Gibrán's Podcast

Jihan Gearon is an artist who is pouring her spirit into the sort of art that can change your life. She is a friend. We met when I used to facilitate the fellowship that developed the Young Climate Leaders Network. I think of her as a recovering activist. But that’s not exactly true. She can’t stop being an activist. She is just another one among the ranks of us who are looking for a better, kinder, and more sustainable way to make the world whole again.

I titled this episode “Life Giver,” because that is who Jihan is, and what she does. She breathes life into the world. She reminds us that we can create anything. Here you’ll learn about how:

at the age of thirty-five, Jihan was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. As part of her journey of healing, she turned to painting, creating bold, powerful works that featured the animals, people, and other beings that protected, motivated, and transformed her during her recovery. Her paintings bring her passions in life together, showcasing feminine energy, connections with the natural world, and the future of a healthy planet.

Not one of us will be spared the tragedies of human existence. It behooves each of us to learn from those who come through these as even bigger and brighter souls than they were before grief happened.

Jihan describes herself as “an Indigenous feminist, painter, writer, organizer, and leader in Indigenous environmental justice.” She is a Diné and Nahiłii (Black) member of the Navajo Nation. And she is also a graduate of Stanford University.

Jihan doesn’t just make art, she is also a consultant and a teacher helping leaders and organizations to apply the best of indigenous wisdom to the work we do in the world.

I know you’ll love this conversation. Enjoy!

Hear all our podcasts at https://www.gibranrivera.com/podcast

If you grew up in 90’s you probably know what it meant to be “sweatin” somebody. It’s something like liking someone, and doing all sorts of things to make sure they know you like them. You are after them. And you might do a little too much to make sure they notice you.

What if you were just as committed, just as passionate, willing to go just as far, when it comes to sweatin’ your truth?

I imagine your body would move in all sorts of ways. I figure you would get in tune with others around you. I know you would not hide. You would let us see what you are finding, because you would know that we would find ourselves in it too.

Here I’m sharing a beautiful interview with Maria Bauman, Artistic Director of MBDance. Her bio starts with the words:

“Muscles. Beads of sweat. Exertion. Inversion. Carving out selfhood.”

She is “a woman dancer, a person of color, a southern not-quite-belle who grew up poor, and a queer person.”

Her “choreography for MBDance is based on physical and emotional power, desire for equity, and fascination with intimacy”

She asserts that “the popular notion of a ‘neutral body,’ often described in contemporary dance classes, does not exist in her experience.” Instead she creates “from storied bodies, mythological bodies, bodies-in-creation, and bodies-as-manifestos.”

In the previous episode of the podcast I invited you into a conversation with the great Jawole Zollar, founder of Urban Bush Women. Here I am inviting you into a conversation with one of her mentees. I met Maria while working with UBW and I have not met too many other people who are such kindred spirits.

We go about our work in very different ways. But there is spiritual alignment, a commitment to the body, a passion for culture and a promise to community that makes me feel like Maria and I are here serving the same force, aiming to fulfill a similar purpose.

I encourage you to listen with care and to let yourself be inspired. I invite you to get after your truth with all of your spirit and to dance in such a way that the truth sweats out of you.

Enjoy!

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar is the founder of the legendary ensemble Urban Bush Women. She is also a winner of the MacArthur Genius Award. I met Jawole at a Creative Change Retreat, an intersection of artists and activists that used to be held at the Sundance Resort, in Provo, Utah. One of my favorite gatherings to facilitate.

I was immediately moved by Jawole’s presence, and I could sense how she was tuning into a deeper energy in my facilitation. We started to get to know each other and quickly learned that not only do we share values and aspirations for a more embodied and generative approach to change. But we also share a powerful spiritual alignment.

This allowed Jawole to trust me to do organizational development work with Urban Bush Women. An honor and an experience that I continue to relish.

“Jawole is a choreographer and dance entrepreneur who has forged a style of dance-making and artistic leadership that tethers dance to cultural identity, civic engagement, community organizing, and imperatives of social justice… she has created a sustainable movement and organization that centers the perspectives of Black women.”

I was thrilled that Jawole accepted my invitation to the podcast. Our conversation ranges from her early life, the cultural influences that define her work, her ongoing spiritual commitments and some of the latest work that is moving through her genius.

Enjoy our conversation.

I was born in Puerto Rico. One of the last “official” colonies on earth. I know something about the taste and smell of empire.

Today all of humanity is still contending with the reverberations of 500 hundreds years of European imperialism.

The indigenous people of the world have a lot to teach us about the genocidal impacts of colonization and about what it will take to decolonize ourselves. Because most of us, indigenous our not, remain colonized by a spell. A spell that tells us that to be human is to stand alone, to extract, consume and accumulate, to be afraid of each other and to confuse economic growth with the developmental growth of our very souls.

Here is a conversation with Kassier Heartendorp. One among the Maori people that are successfully participating in the decolonization of New Zealand.

Kassie is the Director of Action Station, an independent, crowdfunded, community campaigning organization in her native land. They speak of their mission as:

“To tautoko (support) and whakamana (uplift) everyday New Zealanders to act together in powerful and coordinated ways to create what we cannot achieve on our own: a society, economy and democracy that serves all of us - everyday people and Papatūānuku, the planet we love.”

Kassie has an audacious intellect and a generous heart. Every time we speak it feels like we sync into a deep, authentic, generative space that must be what happens when we live life with intention.

You will find this an inspiring and relevant conversation. Decolonization is not only possible. It is actually happening. It leaves me with a sense of hope and possibility.

Kassie holds something that is essential for more of us to learn and remember. I encourage you to listen.

Last Fall (in 2022), my friend Jesse Hassinger, who works for The Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, Massachusetts, reached out to me with an exciting request.

He asked if I would interview adrienne maree brown on the release of her new book, Fables and Spells: Collected and New Short Fiction and Poetry.

Of course, I said yes! adrienne describes herself as someone who grows healing ideas in public through her writing, her music, and her podcasts. I think of her as one of those prophetic voices that are able to speak in an ancient mythopoetic language. The tongue that helps our souls find meaning as we return home to ourselves.

We decided to launch Season 3 of the Podcast with an audio of this interview I did for The Odyssey Bookshop. It is a potent conversation that is not short on magic. I invite you to listen with an openness to be touched. Allow yourself to be brought into an ongoing decentralized conversation that wants to remember what we’ve lost. While moving forward here, in this evolution of consciousness and culture.

On this podcast I interview my dear friend Pamela Standing. Pamela is a fountain of wisdom. She is a source of that sort of heartfelt joy and laughter that is embodied by people who hold a deep understanding of what it means to walk well upon this earth.

Pamela is a citizen of Cherokee Nation. I met her when I was facilitating a Rural Economy Fellowship of what was then called the “Business Alliance for Local Living Economies.” She is a grassroots organizer who has immersed herself in rural tribal community wealth building.

She endeavors to close the disparity gap through cooperative work and collaboration. Her work is about forming partnerships and alliances that ultimately result in the sharing of resources.

Pamela serves as the Executive Director of the Minnesota Indigenuos Business Alliance (MNIBA).

In this episode we talk about forgiveness and healing. About our ancestors, and about wealth vs. prosperity.

Give a listen and let me know what you think.

Saludos,

Gibrán

How do you make art for our time?

How do you engage your creative life force to meet this moment? A time in which systems are collapsing and a new world wants to be born.

The life of Favianna Rodriguez is an answer to these questions. She is a renowned interdisciplinary artist, a cultural organizer and a social justice activist. But most importantly, she is one of my dearest friends.

It is hard to wrap your head around the breadth and depth of her work. She leads the Center for Cultural Power. And she describes her art as a visual manifestation of her lived experience, and the inspiring journey of her healing.

We cover some ground in this episode. We talk about her creative process. And of what it means for her to be shifting mediums for her art. We talk about abortion, healing, pychedelics and ancestral practice.

We live in a punitive culture. The United States incarcerates more of its people than any country in the world.

Turn to twitter at any point of the day and you see cancel culture in full display.

What makes us think we can throw people away?

We are wired for connection. We need structures of belonging. This is how we signal a culture of safety and well being. Punitive culture makes us anxious. It makes us afraid. It makes us feel alone.

What happens when you take a stand for restorative justice?

What if we take back our architecture, our institutional space, to foster love and forgiveness instead?

Meet my friend Deanna Van Buren. The founder and executive director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces. She is an artist running an architecture and real estate development firm that works to end mass incarceration.

Can you imagine?

This is a conversation full of heart and insight. Deanna is not just an architect and an artist. She is a committed spiritual adept with a passionate commitment to the power of women of color. Get a feeling for her wisdom.

Her TED Talk has been viewed more than a million times (https://www.ted.com/talks/deanna_van_buren_what_a_world_without_prisons_could_look_like?language=en). And she was just featured in the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/arts/design/prison-architecture.html). I am thrilled to know the world is paying attention to her work.

There is so much exciting talk about emergence these days! How do you apply this thinking to something like the Church? How can you make room for the new when a tradition is 2000 years old?

Rev. Mariama White-Hammond is finding out. She is a founder of New Roots AME Church, an Emergent Church in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. Where I live! Reverend Mariama says that Emergent Churches believe God is doing something new in this moment. And that it is our job to move with spirit and make ourselves available for God to emerge.

In this podcast episode we dive into spirituality and emergence. We talk about accountability.

And about what we can do to heal the deep divide in our Country.

Rev. Mariama is and has been a passionate advocate for ecological & social justice. For youth engagement and Spirit based organizing. She is engaging the faith community, and particularly the Black church on climate change and ecological justice issues. Mariama is also becoming a farmer.

For more details, check out the full post on my website: https://www.gibranrivera.com/the-evolutionary-leadership-podcast/new-roots

How do you influence popular culture in ways that elevate Black humanity? How do you build the skill, power and wealth of Black creatives?

The podcast is baaack!!!! And here I’m introducing you to my friend and colleague Melinda Weekes, founder and CEO of Beautiful Ventures. She is a minister, facilitator, consultant and visionary social change architect.

This is a joyful conversation ranging from theology to the business of culture. You will be moved by Melinda’s heart and brilliance.

Find out more about Melinda and our other podcasts on the website

www.gibranrivera.com