ISPS Faculty
Catherine Hoppers, Ph.D.
Professor Hoppers is a scholar and policy specialist on International Development, education, North-South questions, disarmament, peace, and human security. She is a UNESCO expert in basic education, lifelong learning, information systems and on Science and Society; an expert in disarmament at the UN Department of Disarmament Affairs; an expert to the World Economic Forum on benefit sharing and value addition protocols; and the World Intellectual Property Organisation on traditional knowledge and community intellectual property rights.
She got a Masters and PhD in International Education from Stockholm University, Sweden; was a recipient of an Honorary Doctorate in Philosophy from Orebro University (Sweden), and an Honorary Doctorate in Education from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa. In South Africa, Professor Hoppers was awarded Professor Extraordinarius in 2019 at University of South Africa (Pretoria). She held a South African Research Chair in Development Education at the University of South Africa (2008-2018) a National Chair set up by the Department of Science and Technology. Prior to that, she was a technical adviser on Indigenous Knowledge Systems to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (South Africa) and led the Task Team to draft the national policy on Indigenous Knowledge Systems. She was a Distinguished Professional at the Human Sciences Research Council; an Associate Professor at the University of Pretoria; a visiting Professor at Stockholm University (Sweden) where she led the Systems Research Collaboration (Sweden and South Africa), bringing together policy makers and professionals in the academia in the two countries.
Jürgen W. Kremer, Ph. D.
His teaching and writing focuses on a decolonizing discourse of Whiteness, the history of modernist White self-constructions, and the critical reconstruction of European indigenous layers. I hope that out of the tears about the grievous things our ancestors have suffered and committed, amidst all the achievements, there will arise shared laughter and appreciation as the joy of the local truth ceases to be a call for dominance, and as people enjoy and appreciate each other's capacity for cross-cultural learning. Facing collective shadow material, the inclusion of the dark and light seem to prevent us from superficial nostalgia and dissociated romanticism in relation to any culture, and help us to move into the future through our connections with ancestral cultural roots. The remembrance of the web of stories that create who we are; the connection with the surrounding lands, community, and cultural history; the philosophical reflection upon our cultural premises; the dialogue of the various sciences with local knowledge and narratives, i.e. indigenous science these seem to be ways to open an avenue for rich multicultural inquiry and learning as well as the resolution of cultural wounds and the exploration of the liberating potential of ethnic constructions. Durable peace is only possible if we find ways to affirm and assert visionary and interconnected sovereignty that supersede the models modernity/colonialism has offered. My work is dedicated to diverse learning environments that elicit the teachers' and students' potentials through personal and scholarly inquiry for the sake of the communities to which they will dedicate their professional lives.
Grace Nono, Ph.D.
Born and raised in northern and southern Agusan in Mindanao, Philippines to a Camiguingnon mother and an Ilocano father, Dr. Grace Nono is a scholar who writes at the intersections of ethnomusicology, Native religious studies, gender, and ecology. She is also a music performing artist who specializes in the performance of Philippine oral traditional songs, and the Founding Head of the Tao Foundation for Culture and Arts, a non-profit organization dedicated to cultural revitalization.
Grace received her Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from New York University; her first masters in Philippine Studies from the University of the Philippines; and her second masters in Religion, major in Women, Gender and Sexuality/Comprehensive from Yale University. She has taught courses at the University of the Philippines Arts Studies Department, and at the Harvard Divinity School during a postdoc with the Women’s Studies in Religion Program. Grace has published Song of the Babaylan: Living Voices, Medicines, Spiritualities of Philippine Ritualist-Oralist-Healers (2013), The Shared Voice: Chanted and Spoken Narratives from the Philippines (2008), and a number of articles. Her third book is currently in press: Babaylan Sing Back: Philippine Shamans, Voice, Gender, and Place (2021).
As Founding Head of the Tao Foundation for Culture and Arts, Grace has organized transnational gatherings participated in by Philippine Native ritualists, oralists, healers, on the one hand, and by professional scholars, artists, and activists, on the other. The Tao Foundation also runs the Agusan del Sur-School of Living Traditions that facilitates the transmission of Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices from Native elders to Native youth in a whole range of areas from language to songs and dances, to customary law, ancestral domain, ritual, and medicine. As a singer of Philippine oral traditional songs taught to her by various Philippine elders, Grace has been presented in over sixty cities and venues in over twenty countries in Asia, Europe and North America. For more information about Dr. Grace Nono please visit taofoundationph.org and gracenono.com.
Brian Rice, Ph.D.
Dr. Brian Rice is a full professor and holds the position of Indigenous land based educator in the Department of Kinesiology and Recreation management at the University of Manitoba. He is also one of the first graduates of the Indigenous Knowledge and Recovery of Indigenous Mind doctoral programs developed by Dr. Apela Colorado in the 1990’s. Originally born in Buffalo New York, Dr. Rice is an enrolled member of the Indigenous Mohawk Nation at Kahnawaké Quebec, Canada. Besides being a teacher and an interim principal for four years in an Indigenous operated school, he has taught full time in the departments of Native Studies, Religious Studies, Continuing Education, and Education over a 30 year period. He continues teaching courses in Indigenous history and culture both national and global. He has published three books Seeing the World with Aboriginal Eyes; The Rotinonshonni: A Traditional Iroquoian History Though the Eyes of Sawiskera and Teharonhia;wako; and A History of Newcomer and Indigenous First Encounters from the East to the Mid-west for Educators. He has also published various chapters and articles on Indigenous issues, history and culture within various books centered on peace studies. He did his doctoral course work in California, Hawaii, Mexico, Thailand and Senegal and has presented in Guyana, Ireland, Israel, Palestine, Thailand, Australia, Myanmar, Kenya, Japan as well as other regions in the United States and Canada. Previous to writing his dissertation and as part of his research methodology, he embarked on a 700 mile walking journey following the path of the Peacemaker who confederated five warring Indigenous nations including the Mohawk, that later influenced the federation of the 13 thirteen American colonies becoming the United States of America. He then contributed by helping to facilitate journeys consisting of elders and community members back to their traditional homelands.
Valerie Ringland, Ph.D.
Dr. Valerie Ringland is an East Frisian-Jewish woman working as an Indigenous scientist and spiritual social worker. Her work bridges Indigenous and Western worlds, with a focus on facilitating healing related to trauma and social conflict. Her Western training includes a Ph.D. in social work from the University of Texas at Austin, a J.D. in law from the University of Colorado at Boulder, a B.A. in mathematics from Emory University, certifications in mediation and restorative justice, and her Indigenous training spans sacred circle-keeping, indigenous dance, ancestral healing, earthing, dreamwork, and sweat lodge, in addition to lived experiences. After over a decade of work in social research, policy and practice in Australia, the U.S., India, South Africa and Peru, Valerie founded Earth Ethos in 2018 to facilitate others to integrate Indigenous science into their research, organizations, social justice and healing practices. She is currently working on a project with an Aboriginal community-controlled organization in north-central Australia to use Indigenous and Western science to build an evidence base through the process of community-led design of new social-emotional well-being projects.
Marcela Sabin, M.A.
Marcela Sabin is a cultural practitioner and promotor of curanderismo and ancestral knowledge deeply committed to healing work based on indigenous traditions.
She was born in Argentina, her ancestors are Celt from Galicia, Basque from Pyrenees, Saxon and native people of South America, she migrated to Central America, feeling a deep call to help in the preservation of traditional healing practices. She lived in a Mayan community in Yucatan learning from women, midwives and elders, an experience which changed her life. Working with the National Indigenous Institute in Mexico, she developed local cultural projects to connect children with elders using art and storytelling. Since that time, she has dedicated her work to empowering the cultural identity of indigenous people of Mexico and other countries in Latin America, and sharing their wisdom with appreciative audiences in the U.S.
Her experience as an immigrant in the U.S. guided her to work with diverse ethnic populations of low-income and immigrant families as a family and community advocate for their educational and mental health needs. Her work with the Maya communities in Mexico planted a seed of curiosity in her to search for her own ancestral indigenous roots and traditions. While in California she completed the Masters program in Indigenous Mind. Looking to pass on this healing experience to others outside the academic settings, she co-founded the nonprofit organization Circle of Ancestors, where she is now President, and has been part of the growing international movement of reclaiming ancestral traditions and healing for several years.
Her calling in the U.S. has been focused on remembering and connecting seekers in community back to their ancestral knowledge, traditions and ancestral practices as a path to personal and collective healing.
Marcela has a BA degree in Psychology from University of Cordoba, Argentina, a BA in Expressive Movement, from Buenos Aires, and in U.S. she earned a Master’s degree in creation spirituality, with a concentration in Indigenous Mind.
Fania Davis, Ph.D., J.D.
Fania E. Davis is an author, educator, restorative justice practitioner and long-time social justice activist and civil rights trial attorney with a PhD in Indigenous Knowledge. Coming of age in Birmingham, Alabama during the social ferment of the civil rights era, the murder of two close childhood friends in the 1963 Sunday School bombing crystallized within Fania a passionate commitment to social transformation. For the next decades, she was active in the Civil Rights, Black liberation, Women's, Prisoners', Peace, Anti-racial violence and Anti-apartheid movements. She has taught Indigenous Peacemaking and Indigenous Law at the graduate level. Studying with indigenous healers, particularly African, catalyzed Fania’s search for a healing justice. Founding Director Emerita of Restorative Justice of Oakland Youth (RJOY), her numerous honors include the Ubuntu award for service to humanity, the Maloney Award for excellence in Youth Restorative Justice, World Trust's Healing Justice award, the Tikkun (Repair the World) award, the Ella Baker Jo Baker Award, the Bioneers’ Changemaker Award, the LaFarge Social Justice Award, and the Ebony POWER 100 award. The Los Angeles Times named her a New Civil Rights Leader of the 21st Century.
Fania's latest publication is The Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice: Black Lives, Healing and U.S. Social Transformation.
In Memoriam:
Betty Jean Bastien, Ph.D
Betty Bastien of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Director of Academic Programs Red Crow Community College (Kainai First Nation) Associate Professor Emeritus. University of Calgary Faculty of Social Work.
Dr. Bastien received her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Integral Studies - Traditional Knowledge Program. Her research explores traditional approaches to conflict resolution and learning as a means of seeking balance, premised on “knowing” through participatory and experiential processes. This work is a culmination of working with elders for over 25 years in research, ceremony and language revitalization. Subsequently, her work maintains attention toward the holistic orientation to health, well-being, and environmental sustainability, core responsibilities in an Indigenous paradigm. It emphasizes the importance of continually integrating these approaches as an essential consideration for building an inclusive society. Betty has done international presentations with World Indigenous Peoples Education and Language Revitalization in Danzhai & Sandu Counties, China. Publications include (2004) Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, University of Calgary Press. (2015) Sacred Science of Circles. Pelech, W. et al. Unity in Diversity: Embracing the Spirit of Group Work. London, UK, Whiting and Birch Ltd. 20-40..