What We Carry Forward: York, Sankofa, and the Bigger We
What does it mean to be necessary to a nation’s journey but excluded from its freedom? Grounded in Sankofa, the Akan principle that calls us to return for what has been forgotten or left behind so we can carry its truth and wisdom forward, this multimedia session asks participants to look back in service of building a more honest and inclusive future. The experience begins with a screening of Big Medicine: York Outdoors, a documentary following father and son Hasan and Malcolm Davis and a host of modern explorers as they retrace York’s story through history, land, outdoor access, family, and public memory. York’s indispensable role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition, followed by his return to enslavement, exposes a central American contradiction: belonging can be offered when our labor is needed, yet limited or withdrawn when freedom, power, and recognition are at stake.
Following the film, Hasan brings York into the room through a live living-history performance. Hasan and Malcolm will then lead an audience conversation about who is remembered, who is allowed to belong, and what honest storytelling asks of us now. Together, participants will consider what York’s story requires us to retrieve, repair, and reimagine. Through art, ancestral memory, place, and deep listening, the session invites us to resist single stories, hold harm and humanity together, and move from symbolic inclusion toward a bigger “we” grounded in dignity, freedom, and shared responsibility.
Hasan and Malcolm’s father-son collaboration creates an intergenerational bridge between ancestral memory, lived experience, and the future we are still working to build. Hasan’s decades of bringing York’s story to life meet Malcolm’s work with Affrilachian history and youth voice engagement, allowing audiences to experience the past not as a fixed account, but as an inheritance each generation must examine, question, and reshape. Together, they demonstrate how honest intergenerational storytelling can preserve ancestral voices, bridge difference, and help make a more inclusive future believable.
