By Shyla Cadogan Who inspires you to live a healthier life? While many people follow the lifestyles of the rich and famous, scientists at the University of Southern California suggest looking to the indigenous communities of the Bolivian Amazon. The Tsimané and Mosetén tribes use…
By Neenah Payne 10 Cultural Heritage Questions You Should Ask Your Relatives points out: “Many people don’t really think of themselves or their family as having a particular culture. For most people, it’s “just how things were done”. People rarely question their culture and therefore…
By Neenah Payne The buffalo — like the Plains Indians — is iconic of the West. The bison (buffalo) is on the back of the nickel. We sing “Home on the Range”: “Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam.” In 2016, President Obama…
Op-Ed by Neenah Payne I LOVED Christmas growing up and looked forward to it all year! The season began when my father and I bought a Christmas tree which my brothers and I decorated. My mother would take me to the department store to see…
By Neenah Payne In 1621, colonists and the Wampanoag shared a ‘feast’, viewed as the first Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is now one of the most popular holidays in America. More people travel to be with family for Thanksgiving than for any other holiday. Many Americans look forward…
By Neenah Payne The concept of “keystone species” was introduced by ecologist Robert Paine in 1969. A keystone species has a large effect on the community it supports. Keystone species increase the species biodiversity of a community and enhance stability of the environment. Without them,…
Op-Ed by Neenah Payne Mapping a New Geography of Hope With Native America shows that our Foundational Stories shape our minds and our relationship to the Earth. The Foundational Story of the West is the story of the Garden of Eden. In that story, a…
Op-Ed by Neenah Payne Dr. Zach Bush’s Urgent Prescription To Save America shows that Dr. Zach Bush warns that we are in the Sixth Great Extinction now and human survival depends on the urgent restoration of our soils to provide the nutritious foods we need….
By Neenah Payne Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, former chairman of the Nestle Group, said in 2005 that access to water is not a human right! Coca Cola, Poland Spring, and other bottlers are threatening the water supply. California and the Southwest face record life-changing droughts. China has…
By Neenah Payne November is Native American Heritage Month, an opportunity to learn from the many rich traditions of Native Americans. Native American Day: Learning The Way of Earth explains that Dr. Zach Bush warns we are in the Sixth Great Extinction and human survival…
By Neenah Payne Halloween is a celebration almost everyone likes — especially kids. Getting dressed up in costumes is exciting. As a child, I enjoyed going door to door “Trick or Treating” to get candies. Carving pumpkins (Jack O’Lanterns) and bobbing for apples was fun…
By Neenah Payne Some calendars still call this holiday “Columbus Day” which teaches us to celebrate conquest. It does not teach us how to collaborate with other cultures or to survive on this planet. Fortunately, over 50 cities and states have adopted “Indigenous Peoples Day”. That encourages us…
By Neenah Payne Americans flock to the Amazon to drink ayahuasca with shamans. However, for most Americans, Native America is the ignored Big Pink Elephant in the living room. Although many of our states, cities, and rivers carry Native names, most Americans ignore the existence…
Compiled by Patricia Burke, with Emma Kelly and Justin Craig Barnardo Heed the indigenous populations, because society is being dispossessed of its land and culture by dominators, again, with entitlement now extending to the skies and the seas. One tool being used is addiction. Again….
By Julia Conley Environmental justice advocates and other progressives on Friday condemned a federal judge’s decision Friday to sentence human rights lawyer Steven Donziger to six months in prison—following more than two years of house arrest related to a lawsuit he filed decades ago against oil giant Chevron. The sentence, delivered by U.S. District…
By Neenah Payne Most people recognize now that America and the rest of the world are in deep trouble — in terms of our economy, health, politics, the environment, endless wars, etc. Is there a vision anywhere on the planet that can unite the world…
Op-Ed by Neenah Payne Most people recognize that the world is in very serious trouble in multiple ways — the global economy is increasingly at risk, the world’s rainforests are being destroyed as are our soils which undermines the health of our plants and animals…
By Fernanda Sanchez Jaramillo This story was originally published on Media.coop; an edited version is published on Global Voices. In 2016, when the Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) was signed, Colombia also introduced the legal growth,…
By Neenah Payne America is a Christian nation. Christmas – which commemorates the birth of Christ – is one of the most important celebrations of the Christian religion. However, few Americans stop to think that almost all of the ways in which we celebrate this…
By Elias Marat A U.S. federal court has ordered the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) to immediately halt operations and evacuate all oil from the pipeline over concerns about its likely environmental impact and the potentially existential risk it poses to the land belonging to…
