NatureSpeaks

Screen NatureSpeaks Here

We want to hear from YOU.  After the event, please take a few minutes to respond to this short survey.

Your feedback is one of the most valuable contributions you can offer us. There’s a link to the survey in the chat. Thank you!

NatureSpeaks is a one and a half hour online experience of film, spoken word, poetry,creative nonfiction and community dialogue that evokes the language of buffalo, wolverine, jaguar— grasslands, rivers, and mountains in collaboration with WCS Rockies, Street Poets Inc. and the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Street Poets Inc. was born from a poetry writing workshop that began in a Los Angeles County Juvenile Probation Camp back in 1995. Over the past 25 years, Street Poets has brought deep-rooted poetry practices to classrooms, detention centers and community sites from Los Angeles to the Navajo and Apache Reservations in Arizona, to Belize, Europe, Africa and beyond. Whether facilitating virtual circles, laying down tracks in our recording studio, or performing live from our Poetry in Motion van, Street Poets harnesses the healing power of poetry and music to build community and inspire our next generation to write, rap and dream a new world into being for us all. Like nature, we are resilient, sometimes more than a little wild, and highly collaborative. We believe in the power of the herd, and are always looking to join ours with others. To learn more visit: streetpoetsinc.com

Founder and Executive Director of Street Poets Inc., Chris Henrikson, has over 25 years of experience teaching poetry and mentoring youth and young adults within and around Los Angeles County educational and juvenile justice systems. He has served as a consultant and retreat facilitator for a wide range of companies and organizations including Snap Inc. and the Ant-Recidivism Coalition, for which he leads homecoming retreats for formerly incarcerated adults. Chris also has served as a keynote speaker and conference panelist exploring youth rites of passage, arts-based violence intervention strategies, creative community building, the healing arts and alternatives to incarceration. Originally from Boston, Chris is a graduate of Duke University (B.A. English) and the American Film Institute (M.F.A. Screenwriting). He worked as an arts journalist in New York City and later as a screenwriter in Hollywood before a volunteer teaching stint in the Los Angeles juvenile detention camp in 1995 inspired him to create Street Poets. He sits on the board for the Arts for Healing & Justice Network and Wolf Connection, a wolf-dog sanctuary and education retreat center one hour from downtown L.A.  View “Can Poety Change A Person”

The Rocky Mountain Program sits at the wild heart of North America. In the next decade, we envision elevating the stature of the Rockies Program as a globally significant conservation success story where priority ecological and cultural keystone species move across connected wild and working lands at scale, resilient in the face of a changing climate, valued and conserved by decision makers and the diverse cultures and communities who call the Rocky Mountains home. Our mission is to draw on new and existing science, policy expertise, strategic partnerships, storytelling, and citizen mobilization and movement building to rewild and reconnect primary working and wild landscapes and waterways and advance a 21st century conservation model that breathes life into the principles of equity and justice. To learn more visit: rockies.wcs.org

Cristina Mormorunni, Rocky Mountain Program Regional Director, was born in San Francisco during the hey-day of the Summer of Love. It should come as no surprise that she was thus marked at birth as a provocateur, an agent of change, a rebel, a purposeful nomad fluent in the language of passion and spitfire. Beginning when she was a wee one, Cristina dedicated her life to the conservation of wild nature and the advancement of social justice and equity. She has been hell-bent on transforming our world into a more beautiful, artful, compassionate, and healing place ever since. Cristina has worked in the non-profit arena for over twenty-five years and has developed and led numerous conservation campaigns for international NGOs, as well as extensive experience designing and evaluating investment strategies for philanthropic organizations and family foundations. From the Far North to Northern Australia, from South America to the Antarctic, Cristina has worked in diverse cultural, ecological, and political landscapes. At its core, her work is about supporting, connecting, and deepening the relationships that link culture, environment, and economy—and connect us as humans. Cristina received her academic training at Connecticut College and the University of Washington’s Graduate School of Marine Affairs, where she focused her master’s research on Indigenous-led conservation models and community-driven systems for marine conservation in the North Pacific. She recently completed her MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute for American Indian Arts.

At  Institute of American Indian Arts, the spirit and vision of Native American and Alaska Native people is our first priority. Founded on October 1, 1962, the Institute of American Indian Arts offers academic excellence to both Native and non-Native populations. Our goal is empowerment through education, economic self-sufficiency, and expression and enhancement of artistic and cultural traditions. We take great pride in preparing students to pursue a life rich with ideas, expression, and moral values. We are ensuring a continual flow of leadership to carry our heritage and traditions forward. Our faculty, many of whom are Native, leaders, and IAIA graduates, give witness to the positive impact IAIA’s unique environment and influence have had on their lives.

Carey Powers is a poet and first-time writing instructor at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she graduated with an MFA in Poetry in 2019. She has been involved with the IAIA community for 5 years as an undergraduate student, a graduate student, a Youth Outreach Fellow, a teaching assistant, and now as an instructor. She is grateful for this incredible community and continues to learn from it every day. In 2019, she taught poetry workshops to elementary students in the Santa Fe area as part of the MFA and Continuing Education Department’s Suicide Prevention Initiative. Her MFA thesis explored metaphor as a teacher of empathy, relation, autonomy, and interconnection in a poem and in the world. She is currently at work drafting ideas for future projects related to providing spaces for people to tell their stories and heal through art and poetry. Originally from California, she has lived in Santa Fe for eight years with dear friends and family.