About This Work
Migraciones: Of Raíces Entrelazadas / De Roots Intertwined. In this project 20 Uprising Doulas will be trained to do Rooted Story Work. Uprising Doulas are community guides who support shared processes of healing, remembering, and collective care. This work is a community (re)memory(ing) project sponsored by Healing Illinois and The Field Foundation. We have committed to amplify left out voices as a community of varied members.
It is not therapy, not journalism, and not academic research. Participants are trained to facilitate story groups with care, consent, and respect for community knowledge using the tools of testimonio. Testimonio is a storytelling practice rooted in Latin American, Black, and Indigenous traditions. It centers first-person lived experience as a form of truth-telling and collective memory. We will also use tools from genealogy. Genealogy is often understood as a family tree—names, dates, and biological relationships. In this project, genealogy is much broader.
Community genealogy looks at how people are connected through:
- shared places and land
- work and labor (mines, plants, farms, railroads, domestic work)
- migration routes and return journeys
- churches, schools, mutual aid, and social clubs
- environmental events, closures, or displacement
- traditions carried through food, music, movement, and craft.
We use, as Uprising Doulas, lineage art. Lineage art includes creative and cultural practices passed down through families and communities, often carried in everyday life rather than formal institutions.
This work centers Great Migration, Southern, and other migrant memory traditions.
If this sounds like a journey you would like to take with us, please apply.