Est. 2024 · Archives · Research Library · Living Museum
A postcustodial cultural heritage complex built to serve Afro-Atlantic sacred communities as governing authorities over their own knowledge — not as subjects of institutional description.
Who We Are
The Iroko Historical Society is dedicated to preserving and celebrating Afro-diasporic heritage by safeguarding writings, texts, images, libretas, and music contributed by practitioners, elders, and scholars. We strive to provide access to this rich repository for advanced scholars and initiated practitioners, honoring the sacred and cultural significance of these materials through ethical, community-governed stewardship. — Mission Statement
The Society operates across three interconnected institutional components under a unified governance logic designed by practitioners with the standing to design it. No institution of this kind has previously existed because none has attempted to hold all three registers — archival, scholarly, and living — under community-sovereign authority.
Institutional Structure
Digital Archive
Governs restricted sacred materials under a six-tier access system calibrated to community authorization protocols. Field-level access control allows a single record to be simultaneously public at one property and elder-restricted at another.
Research Library
Provides structured scholarly access to Afro-Atlantic sacred knowledge systems across traditions, geographies, and historical periods. Contested knowledge modeling documents lineage disputes and variant traditions without forcing resolution.
Living Museum
Holds the living reality of active sacred traditions at the center of its institutional identity — as operational fact rather than curatorial stance. The community is not the subject of the institution; the institution is infrastructure for the community.
Semantic Infrastructure
Published at ontology.irokosociety.org under CC0, the Iroko Framework is the semantic vocabulary that makes the Society's governance logic legible at machine scale. It introduces six design principles no existing metadata standard provides simultaneously: field-level access control, contested knowledge modeling, oral provenance tracking, sovereign agency, postcustodial design, and interoperability with Darwin Core, SKOS, PROV-O, and FOAF.
Foundation Layer
The five infrastructure modules that provide the governance skeleton for all domain vocabularies.
Governance Layer
Composable modules governing access policy, community authorization, refusal rights, and stewardship mandates as first-class institutional functions.
Domain Layer
Tradition-specific vocabularies covering Lucumí, Candomblé, Vodou, Palo, Abakuá, Ifá, Orisha, and related Afro-Atlantic sacred systems.
Fieldwork & Scholarship
Cuba · Since 2002
Over two decades of fieldwork in collaboration with religious communities across Cuba, including ongoing digitization work with Babaláwo Irete Obara.
Scholarship
Presented at the Society of American Archivists, KOSANBA, and the Biblioteca Nacional de Cuba. UA Outstanding Graduate Paper Award for "Havana to the Sabine."
Founding Credentials
Founded by Délé Fágbèmí O., JD, MA (Anthropology), MBA — Babalawo, Olofista, Olu-Iroko, and Alaaña/Olubata with over 20 years of initiatory experience in the Lucumí tradition.