Ancestors in Training

Bridging the teachings of Indigenous peoples of the Americas with African Traditional Religions, this book is an offering, a reclamation, and revelatory invitation into the deeply rooted work of intergenerational healing.

How to become and embody a good ancestor: a six-archetype approach to recovering your lineage, claiming your sacred role, and transforming your ancestral legacies.

How can we live lives that our descendents and the next seven generations can be proud of? How can we walk with integrity in the face of an uncertain future? How can we enact legacies of care, healing, and responsibility?

Ancestors in Training is a living cosmology that explores how we inherit, embody, and transform ancestral legacies in a world shaped by colonialism, displacement, and resistance—and a spiritual guidebook to reclaiming Indigenous wisdom roots and the teachings of African Traditional Religions.

Author Veronica Agard identifies six archetypes to help you step into your sacred responsibility as an ancestor—and to understand how you’ve been shaped by the past; what you’re stewarding now; and what you’re called to heal, evolve, or transform for future generations. 

• The Dream Carrier
  
• The Cycle Breaker
  
• The Wayfinder
  
• The Archivist
  
• The Firekeeper
  
• The Root Tender
  

Written for readers in Black Diaspora and Indigenous communities, Ancestors in Training offers rituals, reflections, and ancestral wayfinding practices. Agard guides you to cultivate diasporic memory, connect deeply to your ancestral lifeways, and interrupt cycles of intergenerational trauma so that you—and your descendants—can heal and thrive.