Recent months have shown that Black Liberation Movements continue to be necessary around the globe and we cannot help but reflect on the Haitian Revolution. A pivotal moment in 1791 kickstarted the only anti-colonial revolt in the Western world to successfully result in a new republic established for and by Africans. As we celebrate 229 years since that day when our ancestors met secretly on the Caribbean island to plan the overthrow of their oppressors, we learn some key things from Ama Makeda, a born and raised Haitian who practices “spirit science.” She spoke to us about the less romanticized details of the gathering at Bois Caïman, and how Vodou and careful organization by women were integral to the victory.
Where in Haiti were you raised, and where are you now?
I was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1984 and I was raised all my life here. I always vacationed in Haiti until I became a teenager, when I started really traveling. At seventeen, I left Haiti to continue my education in Montreal where I studied for six years, and I spent one year in Toronto. I came back to Haiti in 2007 and I’ve lived here since then, mainly in Port-au-Prince. My king is from the south and my father is also from the south, so I go there as often as I can. Since 2018 the country has been so politically unstable that the national roads are usually blocked. So I haven’t been south for the past two years.
When did you notice yourself becoming more aware of the spiritual aspect of life?
I think it has always been there. As a youth I didn’t know how to grasp it. I didn’t comprehend it but I was always aware of this higher self. I went to Catholic school and I always rebelled against every single concept I was taught since I was six years old. I challenged those nuns! I think the only reason they kept me in the school was because my dad was contributing some money to their charity. [Laughs.] I think I’ve always had that inclination towards spirituality.
I also studied dancing, since I was three years old, and professionally since I was fourteen. The professional dancing realm here in Haiti is very focused on Vodou, so I knew all the drum rhythms, I knew how to personify someone in trance, I knew the color that goes with what spirit from a very young age. These things were very much taking a lot of space in my life, much more space than any other thing.
So they do a good job in Haiti of teaching the youth folk traditions?
Well, yes, they do focus on traditional folk dance, but the particular school I went to, Artcho Danse, now called Ayikodans, they were very focused on the deep aspects of it. In any other dance school it’s just, Okay, we’re gonna do the Congo. Make sure you smile! You know? Where I went, especially when I got to the professional level, it was really about understanding the profound aspect of it. Sometimes they would even invite us to ceremonies. I never went to any ceremonies because they were not in Port-au-Prince but they themselves would go and would report to us what happened, how the dancer reacts when the spirit comes, how the drummer reacts. You know, how does the vibe change? So we were never smiling on stage. It was really ancestors manifesting through us. I never got into a trance but it really felt like there was something higher present in me, manifesting at the specific moment.
Ama Makeda (center) performs in a choreographed production. [Photo: Daniel Azoulay]
What is the general public perception of Vodou in Haiti?
It’s usually negative, very negative. It’s unfortunately something that people use when they are in need. It’s really something that you do behind the curtains, you know? Or when you really use it, it’s a life-or-death kind of situation. Unfortunately, most people who practice are also practicing Catholicism or other branches of Christianity that are still developing here in Haiti. But those people, when they get really sick, they will go to the Vodou priests when they really need to take care of something serious. But it’s all behind the curtain and that’s why it’s not talked about. That’s why it’s so misunderstood and not lived on a daily basis.
Do people locally commemorate the anniversary of Bois Caïman as the beginning point of the Haitian Revolution?
There’s a consciousness happening right now. I think it was last year that they started officially commemorating and marking the 14th of August, 1791, which is the date of Bois Caïman. Actually, it’s also called the Day of Vodou, when we really commemorate our tradition of Vodou. There are so many versions of the legend of Bois Caïman but more scholars are coming up and clarifying things. One of my teachers, Bayyinah Bello went to the University of Bern, which has the biggest documentation of the ceremony of Bois Caïman. She conducted interviews and lectures to clarify details and teach people about it.
Bois Caïman wasn’t really a Vodou ceremony. It was a meeting. They had to talk. They had to plan. They had to discuss how they would break the colonial system.
What really happened on August 14, 1791?
People look at Bois Caïman as just a Vodou ceremony but it was more than that. It was a congress – multiple meetings that happened in many places at the same time. The meeting was not at Bois Caïman alone. It was planned to happen in 16 different places, according to the documentation that Professor Bayyinah Bello was able to come across, and it ended up happening in 12 of those locations. Three of them were actually in present-day Dominican Republic. So there were different meetings happening in the heart of the forest because they were safe there. They were surrounded by trees and it was a full moon. They didn’t have to light any torches or anything like that.
Let me be clear that we had the right to do ceremonies on the plantation back then. There was nothing wrong with doing a ceremony on the plantation. So Bois Caïman wasn’t really a Vodou ceremony. It was a meeting. They had to talk. They had to plan. They had to discuss how they would break the colonial system. It wasn’t just a ceremony where you beat the drum and get in trance. It was society organizing. It was something huge. Of course, we’ve always had the practice of honoring our ancestors when we meet. We follow tradition, we pour libation, we light a fire, we dance a little, we beat the drum. But the main thing was to sit down and organize. They wouldn’t have done all that organization for just a Vodou ceremony. It took four years for them to organize the congress of the forest because in slavery times you couldn’t say, Okay, let’s do a little meeting here. That wasn’t possible.
Why is there a fixation on the Bois Caïman location and a larger-than-life view of Dutty Boukman?
Well, let’s say that the colonial system had everything planned out. It’s also a very macho system. The slave master had much more fear of the male slave than of the female slave. So, for example, when the female slave reaches 60 years old, she’s not even looked after. She gets off the field work and can spend three days without anyone knowing where she is. It’s not a problem. Meanwhile, the male slave could be 100 years old and still need to ask permission to go pee. So the older women used this advantage to organize the congress. It took them four years and it was Cécile Fatiman who was at the base of this organization. She’s the one who requested that they meet to make sure that their grandchildren don’t go through what they were going through. She was able to gather all those old ladies and make sure that they developed codes, words of power to pass to this cave and that cave, and to make sure the message gets there. We have the tendency of making things look like a movie but it required much more organization against such an oppressive system. You cannot just say, Okay, yo! Can you meet me tomorrow at Bois Caïman? No, it couldn’t happen like that. You needed much more strategy. The fixation comes from the fact that they narrowed our minds so much. In Haiti, there’s an expression that says, Twòp fim ou gade, meaning, You look at too many movies. That’s where the fixation with Bois Caïman comes from. Maybe it was the biggest meeting. Maybe Bois Caiman had people there to write or report what happened. Maybe in other locations there was no one to report the historical details. You would just know there was a meeting there but you don’t know much about it.
As for the personality of Dutty Boukman, he was never in the organization of this congress because he was a cocher. He was a messenger – his job was to pass the message. Boukman really started to have an impact during Bois Caïman, where people were getting discouraged at some point during the meeting. They were saying, No, we cannot do this. They have guns, they have all the power to fight us. And then Boukman spoke up, saying what they now call the Prayer of Boukman. In summary, he said it is God himself that is with us today so we can rise and break this system. That’s when Boukman really came into the game and that was the fuel for the outcome that we had in history.
A key thing often mentioned is the drinking of pig’s blood. What did that sacrifice really mean?
Again, because it happened in many places there are many variations of the story. Some people will tell you it was a pig that was sacrificed, some will say a chicken was sacrificed or a goat was sacrificed. So, depending on the area, it was a different sacrifice. In the area of Saint-Marc in the north, there was an enslaved man called Vixamar who didn’t think it should be an animal sacrifice. He said, I’m gonna cut my own self and spill my own blood. So there was no animal sacrifice there. Personally, I’m not a Vodou initiate. I have respect for the practice and I’m still looking and digging to find out how we used it prior to the bitterness of slavery. The sacrifice part of Vodou is not a part that I resonate with but there is meaning in blood. In mysticism, there is meaning in blood and I do understand the symbolism and the power that a whole group can draw from by spilling blood on Mother Earth. From my research, one of my masters, Marc Arthur Drouillard, talked about the power that people got after the ceremony. They could get shot by a white man and just pass this mouchwa wouj – this red head tie – on their faces, and they would just stand up and continue fighting. Back then, people had a better understanding of the rituals, of the mysticism of nature, of where the sources of spirits come from, so they could invoke them and make sure that they were with them in this fight.
Why have the spiritual powers that instigated the founding of Haiti seemed unable to overcome the largely economic abuse from European nations in the centuries since the revolution?
There was no continuity in this powerful work that we do, so powerful that we need to continue it. In spirituality you need to be able to evolve and ascend to different realms. You call unto a war spirit, you call unto Ogou Feray, you call onto Bawon Lakwa, Èzili Je Wouj, really war spirits. At some point you need to tame those spirits to be able to evolve to higher realms of spirituality. This is what we have never done and this is why we’re still in chaos. It’s why we’re still bubbling. We can never find peace within ourselves and that is the issue.
What is a Vodou ceremony like today?
Again, I’m not a Vodou initiate but I have observed gatherings. I’ll talk about the most major one that I’ve been to, which was at Lakou Soukri. In Haiti you have three main temples or lakou, which means yard, or they also call them peristil. They are all in the center of Haiti – Lakou Badjo, Lakou Soukri and Lakou Souvenance. I went to Lakou Soukri. Back then my king was doing research on rhythm and I was doing my research on dance. My first impression when I went into the lakou was that a lot of it has been lost. A lot of the tradition has been lost. A lot of the morals have been lost. My first impression was that there wasn’t enough respect for what I was always told was a sacred space. I think that so many things have been lost that we need to sit down, and this is what I’m hoping with the celebration of the Day of Vodou that started last year, that there could be some roundtables to sit and clarify what is Vodou. How do you include Vodou in everyday life? You do not need to be an initiate because Vodou is knowledge. That’s what the word Vodou means. It means knowledge. Knowledge of you and your surroundings. How do you evolve? How are you in tune with your surroundings? There’s nothing complicated. People talk to you about mysticism and this and that, and magic potions. There’s none of that. But let’s clarify. Let’s clarify and let’s pass it on and stop putting it under the table and then teaching people Christianity. This is a disgrace to our ancestors, to be practicing Christianity right now. Let’s be clear about it.
Unfortunately, this is what I felt. In Haiti, there’s what you call reklamasyon, which is usually the spirit reclaiming you. You could be a Christian, you could be whatever you are, and then someone gets in trance and then it’s that spirit that came into that person to reclaim you, to tell you this is the spirit you need to serve. I’ve been through this twice and the first time this happened it was with a Jamaican sistren in Montreal. She was in trance, started speaking Creole, Yoruba and all kinds of languages, and she knew everything about me. It wasn’t really a reclaim but it was an affirmation of who I was, you know? The Lwa, the spirit, was Grann Èzili, the mother of Èzili Dantò and Èzili Freda. In the syncretism of Haiti, they would refer to them as Virgin Mary. She explained to me who I was, how powerful I was, and why any spirit could not ride me or get to me because I am Spirit. So I’m not gonna drop myself or start eating glass or anything like that.
The second time was in Archaie with an elder houngan, or Vodou priest, and the spirit that came was called Kalfou, to say that Èzili Dantò is reclaiming me. In Haiti, it’s very common if a woman is black like me, they look at you like, Okay, you work with Èzili Dantò. That’s the spirit that walks with you. So I was supposed to buy this image at the market and buy this perfume, and then they were going to do a ritual and then give me a ring. I said, No thank you. Spirit stays in the spirit realm. I cannot marry in the spirit realm. I’m in the human realm. I’m married to someone in the human realm. I can respect and listen to whatever the spirit has to tell me but nothing says that I have to marry them.
Spirit science is to be in tune and to understand profoundly the manifestation of all five of the elements – water, air, earth, fire and ether, the most subtle of them all.
What is spirit science?
To me, spirit science is natural mystic. It’s working with the elements. It’s the most natural of all mysticism and this is where we can find a link between any civilization, whether you call them the Mayas, the Incas, the Kemetic or the Akans. We all share a relationship with the elements. This is what constitutes the human, what we are. Spirit science is to be in tune and to understand profoundly the manifestation of all five of the elements – water, air, earth, fire and ether, the most subtle of them all. And this is a personal journey, a personal experience. You have to be able to go deep within to find out. And this is why nothing that is on paper, nothing that is dogmatic can define you. Only your own self can define you. This is where you can find the absolute truth because all is related. There’s not one formula fits all. It doesn’t work like that. Once we understand that in nature we are all made of those five elements and that we have this strength, then you just need to go deep within to find out how is that manifested within you.
How do you describe ether to people who focus on just the first four elements?
My overstanding of ether is simply anything that is not yet manifested in the physical. Anything that is not yet manifested in the material is in the etheric state of existence. As simple as that. It’s going to the source. Ether is the source. Ether is energy. At the end of the day, it links all the other four. And this is why it’s at the center. It’s not even the fifth one. It’s actually the first one. Just like they often talk about the third eye but it’s not the third eye. It is the first one. The other two spring out of it.
Ama Makeda on the beach at home in Haiti. [Contributed]
How do you incorporate Yoga into your spirit science?
It is the main component. I’m a Yoga practitioner and instructor. I’m initiated in the ancient Kemetic order in Toronto, the Ausar Auset Society. And I am also self-initiated in ancient African Kabbalah practices. I used to do rituals and so many things just to manifest and feel like I’m really fulfilling my mission on Earth. Then I came across Yoga. It wasn’t all of a sudden but it was really bit by bit. I was in Montreal, embracing Rastafari back then. I was vegan very early in my life. I was already meditating and doing a lot of things that are part of the Yoga practice, so when I came into Yoga it was just natural. Everything that I was reading in books and doing in rituals were all in me. In me and specific to me. It was no longer generalized. It was no longer a group thing. All that I was looking for was in me. I live my spirituality through this inner journey. That’s what Yoga is. It’s an inner journey to find out who you are as the base self, the etheric self. To understand yourself first as energy before manifestation in the flesh. This is why I just put it forward in my life and since then I have been glowing and blooming because this is what I came to do. You can call it Yoga but calling it Yoga is also very limiting because it’s much, much more than that. When you can internalize those senses, it becomes much more than Yoga. Yoga is a Sanskrit word. Yoga is from India. But whichever ancient civilization you look at, in many places, they all had a mind, body and soul practice. India codified it and called it Yoga but we all knew that we needed to create harmony between the mind, body and soul to comprehend our existence and the reason why we were manifested in this realm.
What was the Rastafari experience for you?
It started pretty early because Bob Marley was the only thing I listened to as a young teenager. So he definitely started opening my eyes. That was how it all started, beyond Rastafari. I was always interested in having dreadlocks. That was during Catholic school so it was like, You crazy! You can’t even keep your head nappy! And now you wanna have dreadlocks!? [Laughs.] As soon as I left for Canada when I was seventeen, the first thing I did was take out that perm and started growing my locs. The lyrics of Bob Marley pushed me to search more about Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I, Priest Emmanuel, Marcus Garvey, the whole Rastafari foundation. Back then, I could print for free at school in Montreal, so I would print and print and print and go back home and read and read and read. Later on, I dated a Rastafari who was a Bobo Shanti living in Miami. I would go back and forth, and I was introduced to the tabernacle there. I went through this for a little while and where the disconnect happened was the same disconnect that I needed to do with the Bible. I didn’t really feel comfortable with the whole Levitical order, the whole, you know, man, man, man, man, man. The man I was dating would say I needed to wear skirts only but it was cold in Montreal. What about if I need to keep my legs warm? [Laughs.] It’s about just being logical. I love the culture. Rastafari taught me a lot about pan-Africanism, vegetarianism, the Blackness and finding out who we are as a Black people in general, educating yourself about our ancestors and the great things that they did for us. I still keep all the best parts of it but unfortunately I cannot deal with the Bible. I read it in French, Creole, English. I’m sorry but this book is so manipulated in the wrong way, to mislead us.
I still identify with a lot of things in Rastafari. I put forth the great Vaughn Benjamin, Akae Beka. To me, there’s no better definition of true, deep, profound Rastafari. This is what I identify with. This is what’s important to me: whatever channel people choose to follow, always adapt it to the reality that you are currently in. Vaughn Benjamin went so far. He went into the cosmos! He went into the universe to bring definition. When you look at the reality of certain countries in Africa, Côte d’Ivoire for example, and you listen to Rasta man like Tiken Jah Fakoly, he is adapting the philosophy of Rastafari to the reality that he and his bredrins and sistrens are living in. To me, this is extremely important and that’s why we cannot have one size fit all.
Do you resist the labels then?
People always ask me how I define myself. This is why I use the term spirit science. I will not define myself as Rastafari, as Kabbalistic, as Kemetic. I would never put any label on myself because I learn from all of those. I take what I feel resonates with my energy as a person. To me, this is what makes me. The fact that I’m able to take from different sources and to say, Okay, this is me. And I know. I’m not doubting. I’m not supposing. I know. This is my incarnation’s purpose. This is why I’m here.
Who are people throughout the African Diaspora (past and present) who have shaped or influenced you?
I would talk about a lot of lecturers like Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan, Dr. Llaila Afrika, Dr. Delbert Blair, Dr. Jewel Pookrum, Queen Afua, professor Bayyinah Bello here in Haiti. I’m just saying whatever is coming naturally right now. So many have greatly influenced me. I’ve learned so much from them.
If culture is the last stand, what is culture to you?
[Read for context: Culture is the last stand]
Culture is something that you practice, that you repeat, because it’s in your nature. It’s in the nature of who you are, the nature of your DNA. You ancestors did it and you do it because it is what identifies you. It is your essence. Culture is one’s essence, which evolves, so it’s not stagnant.
What recent or favorite book(s) would you recommend to readers?
They Came Before Columbus by Ivan Van Sertima. La Simplicitié Volontaire translated as Voluntary Simplicity by Serge Mongeau. This book really woke me up. It’s about overconsumption and globalization and how you can really step back and make a difference in this system.
The author that really marked me was Dr. Malachi Z. York with Melanin-ite Children and The Mind. Very powerful books. Another book that I really love, that I still can’t finish, is called Behold, A Pale Horse by William Cooper. It’s about the system. You need to take it bit by bit because it’s really a lot of information. What I read is always about information. I don’t read novels or anything like that.
Is there any room for spirit science in Black Liberation Movements today?
For sure, there is always room for it. We just need leaders who really implement this in whatever movement we are doing. The Haitian community, for example, is big in the United States. They need to remind people of the work that we did here in Bois Caïman. They need to remind people of the work we did for the whole world, for Black people in general, and this work was all about spirit science. You need to get together, first of all, and organize. There’s no way you can break a system by protesting. You need to break it by the decision you make everyday: what you eat, what you wear, where you go, what you consume, what you watch. Spirit science is no mystery. It’s an everyday decision to honor the energy that you are, and we have the energy of Black people. We have the energy of the foundation of humankind. So this is what we need to nourish. We cannot be protesting and still getting killed. This ain’t taking us nowhere. We really need to question every single move we do and head towards self-sufficiency as a nation.