What Gives Us the Capacity to Survive?

 

 

Elder Atum Azzahir is 81 years old but says, “I feel no more than maybe 70. I have high, high energy.” As the founder and executive director of the Cultural Wellness Center (CWC) in south Minneapolis, she has used that energy to challenge health and wellness paradigms for communities of color.

Born in 1943 in segregated Mississippi, Azzahir was raised in an all-Black community that supported collective purchasing and shared child care and collaboration.

“We had to get along with each other. We had to watch out for each other,” she recalls. “The way that we related to one another gave us a greater resiliency and the capacity to stand up against outside forces.”

Azzahir came to Minnesota in 1978 after fleeing near-fatal domestic abuse. She worked in the battered women’s movement and learned to “voice my soul and do the work in a collective way.”

Around 30 years ago, she traveled to the Delta to understand better how people of African heritage endured oppression. She wanted to know “what gave us greater capacity to stand up and survive?”

She says, “Everyone I spoke to began to talk about self-love versus self-hate, that you couldn’t believe everything you heard from the outside. You had to believe in yourself.”

Azzahir concluded that culture was at the root of Black resiliency. Unfortunately, health programs for people of color seemed to be based on research data that focused on her community’s deficits instead of strengths.

So, in 1996, Azzahir founded the CWC, a nonprofit that integrates health, heritage, and harmony in its approach to well-being. The center encourages people to reconnect with cultural roots through self-study, coaching, physical activities like yoga, and grab-and-go meals featuring foods like ancient African grains.

“We need to help people help themselves,” she says.

The center partners with mainstream medical systems to help providers understand how community practices and alternative treatments can complement Western medicine. It emphasizes the collective nature of health care, teaching providers that health is familial, not individual, for Black communities.

“Whether it’s diabetes or heart disease, or even Covid, many people in the family are sick when one person is sick,” Azzahir says. “We provide the support: visiting, listening, helping the patient.”

The center also helps communities recognize mental health stress is often a valid response to oppression. “We tell them that the anger, the anxiety — the pain that is often undefinable at the core of their experience — is called historical trauma,” Azzahir says.

Solutions might include herbal remedies or increased social support, rather than immediately turning to medication. Some staff are trained in psychotherapy.

“You should never be alone and feel a sense of rejection,” Azzahir says. “You have to be heard, listened to, and given good feedback. All of that gives calmness, a peace of mind, and a sense of groundedness.”

Collaborative Work

Some local health care leaders appreciate the values of the CWC’s approach. Azzahir calls this “sweet-spot work,” in which communities and institutions come together to respect and combine health care practices. The Center has long-standing relationships with health care systems such as Allina Health and North Memorial Health, and provides elder coaching to Ramsey County, including sound therapy, self-healing talk circles, and reconciliation healing circles. One challenge, however, is that the CWC often works in a for-profit system where its practices are not reimbursable.

The CWC is developing a new three-story building in Minneapolis called “Dreamland on 38th.” It will serve as a hub for cultural ancestry research, network building, and training for cultural health practitioners. It will provide certification programs, entrepreneurial development support, and a dedicated space for cultural community group healing, rituals, and ceremonies. Groundbreaking begins in June 2025, with an anticipated move-in date of spring 2026.

“At this particular time in the political world, we do have to find a way to come together,” Azzahir says.

culturalwellnesscenter.org

 

 

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