From a SAND Community Gathering (December 2025), Francis Weller joins SAND co-founders Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo for a wide-ranging conversation on grief, initiation, and the sacred thresholds of a changing world.

They speak of rough passages and necessary descents—of what must burn away, and what endures. With Francis’s steady guidance, sorrow, longing, beauty, and vulnerability are reclaimed not as weaknesses, but as profound sources of strength, orientation, and soul knowledge.

Rooted in the soulcraft teachings of his book In the Absence of the Ordinary, the dialogue unfolds in a spirit of reverence and remembrance. Together, they explore the unraveling of the familiar as an invitation into deeper belonging—grief as a living portal, and beauty as a practice of staying close to what is sacred, even in times of descent.

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Blackfoot scholar Dr. Leroy Little Bear shares foundational Indigenous ways of knowing—revealing a worldview built on energy, motion, and relationship rather than matter, time, and separation.In this conversation, Little Bear illuminates how Blackfoot philosophy understands reality through "interpretive templates"—cultural lenses shaped by language, land, and cosmology. Where Western thought centers singularity and fixed answers, Blackfoot ways embrace flux, transformation, and "all my relations."

Dr. Leroy Little Bear is a Blackfoot legal scholar, professor emeritus, and prominent Indigenous rights advocate from the Blood Tribe. He is a founding member of the Native American Studies Department at the University of Lethbridge, served as the director of the Harvard University Native American Program, and played a crucial role in shaping Canadian constitutional law to recognize Indigenous rights, including contributing to Section 35 of the Constitution Act. His work extends to international advocacy, advising the United Nations on the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and he has received numerous honors, such as the Order of Canada and the Alberta Order of Excellence.

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Explore more in Indigenous Worldviews in the SAND film Series The Eternal Song

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This episode was recorded live at The Eternal Song Film Gathering in 2025.  Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo welcome Dr. (Uncle) Paul Gordon and Joe Williams, featured in the upcoming SAND Film In the Circle of Life premiering January 20, 2026. In this conversation they discuss the profound importance of connection to the land, cultural heritage, and traditional practices in achieving wellness. The conversation reveals how Indigenous wisdom can address modern societal woes and highlights the importance of respecting and maintaining a deep relationship with the natural world.

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Recorded live at The Eternal Song Seven Day Film Premiere summit with Indigenous voices

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From a recent SAND Community Gathering (December 2025). This urgent conversation, facilitated by Ashira Darwish and rooted in Haidar Eid’s new book Banging on the Walls of the Tank, moves through the fractured present of Gaza, bringing forth a chorus of resistance, mourning, refusal, and clarity.

This is a dispatch from within the rubble, the classroom, the lull between airstrikes. Together. Eid and Darwish hold the line inside the unbearable: the grief of ongoing genocide and the insistence on liberation; the impossibility of hope and the necessity of imagining otherwise.

Their conversation refuses erasure, insists on dignity, and carries the clarity of those living under siege with purpose and memory intact.

This conversation carries the vibration of Gaza’s resistance outward, inviting listeners not just to witness, but to respond.

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This final episode of 2025 reflects on a year of transitions and healing, focusing on themes of intergenerational trauma, collective grief, and social justice, especially in the context of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Through diverse voices including Dr. Gabor Maté, Naomi Klein, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Ashira Darwish, Omid Safi, Kazu Haga, and others, the episode delves into personal and collective fields of healing. It emphasizes the importance of remembering, ritualizing healing, community action, indigenous knowledge, and a para-politics of grief and relationship. The episode also highlights the significance of interconnectedness, resilience, and the continuous effort towards justice and transformation.

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This final episode of 2025 reflects on a year of transitions and healing, focusing on themes of intergenerational trauma, collective grief, and social justice, especially in the context of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Through diverse voices including Dr. Gabor Maté, Naomi Klein, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Ashira Darwish, Omid Safi, Kazu Haga, and others, the episode delves into personal and collective fields of healing. It emphasizes the importance of remembering, ritualizing healing, community action, indigenous knowledge, and a para-politics of grief and relationship. The episode also highlights the significance of interconnectedness, resilience, and the continuous effort towards justice and transformation.

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In this episode of The Sounds of SAND podcast, host Michael Reiley speaks with Father Adam Bucko about his journey and the integration of Christian contemplative spirituality with social justice activism. Father Adam shares his formative experiences growing up in Poland during the resistance against totalitarian government, his work with marginalized youth in the United States and India, and his philosophy of engaged contemplation. He discusses the importance of heartbreak as a spiritual guide, the responsibility of acknowledging historical injustices perpetrated by the Christian church, and the practice of staying grounded through monastic rhythms of life. The episode highlights the need for a balanced approach to spirituality that embraces both love and grief, and explores reconciliation with the world's suffering through active, mindful presence.

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A Decolonial Invitation to Remember, Relearn, and Resist

From a live SAND Community Gathering (November 2025) a live conversation with Dr. Jennifer Mullan & Iya Affo.

Their discussion emphasizes the importance of ancestral wisdom, collective healing, and the decolonization of therapeutic practices. Dr. Mullan shares her personal journey of reconciling traditional healing methods with modern therapy and explores the impact of historical and intergenerational trauma. The conversation also highlights the significance of land, lineage, and community in the healing process, and addresses the ways in which therapy can be transformed to be more inclusive and effective for diverse populations.

Dr. Mullan shares from her journey of calling therapists into a politicized practice—one rooted in responsibility, reverence, and collective liberation. The conversation challenges clinicians to confront their training, interrogate their privilege, and participate in the sacred labor of relearning.

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This episode, recorded live at The Eternal Song live gathering (June 2025), brings together a distinguished panel featuring Patricia June Vickers, Judy Atkinson, Dr. Diana Kopua, and Donald “Del” Lavedure, moderated by Dr. Gabor Maté. The discussion explores the integration of ancestral wisdom and modern therapeutic methods to address and heal trauma within Indigenous communities. The group share their personal and professional experiences, emphasizing the connection between land, ancestry, and healing. The conversation highlights the importance of storytelling, cultural practices, and the role of spirituality in fostering collective and individual healing, while addressing how individuals outside Indigenous cultures can support this crucial work.

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Recorded live at The Eternal Song Seven Day Film Premiere summit with Indigenous voices.

Dr. Cara Judea Alhadeff discusses her work and the profound ideas in her book  Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era. She explores themes of dream consciousness, cultural and ecological extinction, radical symbiosis, and the concept of apocalyptic parenting as a strategy for social justice and ecological ethics, an antidote to petroleum parenting. The discussion digs into the interdisciplinary ties found in her stories, her collaborative projects, and the communal effort in creating sustainable futures. Dr. Alhadeff also shares her real-life experiences of living for almost a decade in a reclaimed school bus, 'The Love Bus', exemplifying the principles of radical mothering, reuse, collective creativity, and joy amidst systemic challenges.

Dr. Cara Judea Alhadeff is a professor and author of dozens of books and articles on art, philosophy, sexuality, climate justice, life-passion activism, and "petroleum parenting," including the critically-acclaimed Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era, and Viscous Expectations: Justice, Vulnerability, The Ob-scene. Alhadeff’s forthcoming book, Unlearning What We Think We Know (Vernon Press), will be performed during the World Affairs Conference. Her photographs/ performance videos are in private and public collection,s including San Francisco MoMA, MoMA Salzburg, Austria, the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, and include collaborations with international choreographers, composers, poets, sculptors, architects, and scientists. She has been interviewed by The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Pacifica Radio, NPR, and the New Art Examiner. Alongside Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Vandana Shiva, Alhadeff received the Random Kindness Community Resilience Leadership Award, 2020. In 2022, Alhadeff was nominated for a MacArthur Fellowship. Her theoretical and visual work is the subject of documentaries for international public television/ radio. A former professor of Critical Pedagogy & Performance at UC Santa Cruz and Founder of Radical Art in Action, Alhadeff teaches, performs, and parents a creative-zero-waste life. She and her family live and perform in their eco-art installation, a repurposed school bus. www.carajudeaalhadeff.com

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