The Return of Our Souls: Why True Wellness Cannot Exist Without Cultural Justice

by Nyoka Samuels-Gilchrist

Nyoka Samuels-Gilchrist August 2025 at Manhyia Palace Museum

This summer at Makyiah Palace, I stood before gold artifacts stolen from the Asante Kingdom in 1874 by British forces—now graciously “on loan” to the very people from whom they were violently taken. Three years. That’s how long the descendants of these master craftspeople are allowed to commune with their own ancestral creations before they must be returned to foreign museums.

As I watched visitors connect with these pieces, I heard the words of the Asante negotiators echo in my mind: “The repatriation of the artifacts to Ghana signifies the return of our souls.”

The return of our souls.

As a holistic nurse who centers the seven dimensions of wellness—cultural, spiritual, physical, social, environmental, emotional, and mental—I cannot ignore what this moment teaches us about the violence embedded in how wellness has been commodified and whitewashed in Western spaces.

Stolen gold artifacts on loan from the greedy people who heisted them. My stomach turns just thinking about it.

Cultural wellness cannot exist when your sacred objects are held hostage in foreign institutions. When your ancestral knowledge is extracted, repackaged, and sold back to you as “ancient wisdom” by people who have never lived your experience. When yoga becomes $200 retreats in Tulum while the communities that gifted these practices to the world struggle for basic healthcare.

Spiritual wellness cannot flourish when your cosmology is dismissed as “folklore” while Western psychology claims credit for “discovering” concepts your grandmothers knew in their bones. When land-based spiritual practices are criminalized while corporate meditation apps profit from sanitized versions of your traditions.

Physical wellness is impossible when environmental racism poisons your water, when food apartheid limits your access to nourishing foods, when medical systems treat your pain as less valid, when your traditional healing practices are called “alternative” while the dominant medical model that fails you is called “standard.”

The global majority doesn’t need wellness rebranded—we need wellness returned. We need our medicines, our practices, our sacred objects, our land, our sovereignty, our right to determine what healing looks like for our own communities.

Wellness needs to return to the global majority like these artifacts need to be returned to the Asante Nation.

True wellness work requires us to name the systems that fragment souls and call that fragmentation “normal.” It requires us to understand that individual healing without collective liberation is not healing at all—it’s spiritual bypassing with a wellness subscription.

The Asante know what we all know in our bones: you cannot be whole while your soul is held in captivity. You cannot heal while the systems that wounded you continue to profit from both your pain and your medicine.

Wellness that doesn’t center justice isn’t wellness—it’s another form of colonization wearing yoga pants and holding a green smoothie.

When we truly commit to the seven dimensions of wellness, we commit to the radical act of returning souls to their people, power to communities, and the right to healing on our own terms.

The artifacts will return to British museums in three years if there is no "renegotiation". But the truth remains: stolen wellness, like stolen gold, never loses its shine—or its rightful owners.

What would your wellness practice look like if it centered returning souls instead of extracting them?

As a holistic nurse committed to justice-centered care, I believe healing happens when we address root causes, not just symptoms. That includes the root causes of why communities are separated from their sources of wellness in the first place.

Cultural Appropriation in Wellness Industry

1. “Unpacking Cultural Appropriation in the Wellness Industry.” SUSTAIN THE MAG, December 21, 2022. https://www.sustainthemag.com/wellness/unpacking-cultural-appropriation-in-the-wellness-industry

2. “Cultural Appropriation and Wellness Guide.” Native Governance Center, October 24, 2024. https://nativegov.org/resources/cultural-appropriation-guide/

3. “The Wellness Industry Has A Cultural Appropriation Problem — & It’s Not Alone.” Refinery29, September 16, 2021. https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2021/09/10548060/indigenous-intellectual-property-cultural-appropriation

4. “Decolonizing wellness protects cultures.” Daily Titan, March 20, 2022. https://dailytitan.com/opinion/decolonizing-wellness-protects-cultures/article_6c7ad86e-a7f5-11ec-abb1-af724e2f23be.html

5. “The Problem with ‘White Girl Wellness’.” 34th Street Magazine, September 6, 2021. https://www.34st.com/article/2021/09/wellness-yoga-gua-sha-beauty-smudging-cultural-appropriation

6. “Decolonizing Wellness and Therapy.” Medium, August 22, 2023. https://medium.com/@moonhedgegarden/decolonizing-wellness-and-therapy-acbe032e41ed

Medical Racism and Healthcare Disparities

7. Hoffman, Kelly M., et al. “Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2016. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4843483/

8. “Looking Beneath the Surface: Racial Bias in the Treatment and Management of Pain.” JAMA Network Open, June 1, 2022. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2793179

9. “How we fail black patients in pain.” AAMC, June 5, 2023. https://www.aamc.org/news/how-we-fail-black-patients-pain

10. “Racism in Pain Medicine: We Can and Should Do More.” Mayo Clinic Proceedings, June 1, 2021. https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(21)00322-0/fulltext

11. “Education to Identify and Combat Racial Bias in Pain Treatment.” Journal of Ethics, American Medical Association, March 1, 2015. https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/education-identify-and-combat-racial-bias-pain-treatment/2015-03

12. Anderson, Krista O., et al. “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Pain: Causes and Consequences of Unequal Care.” The Journal of Pain, December 1, 2009. https://www.jpain.org/article/S1526-5900(09)00775-5/fulltext

Asante Kingdom Artifacts and Repatriation

13. “British museums agree to loan back gold and silver treasures taken from Ghana.” The Guardian, January 25, 2024.

14. “Ghana: British Museums to ‘Loan’ Looted Asante Royal Regalia to Otumfuo.” AllAfrica, January 26, 2024.

Additional Sources for Seven Dimensions of Wellness Framework

15. Hettler, Bill. “The Six Dimensions of Wellness Model.” National Wellness Institute, 1976. (Note: The seventh dimension of cultural wellness has been added by various scholars and practitioners)

16. Swarbrick, Margaret. “A Wellness Approach.” Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 2006.

Suggested Additional Reading

• hooks, bell. “All About Love: New Visions.” William Morrow Paperbacks, 2001.

• Lorde, Audre. “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches.” Crossing Press, 1984.

• Kimmerer, Robin Wall. “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.” Milkweed Editions, 2013.

• Menakem, Resmaa. “My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.” Central Recovery Press, 2017.

Note: Some references reflect ongoing research in this evolving field. For the most current data on wellness industry appropriation and medical disparities, consult recent peer-reviewed journals and reports from organizations like the National Academy of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.