Òṣun Consciousness™

Òṣun Consciousness is an Afro-Feminine Indigenous approach developed by Dr. Orduna to create a new understanding and resolution of the complex social phenomenon of homelessness through Restoring Memory, Transforming Systems, and Cultivating Belonging.

It is derived from the wisdom of Afro-Diasporic indigenous knowledge frameworks, primarily the Yoruba tradition of Ifa, to re-member latent interconnected ways of being in the world and restore balance as the collective is overwhelmed by the extractive, competitive, production-driven pressure of modernity.

Through a focus on four key determinants - Elders, Ancestors, Land, and Culture, our Òṣun Consciousness facilitation methods moves the conversation beyond housing people to restoring the conditions in which people can experience dignity, connection, agency, and belonging. This understanding is especially important to historically marginalized populations - push to the periphery due to race, national origin, disability, age, and other social identities.

We address the meaning of home from multiple perspectives - physical, emotional, spiritual, and communal to build resilience against external threats of displacement, discrimination, fractured relations and institutional failures.

We create organizational cultures where frontline workers and emerging leaders can bring their authentic selves to the workplace and where their living experiences are valued to unlock stories and perceptions often silenced and made invisible. Through this work, we seek to restore one’s ‘why’, support their vision of growth, and increase their fluidity to sustain this work for at least a decade to come.

To us, a house provides shelter; a home holds relationships; belonging gives these relationships a sense of safety, meaning, and purpose.

Our vision of Beloved Community

• Elders Seeks to re-invoke a collective memory of social protocols and mapping of social relations from the Black Southern traditions, and other community practices, as tools of resilience, birthed out of retention of values that instituted practices, positions, roles, and responsibilities to sustain inter-generational relationships to keep communities safe, accountable, and thriving.

• Ancestors Reminds us that honoring the Ancestors are an important component of many indigenous African and other earth-based spiritual systems to invoke the embodied traditions, values, wisdom, and worldviews that survived over the passage of time opening existential pathways so that we can be here today with a sense of purpose and knowledge of self.

• Culture Acknowledges the concept of cultural retention and knowledge as foundational sources of ontological safety and resilience. Like individuals and families, communities perform in cultural frameworks that create values, norms, beliefs, and wisdom. These are often so obvious that they are invisible, creating tensions as truth, when encountering other cultural frameworks. We leverage the wisdom from culture to create responsive solutions that meet local needs.

• Land Emphasizes the importance of access to land as a form of identity, protection, and visualization of place to validate existence and confirmation of one’s safe and secure place of being in the world while considering Earth as witness to all human affairs and a source of stability and survival.