Seminars
There are two seminar times at WJEF20 on Saturday, Nov. 7th:
Main session speaker bios are here.
- Seminar Time 1: 12:30PM ET/7:30AM HT marked with 🅰️, and
- Seminar Time 2: 9:00PM ET/4PM HT marked with 🅱️.
Main session speaker bios are here.
Deanna Ivans,
Social Justice / Being Native at the US Border 🅰️ view on YouTube Deanna Ivans (White Mountain Apache) is a WJEF alumna who also participated in the WJEF Studio recording project (you can hear her song "Prophecy" here.) She has studied film studies and television at the University of Arizona and. As a long-time resident of Bisbee, AZ, a town on the Mexican border, she has had a lot of personal experience with "immigration issues" and she believes that Jesus' radical message of social justice should not lead us to compete over "whose issues are the most important" but rather to fight in one another's fights across racial/ethnic/national lines. Come join her as she shares about life on the border and leads a discussion on how we as Native peoples can be social justice champions. View on YouTube. |
Renee Begay, Poetry Writing
🅰️ view on YouTube Renee Begay is on staff with Nations, a Cru ministry that seeks to honor Native American students and faculty by restoring their lives and culture with Jesus Christ. She is from the Zuni tribe in Zuni, New Mexico. Renee has been married to Donnie (our emcee!) for fifteen years. They have three daughters, Natalia, Kaya, and Peri. This will be an interactive seminar, in which Renee shares her poem "I Am From," and guides you through writing your own, and sharing with the group as you are comfortable. |
Will Krischke & Mike Kelly, Being Non-Native in Native Ministry
🅰️ view on YouTube 🅱️ view on YouTube Join our conversation about engaging in Native ministry as a non-Native person. Learn from our mistakes, how not to do ministry in this context. This will be an interactive discussion of how to avoid pitfalls and discover best practices as we seek to partner well to create communities of hope in Christ. |
Tosa Two Heart, Suicide Prevention 🅰️ 🅱️ view on YouTube Ṫośa Gladys Two Heart (Oglala Lakota) is the Director of Community Behavioral Health at Great Plains Tribal Chairmen's Health Board in Rapid City, South Dakota, and a graphic designer of her own apparel brand (tosatwoheart.com). She received her MBA from Bentley University in Massachusetts, and her Bachelor's in Psychology from UCLA. She grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and is happy to be using her creative and organizational gifts to serve her home community. |
Mark Charles, Q & A 🅰️ 🅱️
Mark Charles, who ran a 2020 Presidential campaign as an independent candidate, is the son of an American woman of Dutch heritage and a Navajo man. He has lived with his wife and children on the Navajo reservation for 11 years, and now they are in Washington, DC. He is a founder of the WJEF conference, author of Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, and a writer for Native News Online. This seminar will be a chance for you to ask Mark questions about his presidential campaign and what he's learned about being Native in the American political arena. |
Moani Nanod-Sitch, Moving with the Holy Spirit
🅱️ view on YouTube Moanike'ala Nanod-Sitch is kanaka 'oiwi o Hawai'i (Native Hawaiian), Chinese, Japanese and Ukranian and is from Kailua, O'ahu. She has served with InterVarsity since 1999, was the team leader of Hawai'i Pasifika ministries and is a member of IVCF's Native Ministries Leadership Team. With ke Akua (God) and a student she helped start "Hui Poly" (a Native Pacific Islander focused chapter reconciling faith and culture). She is now serving as Hawai'i Area Director and is also the pastor of a Hawaiian indigenous style church, "Ka 'Ohana o ke Aloha". Moani desires all to know the depth of ke Akua's aloha. |
Makaiwa Kanui, Mele Lahui (Songs of a Nation)
Birthing Songs of Love and Resistance 🅱️ (video not available) Makaiwa Kanui will be sharing and teaching an original song birthed while living with her family at the Puʻuhonua ʻO Puʻuhuluhulu in protection of Mauna Kea from the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). Birthing songs of love and resistance will focus on Mele Lāhui, the back story or each line and how it is a song not just for our Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) ʻOhana (family), but it is a song calling forth the nations to stand, and to heed to the cry and the call of Creator, creation, and our family and relatives near and far. Read about Makaiwa on the speaker's page. |
Tricia Ivanoff, Sacred Bodies: Living Whole, Living Well
🅱️ view on YouTube Tricia (Uquiliaq) Ivanoff is Inupiaq from Uŋalaqłiq, Alaska. She served on the design team for WJEF17 and was a speaker at that conference. She is currently pursing a dual masters degree (MDiv and MBA) from North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago. She has a growing passion for working toward the healing of Native people. She says, “I like to run, hike, read, travel, fish, cut fish, pick berries, and go boating and four-wheeling. I find myself thirsting for indigenous knowledge and wanting to pour my time into learning more about my traditional ways and learning my language.” |