For most of us, mentioning a conversation you just had with a deceased family member would be guaranteed to raise some concerns.

But in West Africa, talking to the dead is nothing unusual.

Known as ancestor worship, the practice is woven into the fabric of daily life.

But when the transatlantic slave trade ripped people away from their families and way of life, it place their ancestral chain in terrible danger.

To protect it, they turned to religions like Hoodoo, which restored their access to the spirits despite being so far away from home.

Today, I'm going to find out how Africans held on to these ties with ancestors against all odds, and how descendants use memories of the past to bring about healing in the present.

I'm Tarionna "Tank" Ball , and this is Ritual.

For Africans on the plantation, maintaining the religion of their birth in the Americas simply was not the option it was for the Puritans of Plymouth Rock.

Most spiritual practices among enslaved people were feared and forbidden by plantation owners who look to eradicate any sign of strength.

So in secrecy, often under the cover of night, enslaved Africans used different spiritual tools from home that they adapted in order to survive an otherwise impossible situation.

The religions they created had much in common, like spirit communication, which was practiced by all of them.

But they were also unique to the places where they were created.

Vodou, they called it in Haiti, Candomblé in Brazil, and Santería in Cuba.

In North America, the place where African spirituality faced more threats to its survival than anywhere else, it was known as Hoodoo.

Hoodoo doctors gathered medicinal plants to make the traditional remedies that secured a community's physical survival, while other rituals attended their spiritual walls and reminded them of a time before slavery.

To understand this fascinating tradition, I've come to Dr. Kameelah Martin, a scholar who specializes in the history of black spiritual practices in North America.

Dr. Kameelah, I am so excited to be here with you today.

You are a brilliant scholar, and if I may, I would love to ask you what is ancestor worship?

So simply put, ancestor worship is the reverence in celebration of our literal ancestors, those who came before us in our family lineage.

More broadly, it's a part of a collection of spiritual and healing traditions that have come to the United States by way of the transatlantic slave trade.

So ancestor worship is part of a larger collection of spiritual traditions of the United States, popularly known as Conjure or Hoodoo.

We want to be sure to keep the memory of our ancestors alive.

And so when we continue to call their name, we continue to celebrate the strength from that.

Absolutely.

That's why it's mixed with the word worship, because when I worship, you know, we we tend to get a little funny about that.

Absolutely.

You know, we were brought up to worship nothing but God.

So when you put ancestors in front of it, but the way that you break it down, it makes it special because they are more closer to the divine than we are.

And this physical realm.

We might call them our guardian angels, right, to put it to make it a more palatable term.

Right.

The sense that the spirits are our spirits that are connected to us in terms of our family are watching over us.

They're protecting us.

They're intervening on our behalf.

What exactly is Hoodoo?

I like to say it's a system of healing and harming that came over with our enslaved ancestors.

Well, when we think about the horrific experiences of of our ancestors, you know, coming across the Atlantic, enduring bondage and dehumanization, all that they had was their spirituality.

And so to survive something like that, right, you have to call on a higher power.

And so Hoodoo, Conjure, Voodoo, Candomblé, all of these African diaspora traditions are really the thing that helped us get over.

It's the thing that helped us survive.

It is the reason why you and I are able to sit here today because our ancestors, at some point believed and practiced and persevered because they had Conjure and Hoodoo and Voodoo and all of these different spiritual traditions that allowed them to survive.

Is there a relationship between hoodoo and the church?

Absolutely.

Right.

So when we think about Hoodoo and we think about ancestor worship and an African spirituality at large, there, there are some direct connections with particularly the black church.

Right.

And we see people shouting, speaking in tongues and catching the Holy Spirit.

That's that spirit possession.

We're using different terminologies here, but the concept, the belief and the practice are kind of undergirding from the very same source.

People like to kind of separate, Oh, the church is this and Hoodoo is this over here?

But particularly when we're talking about the American South and black folks, there's not really a clean separation.

The way that people would like to think and that's not a bad thing.

It's simply the evolution, right, of the cultural mixing and the religious and spiritual beliefs coming together to form what we know now as the black church.

Why do you think it's kind of lost in present day?

If it's this cool and interesting and healing?

Yes.

Yes.

I think that it boils down to it being a system of power that enslaved Africans had at their disposal.

Right.

And so white supremacy came in and did what it wanted to do.

And they recognized this power and they stripped it.

But the tradition didn't go away.

Right.

It just went underground and just evolved into something different.

How do people today carry on that ancestral connection?

It's actually more mundane than you might imagine it's the everyday rituals.

It's the everyday remembrances.

Calling on those names, looking at those pictures, telling your children stories about time you spent with with a grandmother and grandfather.

It's hard to know just how many other parts of American culture can be traced back to early Hoodoo practices.

Fewer people have held onto the old religion than they have in Haiti or Cuba.

But among many, traditional practices and ancestral connection remain strong.

I'm sitting down with Daaiyah Salaam, a traditional healer from rural Georgia, to better understand her relationship to those who have come before her, and the power it gives her spirit work in the here and now.

So people call you a conjure woman.

What does that mean?

So a conjur woman is someone who can take anything in front of her and make a healing balm out of it.

That's what I considered to be a conjure woman, someone who can make something out of nothing.

You have heard your grandmother say that I need to go make something out of nothing.

I've heard that too, when I think of conjur, I think of light fires, smoke spells.

Like, no?

No, think more... Hollywood got me?

Hollywood definitely had you.

Hollywood definitely had you.

In a choke hole.

So put that down.

Lay that to rest.

What you want to think about is your kitchen opening up your cabinets.

You want to think about what's in your cabinets.

You want to think about when you don't feel well.

And your grandmother's making that chicken noodle soup, and she's praying over the soup as she's stirring it.

You want to think about the spices she uses that herbs she uses You want to think about her going out of her backyard, pulling out onions to put into the soup.

That's what you want to think about when you think about a conjure woman.

How do you practice this ancestor worship?

Well, one way is by having them on display.

So at home, I have an altar just for my ancestors.

And on an altar you will see every one of these pictures as well as any obituaries or relics of my ancestors that I have kept.

Whether it is a necklace or a Bible or anything that brings me close to them.

And so each week I have dedicated Sunday to them and I go to them.

I just sit by them.

I thank them for their life.

I thank them for their perseverance.

I thank them for their wisdom.

And I just ask them to help guide me while I'm here as well and protect me and my family.

That's how I practice.

That's how I honor those who have come before me.

And that's how you communicate with your ancestors?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Because they're always trying to communicate with us.

In what ways?

In every way.

So one in a way of love, because we are here as a direct result of their perseverance, their struggle and their love.

They also want to protect us.

They also have a wisdom now that they are in the ancestral plane that we do not have.

So they want to guide us and give us wisdom.

And so all of these things are ways that our ancestors talk to us if we are open to listening to them.

And so having them in pictures is just my way of saying thank you for your life and thank you for being a part of my life and protecting me.

Why is it important for us to practice ancestor worship?

That's a really good question.

I think is important for us to understand how we are all interconnected with each other and our ancestors help us do that.

When you say These are my people, this is what my people have gone through, and this is where we are now.

It gives you a sense of social responsibility as well.

So the work that I do every single day, I do as my thank you to my ancestors, they have come before me.

I say I did not have to run from dogs.

But you did.

I did not get hosed down.

But you did.

I did not have to get changed by slavery.

But you did.

And as my thank you to you for the privileges that I have today, I want to do what I can to make today better for those coming after me.

Because one day we too, will be ancestors.

And so the work that we do or don't finish will be the work of somebody else.

So they've done their part.

I want to do my part.

And if each of us were doing our parts, I think we could really bring some healing not only to ourselves individually, but to our communities.

Centuries ago, when enslaved people fell ill on the plantation, hoodoo doctors were often the only ones who took the time to help them heal, thanks to their knowledge of herbs and cures.

But the spiritual system that connected them to the supernatural did more than just heal individuals.

It stitched communities back together when slavery would have left them broken.

With every act of spirit, ancestors and descendents worked hand and hand to be made whole again.

Today, ancestral healers like Daaiyah are walking that same path with the understanding that each individual suffering is part of a bigger picture.

Their connection to the ancestors is a way of healing communities from the untreated wounds of American history.

This way, they can draw strength from the past, connect to each other in the present, and envision a future in which freedom belongs to us all.

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