“The Fire of Umai, a call to our sacred Indigenous power”
with Apela Colorado
Thursday, February 10, 2022 at 3 PM Eastern Standard Time
REGISTER HERE
As told in the final chapter of her recently released book Woman Between the Worlds, Apela Colorado, PhD, and a group of healers were hiking a mountain in Kyrgyzstan 12 years ago, passing what appeared to be nothing more than a pile of rubble. To her horror, she discovered that the rubble they were standing on had once been a Temple to Umai (the Earth Mother).
Sacred sites such as Umai and their related stories the world over—particularly those devoted to the Mother—have at best been ignored, at worst destroyed, and many all but forgotten. Hundreds of years of colonization has meant that much of the transmission of cultural practices, particularly those of women, were buried—but not necessarily lost, as evidenced by the Kyrgyz candle ceremony to honor Umai.
Dr. Colorado’s more than thirty years of research unveils a web of stories and sacred sites that evince the mysteries of conception, birth, death and rebirth. Join Dr. Colorado and Beth Duncan on February 10th, noon PST, as they share how recovering suppressed knowledge and stories encoded in Central Asian sites, a point of diaspora for all northern hemispheric peoples, provides ways for indigenous and non-indigenous women to reclaim, embody and renew our ceremonial heritage thereby fostering planetary healing and solidarity with the living indigenous cultures of today.
Apela Colorado, PhD, of Oneida-Gaul ancestry, has dedicated her life’s work to bridging Western thought and indigenous worldviews. As a Ford Fellow, Dr. Colorado studied for her doctorate at both Harvard and Brandeis Universities and received her PhD from Brandeis in Social Policy in 1982. She founded the Worldwide Indigenous Science Network (WISN) in 1989 to
- Foster the revitalization, growth, and worldwide exchange of traditional knowledge
- Safeguard the lives and work of the world’s endangered indigenous culture practitioners.
- Develop an interface with Western science
In 1997, Dr. Colorado was one of twelve women chosen from 52 countries by the State of the World Forum (http://www.worldforum.org) to be honored for her role as a woman leader.
For 30+ years, global nonprofit Worldwide Indigenous Science Network (WISN) has brought Indigenous and Western science together to preserve and protect Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the carriers of this wisdom for future generations, to protect sacred sites and species, and to help students remember their indigenously and connection to life. WISN’s innovative education programs, networking of Elders and Indigenous Cultural Practitioners, dreamwork and the revival of origin satires, cutting-edge blended Indigenous / Western research, and an Indigenous regranting program have impacted programs at the United Nations, global conservation efforts, Indigenous research, and higher education.
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Save the dates for upcoming ASWM Salons:
February 24, 2022 at 12 Noon Eastern Standard Time
Title TBA
Genevieve Vaughan
March 10 2022 12 NOON Eastern Standard Time
Title TBA
Mary Condren
March 24 2022 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time
“Healing the Earth with Traditional Ecological Knowledge”
Cristina Eisenberg
The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event.
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