Dr. Jaiya John was orphan-born on ancient Indigenous Anasazi and Pueblo lands in the high desert of New Mexico, and is an internationally recognized ancestral Baba, freedom worker, medicine poet, and keynote speaker.

Jaiya is the founder of Soul Water Rising, a global rehumanizing mission to eradicate oppression. The mission has donated thousands of Jaiya’s books in support of social healing, and offers grants to displaced and vulnerable youth. He is the author of numerous books, including Daughter Drink This Water, We Birth Freedom at Dawn, Fragrance After Rain, and Freedom: Medicine Words for your Brave Revolution. Jaiya writes, narrates, and produces the podcast, I Will Read for You: The Voice and Writings of Jaiya John, and is the founder of The Gathering, a global initiative and tour reviving traditional gathering and storytelling practices to fertilize social healing and liberation.

Jaiya is a former professor of social psychology at Howard University, and has spoken to over a million people worldwide and audiences as large as several thousand. He holds doctorate and master’s degrees in social psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow with a focus on intergroup and race relations. As an undergraduate, he attended Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and lived in Kathmandu, Nepal, where he studied Tibetan Holistic Medicine through independent research with Tibetan doctors and trekked to the base camp of Mt. Everest. He is a Lewis & Clark College Distinguished Alumni Award recipient.

Jaiya's Indigenous soul dreams of frybread, sweetgrass, bamboo in the breeze, and turtle lakes whose poetry is peace.

Jaiya Website

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