Our Research, Action, & Practice-based Projects:
CURCUM كركم : A Palestinian Collective for Decolonial Healing
The CURCUM كركم Collective is a Palestinian healing justice psychosocial practice and research group that we as DARA helped created and cultivate since August 2019.
We are excited to share that we have created an indigenous Palestinian decolonial healing guide, which is free and available online thanks to MayFly Books, and made possible from funding support of Grassroots International! We have written this workbook as co-authors including myself Devin Atallah, with cherished colleagues Caesar Hakim, Hana Masud, Yousef AlAjarma, Aya Darwish, Abeer Musleh, Rayyan Alfatafta, and Nihaya Abu-Rayyan. Together, we have succeeded in developing this fully bilingual workbook (English and Arabic), which we have called, “CURCUM’s Trees: A Decolonial Healing Guide for Palestinian Community Health Workers” and can be downloaded now here: https://mayflybooks.org/curcums-trees/ and is also on twitter : https://twitter.com/MayflyBooks
Please distribute widely on all your networks.
This current online version is NOT the final copy, but it is a draft that we wanted to share right now with the wider public because of the current situation of unspeakable settler colonial violence that our Palestinian people are facing. This workbook was designed to support community workers in Palestine towards deepening our understandings and our relationships for ongoing resistance and healing. There are five chapters, organized around a series of our beloved native trees and Indigenous knowledges rooted in our Palestinian lands and communities.
-CURCUM كركم
Evaluation of Anti-Racism Youth Leadership Programming in Boston
This is an active research project that we, the DARA Collective, are honored to be engaging in with one of our Boston-based community research partners. In this project, we are evaluating an anti-racist and trauma-informed youth leadership program.
Our research is guided by decolonial approaches to critical inquiry within a community-case study qualitative design, utilizing Situational Analysis. In this project, we aim to contribute to understandings of the ways in which grassroots programming can support youth of color in developing their complex intersecting identities and accompanying them in journeys for healing and resistance.
This project is part of the masters’ theses projects of Rhyann Robinson and Michelle Del Rio.
Mapuche Decolonial Resistance and Healing Journeys
This project is currently being developed. We are working with our beloved peñi and lamgien (brothers and sisters in Mapudungun) to build on our previous projects and collaborations with Rucadungun and Kvme Felen, which focused on enactments of decolonial solidarity praxis in our research and activism while exploring resilience and resistance from perspectives of Indigenous community healers and frontliners in the Mapuche decolonial movements.
Our Cherished Community Partners
(1) Our Partners in
Palestine
(2) Our Partners in Chile/Wallmapu
(3) Our Partners in
Boston, Massachusetts
(2) Our Partners in
Chile: Kvme Felen & Rucadungun
(3) Our Partners in Boston: CAT & TCS
The Community Action Team (CAT)
The CAT is a grassroots group of Boston residents, teachers, students, psychologists, professors, social workers, anti-racism activists, parents/caregivers of BPS school children, restorative justice practitioners, and leaders of local community-based organizations dedicated to healing and transformation in our beloved youth and Boston communities of color.
The City School (TCS)
The City School (TCS) is a grassroots community-based organization located in Dorchester for youth leadership development and programming that focuses on critical thinking, community building, service work, reflection, and action. TCS programs seek to unite high school students from the full range of Boston communities, developing long-term leadership skills of diverse young people concerned with social justice.
Would you like to learn more about my research projects?