Host

Garrison Institute co-founder and Founding President Emerita, Diana Calthorpe Rose.

Guest

Yuria Celidwen, PhD is an Indigenous Maya Tseltal and Nahua scholar, author, and contemplative researcher from Chiapas, Mexico. She is the author of Flourishing Kin: Indigenous Wisdom for Collective Well-Being and a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. She has also held the positions of Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute and Fellow of the Mind & Life Institute. Celidwen has also served in leadership roles with the American Academy of Religion and as a liaison on Indigenous affairs at the United Nations.

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Show Notes

• [02:31] Yuria opens the conversation in her Maya Tseltal language and reflects on the global loss of Indigenous languages, the relationship between cultural diversity and biodiversity, and the urgency of protecting both.
• [05:07] The realities facing Indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico, including barriers to education, systemic inequality, and the responsibility of bringing these stories into public awareness.
• [08:24] Growing up within Maya traditions, learning from her father, a poet, and her grandmother, a spiritual guide, and being trained to listen to the “languages” of the Earth and cosmos.
• [11:36] A broader understanding of ancestors that includes not only bloodline and lineage, but also lands, waters, skies, and future generations yet to come.
• [15:48] The challenges of building bridges between Indigenous knowledge systems and Western institutions while reckoning with the ongoing impacts of colonialism.
• [18:47] How contemplative practice helped Yuria work with trauma, grief, and inherited narratives of inadequacy, transforming pain into a commitment to service and healing.
• [23:37] Why education should never mean assimilation, and the importance of Indigenous-language education, Indigenous sciences, and culturally rooted systems of learning.
• [25:35] The origins of Flourishing Kin and Yuria’s critique of prevailing models of “human flourishing” that overlook the wellbeing of the Earth.
• [28:42] The concept of kin relationality as the foundation of collective wellbeing and an antidote to isolation, division, and the feeling of not belonging.
• [31:12] The “seeds” of Flourishing Kin, including embodied awareness, sensory perception, emotion, meaning, ethics, and ecological belonging.
• [35:12] Why Yuria prefers the language of commitment over hope, emphasizing agency, responsibility, and participation in creating change.
• [36:44] Cultural humility, learning from diverse traditions, and the importance of bringing different gifts and perspectives to the collective table.
• [37:48] Connections between kin relationality and contemplative teachings such as interbeing, interconnection, and dependent arising.
• [38:58] A nuanced discussion about oneness, diversity, and the dangers of using spiritual language to overlook systemic inequality and injustice.
• [41:43] Yuria’s research methodology, the role of Indigenous contemplative sciences, and the challenge of creating space for Indigenous ways of knowing within academic institutions.
• [45:10] Why elevating Indigenous scholarship is essential for planetary wellbeing, stewardship, conservation, and the future of contemplative studies.
• [47:48] Reflections on the growing influence of Indigenous perspectives in contemplative practice and the work still required to achieve equity and recognition.
• [48:08] Yuria closes with a haiku on power, love, and the wounds of our shared world.