2022 Series
Recognition, Reparation, and Restoration
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb speaks on Teshuvah: A Process of Healing Ethical Injury, Unjust Action and Moral Harm. Lynn is a Shomeret Shalom, a practitioner of the Torah of nonviolence engaged in multifaith, intergenerational, and multicultural organizing in solidarity with racial, Indigenous, gender justice and Palestinian liberation struggles. In addition to sitting on the Rabbinic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace and as board chair of Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, Rabbi Lynn is the author of several books, including Peace Primer II, She Who Dwells Within: A Feminist Vision of Renewed Judaism, World Beyond Borders Passover Haggadah, and Trail Guide to the Torah of Nonviolence.
Karen Davis is the founder and president of United Poultry Concerns including the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos dedicated to the compassionate and respectful treatment of domesticated birds founded in 1990. She will discuss the suffering and abuses of chickens in farming operations, sacrificial “atonement” rituals, and farm supply businesses like Tractor Supply Company, and explain how we can restore birds lucky enough to be rescued to a sense of their true selves instead of the “lesser beings” to which abusers seek to reduce them. This project extrapolates to a larger vision and undertaking of Rescue. Karen is the author of numerous publications including the books: Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry; More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality; and The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities.
Joseph Daniel Mitchell, MS is a full-blood citizen of the Creek Nation and a member of the Muskogee Indian Community. In addition to being a Senior Executive Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Joe has consulted with tribal governments and communities in the U.S. on Indian law and served as a tribal advocate for exercising treaty rights on federal lands, and implementing traditional practices for four decades. He has worked in environmental sciences and conservation on tribal and federal lands with more than 200 tribes, the USDA Forest Service, Washington, DC, and Bureau of Indian Affairs.
MaryBeth Timothy is a Native Oklahoman who is pursuing her dreams of creating art and working towards making it accessible to all walks of life. She is enrolled Cherokee Nation and works as a full-time artist/illustrator/business owner. MaryBeth is a self-taught multimedia artist, who overall features an array of subjects and themes in her art, although she leans towards her love of wildlife. Through her work, she shares her affinity for Oklahoma wild birds, animals and wildflowers. MaryBeth chooses to create what she feels, and loves to tell stories through her work. Her goal is to touch the ones that view it and cause a reaction, whether it be emotional or even a stirring curiosity. Both stimulate conversation about the piece and provide her the opportunity to tell its story. MaryBeth has traveled and participated in art shows and other venues around the country and in Europe.
Gay Bradshaw is founder of The Kerulos Center for Nonviolence and The Tortoise and the Hare Sanctuary. She is the author of Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us about Humanity, Carnivore Minds: Who These Fearsome Animals Really Are, Talking with Bears: Conversations with Charlie Russell, co-author of The Evolved Nest: Nature’s Ways of Raising Children and Creating Communities (in press), and primary carer of the Sanctuary resident faculty.
Hadassah DeJack-Reynolds is co-founder and executive director of Tikkun Olam Farm Sanctuary (TOFS). Tikkun Olam, which means repair the world in Hebrew, is a forever home for abused, abandoned, neglected, and unwanted animals in Southern Oregon. She did her graduate work at Wilmington University and West Chester University, obtaining her degree in Holocaust and genocide studies with a focus on the psychology of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. Over 130 animals reside at TOFS where they are living their best life. Hadassah’s insights into human trauma and genocide inform her mission to create a healing community where all beings, human and non-human, are welcome.
In her White Work: Reparative Genealogy and Ecological Restoration, Mary Watkins discusses the relationships between reparative genealogy and racial and environmental reparations. She recounts some of her ancestral legacy and efforts of repair, including her great grandfather’s contribution to the decimation of the Mississippi woods and the Animals after the Civil War. Mary is Professor Emerita of Psychology, Pacifica Graduate Institute where she taught twenty-seven years and co-founded the Community, Liberation, Indigenous and Eco-Psychologies (CLIE) Program. Among other, numerous publications, Mary is the author of Mutual Accompaniment and the Creation of the Commons (2019) which describes a radical model of psychosocial and ecological accompaniment, and co-author of Up against the Wall which re-imagines national borders as sites of hospitality in an era of forced migration.
Deena Metzger is a writer, healer, and teacher whose work spans multiple genres including the novel, poetry, non-fiction, and plays. She is the author of many books, including the novels: A Rain of Night Birds, concerning two climatologists, La Negra y Blanca (2012 PEN Oakland Pen Award for Literature), Feral, and The Other Hand. Her other books include The Burden of Light, Ruin and Beauty and Entering the Ghost River: Meditations on the Theory and Practice of Healing. Metzger co-edited Intimate Nature, The Bond Between Women and Animals, which pioneered the radical understanding that animals are highly intelligent and exhibit intent. Her experiences with Elephants in the wild over twenty years is based on their spiritual agency and complex narrative communication. Some of that experience is chronicled in her forthcoming novel, La Vieja: A Journal of Fire. She has developed The Literature of Restoration to, among other goals, advance Earth based writing, restore climate, and counter extinction.