Camellia Lee

李道玲 Camellia Dao-Ling McDermott Lee (pronouns they/she) is a writer and healing artist devoted to community care. As a youth, Camellia organized with the Coalition to End Environmental Racism, the Chapel Hill NAACP, the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association and the North Carolina NAACP. At Brown University, Camellia earned an Africana Studies degree under the guidance of Dr. Keisha-Khan Y. Perry. Their focus was what Danielle Boaz calls “religious reparations” for the violence of theological anti-Blackness. Brown’s College Curriculum Council approved their course “Yoruba Religion and Africana Freedom Struggles,” which created a public blog to make the information accessible outside the ivory tower. Camellia fundraised to bring Ifa priest Awo Fasegun to lecture at Brown, then transcribed and made the recording publicly available. In 2020, they published the first book in English by 82-year-old Candomblé priestess Ebomi Cici, directing all royalties and author credit to the elder. Camellia currently studies Ni lineage Daoist healing at Yo San University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and the International Taoist Meditation Institute. Camellia is certified by the College of Tao and the CHI Health Institute in Self-Healing Qigong and practices InfiniChi® energy work. They are an apetebi Ifa and initiated ìyáloriṣa in the Adesanya Awoyade lineage of Ode Remo under the tutelage of Awo Fasegun and Iya Fayomi Osundoyin Egbeyemi, priests of Ile Orunmila Afedefeyo.