Rooted in Ancestral Wisdom. Building for the Future.
Black Indigenous Medicine Apprenticeship (BIMA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving Black Indigenous wisdom and leadership through arts, culture, education, healing, and community practice.
We work to keep ancestral knowledge living and accessible by creating opportunities for it to be practiced, shared, and carried forward. Through our programs, portfolio, and stewardship initiatives, we connect people, organizations, and resources to support cultural continuity, community wellbeing, and long-term impact.
Preserving Knowledge. Carrying the Work Forward.
BIMA’s work is grounded in the belief that ancestral knowledge holds wisdom, identity, and practices that can guide present and future generations.
Our work brings together cultural preservation, education, leadership, healing, and community-based initiatives. Today, BIMA is developing an ecosystem of programs, projects, and partnerships focused on strengthening this work and helping it endure.
Our Story in Practice
Arts and Culture: Supporting the preservation and practice of Black Indigenous wisdom and cultural knowledge.
Education and Leadership: Creating opportunities for learning, practice, and leadership development.
Community and Portfolio: Connecting mission-driven organizations and initiatives across culture, health, education, food systems, and community development.
Long-Term Stewardship: Developing approaches to help knowledge, resources, and meaningful work continue across generations.
Incorporated in 2022, Black Indigenous Medicine Apprenticeship (BIMA) started as a Black, trans-led community organization based in Southern Arizona. Our mission is to preserve Black Indigenous wisdom and leadership through arts and culture. Our work is in fellowship with national Afro-Indigenous movements such as Freedom School’s National Health and Healing Justice Fellowship, Black Sustainably Inc, a global organization focused on African sustainability practitioners, and Spirit Grove Collective, a New Orleans based collective committed to healing and ancestral work. BIMA’s projects have a spiral ecosystem whose leaders are physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually prepared for an infusion of resources and a flourishing multi-dimensional expansion. We support locally scalable and digitally networked grassroots projects toward Black-Indigenous sustainable sovereignty.
Our primary program was Dream Reclamation Energy and Ancestral Healing and Matriarchal Praxis (DREAM) School. As an online intensive program, we taught dreamwork as divination, rest, and activism, rooted in African spiritual technology. Over 16 weeks, a focused cohort of up to 25 students learn systems to remember and interpret their dreams, interact with ancestral technologies through their dreams, and blossom their individual artistic practices. These culture-bearing movements and rituals are collective artistic practices that combine art, craft, and tradition. Since 2019, we have engaged 3,820 students and the communities they serve directly and cultivated an online international audience of 50,000 dreamers. DREAM students have created diverse projects including Afrofuturist novels, research into Black lullaby tradition, a comic book, a short film, and an initiative to reconnect BIPOC people to the land. Thank you for joining us as BIMA continues to evolve into the collective futures we’ve been dreaming together.