Leah Dorion’s Artwork Graces our 2026 Symposium

Passing Water Forward, by Leah Dorion (acrylic, 2013)

Our thanks to Leah Marie Dorion for sharing her artwork with us for our 2026 Symposium, “Reimagining Goddess Scholarship: At the Edges of Sacred Knowledge.”

The program for this event reframes knowledge transmission and curation and promotes new connections and relationships among people, animals, and the green world. Leah’s painting, “Passing Water Forward” beautifully conveys the intention and spirit of our program, as sacred knowledge is passed from one generation to another..

Leah Marie Dorion is a Metis writer and artist currently living near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada. Her artwork celebrates the strength and resilience of Indigenous women and families, and echoes the beauty found in traditional beadwork. Leah is also a published children’s book author and illustrator. Leah has a passion for early year’s education and is currently working with the Metis Nation of British Columbia (MNBC) to develop Metis cultural early years resources for children and families. She has also participated as a mentor and lead artist for the Mann Art Gallery Indigenous Residency Project. She is a proud member of CARFAC which is the national voice of Canada’s professional visual artists. Visit www.leahdorion.ca for more information about her artistic practice.

About this painting, Leah says “This artwork features Indigenous women gathering water from the river. The gathered water is carried within sacred vessels to represent the passing forward of knowledge about the land and water through the generations. There is a baby in a cradleboard on the mother’s back and a young girl helping to draw up the river water into her vessel to emphasize that water is necessary for life to blossom, grow, and flourish in this world.

“Holding a vessel of water in our arms, close to our heart, is representative of sharing your wisdom and knowledge to guide future generations. The Canadian Geese flying in the sky are a symbol about how important it is to find direction in life and work together as a community for the highest good of all.”

In this beautiful video, Leah discusses her artistic vision.

January 13, 2026April 6, 2026

2026 Symposium to Feature Dr. Apela Colorado

Dr. Apela Colorado, along with two members of the Worldwide Indigenous Sciences Network “Dream Team” is our featured speaker for our upcoming symposium:

2026 Online Symposium, May 3 2026:

“Reimagining Goddess Scholarship: At the Edges of Sacred Knowledge.”

Apela Colorado, Ph.D. (Oneida-Gaul) is a renowned Indigenous scholar, educator, and cultural bridge-builder whose work centers on restoring Indigenous wisdom and forging ethical relationships between Western and Indigenous knowledge systems. A Ford Foundation Fellow, she earned her Ph.D. in Social Policy from Brandeis University in 1982, with additional coursework in Federal Indian Law and Child Welfare at Harvard University.

In 1989, Dr. Colorado founded the Worldwide Indigenous Science Network (WISN), which she continues to lead. WISN fosters the revitalization and global exchange of traditional knowledge, protects endangered Indigenous cultural practitioners, and facilitates respectful dialogue between Indigenous science and Western disciplines. A major recent milestone in Dr. Colorado’s work is the establishment of WISN’s graduate program in Indigenous Science and Peace Studies at the University for Peace (UPEACE) in Costa Rica.

In 1997, she was honored by the State of the World Forum as one of twelve women leaders selected from 52 countries. She has represented Indigenous perspectives at global events including the United Nations Earth Summit and the Conference on Religion and Environment hosted by the President of Indonesia.

Dr. Colorado’s publications explore sacred ecology, ancestral memory, and Indigenous methodologies. Her recent books include Woman Between the Worlds: A Call to Your Ancestral and Indigenous Wisdom (Hay House, 2021) and Journal des Rêves (WISN.org). She continues to mentor global leaders working at the intersections of culture, land, and spirit.

January 12, 2026January 26, 2026

Scholar Salon 93 (Recording now available)

Scholar Salon #93: Laura Shannon sheds light on indigenous value systems honouring mothers and childbirth, and to offer grounds for placing the Holy Mother at the heart of the Nativity story, as the one for whom the Magi's sacred gifts were intended.

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January 5, 2026January 6, 2026

Announcing Scholar Salon 94: Register for January 22

“Women of Ancient Western Asia and (Questioning) Their Stereotypes“

with Dr. Pinar Durgun

Thursday, January 22, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time

REGISTER HERE

Statuette of a Woman, “Lady with the Aryballos”, about 2200 – 2000 B.C., Akkadian or Neo-Sumerian, painted alabaster. Musée du Louvre, Département des Antiquités orientales. Image © Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Thierry Ollivier / Art Resource, NY.

Modern perceptions of women in ancient Mesopotamia (or ancient Western Asia) are often shaped by persistent stereotypes: that women were universally oppressed, legally invisible, and confined to domestic or sexualized roles. This talk explores how our understanding of ancient women’s lives shifts when we challenge these assumptions and examine evidence across legal, economic, religious, and visual sources. Each category of evidence carries its own biases, privileging certain narratives while silencing others.

Carnelian cylinder seal (and modern impression) with mother and child attended by women, Akkadian period (ca. 2334–2154 BC), from Ur (modern Tell el-Muqayyar, Iraq). PG 871. Image © Courtesy of University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

While patriarchal structures shaped Mesopotamian society and law codes emphasized control and restriction, other sources reveal women owning and managing property, participating in economic transactions, and holding significant religious offices within temple and palace institutions. Rather than seeking a single “status of women” in Mesopotamia, this presentation highlights the variety of lived experiences shaped by class, historical period, and institutional context. By bringing these fragmented forms of evidence into conversation, the talk invites us to reconsider not only women in the ancient world, but also how women’s histories are constructed, obscured, and reclaimed through material culture and its study.

Dr. Pinar Durgun is an art-historically trained archaeologist with a strong background in anthropology. She has a Ph.D. in Archaeology and the Ancient World from Brown University’s Joukowsky institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. Her interests center around death and burial, image and identity making, materials and making in the ancient world. Her current research focuses on seals and seal making, and copies and copying in ancient Western Asia. With fifteen years of experience teaching and working in museums, Dr. Durgun is interested in how museums help us engage with the past and how they can better serve our communities today. She is currently the Jeannette and Jonathan Rosen Associate Curator and Department Head of Ancient Western Asian Seals and Tablets Department at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.

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Upcoming Scholar Salons (3pm Eastern Time):

Thursday February 5, with Dr. Joan Marler, Topic: the legacy of Marija Gimbutas

This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event.

December 15, 2025January 12, 2026

Announcing Scholar Salon 93: Register for January 8

” The Gifts of the Magi Were Meant for the Mother“
with Laura Shannon
Thursday, January 8, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time

Facebook Live Promo Interview on 1/5/26:

Adoration of the Magi, Albrecht Dürer, 1504

In the Christian Nativity story, the Magi brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, symbolising Christ’s kingship, divinity, and death. In this presentation, I suggest that the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh were actually meant for the new mother, Mary. I will also consider the theory that the Magi were not only three, and were not only men, but may have included women healers and midwives among their number.

The original gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh – now preserved on Mt. Athos – take the form of gold filigree pendants and beads of blended frankincense and myrrh. These elements are now divided into smaller segments, but originally would have been joined together in one long loop, in the style of North African bridal necklaces of scented paste beads and flat gold filigree lockets.

The flat gold lockets were known as meskiyah, and were intended to contain fragrant substances. The beads, called skhab, are also powerfully fragrant, formed from resins and spices such as cloves and roses, or indeed frankincense and myrrh. These were ritually blended for a bride before her wedding in a custom which is still practiced today in North Africa.

With this and other artistic, iconographic, and medical evidence, I hope to shed light on indigenous value systems honouring mothers and childbirth, and to offer grounds for (re)placing the Holy Mother at the heart of the Nativity story, as the one for whom the sacred gifts were intended.

Laura Shannon has been researching and teaching traditional women’s circle dances worldwide for 40 years. With degrees in Intercultural Studies, Dance Movement Therapy, and Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred, she is currently a PhD candidate researching the roots of women’s ritual dance. A faculty member of the Findhorn Foundation Sacred Dance Department since 1998, Laura is also Founding Director of the Athena Institute for Women’s Dance and Culture; Director of the Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual and the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete, following Carol Christ; and an Honorary Lifetime Member of the Sacred Dance Guild in recognition of her ‘significant and lasting contribution to dance as a sacred art’. Laura has published numerous articles and chapters on ritual dance in multiple languages, and as a musician and singer, has produced several recordings of traditional dance music. Laura lives in Greece and the UK.

See related article in Feminism and Religion