“Flourishing Kin” Indigenous Lifeways to Collective Flourishing

Our world faces crises that require a focus on community and planetary health and well-being, but the Western mindfulness movement is primarily focused on individual self-improvement. How can Western and Indigenous sciences work together to recalibrate current practices in service of global well-being? Yuria Celidwen shares insights from her recent book Flourishing Kin: Indigenous Wisdom for Collective Well-Being, bridging Indigenous ontologies and methodologies, academic research, and poetic expression to cultivate sustainable collective flourishing through Indigenous contemplative spiritualities and sciences. Celidwen defines relationality and flourishing as a spiritual-aesthetic arrest only possible in community through cultivating relationships toward all kin, from human to more-than-human, and the living Earth. Through poetic expression and authentic truth-telling, Celidwen invites a path that meets the world’s complexity with reverence and joyous participation in the flourishing of all living beings.

A lecture by Dr Yuria Celidwen, with support from the New College Initiatives Fund, the Buddhism, Psychology and Mental Health Program, the Khyentse Foundation, Trinity College’s Integrated Sustainability Initiative, the School of the Environment, and the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies

Biographical introduction from Yuria Celidwen, Ph.D.:

I am a native of the Indigenous Nahua and Maya lineages from the cloud forests of Chiapas, Mexico. I am of Earth; my heart is on fire. My family is one of mystics, healers, poets, and explorers of the soil and the soul of life’s strength, tenderness, and fragility. I grew up with one wing in the wilderness and another in the magical realism of Indigenous dreamlands and stories. My Elders’ songs enthralled my childhood and enhanced my mythic imagination and emotional intuition. They’ve become the fertile soils and waters where the seeds of reverence, play, and wonder dig their roots. I am a Truth-bearer, trickster dreamer, and culture-shifter. As a scholar, I research Indigenous forms of contemplation and the transcendent experience embodied in prosocial behavior (reverence, ethics, compassion, and a sense of awe, love, and sacredness).‎ I call my research broader statement the “Ethics of Belonging,” encouraging awareness, intention, and relational actions toward planetary flourishing and a path of meaning and participation rooted in honoring Life. I am affiliated with the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, where I research Earth-based contemplation and collective flourishing in Indigenous traditions of the world. Alongside this, I am a senior fellow at the Othering and Belonging Institute; and for the American Academy of Religion, I co-chair the Indigenous Religious Traditions Unit and am on the steering committee of the Contemplative Studies Unit.