The first week of July is always the busiest in my year; my husband’s birthday, my best friend’s birthday, and my wedding anniversary all fall within its span—and all that beautiful shit is EXPENSIVE! To make matters more annoying, this week is hotter than the devil’s draws. Even the gay bar is overrun with screaming soccer hooligans, and every beam of its fan-cooled canopy bears somebody’s flag.
Lumumba Vea is…I don’t know what to call it but a ritual, though a language barrier prevents me from knowing exactly how Michel Nkuka Mboladinga frames his work. He’s been dressing as the slain prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo since 2013.
Last year, I wrote about de-elevation rituals, the process by which we remove the spiritual vestiges of anti-Blackness, enslavement, and oppression through breaking the power vested in their statues and other charms.
De-elevation Rituals
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September 15, 2025
When a White supremacist government elevates one of their heroes onto a plinth, it is a spiritual act.
Yet de-elevation rituals are not even half of the process, they’re one third. For de-elevation to have an impact, we must elevate our ancestors of tradition and lineage, as well as re-elevate those slain by the state in public places.
Lumumba Vea, in my opinion, leads the way in this.
The veneration in Lumumba Vea is obvious—yet when we focus on his performance as an act of public elevation, we can understand the work in front of us for the rest of this year.
Against the backdrop of the 250th anniversary of the US as a colonial, genocidal enterprise, Lumumba Vea is an important symbol for all Black people.
This is often accomplished through dedicated ritual. It is also a process that can continue once a specific elevation ritual is complete.
Even elevated ancestors may still need alignment with the times. This is one of the topics divination helps us address; by speaking openly with our ancestors, we can identify their biases, negative behaviors, and lingering emotional states so that when the session closes we can work with our ancestors to remedy those issues. This can be to individual benefit: an ancestor who in life was homophobic, a lackluster parent, or involved in violent enterprises need not retain those traits.
When we do not elevate our ancestors and our dead, their problems may persist—and they may manifest those issues in our lives when they are part of our ancestral practice.
This is why ancestor elevation may need to come before ancestral veneration. When we venerate an ancestor we have not elevated, it can make those harmful aspects of personality and habit more present in our ancestors and in our own lives.
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This is why busts of George Washington get a makeover around the 4th of July.
So too should it be that we go to the statues of our ancestors to honor them and ask that they increase their presence in our own lives.
We have plenty of ancestors to elevate in this way. For those of us in New York, we should consider elevating Peter the Doctor, and restoring knowledge of his works and legacy. We should continue to elevate Sojourner Truth and Dr. James Still.
The US conspired with Belgium to assassinate Patrice Lumumba. It is only right that he is restored to public life through this act of elevation. May he be among many so restored.
May our ancestor’s names ring out louder than fireworks.
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