Transformation Series: Closing the Year with Indigenous Wisdom and Soul Healing

Join us in Beloved Community as we close the year with reflection and celebration. Eduardo Duran, Indigenous thinker, healer, writer, and veteran has spent his life and career learning and teaching about Indigenous lifeways. He is known for his groundbreaking work Healing the Soul Wound: Trauma-Informed Counseling for Indigenous Communities.

In this gathering, Rachel, Shirley, and Eduardo will explore Indigenous wisdom and soul healing in relationship to our times, year-end reflection, and Beloved Community.

What is the Transformation Series?

The Transformation Series is part of the Beloved Community Initiative's commitment to critically engage with the CIIS community by platforming inspiring voices. Designed to enhance our mission of cultivating courageous conversations, bridging divides, and building connections, we hope that this series will inspire hope and transformative action.

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About Our Speakers

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Rachel Bryant, M.A., is an educator, leader, and healer with more than two decades of experience in public and community mental health. She serves as Vice President, Community Engagement and Belonging at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), where she has helped teach, mentor, and launch the careers of hundreds of emerging mental health clinicians from diverse backgrounds. With a pedagogical and therapeutic orientation in Black, Indigenous, and Liberation Praxis, Rachel is dedicated to working alongside others to heal the soul wounds of poverty, violence, and addiction in our communities.

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Shirley Strong, M.Ed., M.A., is a social justice educator and advocate committed to increasing equity and inclusion in higher education and healthcare for underserved and vulnerable populations. She has worked in higher education, philanthropy and social justice for over 35 years, including eight years as Dean of Students and Director of Diversity at CIIS and five years as Chief Diversity Officer at Samuel Merritt University in Oakland, California. Currently, Ms. Strong serves as senior advisor to the Structural Competency Working Group (SCWG), a cross-section of health professionals who train health organizations to recognize and address structural racism in health care and to develop policies and procedures to improve health equity. She is committed to integrating spirituality with activism in the service of the Beloved Community, as envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other prophetic leaders.

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Eduardo Duran (Apache/Tewa/Lakota) is a psychologist who has been working in indigenous communities most of his professional career. He is a Vietnam Veteran who started his academic training after being discharged from the United States Navy. He has been involved in Buddhist and traditional Native practices for many years, and his work is informed by traditional Indigenous understanding of heart knowing.

Eduardo is the author of Buddha in Redface (Writers Club Press, 2003), a story that deals with these traditions as well as our karmic relationship to the Earth. He is also the author of Healing the Soul Wound: Trauma-informed Counseling for Indigenous Communities and Native American Postcolonial Psychology. He presently lives outside of Bozeman, Montana.