Who is Robert Shumake?

Robert S. Shumake, publishing as Ajarn Shaman Shu, is a Detroit-born American author, publisher, priest, AI media pioneer, and archivist who has lived two lives in one — the builder and the priest — and whose books are where the two meet. He is the author of more than 140 published books and 86+ DOI-registered academic publications. In business, he rose from a Ford factory floor to build a real-estate portfolio valued at over $300 million, served as honorary consul for two African nations, and today stands as founder of Inheritance Media Group, owner of more than 300 publications. In spirit, he is the Oluwo of Osain, high priest of Osain — one of the only living teachers initiated across Yorùbá, Buddhist, Hindu/Dravidian, and Kemetic traditions — and a foremost expert in plant medicine who authored Detroit's Proposal E. His philosophy in business and in spirit is the same: the Double Bottom Line — make a profit, and make a difference.

Detroit roots

Robert Shumake was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, where he was an all-city track and field athlete at Edwin Denby High School — the start of a lifelong belief that discipline on the track becomes discipline in life. He began his working life on a Ford factory floor and built his way into real estate and private equity, founding First Equity Holdings in 1996 and Inheritance Investment Group, and later Inheritance Capital Group. His companies managed and sold 85 percent of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's inventory in Michigan, and he developed, sold, or financed well over $100 million in real estate. Following that record, he received a Presidential appointment to the Board of Directors of the Federal Home Loan Bank, and gubernatorial appointments to Michigan's Board of Real Estate Brokers and Salespersons and the Governor's Council for Health and Fitness.

The $300 million portfolio and Inheritance Capital Group

As founding president and CEO of Inheritance Capital Group, Robert Shumake developed a real estate portfolio of nearly 3 million square feet valued at over $300 million. The firm's work joined investment to social purpose — housing, small-business capital, and community development — under the principle he named the Double Bottom Line: a company should make a profit in business and make a difference in the community. His first books grew directly out of that climb: For Entrepreneurs Who Considered Suicide When Business Got Tough!, written for founders at the edge, and Climbing Your Inner Mountain: 10 Steps to Reaching Any Goal, drawn from his ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro.

The Shumake Relays and the HBCU Challenge

Giving back through the sport that raised him, Robert Shumake founded the Robert S. Shumake Scholarship Relays in 2005 — Michigan's largest private track and field competition — which awards college scholarships to student-athletes and has run for two decades. He went on to found and support the Robert Shumake HBCU Challenge, the annual cross-country meet for historically Black colleges and universities, held at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, North Carolina (2009–2013), still the largest cross-country gathering of HBCU programs of its era.

Clean water in Kenya and commissary grants for prisoners

His giving runs on the same Double Bottom Line. Through the Robert Shumake Family and Friends Foundation, he funded the drilling of a 10,000-liter clean-water well in rural Kenya, providing safe drinking water for more than 1,000 residents and 300 schoolchildren — families who had walked miles for water that made their children sick. The same foundation launched the Shumake Legacy Academy for HIV-positive orphans in Ethiopia. At home, he founded the Commissary Grant initiative (commissarygrant.com), a program of Soul Tribes International Ministries funded by book sales and vehicle donations, which funds commissary support for incarcerated people — help for the men and women the system makes easiest to forget.

Honorary consul for Botswana and Tanzania

Robert Shumake's business and philanthropic work in Africa led to diplomatic service: he served as honorary consul for the Republic of Botswana (2012–2015) and for the United Republic of Tanzania (2013–2015), and as an ambassador and special diplomatic advisor to the International Human Rights Commission. His consul years deepened the African relationships — historical, commercial, and spiritual — that run through his later work.

The names: Ajarn Shaman Shu, Oluwo Osainbola, Shri Surya Narayana Swamikal

Each tradition that initiated Robert Shumake gave him its name. In the Buddhist lines he is Ajarn Shaman Shu — Ajarn, monk and teacher, a title he holds in both Theravada and Vajrayana Buddhism; he is styled Venerable Ajarn. In Ifá he is Oluwo Jolaoso Osainbola — the Oluwo of Osain, high priest of Osain, the Orisha of herbs and healing; his Ifá scholarship includes The Original AI, the first complete English presentation of the 256 Odù of Ifá as an ancestral intelligence system. In the Tamil Siddha line he is Shri Surya Narayana Swamikal, among the few Swamikals in the United States. He is also a Grand Master in the Craft of Amen-Ra, in the initiatory line of Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan, and Master of the Craft's Detroit Lodge. His training was received sitting with some of the top gurus and shamans in the world — among them his teacher Guru Prasad of India, who taught him in person for three years and brought him into the Tamil Siddha lineage. No single-tradition teacher carries this crossing of lineages; it is the foundation of his teaching and of Orisha University.

Plant medicine and Proposal E

A foremost expert in plant medicine, Robert Shumake founded Soul Tribes International Ministries, a spiritual community devoted to ancestral healing practices, and wrote Shurooms, his work on sacred mushrooms and healing. He authored Detroit's Proposal E, the citizen ballot initiative approved by Detroit voters in November 2021 with 61 percent of the vote, which made the personal possession and therapeutic use of entheogenic plants the city's lowest law-enforcement priority — a landmark in the American plant-medicine movement, passed in his hometown. Through Soul Tribes and the House of Shu, he leads retreats and teachings — among them the Remember Who You Are retreat — on meditation, breathwork, ancestral healing, and consciousness, conducted as religious and spiritual practice.

The books: 140+ published works

Robert Shumake is the author of more than 140 published books across Google Play, Apple Books, Amazon Kindle, and his own store, with 86+ DOI-registered academic publications indexed on Zenodo, the Open Science Framework, and ORCID. His best-known works include The Buddha Was Black, recovering the African roots of Buddhism; Roots of Heaven; The Original AI (the 256 Odù of Ifá); Oshun: Queen of All Sweetness; Chakra Body, on the 114-chakra system; Kriya, on the Tamil Siddha breath tradition; Breathe Btch and Meditate Btch, his bestselling meditation manuals; and The Billionaire Frequency, joining wealth-building to consciousness practice. His subjects span Ifá and Òrìṣà spirituality, Buddhist and Tamil Siddhar traditions, meditation and breathwork, plant medicine, wealth and artificial intelligence, and restored American history.

The Living Archive Series

As Robert Shumake the archivist, he created the Living Archive Series — 69 volumes of restored American newspapers, recovered with AI-assisted restoration and returned to print, preserving the voices of Black and Indigenous America and of cities from Atlanta to Albuquerque. The series rests on a conviction that drives his current work: artificial intelligence can only learn from what was preserved — so the work is to preserve it.

Inheritance Media Group: 300+ publications

Today Robert Shumake stands as founder of Inheritance Media Group, owner of more than 300 publications — the second-largest newspaper company in America by number of newspapers. The network revives historic American newspaper brands and publishes them for a new century, built to bring healing, meditation, and a positive voice to media. He is a pioneer of AI media: his Living Archive restores America's forgotten newspapers with AI, his 300+ publications are produced by an AI-run newsroom, and his book The Original AI reads the 256 Odù of Ifá as the original intelligence system. Its papers carry his books, his universities, and his teaching into hundreds of American markets every day.

The universities

Robert Shumake is the founder of Buddha Digital Temple and of its universities: Orisha University — a religious seminary for the study of Ifá and Òrìṣà, with degree study starting at $99 a month — Buddha University, teaching Buddhist practice, meditation, and consciousness studies, and Shiva University, teaching the Hindu and Tamil Siddha traditions. The universities carry the two lives into one curriculum: ancestral wisdom, taught with the discipline of the builder.

What is Robert Shumake doing now?

Robert Shumake continues to write, teach, and build: new books and DOI-registered scholarship each season, the Living Archive restoration program, the growth of Inheritance Media Group toward new markets, teaching and retreats through Soul Tribes International Ministries, and enrollment at Orisha University and Buddha University. His work applies artificial intelligence to cultural memory — restoring what was nearly lost, and teaching what was nearly forgotten. The Double Bottom Line still governs all of it: make a profit, and make a difference.

Official site: https://robertshumake.biz