Plenary Panel: Engaging Interconnectedness: Lessons from Sentient Beings/Ecosystems
We are honored to present this panel of women whose work advances the essential conversations of an interrelated world, protecting and fostering the unique contributions of ecosystems, people, and other sentient beings to the dialogue of life on earth. This panel will be followed by an opportunity for panelists to respond to one another, as well as a Q & A with attendees.
Asoka Bandarage, PhD: “Paradigm Shift: From Domination to Partnership”
Dr. Cristina Eisenberg: “Honoring Reciprocity: Collaborating with Indigenous Peoples on Traditional Ecological Knowledge”
Denise Mitten, PhD: “Blurring boundaries and disturbing dichotomies”
Apela Colorado, PhD: “Manuakepa ~ Reawaken Our Power to Connect”
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“Paradigm Shift: From Domination to Partnership”
Asoka Bandarage, PhD, formerly Chair of the Women’s Studies Program at Mount Holyoke College, is currently Distinguished Adjunct Professor at the California Institute for Integral Studies. She has also taught at Yale University, Brandeis University, Macalester College, Georgetown University, and European Peace University. She is the author of Women, Population and Global Crisis and Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society and the Economy, and other publications. Asoka is a co-founder of the Committee on Women, Population and Health, and served as guest editor of Political Environments and Woman of Power. She conducts workshops on social change and works with the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate.
“Manuakepa ~ Reawaken Our Power to Connect”
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, develop an authentic interface with Western science, and safeguard the lives and work of the world’s endangered indigenous culture practitioners. In 1997, Dr. Colorado was one of twelve women chosen from 52 countries by the State of the World Forum to be honored for her role as a woman leader.
“Honoring Reciprocity: Collaborating with Indigenous Peoples on Traditional Ecological Knowledge”
Dr. Cristina Eisenberg is graduate faculty at Oregon State University in the College of Forestry. An Indigenous woman scientist, she is the principal investigator on two major on-the-ground projects with First Nations (Alberta, Canada) and Native American (Montana, USA) communities to integrate Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) into plant and wildlife conservation in Western North America. The former Chief Scientist at Earthwatch Institute, Cristina oversaw a global research program focusing on ecological restoration, social justice for Indigenous peoples, and sustainable production of natural resources. She serves on the board of Society for Ecological Restoration, where she chairs the TEK Working Group. She has written two books about conservation and keystone predators and is at work on two more under contract, one about climate change and wildlife and another about bison conservation.
“Blurring boundaries and disturbing dichotomies”
Denise Mitten, PhD, is professor of the graduate program of Sustainability Education and Adventure Education at Prescott College, Her work is informed by an interdisciplinary background that includes parent education, forest ecology, outdoor leadership, complementary and alternative therapies, and health and wellness. She studies the intersection of health and wellness while being in nature including spirituality, a sense of place, and the effect of outdoor activity participation on body image. Internationally recognized for her innovative scholarship in outdoor and environmental pedagogy, gender, and compassionate leadership, Denise has developed award-winning outdoor leadership programs for women, women felons, nuns in recovery, and socially and economically disadvantaged women and children.
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