A Sense of Place Webinar Series: Indigenous Perspectives of Earth, Water and Sky - YAKANAL: Rekindling Our Ancestral Relationship to Place
YAKANAL engages Indigenous youth in cultural exchanges and cultural preservation programs of local impact, offering unique opportunities to share rich cultures and traditional knowledge. The program brings together multi-generational groups of Pueblo participants from New Mexico with Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec, and other Indigenous groups from Latin America to engage them in immersive cultural exchange experiences. YAKANAL joins the words for “corn” in the Western Keres and Yucatec Mayan languages, honoring a mutual and sacred relationship with our ancestral food. Our mission is “To strengthen cultural identity and leadership capacities in Indigenous youth, preparing them to engage with other cultures while preserving their own.” Featuring speakers Isabel Hawkins, PhD from Exploratorium in San Francisco, and Shelly Valdez, PhD President of Native Pathways, Laguna NM.