Bio: Elliot Barnette lives and works in Seattle, WA. They are a passionate Jewish professional and love working towards building deeper relationships with their local community. In their free time, Elliot enjoys reading, writing, drinking tea, and spending time on the couch with their Great Dane.

Aliko Weste sits down with Elliot Barnette for a deeply honest conversation about race, privilege, whiteness, shame, accountability, and what it means to stay present through discomfort.

Together, they explore the emotional weight many white people carry when confronting privilege, and why the goal is not to seek absolution from people of color, but to use power, access, and resources in service of the collective. The conversation moves through themes of internal repair, community responsibility, racial dynamics in relationships, the Pacific Northwest’s culture of emotional distance, and the quiet ways power can show up unconsciously in everyday life.

At the heart of the episode is a simple but powerful invitation: take a deeper breath. Rather than freezing, avoiding, or rushing past uncomfortable truths, Aliko and Elliot reflect on how deeper presence can create more space for honesty, resilience, compassion, and real connection.

This episode is a thoughtful entry point into Season 3, inviting listeners into the kind of brave, tender, and necessary conversations that help us return to each other, to community, and to the world we want to build.

Connect with me

https://www.instagram.com/theealikomountain/

Guest's link

https://www.instagram.com/theelliotbarnette/

Rafa Kalapa (Alan Rafael Seid) grew up bilingual and bicultural in Mexico and the US.

For over 30 years he has been a researcher, student, and teacher of modalities for living in harmony within ourselves, with each other, and with the planet.

He coaches leaders and Changemakers on how to maximize their positive impact. You can see what his clients say about working with him at https://RafaKalapa.com/testimonials.

He lives in the North Cascades of Washington State, and is founder and co-convener of the Kalapa Wisdom School for Changemakers at https://theKalapa.com.

Meg Evans is a former competitive figure skater who left home at 16 to train with Olympic coaches, mastering the demanding world of elite sports. After retiring from competition, Meg embraced a radically different path, dedicating herself to learning primitive survival skills and using wilderness therapy to support troubled youth. Now focused on outdoor education, Meg is passionate about connecting people with nature and exploring the world through travel.

Leo Cosmo Farbman (he/they) is an Ashkenazi Jewish parent, reparations organizer, ancestral wisdom carrier and death doula. His practice weaves together the work of wealth redistribution, land return, ancestral healing and cultural repair towards personal and collective balance. They are an apprentice to the Afro-Indigenous healers of Drinking Gourd, the Sacred Logistician of the Reparations Summer campaign and co-founder of the Kolibri Foundation. Leo lives on Duwamish and Coast Salish land in Seattle, WA and enjoys eating bread. They can be reached at [email protected].

Vila Loukas has been serving people in the healing arts for over 20 years. She is certified as a Healer and Guide with the Modern Mystery School International. Vila brings a unique blend of keen insight, deep compassion and fierce commitment to her work with clients and students who are ready for greater light, flow and empowerment in their lives.

As a teacher of metaphysics, Vila specializes in guiding people to delve deeper into their own awareness of self, connection to spirit and capacity for self presence. She is dedicated to helping individuals find and express their own beautiful, unique and brilliant light not only to assist with personal fulfillment, but to anchor greater light for the world that so needs it right now!

Tada Hozumi (穂積 理彰) was born October 13th 1977, in Basel Switzerland, on the 670th anniversary of the destruction of the Knights Tempar.

Through the years or 2016-2020 they pioneered "cultural somatics", an open-source framework for social change, which understood groups of humans, from families to whole nation states, as having interwoven collective nervous systems. This innovation, which seamlessly tied social activism and somatic psychotherapy together, created a paradigm shift in both fields.

On the Chinese New Year of 2023, after a three-year hiatus from teaching, writing, and speaking, Hozumi officially announced, alongside their wife and collaborator, Rein Lo, the release of their new project, Lunmu (龍夢) , which explores the interweaving of IRL and URL worlds through ritual art, based on the foundational cosmology that the world we live in is a simulation generated by a "Dragon's Dream".

Since the spring of 2023, Hozumi has returned to Japan to take up their work as a member of The Hozumi clan, one of Japan and the world's longest documented and unbroken shamanic lineages, who trace their roots back to the antiquity of Mesopotamia.

Hozumi believes that we are in a global spiritual rebirth and that the Japanese spiritual system has been intentionally protected and preserved by their ancestors and similar Japanese clans for this exact prophesied time.

It is their life's work to share this gift of their ancestors with the rest of the world."

Tadahozumi.org

Lunmu.io

Tad (he/him) is a digital advertising and programmatic media pioneer with a passion for helping sole proprietors, small businesses, and non-profits create effective and manageable brand strategies. Since 2018, he has created and led communities of small business owners in orchestrated, grassroots marketing and fundraising campaigns for non-profits such as Meals on Wheels, The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Josh Gibson Foundation, and Buck Leonard Association for Sports & Human Enrichment. Tad and his wife Karen Fassio are co-founders of Abundant Marketing Collective.

Rhys-Thorvald Hansen is a folk artist and facilitator whose work seeks to erode the barriers between self and place. Living along the coast of the Salish Sea, Rhys draws inspiration from the rhythms of the land, water, and those with whom humans share the earth.

As a multimedia artist focusing on textiles and digital illustration, Rhys' work is concerned with the multiplicity of patterns that echo across time and place, and using queer ecology to challenge commodification and objectivity. While they are currently fixated on needle felting and all-things-sheep-and-wool, their passion extends to a variety of fiber handcraft tools and techniques. In addition to their studio art, Rhys uses the arts-based creative empowerment to transform group processes and culture as a facilitator. With a focus on serving groups that intersect food systems or land stewardship, their practices are rooted in experiential learning and embodiment. You can find them online @rhys.earth.

With over 20 years in corporate coaching and leadership development, Renee is both a Certified Autoimmune Paleo (AIP) Coach and Certified Health Coach (CHC), with additional training in Functional Nutrition. Drawing from her personal journey overcoming anxiety, she has developed powerful healing practices that work with the body’s natural capacity to restore and thrive. She offers customized, multi-dimensional programs that guide leaders to become their most self-loving, adventurous, and sacred selves—ultimately embodying a life that is Devoted, Forgiving, Fearless, Wise, Magical, Provocative, and wholly liberated.

Renee's Story: https://youtu.be/VA23cGD5WVA?si=jZDzFZ9ybLPlcRzO

Renee, founder of Karma Free Living, is a transformational life coach, author, public speaker, and gut health expert dedicated to helping people find freedom, empowerment, and self-love. Through her unique approach, she provides Visionary Leaders with the tools to achieve sovereignty over their energy, offering them the freedom to live boldly, fearlessly, and in harmony with their highest selves.

Website: https://healthyinspiredyou.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/renee.andreasen or Renee Andreasen

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZJ2ovai-8DG_e5EuGFxkng

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reneeandreasen/

Nala is director of “The Well, An Oasis for Animist Ritual,” supporting innovative ways of restoring grieving and lamentation culture from around the world. For 25 years, she has been tending the lands and waters of her permaculture homestead, both physically and ritually. Hands in the soil, she is honored to practice a low-tech, ecosomatic lifestyle on an Island beside the Salish Sea, in Washington USA — the traditional lands of the Chimacum and S’Klallam people.

From her handbuilt earthen sanctuary at the edge of the woods, Nala has been cultivating the old-tyme “wisewoman” skills for decades. Weaving Griefwork and Ancestral Healing, Nala moves us beyond the psychological, and into the realm of Ritual. She specializes in helping people who feel rootless, culturally orphaned, and spiritually homeless reclaim our birthright of belonging to our own ancestors. Through a deeply somatic and liberatory approach towards deconstructing whiteness, we become more rooted in relationship with who we come from, and the lands where we live.