Honoring Authorship and Mentorship in Africentric and Community-Aligned Teaching and Learning
Navigating Ethical Attribution in Shared Frameworks with Integrity
Introduction
In community-centered and Africentric traditions, knowledge is never neutral. It carries spirit, lineage, and obligation. As more practitioners rooted in these traditions engage with formal academia or institutionalized mindfulness and psychology programs, a fundamental tension arises. How can we share insights that emerge in communal spaces without violating the trust, reciprocity, or spirit that shaped them? What constitutes rightful authorship when teachings are co-held, co-developed, or shared in sacred trust? These questions invite a deeper exploration of the ethics of knowledge transmission, especially for Black scholars and cultural workers navigating both traditional wisdom and formal education.
Africentric frameworks such as Sankofa provide more than cultural context; they offer structural alternatives to dominant ideas of ownership. In the Sankofa paradigm, knowledge retrieval is a sacred act. It involves returning to ancestral sources, revisiting silenced truths, and bringing forward what was once hidden. This work is never solo. Even when carried out by an individual, it takes place within a web of spirit, community, and historical relation. A person who channels a Sankofa insight is not its originator. They are its vessel. Therefore, authorship within this frame becomes a matter of accountability and presence, not possession.
✨ Support Wil’s Transcending - 🔥 Fuel this fire - with a donation ✨
Mentorship
When a learner receives teachings in sacred trust, such as through a mentorship circle, spiritual fellowship, or healing-based collective, the right to share those teachings publicly depends on the nature of the relationship. In Africultural systems, mentorship is rarely transactional. It involves mutual regard, shared destiny, and often, informal initiation. However, in Western academic or clinical settings, mentorship can carry monetary value and gatekeeping power. This dissonance creates conflict for many Black learners who seek both ancestral connection and institutional legitimacy. The issue becomes most visible when a person wishes to write about or teach a framework they first encountered in relationship with a mentor who charges a fee.
Mentorship itself carries layered meanings. In many African cultural contexts, a mentor is not simply a teacher. They are a guardian of unfolding. They see the mentee not as a subordinate, but as someone holding future wisdom that requires nurturing. In this view, mentorship involves guiding another toward the fullness of their gifts without assuming credit for those gifts. The mentor is accountable to the mentee's emergence, not just their productivity. This view contrasts sharply with academic and capitalistic mentorship models, where the relationship is often defined by institutional roles, hourly billing, or advancement metrics.
This difference becomes especially charged when a mentee reaches out for guidance on higher education, doctoral programs, or publication, and is met with a financial gate- a $450 per hour coaching fee, for example. The question arises: does this person see me as someone to invest in or as someone to bill? Am I a future scholar in their eyes, or a client in need of help? For many Black scholars, this moment carries deep emotional and historical weight. It echoes the longstanding denial of academic mentorship to Black learners, and it surfaces the embodied memory of being seen as a problem to manage rather than a possibility to grow.
Point: Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Black professionals would practically hunt down others with potential in the hopes of mentoring them. It was not uncommon to hear, “Come to my office. Spend the day and see how I work. Call on the weekend. Come over for dinner and meet the spouse.” In 2025, it seems we each consider ourselves brands with Tubes and Grams. Every hour of our time together is categorized and monetized as a step in the coach marketing funnel. This is not our way. This positionality bears no kinship to africultural practice. When we forget our relationship to one another is sacred, we undo our own true value in the capitalist quest to increase our net worth.
Counterpoint: I’ve been extracted from and need to set boundaries, limits, and legitimate monetary value on my time. I have not always valued myself or seen myself as worthy of being paid for sharing my space, energy, and hard-earned wisdom. It cost me to get here. We live in a capitalist system. I have training and experience as a teacher, therapist, and coach. It’s simple. Time is money and that’s just the way it is.
For the would-be mentee, clarity necessarily comes through discernment. Not every teacher is meant to become a mentor. Not every relationship is meant to deepen beyond the container in which it was first formed. A teacher may offer invaluable wisdom without stepping into the role of personal guide. This does not erase the value of what they have given. Instead, it calls the learner to hold boundaries and honor the teaching without conflating it with a deeper relational offering that may never come.
I take up this practice for myself as the disappointed mentee:
Begin by closing your eyes to welcome protective radiant darkness, and inhale deeply into the heart, pausing at the top to honor tradition. Exhale through the mouth as you release barriers between mentor and mentee. Repeat this breathing cycle, and allow yourself to let go of the possibility that this teacher might become more than an instructor. In this third cycle of shared breath, feel ancestral currents guiding your pen and your presence toward what truly is your aligned destiny.
Authorship
Black scholars and cultural workers must take responsibility for how we integrate and share insights that emerged through those relational channels. When someone contributes a language, a structure, or a vision that shapes our own articulation, that contribution must be named. Even when we add our own framing, language, or embodied example, we do not erase the original source. We are not thieves, but neither are we free from the need for transparency. Naming that a model emerged through the teachings of a particular person is not only ethical, it is culturally appropriate. It reflects the value placed on attribution, communal clarity, and truth-telling.
There is also a need for systems of self-assessment. Before publishing or publicly teaching a framework inspired by a communal or mentored space, one can ask: Was this insight shared with me in a way that invited public use? Have I received explicit or implicit permission to teach this? Have I contributed back to the space in a meaningful way? Have I named the people or lineages that helped shape this work? These questions are not about avoiding blame. They are about embodying the values we claim to hold.
The challenge becomes even more nuanced when teachings emerge in hybrid spaces. For example, when a Black-led professional circle rooted in psychological or academic frameworks shares teachings that are both culturally resonant and institutionally shaped, those teachings sit at an intersection. If the person who offered the structure is a scholar with published works, then citation becomes easier. But when a framework is presented orally, in a cohort, without published text, the decision to cite or reference must be guided by ethical regard, not just by citation rules. This is where Africentric discernment comes into play. The question becomes: What honors the spirit of what was shared? What upholds relational integrity?
The concept of equitable authorship also connects to trauma-informed care. For people with histories of intellectual or cultural theft, the failure to be cited or acknowledged can feel like re-traumatization. Similarly, for those seeking to find their voice after years of silence, the accusation of plagiarism or unearned use can be deeply shaming. This makes transparency and clear agreements essential. Trust is not built on assumption. It is built on clear, named relationships and a mutual commitment to truth.
On Community-Based Participatory Research
Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) offers one important entry point. CBPR is a research model that insists on shared power, collective inquiry, and transparent authorship. It reframes research as a partnership, where community members co-lead each phase of the process. Unlike extractive academic models, CBPR honors lived experience as valid knowledge and centers the co-ownership of outcomes. Black maternal health research led by Amutah‑Onukagha uses participatory methods to surface lived experience and co-design solutions (Amutah‑Onukagha, 2023). Its values echo the communal, intergenerational ways of knowing that exist across the African Diaspora. Scholars in this tradition emphasize long-term commitment, mutual benefit, and the transparent naming of all contributors. CBPR can function as an anti-racism tool by addressing structural inequalities and centering community wisdom (Jones, 2022). These principles become essential when navigating questions of who gets cited, credited, or named in work that comes from shared spaces.
Community-based and Africentric scholarship is not about hierarchy. It is about honoring the web of relation. No insight exists in isolation. Every story, every structure, every sacred truth moves through many hands and mouths before arriving in text. Community–academic partnerships in Detroit have leveraged CBPR to co-create health interventions in Black and Latino neighborhoods (Allen et al., 2004). The ethical implications of using such frameworks in one's own writing, especially when they emerge through communal study or are introduced by revered teachers, demand care. Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) principles emphasize mutuality, transparency, and shared ownership of knowledge production. To write with integrity is to acknowledge that movement. To teach with integrity is to share credit, tell the truth, and create space for others to grow beyond the structures we ourselves inherited. In these settings, all participants who help share the work, the theory and the theory of the framework are co-contributors and are, therefore to be named as such to align with right relationship in authorship.
A Living example: Counterstorytelling
In the context of culturally grounded practice and liberatory pedagogy, the ethical use of frameworks shared within trusted community spaces requires rigorous attention. This is especially true in my work within Africentric and community-based paradigms that emphasize relationality, memory, and collective healing. If a specific framework was created by a mentor and shared as a teaching model, it is ethical to attribute the model directly to that person. If the learner later refines or expands the model, those additions can be named as personal contributions while still honoring the original source.
When knowledge arises in sacred settings such as Sankofa Community Circles, where Dr. Shelly Harrell introduces Sankofa frameworks and practices such as Counterstorytelling as both method and medicine, the question of authorship, integrity, and shared lineage emerges with weight. I must navigate the tension between integration and appropriation. So, I state for the record, "Much of the Sankofa-based frameworks referenced on this Substack site integrate the teachings shared by Dr. Shelly Harrell in the 2025 Sankofa mentorship circle through the Soulfulness Center. I have expanded upon these teachings with my own language, lived interpretation, and practice." This statement affirms both the original teacher and the student-practitioner’s agency. These standards extend beyond research and into the praxis of cultural stewardship, as knowing better requires us to do better.
In conclusion
This inquiry explores the ethics of integrating Sankofa teachings, particularly those shared by Dr. Shelly Harrell, into my own writing and teaching. It considers the boundaries of attribution, the meaning of lineage, and the stakes of claiming voice. Drawing from Africentric psychology, community-based research ethics, and my lived experience as a practitioner navigating grief, liberation, and unsilencing, the paper offers a model for discerning use without extraction. The stakes are high. The trust of our communities, the integrity of our work, and the healing power of our stories all depend on how we hold what has been shared with us. This paper begins there.
Authorship in Africentric and community-rooted contexts requires a different standard than the dominant academic and clinical models. It demands cultural accountability, spiritual transparency, and the humility to name where our knowing begins and ends. It asks us to be honest about who shaped us, and to offer our own teachings in ways that leave the door open for others to walk through. Knowledge, in these traditions, is not a product. It is a practice of remembrance, re-engagement, and re-connection.
References
Allen, A. M., Willis, S. K., Odoms-Young, A., Kieffer, E. C., Loveluck, J., & REACH Detroit Partnership. (2004). Community partner perspectives on benefits, challenges, facilitating factors, and lessons learned from community-based participatory research partnerships in Detroit. Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action, 26(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1353/cpr.2007.0022
Amutah-Onukagha, N. N. (2023). Honoring the wisdom and assessing the health literacy of Black women: A community-based participatory research study. Maternal and Child Health Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-022-03571-z
Harrell, S. P. (2019). Cultural soulfulness: An approach to healing and resilience. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 59(6), 792–818. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167817707109
Jones, C. P. (2022). Antiracism and community-based participatory research. American Journal of Public Health, 112(1), 70–78. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.307114
