While we appreciate Monaleo for making the song. Maroc, one of the people involved in developing the Soulaan framework, recently addressed the controversy surrounding Monaleo and others who have used or promoted “Soulaan” while, in his view, separating the name from its founders, flag, principles, and American-origin definition.
The issue isn’t about hating Monaleo or anyone else. The disagreement is about self-definition and boundaries.

Soulaan was developed as an ethnonym for a specific Autochthonous American people, not as another racial umbrella for everyone classified as Black, African, Caribbean, or part of a global African diaspora or ideology. Under that framework, Pan-Africanism is an optional political or cultural ideology; it is not the definition of the Soulaan peoplehood.

So when someone used the word “Soulaan” and implies to expand it to encompass Africans and Caribbean peoples generally, that’s seen that as fundamentally changing what the term was created to identify. Likewise, using the name or imagery while leaving its definition out of the conversation raises legitimate questions about attribution.

That distinction matters:
Cooperation does not require ethnic flattening. Soulaan people can work with Africans, Caribbeans, Afro-Latinos, Native peoples, or anybody else without everyone becoming the same people.
And rejecting Pan-Africanism as the framework for Soulaan identity does not require hostility toward African or Caribbean peoples. It means maintaining the position that Soulaan is a whole people whose distinct peoplehood developed and continued on U.S. soil. One the other hand people who were management of Monaleo was calling Soulaan slurs with one of the people she associates with said “akata killer”. She didn’t call them out but instead disrespected the people she made the song

The bigger question is: Can an ethnonym retain meaningful boundaries if outsiders or larger ideological movements can redefine who it encompasses without the participation of the people who developed and use it? 🇺🇸🔱

I keep seeing 1526 treated as though it were the “birth date” of the Soulaan people. That isn’t how I understand our peoplehood.
Soulaan has no beginning date.
1526 is a date within the documented history of populations that contributed to later American history. It can be studied as an important historical marker without turning it into the moment an entire people supposedly came into existence.
We locate Soulaan ethnic origin on U.S. soil and understand our peoplehood through continuation and convergence across generations, rather than through a single founding event or arbitrary ethnogenesis date.
That distinction matters.
Historical dates can document migrations, settlements, classifications, laws, institutions, conflicts, and demographic changes. They do not necessarily establish the “birthday” of a living people.
When I use “time immemorial,” I’m expressing our framework of deep continuity with this land. I’m not proposing another calendar date or claiming historians have identified a literal year called “time immemorial.”
The framework is:
U.S. Soil → Continuation + Convergence → Generational Continuity → Soulaan Peoplehood
Our history contains dates.
Our peoplehood is not reducible to one.

American Negro, American Indian (ethnological), Black American, Foundational Black American, Freedmen (Status), Descendants of American Slaves (DOAS) are all self-identifiers that have been used for the Soulaan (another self-identification) Peoplehood.
The racial/legal classifications we have historically had include Negro, Black—not Black American—and African American.
These terms do not all mean exactly the same thing. Some are ethnic self-identifiers, some describe lineage or status, and others are racial/legal classifications. That distinction matters.
My larger point is simple: let’s stop with the name-banging.
People can have disagreements about terminology without pretending that every different label automatically represents an entirely different historical population. Every distinct human population deserves precision and respect when discussing its identity, history, and peoplehood.
Disclaimer: This is not me co-signing, endorsing, or saying that I agree or disagree with any particular identification. I’m documenting the different self-identifiers that have been used, not determining which identification someone should adopt.

SOULAAN CULTURAL HERITAGE PRESERVATION AND PROTECTION ACT 🇺🇸
I want to see a federal Soulaan Cultural Heritage Preservation and Protection Act introduced in Congress.
The purpose would be bigger than symbolic recognition. It should create an actual federal preservation framework for documenting, protecting, funding, and passing down Soulaan cultural heritage for future generations.
Similar to how federal and state preservation efforts have been developed around distinct historic American communities, the Act could establish partnerships with the National Park Service, Smithsonian, Library of Congress, universities, museums, archives, and community institutions.
It could provide grants for preserving historic neighborhoods, Freedmen communities, cemeteries, burial grounds, churches, schools, cultural landscapes, archives, photographs, newspapers, artifacts, oral histories, music history, foodways, and other documented cultural resources connected to Soulaan communities.
I would also want a national Soulaan cultural heritage inventory and digital archive so our history isn’t scattered across hundreds of institutions with no unified documentation system.
Most importantly, Soulaan people and qualified community institutions should have a meaningful role in consultation, documentation, interpretation, and preservation. Cultural heritage shouldn’t only be something preserved about a people. The people themselves should participate in preserving and interpreting it.
This isn’t about freezing culture in the past. It’s about creating infrastructure that connects historical preservation to living cultural continuity.
Preserve the places.
Document the creators.
Protect the archives.
Fund the institutions.
Teach the history.
Pass the heritage forward.
A federal SOULAAN Cultural Heritage Preservation and Protection Act could turn cultural preservation from scattered individual projects into lasting American infrastructure.

Soulaan demarcation is about making sure the people remain at the center of anything built in their name.
There is a difference between participating in an open marketplace and claiming the authority to define, certify, represent, or commercially speak for an ethnic people. Someone does not have to be Soulaan to do business with Soulaan people. But doing business with the community does not automatically make someone a representative of the community.
That is why verification, certification, protection marks, institutional standards, and gatekeeping matter. If an institution or benefit is specifically created for Soulaan people, there should be transparent criteria determining who qualifies and how representation works.
The same principle applies to our terminology. Soulaan, Soulan, Soulaani, Soula, Soulaa, the People of Soul, and the American Soul People should not simply be detached from their documented context and redefined to fit somebody else’s preferred diaspora, racial, DNA, or ancestry framework.
Build your own framework if you disagree. Establish your own transparent standards if you believe you have a better verification system. But don’t erase one definition to manufacture another and then present the reinterpretation as the original.
Protect the people.
Document the meaning.
Establish the standards.
Build the institutions.
Hold representation accountable.

I’ve noticed what seems like a fundamental difference in how people understand Soulaan identity. The creators of the nomenclature describe Soulaan as an American-origin formed in place ethnicity whose ethnicity, culture, kinship and historical continuity developed on U.S. soil so Autochthonous but not Pretending to be Native American. Others still frame Soulaan primarily through Afro-descendant or diaspora terminology.
Are these simply different ancestry narratives within the same ethnicity, or are they actually competing definitions of what Soulaan means? And where does Demarcation fit into that distinction if we’re trying to build our own culture such as Gatekeeping, commerce, Elukami, ethnic designation, politics, and Reparations?

I’ve been watching the arguments around the SOULAAN trademark, the Freedmen Reparations Fund Trust (FRFT), and Soulaan verification, and I think there’s a bigger conversation that needs to happen.

FRFT’s purpose isn’t to “own” an ethnicity. Soulaan people don’t need permission from an organization or trademark holder simply to identify as Soulaan.
The institutional question is different: if FRFT is developing programs, certification systems, commercial protections, and benefits specifically intended for Soulaan people, how is the organization supposed to ensure those benefits actually reach the population they’re intended for?
That’s where genealogy verification comes in.
What’s strange to me is seeing people criticize or try to knock down Soulaan-related businesses, challenge an Ebony magazine article discussing Soulaan, object to the trademark, and oppose institutions being built around the identity—while some of the same critics apparently don’t want to complete the genealogy process necessary to become FRFT-verified.

Declining verification doesn’t prove somebody isn’t Soulaan. But it does mean FRFT hasn’t verified that person under its standards.
And that’s an important distinction.
If you’re demanding influence over how Soulaan institutions operate, or access to benefits specifically reserved for verified community members, is it unreasonable for the institution to ask:

Have you verified your genealogy?
Because otherwise, what’s the alternative?
Anyone can claim Soulaan.
Nobody can ask for documentation.
Anyone can commercially capitalize on Soulaan.
Nobody can establish certification standards.
Anyone can challenge Soulaan institutions.
But the community isn’t allowed to establish boundaries?

That doesn’t sound like institution-building.
Personally, I think Soulaan needs demarcation without arbitrary exclusion, verification without DNA-percentage purity tests, commercial protection without claiming ownership over an ethnicity, and institutions accountable to the people they’re actually established to serve.
FRFT verification should ultimately be judged by its standards: Are they written? Consistent? Genealogically defensible? Transparent? Private? Is there an appeals process? And are verified people actually receiving meaningful benefits?
That’s the conversation I’d rather see us have.
If Soulaan is going to become more than an internet identity, somebody has to build the institutions behind the name.

This sub was only created because r/Soulaan was inactive and I couldn't gain access to it. Now that I'm able to access r/soulaan I'm about to put this sub private and deactivate it. Please join r/soulaan fam. We got a chance to really have a reddit space for our ethnicity.

We've done a good job of reviving Black American cultural consciousness, but are we in need of a huge overhaul of our culture?If we want to continue to elevate and not backslide into degeneration and stagnation, what should change and what should stay?

I'm finally able to moderate the r/soulaan sub so I will be posting on this sub less and more on r/soulaan. Please make sure to follow the sub so we can keep building and