Good talk.

Yes, it's about our connection with each other. The mind will honor, respect, and treat well those that it feels connected with. We prove this every day in our groups, we need to make a larger group... the larger group, one humanity.

We have allowed ourselves to be divided and conquered and to be used against each other with divisiveness and fear.

Video courtesy of the Omega Institute.

Anthony Kapel "Van" Jones (born September 20, 1968) is an American news commentator, author, and non-practicing attorney. He is a co-founder of several nonprofit organizations, including the Dream Corps, a "social justice accelerator" that operates three advocacy initiatives: #cut50, #Yeswecode, and Green for All.

How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World.

Can Aboriginal perspectives provide us the paradigm shift we need now? As an indigenous person, University Senior Lecturer Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from a unique perspective, tied to the natural and spiritual world. In considering how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation, he raises important questions. 

Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne. He lives in Melbourne.  

We all have a common story. We are moving toward a related way of being. 

The inaugural States of Change Learning Festival opens with award-winning author and thinker Tyson Yunkaporta. We're also joined by Angie Tangaere!  

We’re accustomed to a certain way of thinking. We want the world to be simple, but we talk about it in complicated ways. Indigenous thinking is different. It knows the world is complex and finds deep ways to communicate this knowledge through pictures, carving, stories. What happens if we bring an Indigenous perspective to the big picture - to history, education, money, power? Can we, in fact, have proper concepts of sustainable life without Indigenous knowledge?

Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne. He lives in Melbourne.

Forum for the Future

Using the systems thinking 'iceberg model' to explore the civil rights movement shows us how different parts of a system interact and influence one another. It becomes clear that no single event started the movement, but rather it evolved through collaboration and decades of perseverance. By working together, we can change how power and privilege it is allocated, we can design societies that are free, democratic and support everybody on the planet to flourish.

Jul 12, 2020

COVID19 is a wake up call. Educating ourselves is paramount and taking time to learn of First Peoples relationship to the land.  Our mothers first and most important teachers that carry the values that act as foundation for life. 

How can we tackle the main challenges of our time: the economy in the short-term, life satisfaction in the mid-term, and environment in the long-term? Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk and public thinker whose powerful message has influenced major economists such as Dennis Snower, Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz and George Soros. He has taken his simple, yet radical message to Davos and the United Nations, and now visits the RSA to make a robust case for cultivating altruistic love and compassion as the best means for benefitting society – and ourselves. It seems so simple, but why is it so hard to implement this ancient solution to both our personal and global 21st century predicaments?

Portland Interfaith Clergy Resistance sponsored a prayer vigil at Terry Schrunk Plaza, across from City Hall, on Juneteenth, a day to commemorate emancipation from slavery in Texas on that day, June 19th in 1865. This film observes the 8 minutes, 46 seconds of silence and we suggest our viewers take the opportunity to reflect on the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, when Minneapolis police officers took a series of actions that violated the policies of the Department.  The situation turned fatal, leaving Mr. Floyd unable to breathe, even as he and onlookers called out for help. Participating clergy included: Rabbi Ariel Stone, Shir Tikvah and PDX Interfaith Clergy Resistance; Rev. Jon Aney, United Church of Christ; Rabbi Debra Kolodny, Portland United Against Hate; Rev. Aric Clark (he/his); and Davina Bookbinder, Rabbinical Student

Host Marcia Alvar speaks with Wilma Mankiller, Principle Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1983-1995. Ms. Mankiller (1945-2010) discusses her experiences as related in her book, "Mankiller: A Chief and Her People." She describes her early political activism as well as her eventual return to her home (Oklahoma) which led to her involvement in the Cherokee tribe. Also includes her election as tribal chief as well as her time in office, and, now that she is stepping down, her reflections on the experience. (1994 Interview)

Wallace Black Elk: We are born with love, kindness, generosity and giving. Connie Baxter Marlow: Walking in Trust: Radical Childrearing. Trust is the key to living in harmony, live a new way of being, bring your gift, each child knows his path, Trust in a loving universe. Native American way of discovery. LIsten to circumstance. Watch the signs. Healing of Separation. Courage. Wallace Black Elk, Connie Baxter Marlow, Sally Ranney in Aspen, Colorado. July 13, 1998. Excerpts from REALITY CHECK!