To document a site like a Praise House without accounting for its symbolic and spiritual dimensions is to flatten its meaning. In Gullah Geechee culture, architectural form is inseparable from cosmology, ritual, and encoded memory. Trust becomes a threshold to entering these spaces, and positionality becomes a determinant of what is revealed. Participants asked, “Are you a researcher for them or for us?”—a question that speaks to long histories of extraction and the need for deep relational accountability. Scanning, therefore, becomes a practice not only of visual capture, but of cultural listening. It involves invisible labor: emotional attunement, translation of unspoken norms, and the sacred stewardship of space. Sites like Ms. Sally Ann’s home—unrecognized by historical registries yet central to cultural memory—challenge dominant frameworks of what is deemed worthy of preservation. Here, documentation becomes a form of protection, asserting sovereignty through spatial witnessing.
Methodological Implications:
This approach embeds respect, consent, and narrative integrity into the scanning process itself. It foregrounds participatory ethics, ensuring that documentation is co-produced and responsive to local knowledge systems. By challenging the notion of “neutral” space, the methodology expands what is considered preservable—from monumental architecture to vernacular and spiritually significant sites. Narrative sovereignty becomes a guiding principle, ensuring that stories are not overwritten or reframed by outsiders, but retained and transmitted through community-affirming modalities. In every scan, there is an embedded question: whose memory is being archived, and who holds the authority to shape its future telling?
Takeaway:
Cultural documentation is never just technical—it’s emotional, spiritual, and political. To scan Black sacred space is to engage in a form of cultural translation that demands trust, reverence, and responsibility.