Awo Fatokun’s journey has been diverse: from walking alongside the Black Panthers to studying in a Franciscan seminary, from the courtroom as a human rights lawyer to the grassroots as an educator, Bill embodies the art of bridging worlds. With over three decades spent coordinating transformative study abroad programs, Awo has guided students—many from the Global North’s most elite institutions—into profound encounters with Indigenous, peasant, and favela communities in Brazil. Long before “decolonization” became an academic buzzword, Bill was cultivating learning spaces that challenged the assumptions of modernity and coloniality, placing relational accountability and community wisdom at the heart of education.

Carrying the ceremonial name Awo Fatokun as an Elder of the Yoruba Ifa tradition, Bill integrates deep spiritual insight with his lived experience. To him, the Orisa are not distant deities but relational forces of wisdom and responsibility, calling humanity to cultivate self-love and entanglement with all life. In his work with the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) collective, Bill navigates the spaces between—between modernity’s collapse and the emergence of new paradigms, between ego-driven individualism and a renewed ethic of collective care, between humans and the more-than-human world.

Bill is not only a knowledge keeper but also a weaver of futures. Whether mentoring students, co-authoring groundbreaking decolonial curricula, or cultivating dialogues between Indigenous and academic communities, his work invites others to step into the complexity of entanglement.

Bill’s unique background, which spans law, spiritual traditions, and global education, has prepared him to tackle the urgent questions of our time: How do we dismantle the illusion of separability? How do we unlearn the violence of modernity? And how do we cultivate relational ethics in the face of permanent crises? With Bill as a guide, the GTDF collective engages these challenges with humility, creativity, and a fierce commitment to healing the web of life. Bill recently served as Elder in Residence at the University of Victoria, Department of Education, and is presently Elder in Residence at the Meta-Relational Institute, in Victoria, B.C. and senior educational advisor at UNISERES in Fortaleza, Brazil.