MEET TLNI FOUNDER: DR. DANIELLE MINCEY WHITE
᯽I Am the Living Baby
In 1963, I was born at just 28 weeks, not by chance or accident. My mother carried me after receiving a promise from her own mother, Willa Belle Jackson Roper. Willa Belle had passed in 1940 while giving birth to a stillborn child, yet she appeared to my mother after the devastating loss of her fourth stillborn and said:“You will have a living baby.”
She became the bridge between the breathless and the breath-filled, and I am the fulfillment of that promise.
᯽I am the fulfillment of that bridge.
᯽I am the continuation of a matrilineal promise kept.
᯽The Mantle of My Lineage
I no longer look at my origin sideways. I no longer negotiate the sacredness of how I came to be. I am the Living Baby. I am the voice of Willa Belle made flesh. I am the knowing my mother trusted.
᯽I receive the Mantle of my Lineage.
᯽I wear it with reverence, with clarity, with joy.
᯽The Living Nation Remembered
TLNI is not something I build. It is what I am now remembering myself to be. It was born from this remembrance. It is not merely an institute but a resonance field: A soul-woven body of wisdom, ancestral continuity, sovereignty, and creative leadership.
᯽Origin Knowing
Every teaching, every ritual, every global partnership is seeded from this truth: I was spoken into being by the breath of those who could not speak. I am the breath they waited for.
Welcome to TLNI – The Living Nation Institute.
At The Living Nation Institute, we affirm that every culture holds the right to exist, evolve, and express itself in alignment with its ancestral memory, ecological wisdom, and sovereign truth. We do not engage from a lens of tolerance, inclusion, or reform. We engage from a place of remembrance, restoration, and return.
Our Purpose
TLNI exists to support individuals, communities, and nations in reclaiming their sovereignty of body, land, lineage, and spirit. We do not assume that justice is granted through systems of power. We recognize that justice lives within the people who remember who they are.
A Declaration, Not a Defense
The Living Nation Institute is not a response to injustice. It is a resonant field of re-indigenized futures. A place where the right to exist is not defended, but declared.
Our Commitments
We welcome relationships, not tokenism. We pursue collaboration, not compliance. We prioritize: Dignity over diversity, Liberation over inclusion, Sovereignty over access
What We Stand For
Our work does not seek to assimilate. It seeks to amplify self-determination across diasporas, territories, and traditions. We stand with those who are:᯽Reclaiming ancestral foodways, languages, and rituals ᯽Healing from colonization’s visible and invisible wounds ᯽Designing futures rooted in regenerative cultural intelligence
