"sisters without peer":
The Power of Womanhood in African Civilizations
In the spirit of our Ancestors, our Pan-African global family, and the yet unborn, ASCAC extends a warm invitation for you to join us for our 37th Annual Ancient Kemetic (Egyptian) Studies Conference. Our 2020 theme is “Sisters Without Peer”: The Power of Womanhood in African Civilizations. In April of 2020, we will gather in Los Angeles, CA at Los Angeles Southwest College to celebrate our past 36 years of existence and to not only renew our moral obligation and responsibility to counter the political, cultural, and psychological oppression of African people, but to also continue to promote, preserve, and disseminate African cultural and intellectual enlightenment that sustains our humanity and is the foundation of our liberation.
Our conference theme this year focuses on building knowledge on African women as a powerful force in our history and culture as co-builders of African civilizations, communities, and institutions. African women have been neither passive witnesses, nor voiceless bystanders on the sidelines of their own cultural experiences. They have had an active role in creating, sustaining, protecting, defending, and perpetuating African civilizations. If we think of culture, or an interpretation of that culture, as a kind of cultural script, we can clearly see that African women have co-written and co-authored African cultural scripts in concert with men. And the exercise of power, decision making and authority by African women is a normal, fundamental, and a most ancient feature of African civilizations. In African civilizations, human beings had to be balanced with themselves, their family, their community, their systems of governance, as well as with the spiritual world of ancestors and divinities. In Kemet, Maat (truth/justice), depicted as a Goddess with an ostrich feather atop her head, was the divine governing principle of their cosmic and social order. In this conference, it is important to not just talk about and highlight individual African women as exemplars, but to also examine the worldview and cultural values of the social order in which both men and women relate to one another.
Los Angeles Southwest College was the site of our first ASCAC Conference in 1984 with the theme “Rescuing and Reconstructing Black History and Humanity.” It is in divine order that we return this year to the same site to also honor many women who have made foundational and important contributions to ASCAC. One prominent exemplar is Queen Nzingha Ratibisha Heru, a long-time resident of Los Angeles who served ASCAC as President for over 20 years and provided the African community with a powerful expression of African womanhood and peoplehood. As our fierce and respected leader, Queen Nzingha played a pivotal role in helping ASCAC to spread African-Centered education, exposing the community to African cultural ideas, practices, and activism, communicating ideas for the betterment of society, and heightening our collective historical and cultural consciousness.
In leading us, Queen Nzingha would always invoke this aphorism: “the reward for good work is more work.” In the spirit of Maat, let us use this conference to pause, examine, and honor the beautiful and diverse powerful expressions of African womanhood past and present. Let us also continue the work of our ancestors and self-consciously bring the values of our African traditions and heritage into the contemporary world in our struggle for the liberation of African people. This conference brings together researchers, artists, and activists from all walks of life from across the country to speak Maat and do Maat!
Dr. Mario Beatty, International President, ASCAC