Roots & Remedies 2022
Rest in Pleasure
Onika is a musician, songwriter, historically poor Black, Native Queer licensed therapist, with a Horticulture diploma, concentrating in healing gardens. She identified the need for Black Dream Escape as a labor and abolition activist, organizing in support of basic human rights and connecting those rights to quality of sleep.
Her clinical social work focuses on how trauma affects marginalized communities, and throughout the seven years that she has been a therapist, she recognized that therapy models are not culturally relevant and that oppression has left people mentally exhausted.
She has served as a rest doula in Pittsburgh for five years, educating communities, organizations, and individuals on the importance of Black and Indigenous rest and sleep.
She has also served as an artist-in-residence for Sanctuary Pittsburgh and the There are Black People In The Future artist residency.
Windafire is a Caribbean, Black Latine, Queer, Gender-Unified individual. As a healing artist and initiated priest in the Lucumi Tradition, he uses his art and music for health and healing. He views his role in the movements for social justice as a model and instructor for wellness, boundaries, and commitment to personal joy.
At 17, he has had ample time to observe the way in which his friends are exhausted by endless assaults on their humanity. He has watched peers become ill from tireless social justice work. In the course of his education, Windafire has done an intensive study of medicinal plants and foraging. He currently makes his own salves, lotions, tinctures and sprays which he has made available to activists. He is currently developing products for Black Dream Escape.
As a home educated person, he has been given the freedom to study marketing, product development and business planning. He feels very fortunate to be empowered to commit to his life works when, and as, he is called.