We Have Everything We Need: Ancestral Healing Informing Pathways to Collective Liberation in the Lives of Youth of Color
Alexis Hunter
About the research
Award
NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship
Award Year
2025
Institution
University of Colorado
Primary Discipline
Community-Based Youth Organizing
This three-article dissertation addresses the growing focus on young people's mental health by examining how Black/African, Latine, and Indigenous youth in community organizing spaces percieve healing as deeply connected to social justice advocacy. Youth-led community contexts are increasingly embracing practices grounded in healing justice, critiquing the limitations of Western, Eurocentric mental health models, and centering the rich healing traditions within communities of color. To uplift youth of color as experts in their own healing and liberation, this dissertation draws on Black/African extra-colonial traditions, including both pre-colonial and anti-colonial practices. Guided by Christina Sharpe's (2016) viewing praxis of wake work, the dissertation explores how young people make meaning of the relationship between healing and justice-oriented action. It also offers design principles and insights for community-based participatory research. This work contributes to the field of education by identifying how schools and educational institutions can learn from youth-led community spaces to better support mental health and well-being in the face of ongoing antiblackness and systemic catastrophes.
About Alexis Hunter
Alexis (Lex) Hunter is a doctoral candidate with a dual focus in Educational Foundations, Policy, & Practice and Learning Sciences & Human Development at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research explores how Black/African, Latine, and Indigenous youth are conceptualizing healing in relation to social transformation. Lex explores the layered, non-linear paths of healing, especially as they emerge through storytelling, intergenerational connection, and cultural memory. As a triplet, Lex's identity as a multiple shapes her understanding of care, healing, and interconnectedness. She loves poetry, rollerskating, trying new foods with her loved ones, and listening to her favorite artist, Stevie Wonder.