About ChE or Xé

Conjuring movements of embodied Liberation.

ChE or Xé (they/ them) is a proudly Queer Trans-Gender-Nonbinary, Afro-Indigenous Artivist-Creatrix, Healing Justice Spirit-Werqer, Liberatory Facilitator, Coach and Consultant living in New Orleans, Indigenous Bulbancha lands of the Gulf South. Their root systems stretch wide—born and raised in the Uto-Aztecan, Kumiai coastal lands of Oceanside, California; politicized in the Bay Area; seasoned traveling the country as a cultural organizer and equity consultant; and deepening familial relationship with the majestic Sonoran Desert, Indigenous Pima lands of Arizona. Xé is proud to be the descendant of those who have survived impossible circumstances of Indigenous genocide, forced tribal identification and erasure, enslavement, and sharecropping. ChE embodies a commitment to stewarding the healing medicine of their ancestors to conjure worlds of Intersectional Justice, interdependence with land, and transgenerational Freedom. Steeped in The Black Radical Tradition, they are a scholar and practitioner of the ring shout, Freedom singing, Indigequeer medicine cosmologies, Gulf South folqways, decolonizing pedagogies, Trans Black Feminism, marronage, and the subversive spiritual resistance of gender-expansive Black womxn across the Diaspora.

Xé is the founding priestexx of HAUS OF THE BLACK MADONNX, an emergent conjure circle creating a spiritual, artistic, liberatory praxis home for QTGNC2-S+ Black and Indigequeer creatrix and medicine folq living in and beyond the liminal through its four hauses: a spirit haus, a haus of art and culture, a haus of print and publish, and a haus of liberatory praxis (known as F R E E D O M  L A N D). Founding Liberatory Consultant of F R E E D O M L A N D LLC (f. 2019), ChE offers Liberatory Coaching and Consulting services; land-responsive retreats; Freedom Schools; multi-year rites-of-passage programs, and a biennial cohort where QTGNC2-S+ Legacy Leaders-of-Color immerse for two years in the transdisciplinary Intersectional Justice framework, Afro-Indigenous Liberatory Praxis. Informed by decades of lived research, practice, and listening to movement elders and culture bearers, ChE synthesized Afro-Indigenous Liberatory Praxis—a pedagogy that explores the subversive resistance methodologies within African/ Indigenous diasporic spirit-ways, Gulf South folk traditions, somatic ritual healing, and seven generations movement-building from a Queer Black + Indigenous Feminist and First Peoples’ cultural epistemology.

ChE’s artistic praxis weaves intermedia, African-Indigenous diasporic traditional and contemporary dance forms, ancestor reverence, storytelling circles, vocal composition, immersive installation, and land-based community rituals that span multiple years. They were a featured Ring Shout practitioner and dancer in the OWN Network television series, Queen Sugar (2022), as well as a featured LGBTQ New Orleans leader for the Netflix billboard and social media campaign, Tales of the City (2019). ChE is currently developing The People Can Fly—a cross-regional living folktellin’ unfolding through a decade of land-responsive performance rituals and community programs that bring the cultural praxis, sacred artforms, and medicine traditions of gender-expansive Black+Indigenous peoples of the Gulf South to the center of national movement-building and dreaming. Xé was the founding Artivist Director of #DignityInProcess (2015-2019)— a love offering to the Movement for Black Lives and an Intersectional Justice platform that toured the country shaping healing justice initiatives, art actions, freedom schools, and wisdom councils for transgenerational mentorship to conjure a movement of Afro-Indigenous life beyond the binary. They have been an artist-in-residence with A Studio in The Woods: Adaptations Residency, Paper Machine, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Spirit Garden Productions, Antenna Gallery, Dancing Grounds, One Love Nola, Destiny Arts Center and more. As a Brown University, Black Spatial Relics Artist-in-Residence (2016-2017), ChE partnered with the Center for Slavery & Justice, local organizers, and Afro-Indigenous culture bearers to bring to light hidden names of those who were enslaved at the Brown family’s estate. Xé directed and choreographed Opinion | The Other America in collaboration with yon Tande (Whitney V. Hunter) and Jude Sandy—inviting the Nightingale-Brown family house to speak hidden narratives alive through Queer Black bodies invoking a ring shout homegoing ceremony for the enslaved. This participatory performance ritual wove its way through the historic house and processed to the auction block releasing the spirits to finally find rest at the water.

Xé has founded and led a number of platforms centering the healing, creative genius, and liberation of QTGNC2-S+ BIPOC including being the founding Liberatory Coach for The Underground Railroad: Liberatory Coaching for Creative Radicals of Color (f. 2017); co-host of the Black Girl Dangerous podcast Spirit Medicine (2016-2017); founder of QT+POC Soul Sangha (f. 2019); founding officiant of #TakinBackSunday: Queering Black Church; curator, trainer/ facilitator for The Breaking the Silence Town Hall (BTSTH): Teen Salon (2015); founding healer and curator of Breathe in Liberation (2013), #BlackHealingMatters and more. ChE was proud to co-shape history in 2013, collaboratively fundraising, designing, and implementing the award-winning Destiny Arts Center’s first explicitly LGBTQ2-S+ youth programs Moving in the Movement, the Art Liberation Troupe, and Queer Emerging Artist Residency (QEAR).

They are the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including Southerner’s on New Ground: The Lorde’s Werq Fellow (2019-2020), Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow (2017-2018), a finalist for MAP Fund (2020) and Eva Yaa Asantewaa Queer Art Grant (2019). ChE received their BA in Psychology and BA in Art with Honors, as well as the Irwin Award for Artistic Excellence from University of California, Santa Cruz (2010). They completed the Social Innovation for Artists Certification with the Masters of Arts Museum Studies Program at Southern University New Orleans (2016). ChE has benefited from the mentorship of numerous individuals including Dr. E.G. Crichton in Intermedia/ Installation, Vivien Bassouamina in Traditional Congolese Dance, Byb Chanel Bibene in Contemporary Congolese Dance, and Claudine Naganuma in Modern Dance and Corvino Ballet Technique. ChE has garnered invaluable experience honing their technique as a principal dancer in Kiandanda Dance Theater, an Afro-Contemporary/ Congolese dance company; and dNaga Dance Company, a multigenerational dance troupe centering Modern Dance and Ballet. They have been teaching yoga and contemplative praxis for over ten years, with a number of somatic, spiritual, and healing certifications including Laughing Lotus Yoga 200-hour Teacher Training (2018), the Atabey School of Cultural Healing, BIPOC Community Herbalism Training (2020), and more.

Follow ChE’s Freedom werq at che-art.life and wefreedom.land

TRANSDISCIPLINARY ARTIVIST-CREATRIX

LIBERATORY CONSULTANT, COACH, & FACILITATOR

HEALING JUSTICE SPIRIT WERQER