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Susannah · March 8, 2021 ·

June 19, 2020 @ 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm EDT

Watch the recording here!

lib·er·a·tion (noun) /libəˈrāSH(ə)n/

  1. the act of setting someone free from imprisonment, slavery, or oppression; release.
  2. freedom from limits on thought or behavior.

Join us for a Community Dialogue and Story Session with Lillie Pearl Allen and Delma Jackson III, about liberation: dreamed and realized, internal and structural, for black lives and beyond., Held Juneteenth, June 19, 2020 at 3pm EDT/ 12pm PDT.

In 1983, Lillie Pearl Allen led the “Black & Female: What is the Reality” workshop at the first Black Women’s Health Conference. Over a thousand Black women and girls participated in this workshop. This gathering marked the beginning of a social movement, created a legacy of leadership for justice that is inclusive of all people, and laid the foundation for the 1992 incorporation of Be Present, Inc.

“I am that seed that has come free from oppression. As a black woman, I want to speak to other black women, but I’m asking all of us to listen because it’s about all of us.”
Black & Female: What is the Reality workshop at the first Black Women’s Health Conference, 1983.
(photo courtesy Lillie Allen)

Delma Jackson is a CWC senior fellow and has spent the last several decades scrutinizing both his own internal biases and how they show up in social movements across history. This combination has led to an ever-broadening scope of what liberation can look like for all people through an intersectional lens and a value-based movement.

Delma’s June 2020 blog post is titled, Cut the Check or Count Me Out: “Good Whites,” Diversity Diversions & A New Look at an Old Idea.

For both storytellers, a desire for personal liberation, led to a desire for Black liberation, which led them both to the same conclusion. As Malcolm X asserted,

It’s freedom for everybody or it’s freedom for nobody.

While the whole country yet again grapples with the reality of structural violence against Black people, we offered a space for these two to share their journey and their dream–for us all.

Susannah · January 26, 2021 ·

July 17, 2020 @ 11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT

Our July community Zoom featured gina Breedlove, medicine woman, vocalist, composer, & sound healer from Brooklyn, NY. gina is an abolitionist for the lost parts of the self; a grief doula who uses sound and ritual to release stagnant energy, creating opportunity for embodiment and soul retrieval. Together, gina wrote, “we will share the potent and powerful medicine of sound and vibration, moving our awareness and intention for ease through our own bodies, and then sharing this intention with all who gather.” 

Learn more about gina’s work: www.vibrationofgrace.com

gina tours the world with her music she calls folksoul, holding sound healing circles in every city she visits. From Rwanda to the Bay Area, she guides folk into deeper knowing of the power of the human voice, and the inexhaustible presence that is Grace.

gina Breedlove’s Sound Healing is magical, profound, wonderful, and yes, healing

– Alice Walker
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Susannah · January 26, 2021 ·

August 21, 2020 @ 11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT

Pat McCabe (Weyakpa Najin Win, Woman Stands Shining) and Delma Jackson. launched our 2020 Fall Series. Pat, a Diné (Navajo) mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader, and international speaker, joined Delma to explore the need, opportunities and barriers to Black/Indigenous solidarity. Watch the recording here!

Their conversation invoked story, analysis and big-picture questions about efforts to not only strengthen the bonds between these two social categories, but also to explore the implications for solidarity across multiple communities.

Read more about Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe)

For Thriving Life, Light and Love

Pat McCabe (Weyakpa Najin Win, Woman Stands Shining) is a Diné (Navajo) mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader, and international speaker. She is a voice for global peace, and her paintings are created as tools for individual, earth and global healing. She draws upon the Indigenous sciences of Thriving Life to reframe questions about sustainability and balance, and she is devoted to supporting the next generations, Women’s Nation and Men’s Nation, in being functional members of the “Hoop of Life” and upholding the honor of being human.

Her primary work at the moment is:

• The reconciliation between the masculine and feminine, Men’s Nation and Women’s Nation

• Remembering, recreating or creating anew a narrative for the Sacred Masculine

• Addressing the Archetypal Wounding that occurred in our misunderstanding and abuse of technology in prayer, ceremony and science.

–from patmccabe.net

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Susannah · January 26, 2021 ·

September 25, 2020 @ 11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT

Dr. Shadiin Garcia and Dr. Claudia Ford joined our ongoing series of conversations, hosted by Delma Jackson, III, exploring the promises and challenges of justice, solidarity, and community building among Black/Indigenous populations. Together, these two brilliant and powerful women discussed where we’ve been, where we are, and where we might go. Opening with adrienne marie brown’s “Radical Gratitude Spell“, they also spoke about strategies for self-care and balance within activism and scholarship. Watch the recording here!

Dr. Shadiin Garcia, at left, and Dr. Claudia Ford (Photo credit Tracey Eller for Cosmic Sister)

Shadiin Garcia is Chicana and Laguna Pueblo, and has lived in Oregon for 16 years. She has worked for over 20 years as a teacher, as a public school administrator, researcher, a policy analyst, Indigenous education leader, and as a consultant. Shadiin has a huge extended family including high school and elementary aged children, 59 first cousins, and 19 aunts and uncles.   

Read more about Shadiin

Shadiin’s work centers on organizational change; culturally relevant and sustaining curriculum; diversity, equity, and belonging; educational and systemic equity; culturally appropriate research; and community driven systemic change. She served as the Deputy Director of Policy and Research at Oregon’s Chief Education Office where she helped develop a research agenda driven by culturally appropriate practices and Indigenous methodologies for improving key educational outcomes. She served as the Director of TeachOregon at the Chalkboard Project leading initiatives to diversify the educator workforce and improve teacher educator systems. With funding from Meyer Memorial Trust, she facilitates Oregon’s statewide American Indian/Alaska Native Educational Professional Learning Community. Dr. Garcia is board chair of the Women’s Foundation of Oregon.

Through her work both professionally and personally, she has cultivated a network of amazing people who navigate across multiple systems and spaces – public, private, sovereign nations/tribes, non-profit, government, P-20, higher education and more. She often collaborates within these networks of experts, thinkers, and advocates which bring multiple minds and approaches to bear on complex topics. Shadiin believies in co-constructing solutions grounded in equity and local context. 

–from thinkshorelines.com

Dr. Claudia J. Ford’s career in international management, development, and women’s health spans three decades and all continents. She is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at SUNY-Potsdam in addition to teaching ethnobotany, indigenous knowledge, gender studies, international business, environmental justice, and environmental literature in classrooms and workshops around the globe.

Read more about Claudia

Dr. Ford’s course for the Biodynamic Association, “The Wisdom of Sophia: Agriculture and the Sacred Feminine,” examines practices and beliefs that brought communities and the environment to the brink of catastrophic change and how spiritual agriculture and other sacred paradigms can help us move away from that brink. She has taught at the International Herb Symposium, Spirit Plant Medicine Conference, New England Women’s Herbal Conference, and The Biodynamic Conference – Cultivating Relationships, all of which she says are, “much needed exercises in decolonization and transformation.”

Claudia serves on the boards of directors of the Soul Fire Farm Institute, committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system, and Biodynamic Association, awakening and enlivening co-creative relationships between humans and the earth. Claudia was awarded both the John R. Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and the Environmental Excellence Alumna Award at Antioch University New England (AUNE) in 2018. “I enjoy being in the classroom where I get to work alongside students investigating complex environmental and social justice issues, and then exploring how to make a difference for ourselves, our families, our communities, and in the world.”

Claudia has a BA in Biology from Columbia University, an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, an MA in Health Administration and a PhD in Environmental Studies from Antioch University. Her doctoral thesis was titled, “Weed Women, All Night Vigils, and the Secret Life of Plants.” She moved to New England after a career in international development and public health and worked with international students and study-abroad programs before joining the faculty at RISD. Claudia is also a midwife, a published author and poet, and a visual artist and she has shared decades of global work and travel with her four children.

“My background is in health, and I always want to explore the topic of the healing of trauma for individuals and communities,” Claudia says. “I consider that the humanities are at the heart of all of the topics I have the fortune to teach, as I am interested in promoting the power of stories—arts, literature, and poetics—in relationship to our greatest social justice challenges.”

–from zoehelene.com

The title of this session comes from Delma’s blog post, Somewhere Between Lenape and Wakanda: Reservations, Reparations, & Afro-Indigenous Futurism. 

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Susannah · January 26, 2021 ·

October 30, 2020 @ 11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT

Pat McCabe (Weyakpa Najin Win, Woman Stands Shining) and Enroue ‘Awo Onigbonna’ Halfkenny, in conversation with Delma Jackson. We rejoined Pat McCabe and welcomed Enroue Halfkenny to our ongoing fall series. In the spirit of Black/Indigenous solidarity, CWC invited participants to practice the power of self care, healing, ceremony, and wholeness with our renowned guest practitioners. Pat and Enroue guided us through a practice for health, calm, and peace in the midst of tumultuous times.

Recording available to the CWC community by request.

Pat McCabe (Weyakpa Najin Win, Woman Stands Shining) is a Diné (Navajo) mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader, and international speaker. She is a voice for global peace, and her paintings are created as tools for individual, earth and global healing. She draws upon the Indigenous sciences of Thriving Life to reframe questions about sustainability and balance, and she is devoted to supporting the next generations, Women’s Nation and Men’s Nation, in being functional members of the “Hoop of Life” and upholding the honor of being human.

Enroue ‘Awo Onigbonna’ Halfkenny is a Boston born, black, cisgendered male of African, Irish, Swedish, Mi’kmaq and Cherokee descent. He is an Awo (priest of Ifa) within the traditional Yoruba religion from West Africa and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, an artist, a father/son/husband/brother, and a Healing Justice Activist.  Through his consulting, healing and private therapy practice, Healing and Liberation Counseling, he addresses emotional, mental, systemic, and spiritual well being issues for individuals, families, groups, communities and organizations.

Together, these two brilliant and powerful healers guided our community through a series of practices designed to restore our sense of well-being and right relationship to ourselves and one another. In the midst of the 2020 election cycle, we welcomed participants into a space to reground, repurpose, and reimagine our futures together regardless of the election outcome.  

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