Maternal Gift Economy: Breaking Through -
Ongoing Salons
Every two weeks
4th Annual Maternal Gift Economy Movement Conference
Uniting Movements
Featuring Vandana Shiva, Heide Goettner-Abendroth, Jodie Evans, Darcia Narvaez and Genevieve Vaughan
Moderated by Letecia Layson.
Nov. 24, 2023
In these times of great danger created by Capitalism and Patriarchy it is crucial to bring together the movements of those who willingly nurture life in their families, in the human agora and in the biosphere. These movements, which share points of departure beyond and before the market mainstream ideology, together provide a fundamental shift in perspective and a goal of human and planetary well being, showing the way out of present collective self-and-other destruction. By linking these movements in sisterhood today in this conference and inviting other movements with life-loving values to join us in the future, we intend to dismantle the false webs of expropriation and exploitation in which humanity has become entangled and recognize, reaffirm, and nurture the minute and the widespread webs of planetary life.
Yours for the survival and thrival of all,
MGEM
Vandana Shiva
Dr. Vandana Shiva is trained as a Physicist and did her Ph.D. on the subject “Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory” from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. She later shifted to inter-disciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy, which she carried out at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore. In 1982, she founded an independent institute, the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in Dehra Dun dedicated to high quality and independent research to address the most significant ecological and social issues of our times, in close partnership with local communities and social movements. In 1991, she founded Navdanya, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seed, the promotion of organic farming and fair trade. In 2004 she started Bija Vidyapeeth, an international college for sustainable living in Doon Valley in collaboration with Schumacher College, U.K.Dr. Shiva combines the sharp intellectual enquiry with courageous activism..Time Magazine identified Dr. Shiva as an environmental “hero” in 2003 and Asia Week has called her one of the five most powerful communicators of Asia.Forbes magazine in November 2010 has identified Dr. Vandana Shiva as one of the top Seven most Powerful Women on the Globe. Dr. Shiva has received honorary Doctorates from University of Paris, University of Western Ontario, University of Oslo and Connecticut College, University of Guelph.Among her many awards are the Alternative Nobel Prize (Right Livelihood Award, 1993), Order of the Golden Ark, Global 500 Award of UN and Earth Day International Award. Lennon ONO grant for peace award by Yoko Ono in 2009, Sydney Peace Prize in 2010, Doshi Bridgebuilder Award, Calgary Peace Prize and Thomas Merton Award in the year 2011,the Fukuoka Award and The Prism of Reason Award in 2012, the Grifone d’Argento prize 2016 and The MIDORI Prize for Biodiversity 2016, Veerangana Award 2018, The Sanctuary Wildlife Award 2018 and International Environment Summit & Award 2018.
More information @ navdanya.org. Follow Vandana on Twitter @drvandanashiva
Jodie Evans
Jodie Evans is a life-long peace and social justice activist and co-founder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace. She was in Jerry Brown’s cabinet when he served as Governor of California in the 1970's, ran his Senate campaign in 1982, and his revolutionary 1992 campaign for President. She has led citizen diplomacy delegations to Iran, the Gaza Strip, Yemen and Afghanistan and has published two books Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Terrorism and Twilight of Empire. She founded a campaign at CODEPINK: Cultivating a Local Peace economy to address the need to change culture from a war economy culture to a peace economy culture if we want to achieve peace and justice. To a giving, sharing, caring, thriving relational economy from an extractive, destructive and oppressive economy. More information @ www.codepink.org
Darcia Narvaez, PhD
Darcia Narvaez - is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame, Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the American Educational Research Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Born in Minnesota (USA), she grew up living around the world as a bilingual/bicultural Puerto Rican-German American but calls Earth her home. Her earlier careers include professional musician, business owner, classroom music teacher, classroom Spanish teacher, and seminarian, among other things. In her academic career, she employs a lifespan, interdisciplinary approach to studying evolved morality, child development and human flourishing, integrating anthropology, neuroscience, clinical, developmental, evolutionary and educational sciences. Her books include Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom, Restoring the Kinship Worldview, and The Evolved Nest: Nature's Way of Raising Children and Creating Connected Communities. She hosts EvolvedNest.org and is president of KindredWorld.org. See her 6-minute movie: www.BreakingTheCycleFilm.org, her 8-minute movie: The Evolved Nest, and her 12-minute movie: www.reimagininghumanity.com.
Heide Goettner-Abendroth
Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth is a mother and a grandmother. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy of science at the University of Munich where she lectured for ten years (1973-1983).
She has published on philosophy of science, and extensively on matriarchal society and culture, and through her lifelong research on matriarchal societies has become a founder of Modern Matriarchal Studies. In her magnum opus: Matriarchal Societies. Studies on Indigenous Cultures across the Globe, (New York 2013, Peter Lang), she defines scientifically this new field of knowledge and provides a world tour of examples of contemporary matriarchal cultures.
She has been visiting professor at the University of Montreal in Canada, and the University of Innsbruck in Austria. She lectured extensively at home and abroad. In 1986, she founded the “International ACADEMY HAGIA for Matriarchal Studies” in Germany, and since then has been its director.
She guided three World Congresses on Matriarchal Studies: 2003 in Luxembourg, 2005 in Texas, U.S., and 2011 in Switzerland. She received several awards and was twice nominated as candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, in 2005 by a Swiss initiative, 2007 by a finish initiative.
More information @ www.hagia.de and www.goettner-abendroth.de.
Genevieve Vaughan
Genevieve Vaughan (b.1939) is an independent researcher who lives part time in Italy and part in Texas. She created the multicultural all-woman activist Foundation for a Compassionate Society (1987-2005) and the Temple of Sekhmet in the Nevada desert (1992 – ongoing) and she co-created the network: International Feminists for a Gift Economy (2001 – ongoing). Her books are For-Giving, a Feminist Criticism of Exchange (1997), Homo Donans (2006) and The Gift in the Heart of Language: the Maternal Source of Meaning (2015). She has edited Il Dono/The Gift (2004), Women and the Gift Economy (2007) and The Maternal Roots of the Gift Economy (2019). A volume of the Canadian Women’s Studies Journal dedicated to the maternal gift economy has just appeared (2020).
More information @ www.gift-economy.com.
Letecia Layson
Letecia Layson is a Filipina, Feminist, Futurist, Priestess of Morphogenesis (Form Coming Into Being), High Priestess of Diana; Priestess Hierophant in FOI/TOI-LA. Letecia is one of the founding Mothers of the Center for Babaylan Studies; a member of International Feminists for Gift Economy, Modern Matriarchal Studies Network