PUBLIC LECTURE: What on Earth has the World got to do with me?

Tis Mal Crow – ‘Saving our Mother and Protecting All Children’

Since childhood Tis Mal Crow has worked with tribal elders studying the identification and medicinal uses of plants and native root doctoring techniques. He is the author of ‘Native Plants, Native Healing – Traditional Muskogee Way’ and has been called to be an elder on the Council of Elders on the Medicinal Plant working Group, which is a group of concerned elders working for the protection of endangered plants. This is an off-shoot of the U.S. Fish and wildlife and U.S. Forestry Services. He has spoken to the United Nations permanent forum on Indigenous affairs and to the Industrial Leadership for the Preservation of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Symposium.

Tis Mal is a passionate advocate of the Children’s Garden, located in Kelowna (female grizzly bear), British Columbia, Canada. He provides all of the educational materials for the children on medicinal and food uses of plants as well as preservation and does presentations in order to pass to them the culture of the Indigenous peoples to be learned and shared with the children of the dominant ‘outside world’. Tis Mal is also widely appreciated as an artist and his beadwork, dolls and jewellery are on display in galleries worldwide.

Dr Nancy Maryboy – ‘Standing at the Pool of Creation: The Interconnected Knowing of Mother Earth and Father Sky’

Dr. Nancy Maryboy (Uwohatli) is the Executive Director and Founder of the Indigenous Education Institute, a non-profit organization with a mission of recovering, preserving, protecting and applying traditional indigenous knowledge. She is Cherokee/Navajo and lives in Southern Utah, USA, where she works on the Navajo Nation. She is from a family of traditional and medical healers.

Dr. Maryboy works with NASA on several advisory committees, including the SunEarth Connection and NASA Explorer Schools. She provides training in areas of juxtapositions of western and indigenous science to NASA, National Science Foundation, Institute of Noetic Sciences, among others. She is an adjunct faculty member of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Northern Arizona University and is currently developing an Internet course in Native American Astronomy, to be piloted in January 2006.

Her work is currently centered around the recovery of indigenous astronomies and how that knowledge can be used in contemporary educational settings, primarily for the benefit of native students. She gives presentations around the world on the juxtaposition of native knowledge, quantum consciousness, western science and the protocols of conducting indigenous research.