Freedom and Equality: What Does it Mean to Be an American? The United States has long held a curious and ambivalent relationship with freedom. The American founding fathers learned much about freedom and equality from Native Americans, who lived in truly egalitarian societies, but later confined the original Americans to reservations. The founding …

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…" It is striking how much these immortal words, written by Char…

A community of Earth System scientists at the Stockholm Resilience Centre asked a powerful question: How do we define a safe operating space for humanity with all that is currently known about the Earth’s various systems? They determined that there are there are nine critical thresholds that together define a safe operating space for humanity: bios…

In the Northern Hemisphere, today marks the winter solstice designating a point in the year when we are afforded the shortest amount of daylight—of course, if you live in say Australia or Chile, you are experiencing the opposite. It is also around this time of year, that many of our spiritual traditions anticipate the return of light. Today we have…

Welcome to a special re-broadcast of our conversation with Deb Haaland and Sally Roesch Wagner in honor of Indigenous Peoples' Day 2023 This podcast was originally published on December 8, 2020. Deb Haaland now serves as Secretary of the Interior in the Biden Administration. She is the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet Secretary. Native A…

When the Buddha was asked “Are you a reincarnation of God?” he replied “No.” “Are you a wizard then?” was the next query and “No” again he said. “So “What are you?” they asked, intent on knowing. He simply replied, "I am awake.” And true enough, Buddha means “the awakened one.” Buddha’s life work was teaching how to awaken. These days, however, the…

In today’s very special podcast we will re-air a discussion that was originally recorded and produced by our good friends at the East-West Psychology Department of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) for their own program, the East-West Psychology Podcast (https://east-westpsychologypodcast.com/). The discussion itself is an introdu…

The East Indian sage Ramana Maharshi was once asked, “How should we treat others?” He replied, “There are no others.” From the perspective of the sage, the universe is one being. It is for similar reasons that the values of respect, kinship, and love are inseparable in aboriginal culture, as are gratitude, humility, and sacred obligations to origin…

Native Americans in professional healing professions may creatively incorporate Native ways in their work, but the path is not easy. The same is true for those coming from a Western background that realize there is something lacking in modern medicine and are attracted to Native ways of healing. Western and Native approaches to healing may seem inc…

EPISODE Part 2: The renowned physicist and philosopher David Bohm once said, “The great strength of science is that it is rooted in actual experience. The great weakness of contemporary science is that it admits only certain types of experience as legitimate.” Life after death, or the survival of post-mortem consciousness, is one of the areas moder…

TWO PART EPISODE: The renowned physicist and philosopher David Bohm once said, “The great strength of science is that it is rooted in actual experience. The great weakness of contemporary science is that it admits only certain types of experience as legitimate.” Life after death, or the survival of post-mortem consciousness, is one of the areas mod…

With the advent of the nuclear age, Western science reached the pinnacle of invention, but lacked a critical understanding of its underlying wisdom or purpose. Carl Jung framed the problem as “modern man in search of a soul.” When the Western mind turned outward, searching for what was missing, it first turned to the East. A trickle of Eastern guru…

Marcellus Bear Heart Williams is what I call a living ancestor. A living ancestor is a person whose wisdom has not departed, but instead taken up residence in the hearts of those who loved him, and even perhaps in those that never met him – someone like myself. Living ancestors are not deceased, as in inert or forgotten. Their energy has not been d…

Nancy Rhodes: Called "a champion of American Opera" by Ronald Rand, Nancy Rhodes is the long-time Artistic Director of Encompass New Opera Theatre and the librettist for The Theory of Everything, a new opera inspired by physics’ superstring theory of multiple dimensions and alternate universes. At Encompass, she has staged scores of operas, about 7…

To say humanity is living unsustainably is a massive understatement. In the words of Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, humanity is like a jockey, whipping its horse faster and faster to get to the finish line, not realizing that the finish line is a brick wall. The proliferation of nuclear weapons did not make us ch…

We live in an era when nearly every governor, state congressperson, or mayor supports maximum economic growth. It doesn’t matter what party you are from – or whether you support lower taxes or more social programs. Economic growth covers up all sins. Increasingly, it does not matter what country you are from. Economic growth is promoted as the way …

This week, Glenn Aparicio Parry shares directly with listeners some of his own thoughts about current events, putting them in a larger historical context. An uplifting but realistic peek at the founding of the United States, the history of the Republican and Democratic parties, emphasizing how much they have changed over time and could change again…

A tiny virus did what climate scientists and the Paris accords could not do. It shut everything down. Mother Earth took a breath. The air and water became clearer and cleaner. More people planted gardens. We had time to think. And most importantly, to reset our thinking. What is the human relationship with the microbial world? How did we get to the…

A tiny virus did what climate scientists and the Paris accords could not do. It shut everything down. Mother Earth took a breath. The air and water became clearer and cleaner. More people planted gardens. We had time to think. And most importantly, to reset our thinking. What is the human relationship with the microbial world? How did we get to the…

The past year has brought us an ongoing global pandemic, tremendous social unrest, political polarization, the near complete erosion of truth in politics, the rise of authoritarianism and white nationalism culminating in the insurrection at the US Capitol. Amid all of this chaos and destruction, where do we find hope? And not just hope based in sha…

Einstein once said “linear time is an illusion, but a stubbornly persistent one.“ Have we have been looking at time all wrong – that instead of looking for linear cause and effect we should be looking for relationship? The late Anishaanabe elder Tobasonakwut Kinew thought so. He preferred to think of time as: “What kinds of things want to happen to…

With all our systems – economic, political, healthcare, and more – crashing all around us, how do we even begin to imagine change? Where is the change? How do we think about it; talk about it; take part in it? Is there such a thing as systems change anymore? Or are we kidding ourselves with abstract formulas that cannot possibly keep up with the ch…

Addressing the Primary Wound of Separation The primary wound at the root of social and ecological dysfunction is separation. While ancient humans understood life as a blessing and humanity’s health as inextricably tied to the health of the Earth, moderns have come to imagine that we are separate from both the natural world and each other. These exp…

Many Native Americans are still suffering from historical trauma from contact with European societies over the past five-hundred years. The negative impacts of colonization upon Native peoples have been undeniable and devastating—and the effects are ongoing. The colonists introduced numerous infectious diseases into Native populations against which…

In honor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing, we do not have any guests on the program. Instead, Glenn Aparicio Parry offers his personal reflections on RBG in the context of American history and what he sees as America’s sacred purpose: unity in diversity, a purpose yet to be realized. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg was Jewish but she was also catholic with a …

Since tie immemorial, people have been telling stories. Storytelling has served as a way of building coherent, cohesive community. It is also a way to pass down wisdom from earlier generations for the benefit of future generations. The wisdom of storytelling could be applied to today’s ecological challenges, such as climate change. But this has not…

The nation appears to be on the brink of civil war, if not already in it. With polarization as bad as at any time in our nation’s history, how can we stop the violence? Discussions about “law and order” ordinarily end up promoting division and triggering historical trauma. Is there a way to stop the cycle of violence and heal victims and perpetrato…

Under colonization, traditional forms of inclusive, consensus-based Native American governance were systematically replaced with Western forms of centralized, top-down leadership. Women, who once held an integral role in the political processes of many tribal nations, were pushed out or marginalized. Then, LaDonna Harris came along. Working with In…

E Pluribus Unum–from the many to the one—seemingly describes a republic based on unity in diversity. Yet Thomas Jefferson, the same person who wrote “All men are created equal,” owned 600 slaves during his lifetime. How can we reconcile such incongruence? In previous podcasts we provided some clues, including the little known fact that the high-min…

To recreate a whole and sacred America, it is important to piece together the forgotten fragments of history that are currently keeping the country divided. The most significant forgotten piece is the profound effect Native America had on the founding values of this nation. Join Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, aut…

To recreate a whole and sacred America, it is important to piece together the forgotten fragments of history that are currently keeping the country divided. The most significant forgotten piece is the profound effect Native America had on the founding values of this nation. Join Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, aut…

The problem with modern politics is that it excludes nature in its planning. Then, nature imposes her will—as she is doing now with the COVID-19 outbreak. What is the message and the learning in the emergence of the virus at this time? The spiritual elders of Colombia, the Mamos, are some of the few people who address the underlying causes to today…