ASWM Scholar Salon with Jamie Figueroa. "Mother Island: A Daughter Claims Puerto Rico" In her memoir, novelist Jamie Figueroa excavates her roots from her childhood, cutting into them across generations and unearthing them on the island of Puerto Rico, the homeland of her Taíno ancestors.
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“Moving from Lateral Oppression to a Culture of Kindness“ with Sherri Mitchell Thursday, May 2, 2024 at 3pm Eastern Time
Sherri Mitchell by Robert Shetterly
“In this Salon we will look at shifting from lateral violence to lateral kindness as an expression of an emerging cultural paradigm. Lateral kindness is the reclamation of our pre colonial cultures and authentic identities, where care for one another was central to our survival and wellbeing. Respect is a key tenet to all healthy and intact cultures across the world.”
Lateral violence is the direct result of the colonial patriarchy that we have been subjected to for millennia. Shifting away from the embedded patterns of lateral violence and moving toward lateral kindness is the first step in creating a healthier path forward for us all. Replacing competition with community is a good starting point, as we have been consistently pitted against each other for access to opportunities and resources creating fractures and distrust. We must now work to rebuild reciprocal relationships and partnerships where wealth, prosperity, and success are redefined and where resources and opportunities are shared within and between communities.
In the Forest, public domain photo
Sherri Mitchell -Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset, is an Indigenous attorney, activist, and author from the Penobscot Nation. She is an alumna of the American Indian Ambassador Program and the Udall Native American Congressional Internship Program. Sherri is the author of Sacred Instructions; Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change and a contributor to more than a dozen anthologies, including the best-seller All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis and Growing Up Native in America.
Sherri Mitchell -Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset
Sherri is the Executive Director of the Land Peace Foundation, an educational organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of the Indigenous way of life and environmental equity and justice. She has worked with some of the largest NGO’s in the world on decolonizing relationships between Peoples and lands. She currently serves as a Trustee for the American Indian Institute, an Indigenous Advisory Council member for Nia Tero’s Indigenous Land Guardianship Program, and a board member for the Post Carbon Institute. Sherri is the recipient of several human rights and humanitarian awards, and her portrait is featured in the esteemed portrait series, Americans Who Tell the Truth. She is also the convener of the global healing ceremony – Healing the Wounds of Turtle Island, a gathering that has brought together more than fifty-thousand people from six continents to focus on healing our relationships with one another and with our relatives in the natural world.
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Please note: The words on the powerpoint may appear blurred; we will add a clear copy as soon as possible. Sherri’s presentation covers all the important ideas found in the powerpoint. If you are interested in learning more about this topic, check out this article from The Coalition to Stop Violence against Native Women.
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Save these dates for these upcoming ASWM Salons:
Thursday, May 16 , 2024 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time:
with Jamie Figueroa, “Mother Island: A Daughter Claims Puerto Rico”
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Thursday, May 30, 2024 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time
with Guadalupe Urbina, singer-songwriter/poet/artist/activist
Join us in this Salon as Lupe shares her music and paintings, and engages us in conversation on the love for the earth, women, and traditional wisdom.
Guadalupe Urbina
Guadalupe Urbina is internationally known for her work as a singer and songwriter, and as a researcher of the oral tradition of her Guanacaste region of Costa Rica. To tell her story of identity and culture, she has ventured into painting, children’s stories and poetry as another extension of her musicality. She is an activist for the rights of women and girls, for Earth Rights. She is the founder of Casa Madremonte, an independent center dedicated to art, agroecology and spirituality inspired by the rainforest. She has published four books and recorded ten albums.
Guadalupe has performed in diverse venues in the three Americas, Europe and Central Africa, such as the Círculo de Bellas Artes or the Centro Cultural de la Villa in Madrid, the Hot Brass and the Maison de l’Amerique Latine in Paris, the Demba Diop Stadium in Senegal, Biarritz Film Festival, a One Woman Show in New York, and the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in Canada. And of course at many theaters, squares, streets, community halls, cafes and World Music festivals. She has received awards from the Círculo de Bellas Artes of Madrid, the América Prize from Radio France International, and the Association of Authors and Composers of Music ACAM has awarded some of her works; the album Trópico Azul de Lluvia in 2001, special recognition for her work compiling oral tradition in the album “Sones Afromestizos de Amor y de Humor” in 2018. She received the Reca Mora Award for a life dedicated to music in 2021 and the Song of the Year award for her song “La Cumbia de la Niña” in 2023.
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With gratitude to our presenters and volunteers, we are taking a break in offering Scholar Salons until later this year. Watch our Newsletter for announcements about the next series.
This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event.
ASWM Scholar Salon with Dr. Donna Giancola. In the Name of the Goddess: A Biophilic Ethic. "A biophilic ethic goes beyond traditional ethical theories by incorporating a a perspective of inter-connectedness and co-dependency with Nature. By invoking the mythical notion of justice, it becomes embodied, and personal, reflecting a subtle shift of consciousness".
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If you are not yet a member, and you would like to view this content, please click Join & Renew to pay for an annual membership.
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In her memoir, novelist Jamie Figueroa excavates her roots from her childhood, cutting into them across generations and unearthing them on the island of Puerto Rico, the homeland of her Taíno ancestors. As a child, the author first understood herself as a member of a “feminine collective” that contained her mother and her two older sisters, even as they all rode the roller coaster of her mother’s history of trauma, emotional unpredictability and dependency, and her series of marriages to white men. Jamie chronicles her journey through her work in the healing arts, the ending of her own marriage to a white man (“a hand-me-down version of one of my mother’s”), and the practice and profession of writing and teaching. Addressing Puerto Rico’s complicated relationship to the mainland U.S., she explores its nuances, along with associated topics of race, internalized colonization, and assimilation.
“Her exceptional command of her craft builds narrative tension while granting force to the way her personal history mirrors geopolitical devastation and imbuing her voice with the power of one no longer unclaimed by, but ready to lay claim to. Mother Island is a searching and lyrical memoir packed with nuance and depth.” (Starred Kirkus Review of Mother Island, Nov 28, 2023)
Join us in this Salon as Jamie reads from her memoir and engages us in a deep conversation on the themes of her work and her writing process.
Jamie Figueroa
Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio, Jamie Figueroa’s mixed-race Puerto Rican heritage of Black/Indigenous/Spanish drives her fiction and creative nonfiction themes. As a woman of color from the Caribbean diaspora, she writes into the complexities of a multi-faceted identity. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novel BROTHER, SISTER, MOTHER, EXPLORER, longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and shortlisted for the Reading the West Book Award. Jamie is on faculty in the MFA Creative Writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Emergence Magazine, Elle, The New York Times, and The Boston Review, among others. MOTHER ISLAND was named among the LA Times “6 books to shake off colonialism and rethink our Latino stories.” Jamie Figueroa is a longtime resident of northern New Mexico.
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Save the date for this upcoming ASWM Salon:
Thursday, May 30, 2024 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time
with Guadalupe Urbina, singer-songwriter/poet/artist/activist
This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event.
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