Indigenous Wisdom Zone

This course will explore the topics of ancestral eating and the decolonization of food while playing at the boundaries of the emerging field of epigenetics. Epigenetics reveals to us that our health and optimal well-being are intimately connected to our food and environment- something our (pre-Columbian) ancestors may have intuited. At a time in which the World Health Organization has declared Noncommunicable Diseases (such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes) an imperative to prevent and control in the 21 st Century, we might deeply benefit from coming back into harmony with our food and the environment around us.

Could the field of epigenetics be showing us that there is something to be learned from the wisdom and knowledge(s) of indigenous peoples? What might the ancestors of humanity have to share with us about that which we eat, the intelligence of our bodies, and the elegance of its interconnection with the environment? Can epigenetics and the honoring of indigenous cultures, languages, and customs help this wise and dormant consciousness to emerge from within, helping guide us toward health; harmony in body-mind-spirit? What care might we take to not culturally appropriate, but learn from indigenous peoples today? Can reparations like land-back and other re-indigenization movements help heal the shadow of colonialization in ways that can be measured tangibly both physically and emotionally? Can we as individuals simultaneously heal ourselves, generations past, and the future generations yet to come? Could changes in our kitchen ripple out to humanity as a whole and to our Earthly home?

Join along to explore these questions and embody change in our kitchens & psyches, and at the dinner table. Have your heart and mind expanded with love and optimism at the possibility with which the integration of modern science and indigenous wisdom may take us.