Indigenous Wisdom for Healing Trauma

Please Note: This live online conversation was recorded on our CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel. Watch it here.

Join Sherri Mitchell, Indigenous rights activist and spiritual teacher, and Brenda Salgado, healer and movement builder, for a live online conversation exploring Native American mythology and cosmology as a means of healing our collective wounds. In Sherri’s work, she employs Indigenous wisdom, as well as a broad understanding of cultural and generational trauma in ways that support deep collective healing.

Learn how Sherri creates deep roots for spiritual and social change by fusing traditional Indigenous teachings with the foundational laws of the universe to guide us to a more serene and balanced quality of life. Sherri offers an exploration of core spiritual values, universal expressions of balance, and the four foundations of self-determined societies as guides for healing and social change.

Discover Indigenous pathways towards healing collective trauma and reconnecting with our spiritual source.

Please note that this talk will be hosted live online. Instructions on how to join the conversation will be included in your event confirmation email. If you need additional assistance finding or joining the event, please email publicprograms@ciis.edu.

Sherri Mitchell (Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset) is a Native American attorney, teacher, and award-winning activist who grew up on the Penobscot Indian Reservation (Indian Island), Maine, and is the author of Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change. She is an Indigenous Rights attorney and the executive director of the Land Peace Foundation, an organization dedicated to the protection of Indigenous land and water rights and the Indigenous way of life. Mitchell is the organizer behind “Healing the Wounds of Turtle Island,” a global healing ceremony that rises out of the Wabanaki Prophecy of the Reopening of the Eastern Gate. Her work is featured in the documentary film Dancing with the Cannibal Giant.

Brenda Salgado is founder of Nepantla Consulting, and is currently in the process of establishing the Nepantla Center for Healing and Renewal and Nepantla Land Trust. She holds degrees in Biology (BA), Developmental Psychology (BA), and Animal Behavior (MS). Brenda has 20 years of experience in leadership development, nonprofit management, spiritual teaching, movement building, women’s health, and environmental and social justice. She has received training from indigenous elders in traditional medicine, limpias and healing ceremony. In the past, she has served as the Director of the East Bay Meditation Center, and as a Senior Fellow at the Movement Strategy Center where she contributed to transformative movement building in the social justice field and was co-author of Out of the Spiritual Closet: Organizers Transforming the Practice of Social Justice. She formerly served on the boards of Movement Strategy Center, Unity Dan Leandro, and the Lion’s Roar Foundation (Lions Roar and Buddhadharma magazines). 

In November 2016 she released her first book, Real World Mindfulness for Beginners: Navigate Daily Life One Practice at a Time. Trained by Purepecha, Xochimilco and Toltec elders in traditional medicine, energy healing, and indigenous prophecy about the times we are in, Brenda draws on the healing powers of the natural world to guide her work as a speaker, steacher, healer and guide. 
 
Her current projects are focused on mindfulness, transformational leadership, sacred economics, land trusts for social good, ancestral healing, ceremony for collective healing and consciousness transformation, and the weaving of mindfulness and indigenous teachings for our times. She is committed to co-creating a society filled with wholeness and beauty, and is grateful to her ancestors for the values that have led her to spirituality, healing, leadership development, and social justice work. 
 
A sought after public speaker, teacher, and movement builder, Brenda has presented, facilitated, led workshops, and offered ceremony at numerous venues across the country. Learn more at https://www.nepantlaconsulting.com.