Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 1 – Vortex of Indigenous Cosmologies

Vortex of Indigenous Cosmologies

with Melissa Nelson and friends

Sunday July 28
9:00am PDT  | 12:00pm EDT  | 5:00pm BST  |  6:00pm CEST 
2-hour session.

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Melissa K. Nelson is an ecologist and Indigenous scholar-activist. She earned her Ph.D. in ecology at the University of California, Davis. Formerly a professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, she now teaches at Arizona State University in the School of Sustainability, Global Futures Laboratory. From 1993 to 2021, she served as the founding executive director and CEO of the Cultural Conservancy. She now serves as their president emerita. Melissa is the Bundle Holder for the Native American Academy. She is a contributor and co-editor of Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability, published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. She is also a contributor and the editor of Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future (2008). She is Anishinaabe/Métis/Norwegian and a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.

Terrellyn Fearn is a Mi’kmaq scholar-practitioner, Snake clan from Glooscap First Nation and a citizen of the Wabanaki Confederacy. Terrellyn is the Project Director of Turtle Island Institute, a global Indigenous social innovation think and do tank (a learning lodge) grounded in Metuaptmumk: All Around Seeing, a uniquely Indigenous approach to wholistic human development and systems transformation.

Her work spans 30 years exploring the human dimensions of transformative change where systems science, arts and the sacred meet by amplifying Indigenous languages, ancient wisdom traditions and Ancestral sciences. She is a Research Associate with the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation & Resilience and holds a Masters degree in Education. She has worked with over 380 Indigenous communities across Turtle Island (North America) to advance wellbeing and create communities of practice dedicated to social change and heart centred leadership. Terrellyn is a mother and believes large-scale systemic change begins through restoring the sacred feminine and reawakening the human Spirit by connecting to self, each other, our Earth Mother and all of Creation

Isabel Hawkins, Senior Scientist (she/her/ella), grew up in Córdoba, Argentina, where the beauty of the night sky and a childhood visit to the Planetario charted the course of her career as an astronomer and science educator. Reaching for the stars, Isabel came to the United States as an American Field Service exchange student when she was sixteen. In 1981, she received a BS in physics from UC Riverside, where she was asked to join Phi Beta Kappa. Subsequently, she obtained an MS and a PhD in astrophysics from UCLA. Before joining the Exploratorium in 2009, she spent 20 years as an astrophysics researcher and science educator at the University of California, Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory. Isabel’s work at the Exploratorium is focused on NASA, NSF, and museum-funded efforts related to Latinx audience engagement, such as Solar Eclipse, GENIAL: Generating Engagement and New Initiatives for All Latinos, and Cambio, a professional development approach for building Latinx-focused cultural competence in museums. Through cultural astronomy, she fosters science pluralism by making visible The Cultural Roots of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), a research synthesis effort that has been funded by the NSF. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific bestowed on her the prestigious Klumpke-Roberts Award in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy, an honor that she shares with fellow awardees Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Julieta Fierro, and Tim Ferris, among others. Isabel is also a consultant for the Smithsonian Institution, a volunteer coordinator for the YAKANAL, Indigenous Youth Cultural Exchange program, and a 2018 to 2022 Fulbright US Global Scholar. Her interests include salsa and bachata dancing, yoga, drawing Maya classic period glyphs, and the study of native languages.

Marcus Briggs-Cloud is a language revitalizer, scholar, and musician. He is co-director of Ekvn-Yefolecv, an off-grid, climate-positive, income-sharing Indigenous ecovillage community centered in Weogufka, Alabama, comprised of Maskoke persons who have returned to their ancestral homelands—after 180 years of having been forcibly removed—for the purpose of embodying sustainable lifeways through language/cultural revitalization, ecological restoration, regenerative agriculture, and natural building. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Marcus has a PhD in interdisciplinary ecology from the University of Florida, where his work intersected ecology, linguistics, genetics, ecofeminism, and liberation theology. He received awards for his Maskoke hymn album Pum Vculvke Vrakkuecetv (To Honor Our Elders), and in 2012, he served as composer and choir director for the Vatican canonization liturgy with Pope Benedict XVI for Indigenous Saint Kateri Tekakwitha. He is partnered to Tawna Little (Maskoke); they have two children, Nokos-Afvnoke and Hemokke, with whom Marcus enjoys speaking exclusively in the Maskoke language.