Lecture

“From the Heart: The Energy of Creativity, Healing, and Social Transformation-A Nimipu/Tejana Feminist Perspective” by Dr. Inés Hernández-Avila

This presentation will address the connections between the energy of social transformation, healing, and creativity in the pursuit and manifestation of social justice, from a Nimipu/Tejana perspective. This perspective has at its center the notions of social transformation and social justice as intimately related to autonomy (personal and collective); the relationship of healing to the movement of energy; and the role of the heart as key to creativity and transformation.

Workshop

"Contemplative Practice, Healing, and Creativity"

 Dr. Inés Hernández-Avila will lead this interactive workshop on “experiencing energy.” It will focus on the relationship between contemplation, meditation, (self)healing, and creativity. Participants will be led through a guided meditation wherein they connect to the center of the earth and to the cosmos, in a way that allows each person to gather her or his own energy in a process of renewal and re-emergence. The emphasis will be on the ability that each individual has to practice this “renewal meditation” through contemplation, mindfulness, and grounding.

BIO

Dr. Inés Hernández-Avila is Professor of Native American Studies at UC Davis, a scholar, poet, and visual artist. She is Nimipu (Nez Perce) enrolled in the Colville reservation in Washington and Tejana. She is one of the founders of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). In 2008 she won an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship, sponsored by the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. This fellowship allowed her to focus on contemplative practice in her teaching and research as it relates to ancient Nahuatl and other indigenous philosophical traditions, as well contemporary indigenous expressions of personal and collective autonomy and creativity in the service of social justice. In 2009 she received the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award at the Graduate and Professional level. She is a Co-Director of the UC Davis Social Justice Initiative (2013-2016). Professor Hernández Avila regularly teaches Summer Abroad in San Cristobl de las Casas, Chiapas, with a focus on the Zapatistas and on contemporary Mayan writers and visual artists. In Fall 2015, she had a fellowship at the Humanities Research Institute at UC Irvine and was a member of the Residential Research Group on the “History of Mortality.” Her most recent publication is Entre Guadalupe y Malinche: Tejanas in Literature and Art (University of Texas Press, 2016), co-edited with Norma E. Cantú.

“Looking Deeply” by Inés Hernández-Avila