In this episode, I welcome Dr Lyla June Johnston, a multi-genre Indigenous musician, scholar, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages to explore what it means to learn from Indigenous cultures in a non-extractivist way. This episode is part of the recorded series from the International Festival of Ideas, held in May 2024.

Lyla's conversation is an honest look into how we can move from an embedded colonial-settler mindset when engaging with Indigenous peoples and knowledge to a collaborative and decolonial relationship - asking the question "how can I help, if at all?"

She has engaged audiences around the globe towards personal, collective, and ecological healing, blending her study of Human Ecology at Stanford, graduate work in Indigenous Pedagogy, and the traditional worldview she grew up with to inform her music, perspectives and solutions.

She recently finished her PhD on the ways in which pre-colonial Indigenous Nations shaped large regions of Turtle Island (aka the Americas) to produce abundant food systems for humans and non-humans.

To see more of Lyla's work, visit her website to find her music, writings and speeches.

To find the recordings of conversations and events from the International Permaculture Festival of Ideas, visit the Permaculture Education Institute.

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