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A. Prince Albert III, Prince The Culture Keeper™
Every so often, a voice emerges that reminds us culture is not something we inherit to display, it is something we live to sustain. A. Prince Albert III, known globally as Prince The Culture Keeper, is one of those rare leaders whose work bridges ancestry and innovation with a purpose that feels both urgent and eternal.
Through law, art, and advocacy, Prince has built a life centered on protecting and evolving the lifeways of African-descendant and Indigenous communities across the Americas. As founder of The Culture Keepers Circle, and through his work with Goldwater Ventures and Goldwater Arts, he continues to redefine what it means to defend culture as a living force. His influence reaches from policy to performance, from the classroom to the community, and from sacred ceremony to the modern stage.
In this powerful conversation, Prince shares how his Afro-Indigenous roots shaped his lifelong mission, what cultural sustainability truly requires, and how he continues to fight for the protection of the people, places, and practices that keep our stories alive. What follows is an exploration of heritage, innovation, and spiritual purpose told through the voice of a man devoted to ensuring that culture never becomes history; it remains life.
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Legacy is often rooted in origin, can you share a moment from your Afro or Indigenous upbringing that first awakened your sense of cultural responsibility? |
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My sense of cultural responsibility was awakened in two distinct moments. The first happened when I was 15 in my AP history class as we learned about the history of the United States of America for the first time. I was gut-punched by the twin legacies of settler colonialism perpetrated against my Indigenous ancestors to acquire 2.6 billion acres of land and territorial waters, as well as chattel slavery, which forcibly relocated 12.5 million of my African ancestors over four centuries.
I was particularly struck by the role of cultural erasure in each enterprise. Settler colonialism is a system whose goal is the elimination of Indigenous peoples to gain perpetual access to their land, with the colonizer replacing the original societies with a new, settler society. Similarly, chattel slavery was an economic system that relied on the absolute dehumanization of enslaved people to create a profitable, permanent labor force.
In each case, cultural erasure was pivotal. In settler colonialism, cultural erasure justifies land theft, destroys indigenous identity and sovereignty, and is deployed to maintain social control by dismantling community structures and cultural knowledge systems, weakening the ability of Indigenous peoples to unite and fight back against their subjugation. Meanwhile, in chattel slavery, cultural erasure severs ties to African indigeneity and self-actualized identity, transforming people into property in order to generate a perpetual, self-replicating, dehumanized, subservient labor force. Even though the textbooks and class discussions did not use these specific words, for the first time, I saw the twin evils of chattel slavery and settler colonialism and understood the pivotal role of cultural erasure.
In that AP U.S. history class, it hit me all at once. At that moment, I realized the textbooks were wrong. These histories did not fully tell the gruesome history of how we all came to exist in this country… and, most importantly, that our cultures had not been completely erased. I knew this because my family life was evidence of cultural continuance. At home, we lived our Afro/Indigenous traditions and heritages as first nature. That was the very moment when I decided, intentionally, to live my cultures out loud as an act of resistance and to advocate against cultural erasure.
At school, I challenged the narrative and used the opportunity to address my class, speaking on the missing perspectives and lobbying for our school to recognize Indigenous Peoples' Day instead of Columbus Day. That day and beyond, I accepted that my voice was a powerful tool to defend and advocate for the ongoing legacies of my African-descendant and Indigenous ancestors.
The second moment came when the consistent ceremony surrounding Sunday dinner. Every Sunday, we would gather for a home-cooked, Gullah/Geechee soul food meal my mother prepared. We would gather around the table, and I would read from the large family Bible, then my mother and sister would line and carry a hymn, as my father prayed a "second sermon" as the grace before dinner. We would eat dinner with the TV off, and just engage each other crakin’ wi teef like disya. It was one of the only times my parents expressed themselves in full Gullah. Sunday dinners were sacred moments, where we made space for the Sacred, and we were enveloped in it. Sunday dinners were just recurring examples of living culture from my upbringing, which impressed upon me that culture is a living, breathing energy force. We don’t love our cultures in the abstract; we love our cultures by living our cultures, celebrating their rites and traditions. Together, those experiences impressed upon me the need to celebrate our cultures and to actively defend them.
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You’ve built a career at the intersection of heritage and innovation. How do you balance ancestral wisdom with modern tools in your work with Goldwater Ventures?
My life's work is to protect the people, places, practices, and treasures that are the cultural resources of African-descendant and Indigenous communities across the Americas, and this mission is expressly inclusive of Latiné and Asian Pacific Islander communities. This purpose is rooted in the understanding that culture is a living, breathing force, not a relic of the past. It’s a responsibility that was awakened in me as a teenager, when I realized that cultural erasure was a deliberate and potent tool of social oppression.
Cultural sustainability is an emerging advocacy movement I have founded to empower African-descendant, Indigenous, Latiné, Asian Pacific Islander, and other communities to maintain, revitalize, and reimagine their cultural ways of life. “What are lifeways?” you might ask. They are a people's holistic, interconnected way of life, encompassing their language, traditions, spiritual beliefs, and their relationship to land and water. They are the essence of a culture's identity and the foundation of a community's sovereignty and autonomy. By empowering communities to control and define their own ways of life, my work serves as an act of resistance against cultural erasure and a pathway to collective self-determination, as well as individual self-affirmation and self-actualization.
Today, sharp polarization, economic transformation, rapid technological change, and institutional uncertainty present unprecedented challenges for traditional communities that are striving to adapt and thrive together. To meet these challenges, I've built a career as a movement lawyer at the intersection of cultural sustainability and innovation. This approach uses law and strategic advocacy, both inside and outside of formal law-making spaces, to build the power of politically marginalized communities. It ensures that legal strategies align with the community-defined social change goals, not those defined by lawyers. I work with organized groups to integrate their advocacy strategies with their strategic and operational goals. Communities’ voices and wishes for their own futures are always at the center of our work
Throughout my career—first at my consulting firm Goldwater Ventures, then with my advocacy organization The Culture Keepers Circle, and now in my role as a law professor—I have worked with and for African-descendant and Indigenous communities across North and South America, and the Caribbean as they navigate an enormously daunting and inhospitable institutional landscape. This work involves representing them in their interactions with a wide range of organizations to ensure they have all the knowledge, tools, and leverage to protect their cultural resources as they seek to sustain their cultural lifeways. I even conduct meetings and give/guide presentations in English, Spanish, French, Gullah, French Creoles, and Indigenous languages. I incorporate non-verbal languages when possible. I make room for multi-lingual, multi-modal, and multi-ethnic communication by default, and I am so proud of this inclusive circle I’m building and expanding.
I have led communities into partnerships with governmental institutions like the Department of the Interior (DOI), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Smithsonian Institution, etc., as well as nongovernmental public institutions, including publicly-funded museums, libraries, research universities, and foundations. I have even represented cultural communities working with private institutions, including art and antique dealers and auction houses, Cultural Resource Management (CRM) firms, technology companies specializing in digital preservation, private collectors, and foundations.
My multifaceted career has been dedicated to building a community-led legal movement that advocates for the cultural sustainability of all marginalized communities. I've had the privilege of representing African-descendant and Indigenous communities across the Americas as they navigate a wide range of governmental, public, and private institutional landscapes. Building on years of practice, I'm now an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown, where I teach the nation's first cultural sustainability practicum course to train the next generation of movement lawyers in the cultural heritage sector.
The Culture Keepers Circle protects 13.4 billion cultural resources. What does that number mean to you personally and spiritually?
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We, The Culture Keepers Circle, are a national grassroots movement of African-descendant, Indigenous, Latiné, Asian Pacific Islander, and other cultural communities that stands as a vital bulwark against the federal government’s ongoing attacks on our collective histories and cultural expressions. Our mission is to protect the people, places, practices, and treasures that document our profound contributions to American society.
Our communities are facing threats that could permanently imperil over 13.8 billion artifacts, privatize 1.778 billion acres of public lands, endanger innumerable resources within 3.9 million square nautical miles of U.S. waters, shutter more than 160,000 libraries and museums across the country that rely on federal funding, and defund more than 500,000 scholars, artists, and other knowledge keepers. We recognize that the eleven federal agencies managing these invaluable resources can be understood through three crucial lenses, each representing a distinct pillar of our shared cultural inheritance: those responsible for (1) Place-Based Cultural Resources, (2) our Repositories of Cultural Knowledge, and (3) Promoters of Cultural Expression.
The federal agencies responsible for our Place-Based Cultural Resources include the Department of the Interior (and its three main subagencies, such as the National Park Service), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They directly manage and safeguard ancestral lands, sacred sites, and vital waterways—the physical foundations of our communities' traditional practices and historical narratives. Attacking these agencies directly imperils the very ground that supports us and the waters essential to our lifeways, risking the loss of extensive culturally significant public lands and irreplaceable aquatic resources like sunken slave ships, underwater middle-passage memorials, and underwater nature essential for our diets.
Our Cultural Knowledge Repositories are the federal institutions that house our cultural knowledge, artifacts, records, and collective memory. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and National Public Radio (NPR) are crucial promoters of our nation’s diverse and collective histories, cultural expressions, and artistic innovations. They provide the essential infrastructure and funding that incentivize the scholars, artists, and knowledge keepers who tirelessly work to produce timeless art and paradigm-shifting scholarship. Attacks on these agencies erase our histories, silence our cultural expressions, and censure our artistic freedoms, thereby limiting public appreciation of our momentous historical and contemporary contributions to American culture and American life. Undermining these agencies risks the permanent loss of billions of artifacts and the systematic erasure of our documented histories, thereby denying future generations access to the treasures that define our identities.
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) (which operates the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR)) are crucial Promoters of Cultural Expression. We name them so because these agencies promote our nation’s diverse and collective histories, cultural expressions, and artistic innovations. They provide the essential infrastructure and funding that incentivize the scholars, artists, and knowledge keepers who tirelessly work to produce timeless art and paradigm-shifting scholarship. Attacks on these agencies erase our histories, silence our cultural expressions, and censure our artistic freedoms, thereby limiting public appreciation of our momentous, historic, and contemporary contributions to American culture and American life.
The eleven are paramount for fostering the ongoing creation, interpretation, and public dissemination of our cultural expressions. They provide the crucial infrastructure and funding that support the very "scholars, artists, and other knowledge keepers" who tirelessly work to preserve, interpret, and share our diverse stories. Attacks on these agencies directly threaten the vibrancy of our living cultures, silencing voices, stifling artistic innovation, and limiting public understanding of our multifaceted contributions to the American fabric.
By understanding these agencies through these distinct yet interconnected groups, The Culture Keepers Circle can more effectively advocate for their protection, highlight the devastating consequences of their defunding or dismantling, and rally public support to safeguard the indispensable cultural resources that reflect the true richness and diversity of American society. We urge all concerned citizens to join us in this vital effort.
The Culture Keepers Circle (The Circle) is dedicated to mobilizing communities to resist and disrupt government attempts to control our history, silence our cultures, and seize public lands and waterways. We are working with our supporters to fundamentally reimagine how communities can protect, access, and share invaluable cultural resources globally. To achieve this critical vision, we are focused on three core initiatives: We track threats to cultural resources. We convene communities, Culture Keepers, and authorities to co-develop immediate and enduring solutions against cultural erasure. And we celebrate culture and advocacy through hosting cultural festivals and events. The Circle develops policy strategies, community toolkits, and public programs that address issues such as land and water rights, language justice, technology governance, and cultural sovereignty. Our mission is to ensure that communities not only safeguard their traditions and sacred sites, but also have the tools, legal frameworks, and political power to reimagine and revitalize their cultural systems for future generations. Our mission is to empower communities to protect their traditions and sacred sites, while also providing them with the necessary tools, legal frameworks, and political influence to reimagine and revitalize their cultural systems for future generations.
Personally and spiritually, this is the profound work of connecting our communities back to their heritage. I've worked with communities across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia, and I don't know a single person who has ever donated a cultural artifact to a museum. Instead, I know that communities have had their goods trafficked and removed from circulation within communities. When you see a cultural artifact, it's an artifact because it was a living part of a people's practice—created for a purpose, whether ritual or quotidian life—before being extracted. We often don't talk about the journey; the museum placard talks about where it's from, but never tells the story of how it got there. That silence is ethically and legally fraught. This is why for decades, we've worked with the federal government and institutions like museums, libraries, and galleries so that our artifacts, artworks, and manuscripts tell the fuller stories of our contributions.
This work is so important because you can talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion all you want, but when people can see the physical evidence of our contributions—the artifacts of enslavement, of cultural erasure—that's what truly connects us. It hurts to see a cloth woven with a language no longer spoken by its people, yet preserved in a museum, out of its context and away from its community. But it also gives us meaning and perspective about our ancestors.
For me, this is a deeply personal connection. I think of my own great-grandmother, my living link to a past of servitude in the Black South and to the purest form of Gullah/Geechee culture before the industrial revolution. Connecting myself, my communities, and people everywhere to their cultural resources is about re-inspiring, re-enlivening, and re-engaging with our heritage, which is exactly why those resources were created in the first place.
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In your view, what does cultural sustainability truly require beyond funding and policy frameworks?
Cultural sustainability is more than just a matter of funding and policy; it requires dedication. It's not about cultural heritage or cultural preservation—you preserve things that are dead. Heritage admits of something that started in the past, and we're just continuing it. Cultural sustainability, however, inherently understands that culture is a living, evolving practice. It's about sustaining cultures in all of their forms and even incentivizing new evolutions. This dedication is about communities saying, "Yes, we will use modern appliances, but we will also teach our children the old ways, so that we know all of the ways." It's about differentiating between culture as a means of communal conversation and art for public consumption or mass consumerism.
To put this dedication into practice, my life's work as a movement lawyer has been to empower communities to define their own futures. This vision is at the heart of my work as a movement lawyer, where I've focused on two core principles.
Beyond funding, true cultural sustainability requires that communities themselves are the central decision-makers. This directly challenges the traditional legal model where lawyers hold the power. It's not enough for lawyers to work for communities; they must work with them, fostering long-term relationships where the community leadership defines the goals and holds the lawyers accountable. This model recognizes that marginalized communities have their own authority, which comes from their deep engagement with their people. This ensures that legal work serves the community’s self-defined goals, rather than simply advancing a lawyer's agenda.
Cultural sustainability also requires a rejection of narrow, single-tactic approaches. Simply pursuing lawsuits is not enough. It requires integrated advocacy, which means deploying law as just one tool in a much broader problem-solving repertoire. This includes using strategies like media work, community education, policy drafting, and direct organizing support. The goal is to break down the traditional separation between lawyers, organizers, and policy experts. Cultural sustainability requires a flexible and comprehensive approach that breaks down the walls between different forms of advocacy. Integrated advocacy deploys law as just one tool in a much broader problem-solving repertoire that includes community organizing, media work, policy development, and direct action.
I like the way UCLA Prof. Scott L. Cummings thinks about movement lawyering in (what I call) “3D” because it operates on three levels at once. Organizational Integration establishes horizontal partnerships with social movement organizations, decentralizing professional expertise. Tactical Integration focuses on combining different advocacy methods to maximize their collective power, employing a healthy, highly contextualized combination of litigation, policy advocacy, community organizing, and media work to achieve a movement's goals. Institutional Integration recognizes that change must occur across multiple levels —from grassroots activism in the streets to legislative and judicial action — by empowering communities to assert their own norms and rights.
Ultimately, cultural sustainability requires a strategic and flexible approach that fuses the power of grassroots communities with sophisticated legal and political strategies. It's a continuous, repeat-player process that builds community capacity and ensures that the work is truly democratic and sustainable.
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How do you define cultural power, and how should Afro or Indigenous communities reclaim and use it today?
Cultural power is both personal and collective. It is a profound knowledge of who you are and where you come from, and the ability of a community to define its own story, control its own resources, and create its own future on its own terms. It’s an internal, unshakeable sense of self that gives you confidence to walk into any room knowing that no one can grant you what is already yours or coerce you into betraying your values.
History is not just in the past; it is a practical tool for the present. When you understand the ways in which you’ve been exploited, you also understand the ways in which you’ve resisted, innovated, and overcome. For African descendant and Indigenous communities across the Americas—and for all marginalized peoples around the world—this is the power of knowing who you are, where you come from, and where you are going.
Reclaiming and wielding this power today is a spiritual and practical act of
self-determination, best symbolized by Sankofa: going back to retrieve what we need and carrying it forward. We must reconnect with our cultures as living, evolving practices, not static relics. This requires rejecting narratives of erasure and embracing our role as stewards of heritage—knowing the past not just as oppression, but as a foundation of resilience and creativity.
To do this, we must reclaim sovereignty over our cultural resources—artifacts, public lands, waterways, and even languages. This means challenging the historical extraction and commodification of our heritage and building community-led legal movements that return stewardship to the people. It requires a multifaceted approach that combines legal strategy, community organizing, public education, and policy advocacy.
Cultural power is the foundation of all other power. It enables us to define our political goals, shape public opinion, and build our own economic systems. Ultimately, wielding cultural power means taking our rightful place as the authors of our own histories and the architects of our own futures.
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Goldwater Arts is producing content for major networks. Which stories are still being silenced, and how do you decide which ones to amplify?
Yes, cultural erasure is perpetrated against us. But to shake the table a bit, I also proffer that the stories that we are not hearing are the ones we are not telling. We've been conditioned to believe that our cultural narratives are niche or without value, when in fact, they hold immense power. There's a prevailing practice where others profit from the commodification of our heritage, leaving communities disconnected from its true worth. Our own stories are often suppressed by a lack of access to platforms and a belief that they won't appeal to a broad audience. However, there's a growing and insatiable appetite for content that resonates with our lived experiences and affirms our cultural identity. We see this demand as a clear signal that the time for our stories is now.
At Goldwater Arts, we amplify stories that are organic and unique to Afro/Indigenous peoples from all over the world. Our mission is to produce content that empowers us
with self-knowledge. We produce content that is for us, by us, and with us. As a DJ/music producer and filmmaker, I build visual immersive experiences and soundscapes to teach Afro/Indigenous folk traditions worldwide. As a filmmaker and music producer/DJ, my own work focuses on the traditional forms of music and storytelling from across the African diaspora and Indigenous communities, and their modern reinterpretations. We choose stories that are rooted in tradition but speak to contemporary experiences, and we will continue to tell them regardless of
whether a major network picks them up.
I also believe that in an age where we are inundated by traditional media and social media, the onus is also on the consumer to seek out and support these cultural narratives. I encourage everyone to patronize and fairly compensate the artists and storytellers in our own communities, across ALL artistic mediums. By uplifting the creative work being done by and for us, we
ensure these vital stories are celebrated and sustained for future generations. Goldwater Arts recognizes and honors Black, Indigenous, Latiné, and Pacific Islander artists and storytellers within the cultural communities we serve as a principled practice.
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You have influenced more than 75 laws and policies. Which single policy outcome are you most proud of, and why?
I can't choose just one; I'm most proud of two policy outcomes. Both represent the culmination of my work at the intersection of cultural sustainability and technology, and both reinforce the core belief that innovation must serve our communities, not exploit them.
I am incredibly proud of the Biden-Harris administration's AI Bill of Rights. This policy was a direct result of work I've done with Afro, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian Pacific Islander communities on the ground. It thoughtfully considers how advanced technologies like AI can be employed to help us keep our cultures, celebrate our heritage, and preserve both our tangible and intangible cultural resources. Just as importantly, it works to prevent AI from being predatory, ensuring these tools cannot grift from us, steal from us, or be deployed to continue inflicting pain and extraction. It’s a major step in ensuring technology serves humanity, rather than the other way around.
I am also deeply proud of the legislation moving quickly to recognize Indigenous languages in primary schools. My own training in cultural knowledge started at home; as I always say, the women in our communities are our first Culture Keepers. These efforts mean everything to me because they empower children at a crucial developmental stage to learn about and embrace
their culture in both the home and institutions of learning. School-aged children having their mother tongues being recognized in school validates their cultural identity and reinforces the vital role of family and culture in children’s education.
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You’ve collaborated with legacy builders like Carlos Wallace, whose work spans cultural empowerment and media. What has that partnership revealed about the power of aligned vision in preserving culture and building sustainable impact?
Collaborating with a legacy builder like Carlos Wallace has been incredibly revealing about the power of an aligned vision. Carlos is the real deal; he doesn't just talk about community—he lives it. In a field where you can encounter people who speak of community but don't practice it, Carlos is a true standard-bearer.
Our work together has underscored the importance of building community at the individual, grassroots level. While I often focus on national policy and law, Carlos's emphasis on touching individuals first has deeply inspired me. It has solidified my belief that culture is always celebrated at kitchen tables around the world, and that's where community truly begins.
You can't define or measure the success of cultural sustainability without looking at the local level. Carlos has an instinctive understanding that to build a lasting impact, you must touch the people first, not just the corporations or agencies that serve them. When you prioritize the people, your impact will always remain. I honor him for that. Ashé.
As a Google Next Gen Policy Leader, how did your time in that space influence your thinking around digital sovereignty and tech equity for Afro/Indigenous communities?
Before founding The Culture Keepers Circle, I drove public affairs initiatives in cultural resource management, storytelling, and emerging technologies for cultural preservation as the Managing Partner of Goldwater Ventures. I previously served as a technology policy counsel for civil rights, human rights, and consumer rights organizations in Washington, D.C. I spearheaded political strategy, program development, and stakeholder engagement for clients across local, federal, and international jurisdictions for almost a decade.
My time as a Google Next Gen Policy Leader fundamentally recontextualized my thinking on digital sovereignty and tech equity. I didn’t approach it by simply asking how to get more technology to our communities; I started by examining what technology truly is from an anthropological perspective.
We have to recognize that technology isn't just something you can plug in. Technology, in its truest form, is the creation of tools to make life easier. African-descendant, Indigenous, Latiné, and Asian/Pacific Islander communities have been creating technology for tens of thousands of years. When you realize that creating technology is inherent to all human cultures, you see that the current lack of representation in the tech sector is not a problem of ability, but of gatekeeping. Gatekeeping within tech industries is a predatory and disenfranchising system that has restricted access for the very people who have always been innovators.
My time at the Google NextGen table has further reinforced the need to not only address the digital divide and to acknowledge the historical role technology has played in oppressing our communities. We must learn from the past, from technologies like gunpowder, rice dams, the cotton gin, and other infrastructures of colonization, to understand how modern digital tools can be used against us. Digital sovereignty is about ensuring that we are no longer just consumers of technology, but also its creators and governors.
The ultimate goal of tech equity is not just to provide access to existing tools. It’s to empower our communities to continue their legacy as inventors of technology. It is about equipping them with the knowledge and resources to create new tools that serve and sustain our cultures and improve our lives, rather than being instruments of our continued extraction.
***A. Prince Albert III reaction to Trump’s EO against ‘Woke’ Tech…
"As an experienced civil rights advocate in tech policy and a leading human rights advocate for cultural sustainability, I hold that the premise of President Trump’s Executive Order preventing “Woke AI in the Federal Government” is deeply flawed, and its outcomes will harm America for generations. The true threats to 'truthfulness' and 'neutrality' in AI systems stem from the pervasive prejudices that are alarmingly over-indexed in the datasets on which these models are trained."
"For African-descendant, Indigenous, Latiné, Asian, Pacific Islander, or other historically marginalized communities in this country, our constellations of histories and cultures—our multiverse of perspectives, belief systems, contributions, and values—and our unquantifiable human potentials are vastly underrepresented or outright absent from the digital foundations of emerging technologies. Consequently, the leading AI systems are rarely built with any meaningful input or insight from the diverse consumers they purport to serve. This is not neutrality. It is the digital perpetuation of systemic inequity, masking bias under the guise of objectivity and fundamentally undermining the promise of AI for all people."
"Wake up. While rescinding Executive Order 14110—an order specifically designed to promote safe, secure, and trustworthy AI, crafted in coordination with civil rights, civil liberties, human rights, consumer rights advocates, and cultural communities— this administration is, in effect, announcing its intention to hardwire outright biased technologies into the federal government's provision of services. This new executive order is a deliberate choice to build injustice into the very fabric of our future, locking discrimination into government services forever. Don’t sleep on this."
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As a Navy veteran, how has military service shaped your approach to cultural defense and advocacy?
As a Navy veteran, my military service has profoundly shaped my approach to cultural defense and advocacy. In a time of psychological warfare and strategic attacks designed to erase our cultural identities, my experience informs the very tactics I use to protect our communities.
My time in the Navy taught me to think three dimensionally and strategically. I have learned to recognize that the forces pushing for cultural erasure and assimilation into a state created fiction are not random; they are deliberate and strategic attacks. Culture is not manufactured by a nation; it is created by the people who make up that nation. Understanding this distinction is the first step in our defense.
Just as military operations require clear strategic thinking and tactical execution, so does the work of movement lawyering for cultural sustainability. My military training has given me a framework for how we can defend our cultural resources, practices, and memory. I am grateful that I get to continue using my military experience in strategic, operational, and tactical thinking for the highest good. This is a continuation of my service—a commitment to defending our cultural existence and ensuring the survival of our communities.
We often talk about protecting land, but you emphasize protecting lifeways. Can you explain the difference and why it matters?
It's an excellent question, and it gets to the heart of what my work is all about. While we often focus on protecting land, I emphasize protecting lifeways, which, as the word denotes, are ways of life.
The difference matters because focusing solely on land can be limiting, especially for communities with histories of forced migration. A community's relationship to land, or their "landways," is just one of seven key domains that sustain their cultural life. The others include faithways (spiritual traditions), socioways (social structures and kinship ties), techways (tools and infrastructures), tradeways (systems of exchange), artways (creative expression), and knoweldgeways (communication).
For example, a specific flower may hold profound spiritual meaning in a community's ancestral homeland. If climate or economic pressures force that community to move, the faithway isn't severed; it adapts. The community may use their artways to wear the flower's colors or adorn themselves with its likeness, reimagining the cultural meaning in a new context. This shows that while a connection to land is crucial, a culture's ability to improvise and evolve without it is what ensures its survival and continued existence.
Ultimately, lifeways are a living record of human ingenuity. Culture is the result of people coming together to cultivate life through shared practices—whether that's cooking, singing, or worshipping. By thinking about culture in this dynamic, systemic way, we can understand what is truly endemic to a people and what is necessary for their survival and thrival in changing contexts. My work, therefore, is not just about saving resources; it's about saving people and the practices that sustain them.
What’s one traditional practice or belief from your lineage that still guides your decisions as an entrepreneur and leader?
One traditional practice from my Afro-Indigenous lineage that still guides my decisions as an entrepreneur and leader is praying in nature. Every morning, I rise early, take my dog for a walk, and pray with my eyes open. Walking and praying in nature is a hallmark of my heritage. My ancestors prayed as they worked in the fields, as they hunted and escaped. Some of our ancestors built sanctuaries, and many knew they already lived inside one—an open-air temple, where God was present in the wind, the earth, and the sky. That belief grounds me. When I look up at the blue sky on a summer morning and feel that connection, I remember that my work is part of something larger. Prayer and meditation in nature are not occasional for me—they are daily, necessary practices. They guide my clarity, my decisions, and my leadership.
How does music, especially through Goldwater Grooves, function as both an archive and an act of cultural resistance?
As a music producer and performer (DJ), I uplift traditional genres and reimagine them with new forms while keeping their essence intact. Music is a living archive, encoding our history into rhythmic sound carried in our hearts. Through it, I connect with African-descendant and Indigenous communities across the diaspora. My sound draws from Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Congo, South Africa, Ethiopia, Brazil, Cuba, Ayití (Haiti), Quisqueya (Dominican Republic), Borikén (Puerto Rico), Colombia, Jamaica, and Trinidad. I am also deeply inspired by Powwow music of the Plains peoples, the water drums of the Iroquois, Ojibwe, and Yaqui, and by Indigenous artists who weave traditional drumming into hip-hop, rock, and electronic music.
As the direct descendant of native Gullah/Geechees, I know our music is among the oldest continually practiced forms of music by African-descendant people in North America and is our direct link to Africa. The syncopation, the polyrhythm, and the call and response are things we do instinctively. Music becomes a dynamic library, carrying the full spectrum of a community’s experience forward. My daily practice of communing with music grounds me as an entrepreneur and guides every decision I make.
Music is also an act of resistance, empowering communities to assert identity and existence in the face of oppression. We carry music within us whether others hear it or not. When dominant narratives attempt to silence or misrepresent us, music becomes our platform to speak with dignity, respect, and reverence. At Goldwater Grooves, we uplift traditional music from the African and Indigenous diasporas alongside its modern reinterpretations. We channel ancestral practices into new forms and spaces, bringing performance into the present age while honoring the presence of our ancestors. This work affirms that culture is not a relic; it is a living force that evolves and thrives. Our first responsibility is always to our people and to our ancestors.
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Emerging filmmakers often seek your guidance. What advice do you give those trying to document culture without exploiting it?
Emerging filmmakers often ask me how to document culture without exploiting it. My first advice is always: go back to the why. Study the greats, and also study the community greats—the ones the ivory tower ignores but the people revere.
The ethic that guides us at Goldwater is attribution. Attribute, attribute, attribute. That is what separates true cultural work from extractive Hollywood storytelling. We constantly name, honor, and include the people who came before us. You cannot tell cultural stories on film without featuring the culture keepers. If you are not mentioning, showing, or crediting the elders, the griots, and the community practitioners, that is a red flag.
Remember: you are making art that may bring you recognition and economic gain. To profit from culture without sharing credit or resources with those who guard it is deplorable. My advice is simple—go to the sources, sit with the elders, listen to the griots, learn from the culture keepers. And then feature them, elevate them, and attribute them fully in your work. That is the difference between exploitation and reverence.
Finally, what do you hope future generations will say about your legacy in 100 years?
In 100 years, I hope people will say:” Prince The Culture Keeper proved it was possible to build an ecosystem of cultural support and sustainability. He redefined cultural sustainability and gave us back our agency to maintain, protect, and evolve our practices and resources. He showed us that we did not need to hand our heritage to outside institutions, but that we could build the will and the institutions within our own communities to sustain and transform culture on our own terms. His legacy was an example, and an ethical framework, for how to do cultural sustainability work—in law and government, in business and entertainment, in technology—with integrity and with vision.”
But my deepest hope lies in my faith. As someone formed in the faith traditions of Black liberation theology, I envision the day I pass from this world into the next—crossing from the mortal into the immortal—when I stand before God and my ancestors to render an account of my life. In that moment, I will plead my case, that I did the very best I could with the gifts and the vision God entrusted to me, and with the blessings and power my ancestors endowed me to accomplish. I hold the image of Ma’at’s weighting feather as an image of this movement from ancient Kemet. And I pray that after I speak, God will look upon me and say: Well done, my good and faithful servant. If I hear those words, I know my work has been done. Ashè and Amen.
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