History of the East Coast Village

Many people consider Malidoma Somé to be the most important living interpreter of African indigenous spirit technologies in the west. As divined by his elders before he was born, he has devoted his life in many ways and in many places around the world to building a bridge between two apparently divergent cultures.

The East Coast Village is one such place. Malidoma has committed himself to helping us create a physical and spiritual home here in upstate New York where the Dagara knowledge can be taught and people can come to receive the healing they need to find and live their life purpose. 

The roots of The East Coast Village began during workshops that Malidoma held in the northeast and Chicago area. The idea started to take hold in 1999 when Malidoma contacted Robert Walker, one of his oldest and dearest friends in the west, and asked him to organize a workshop on divination. A small group of fifteen people met at East Mountain Retreat Center near Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Subsequent meetings were held at Jonathan Post and Cindy Parrish’s round cordwood house, just west of Albany, New York, and across the street from where the East Coast Village’s land is today.

In 2001, the ‘Training’, so-called, commenced at Nine Mountain Retreat Center, just east of Northampton, Massachusetts. No one who participated in this series of workshops will forget the weekend after September 11, when the airports were shut down, Malidoma was unable to join us, yet we decided to continue and held a grief ritual one night followed by an earth ritual the next day. Apart from the intensity of that experience, we learned one of the core elements of Malidoma’s teaching: we are all of us capable of doing this work on our own, because indigenousness is in all of us.

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