Chicana-Apache on Tibetan Buddhism (video)

Karin Meyers, Dr. N. Avalos (Buddhist Currents); Xochitl, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Assistant Professor Natalie Avalos is in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She is an ethnographer of religion, whose research and teaching focus on Native American and Indigenous religions in diaspora, healing historical trauma, and decolonization.

UCB Prof. Natalie Avalos

She received her Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a special focus on Native American and Indigenous religious traditions and Tibetan Buddhism.

She is currently working on her manuscript entitled The Metaphysics of Decolonialism: Transnational Indigeneities and Religious Refusal, which explores urban Indian and Tibetan refugee religious life as decolonial practice. She is a Chicana of Apache descent, born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. A video recording of this talk is available here.

Buddhist Currents: Resisting Settler Colonialism as Buddhist Allies to Indigenous Peoples

(Mangalam Research Center, Oct. 28, 2020) Contemporary Indigenous movements for sovereignty, like Standing Rock in 2016, have highlighted the ongoing violence settler colonialism perpetuates against lands and peoples.

Braiding sweet grass with Prof. Natalie Avalos

In this talk, Prof. Avalos discusses how Buddhists can draw from Buddhist teachings and shared land-based ethics to stand in solidarity with Native and Indigenous peoples.

By connecting the dots between settler ideologies, the dispossession of peoples and lands, and ecological harm, she outlines the ways Buddhist practice can facilitate decolonial praxis.

This gives us an opportunity to explore how Buddhist scholars and practitioners may use this period of coronavirus quarantine and intersecting crises to mobilize in the service of ecological wellness and collective liberation.

ABOUT: Currents is a series of conversations hosted by Mangalam Academic Director Karin Meyers. Scholars of Buddhist studies will offer critical perspectives on current social, political, economic, and ecological crises in light of Buddhist history, thought, and practice. In Asia, Buddhist study and practice were traditionally integrated together in monastic life. Today in the West serious study and practice are typically pursued in different social locations, such as the university and Dharma centers. By bringing academic scholars and Dharma practitioners together in conversation, this series aims to bridge that gap. By focusing on contemporary issues and crises, the intention is to explore the relevance of Buddhist teachings for our times, as well as to support and inspire socially transformative Buddhist practice. Each session begins and ends with a short community practice and includes ample time for Q&A and discussion.