The Intersection of Race, Culture, and Activism

With Chase Iron Eyes, Marie Roker-Jones, and Miriame Cherbib. Facilitated by Rebecca Irby. Co-Conveners: Lesley Southwick-Trask & Kurt Krueger

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Co-Conveners: Lesley Southwick-Trask & Kurt Krueger

Lesley Southwick-Trask is an anthropologist specializing in cultural transformation. As a strategist, Lesley has led large-scale transformational initiatives in over 500 organizations and communities. She spent the past decade hosting pilgrims at the Quinta Estrada Romana on the Portuguese Camino de Santiago. Recognised as one of the Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada, Top 100 Women Business Owners in Canada, and Top 50 CEOs in Atlantic Canada, Lesley continues to challenge the status quo as a writer, broadcaster, strategist and social activist.

Kurt Krueger is a global citizen serving a regenerative society and life on our planet. He is a Polymath, Philosopher, Explorer, Alchemist for Love, and Pragmatic Futurist. Since the 70s, Kurt has led programs on 5 continents for elite athletes/coaches and educational institutions. He has taught in the poor neighbourhoods of Los Angeles for 40+ years and was on a hijacked airplane, which led to his offering of stress management programs at the UN and Oxford U. Medical School. He presents/promotes Pachamama.org Alliance/Drawdown and has written the Best-Selling series, Winning Ways for Living.

Presenters

Rebecca Irby (Co-host). Co-Founder & ED/CEO of PEAC Institute and Midheaven.Network | Rebecca is an educator and activist who opens spaces of peace and cross-cultural communication around the world. Her work encompasses the creation of experiential learning for marginalized youth; social skills, diversity, and cultural awareness and communication training for organizations such as the Red Cross, Toyota, and Mitsubishi. Rebecca has spoken about nuclear abolition and heart-centered leadership at prominent institutions such as Harvard Law School, the Yale Policy Conference, and The PyeongChang Global Peace Forum.

Chase Iron Eyes. Chase’s distinguished career fighting for the civil rights of Native Americans includes serving as lead counsel in the Dakotas for the Lakota People’s Law Project, co-founding the Native news website LastRealIndians.com, and work in the Native Lives Matter movement. In 2016, he was the Democratic congressional nominee for North Dakota. From the beginning of the movement, Chase was involved on the front lines of the fight against the Dakota Access pipeline, hosting tribal leadership, providing legal services, and joining the water protectors in their prayerful and peaceful protest. Born on Standing Rock Nation, today Chase lives at Pine Ridge as an enrolled member of the Oglala Nation. Chase holds bachelor’s degrees in political science and American Indian studies from the University of North Dakota, and a Juris Doctor of Law degree with an emphasis in Federal Indian Law from the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law. He is the father of three Lakota children.

Miriame Cherbib.  Miriame is French, Tunisian and American. She grew up in a community of human rights activists in France. With an MA in International Economics, she was engaged by the French National Research Institute to co-design/co-facilitate a dialogue on energy policies. She founded Speaking Justice to help organizations and people learn to have connectful and impactful conversations on race and other subjects viewed as divisive. As an elementary teacher she focuses on Social and Emotional Learning and Anti-Racism. She created the Five Habits of Speaking Justice as a way to support her students learning how to use their voice in uncomfortable and triggering situations.

Marie Roker-Jones. Marie Roker-Jones is the co-Ceo of Essteem which organizes Equalithons (hackathons for equality), first-of-its-kind, virtual DEI events that connect tech companies that uphold diversity and inclusion commitments to under-represented tech talent who want to work for those companies. She is a social impact startup founder in leading gender and racial diversity strategies like Raising Great Men and The Good Men Project. Marie also has workforce and career development experience creating workforce re-entry programs for underrepresented communities. She has helped tech companies and startups create inclusive and impactful work cultures through Veteran and military spouse hiring initiatives. Marie was the lead for The Charter for Compassion’s Compassionate NYC and facilitated dialogue on privilege fragility, designing for inclusion, and debiasing through #CompassionConvos.

Opening and Closing

Grandmother Diane Hargrave. Dr. Diane Hardgrave is a descendant of the Shinnecock Nation, an ordained Peace Minister, and a Distinguished Professor of Medical Anthropology at the College of Southern Nevada. She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia and worked with Save the Children throughout Africa and the Middle East. Based on the premise that science and spirit are two sides of the same coin, Diane directs research projects on genetic editing, mindfulness meditation, indigenous medical systems, and shamanic narratives. 

Grandmother Norene Otnes. Norene Otnes is a member of an International Grandmothers Circle. She is a Tlingit and Tsimshian woman of the Eagle Moiety, Daxxan (Killer Whale) House of Alaska whose work includes supporting women and culturally based training. She has served as a health educator, counselor and family advocate for Tribal and community based programs for more than 20 years. She will open after Dina’s opening directions with a drumming song.

Grandmother Anahata Pomeroy. Grandmother Anahata Pomeroy was born and grew up on O’ahu in the Hawaiian Islands.  Anahata Sounds & Ceremonies has been providing programs and opening ceremonies since 1996.  Singing through my drum, I call to Nature Spirits who are the ones to bless and harmonize our lands and lives.  Hawaiians are known to sing, to dance and to pray to keep the aina/lands vibrant and loved. She closes the day with Diane closing directions prayer.

Kathryn Alexander (Chat Moderator). Coach, artist, author, systems thinker and mystic, Kathryn has gone from having one of the first weaving and spinning stores in the country to photographer and regenerative coach. Working with neighborhoods in Spokane, WA led to her running for city council in 2016. Active still as chair of her district’s neighborhoods leadership team, Kathryn sits on the board of the city’s Housing and Human Services committee and is a founding member of the new Inland Northwest Unitarian Universalist Community (INUUC). Kathryn’s current work, as the founder of Bridge To Partnership, involves the training and certification of coaches, consultants and business leaders in shifting to regenerative practices in their own lives and their business practices. Her values work, and the Resilient Values Set™ specifically, offers a clear path forward into a lasting partnership with Nature – ensuring that, as the Earth thrives, so will humans.