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Join us for the First Live Streaming Parliament! All Parliament plenaries, opening and closing as well as up to 100 major programs will be streamed live.
Pre-registration is required. Do forward this information to those who will not be able to attend the Parliament.
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774 people have already registered for the Golden banquet. It will be on Sunday October 18 from 11:30-1:30 PM. Some tickets are still available on a first come, first serve basis.
Please purchase your tickets today.
- To strengthen the interfaith movement
- Because the Interfaith movement has tripled in the last 10 years, but its funding did not increase much. A Harvard University survey of interfaith organizations points out that the #1 & #4 problems faced by interfaith organizations is the absence of financial support and the absence of professional staff. We must change that.
- To enjoy critical talks by Honorable Dr. Karen Armstrong and a specially recorded exclusive interview of His Holiness Dalai Lama, and more entertainment planned!
The Parliament took another bold step recently by offering grants to strengthen the grassroots interfaith movement. We have addressed funding foundations around the country encouraging them to consider increasing funding for the interfaith movement. But that is not enough. Your support through participation in the Golden Banquet is highly recommended to help the interfaith movement grow.
We know some of you were looking forward to hearing His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This is the reason that despite his illness, he recorded a special interview for you although he can now no longer be there in person.
This Banquet is to strengthen the interfaith movement and that cause is still valid.
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Native American and Alaska Natives alone number 3.08 million of the total US population of 304 million, or 1.01 percent of the nation's entire population. Native Americans lost more than 97.7 percent of land over the course of the American conquest. The signing of treaties, relocation, and epidemics accelerated the decrease of Native American population as well as land. (US Census)
This land grab continues. As recently as early this year, Oak Flat, a centuries-old sacred site for Native Americans in Arizona, was handed over to an international mining conglomerate by Congress earlier this year. Among all American Indians and Alaska Natives, about one-in-five (22%) live on reservations or tribal lands. (PEW)
Indigenous peoples have higher rates of disease, higher death rates, and a lack of medical coverage. (The Office of Minority Health)
At the present time there are 566 federally-recognized tribes in the USA.
Who is Indigenous?
Those ethnic groups that were indigenous to a territory prior to being incorporated into a national state, and who are politically and culturally separate from the majority ethnic identity of the state that they are a part of more than 100 tribes around the world choose to reject contact with outsiders.
104 Million Aboriginals in India
India probably has the largest concentration of indigenous people. There are 104 million aboriginal people in India called the Adivasi.
Indigenous Peoples at the Parliament
The 2009 Melbourne Parliament organized the first global interfaith assembly of the indigenous peoples. Many of the global indigenous leaders said it was the first time for their coming together. At the 2015 Parliament, an array of Indigenous Peoples will open and close the Parliament with a traditional welcoming procession and prayers.
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We are looking for some volunteers so that most of the programs and observations are tweeted in sync with each other. Please volunteer by clicking below. We will have a training webinar for it soon.
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It was the dehumanization of Jews in Germany that facilitated the silence of so many as Holocaust was taking place. The 2015 Parliament of the World’s Religions will feature a booth from the Holocaust Museum examining that phenomenon in the Exhibit Hall.
Were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima Nagasauki militarily necessary? By any rational yardstick, they were not. Japan already had been defeated militarily by June 1945. However, dehumanizing the Japanese people not only allowed the detention of Japanese Americans, but also the use of the atomic bomb.
We will have an installation from Hiroshima about the impact of that bombing in the Parliament Cultural Hall.
The interfaith movement focuses on humanizing the other. This is the reason we will also have an original hand cart at the Parliament which Mormons used when they fled religious persecution from Illinois to Utah.
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Join us in supporting the Declaration of Indigenous Communities by adding your signature and making a personal commitment, along with thousands of others.
"Led by this intent and power of the Creator, we call upon our Brothers and Sisters of conscience to declare with us these commitments to action:
Recognition and Respect of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights to Exist: We, Mother Earth's Medicine People, call for an end to proselytization by the monotheistic religions and claim our equal status with the major religions of the world. We refuse to be subjected to attempts to convert us away from the ways of our ancestors through evangelism, non-recognition of our rights to exist, limited access to resources, the continuing dispossession of lands, and acts of terrorism.
An End to the Desecration of Sacred Sites: We hold the Ancestors, the Mother Earth, Forces of Nature, mountains, rivers, oceans, streams, trees, winds, storms, and all living beings as sacred and worthy of reverence. This worldview is the key to reversing the path of disaster on which all inhabitants of our sacred Mother Earth tread. We invite all Brothers and Sisters of the Creator to invoke and respect the divine spirits of the natural world, thereby ending their desecration."
Read and sign all the Parliament's declarations:
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Meet the Leading Voices of Global Indigenous Communities Sharing Their Keynotes at the 2015 Parliament
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Chief Arvol Looking Horse
Chief Arvol Lookinghorse is the 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, widely recognized as a chief and spiritual leader of all three branches of the Sioux tribe. He has dedicated to the preservation and revival of Lakota traditions, beliefs and practices. His prayers have opened numerous sessions of the United Nations and his many awards include the Juliet Hollister Award from the Temple of Understanding. Chief Lookinghorse lives on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota. He continues to lecture on protecting religious practices and beliefs globally.
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 Ta'Kaiya Blaney
Ta'Kaiya Blaney, 13, is from the Tla’Amin First Nation and grew up along the shores of the Salish Sea in British Columbia. She is a singer-songwriter, actress, and environmental rights activist and has been speaking publically since the age of nine.
She advocates for providing better qualities of living in Indigenous First Nations territories, and ending the oppression, racism, and corruption they face from government and within the community. She has spoken in a UN meeting across the globe, including The TUNZA UN children and youth conference on the environment in Bandung Indonesia, and the Rio+20 UN conference on the environment in Rio de Janeiro.
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Chief Oren Lyons
Oren R. Lyons, Jr. is a Native American Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Lyons has been awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Syracuse University. He has been the recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, the National Audubon Society's Audubon Medal, the Earth Day International Award of the United Nations, and the Elder and Wiser Award of the Rosa Parks Institute for Human Rights. Lyons serves on the board of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and is board chairman of Honoring Contributions in the Governance of American Indian Nations. He is the publisher of Daybreak Magazine and has authored numerous books. He has also illustrated children's books in collaboration with Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve (Brulé Lakota).
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Wándé Abímbólá
Wándé Abímbólá is President and Founder of Ifa Heritage Institute. Deeply rooted in Yoruba oral tradition or Ifa, he received his Ph.D. in Yoruba Literature in 1970 from the University of Lagos. From 2003-2005 he was Special Adviser on Cultural Affairs and Traditional Matters to the President of Nigeria. He was installed as Spokesperson of Ifa in the Whole World in 1981 by the Ooni (King) of Ife on the recommendation of a conclave of West African Babalawos (high priests). The author of many books, he has taught at a number of leading universities in Nigeria and the USA.
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Rose Pere
Dr. Rangimarie Turuki Arikirangi Rose Pere is a Tohuna and a teacher of the Kura Huna, the traditional mystery school of the Maori. She is the elder of several major tribes and a Guardian of Earth Mother. Internationally sought after as a speaker and spiritual authority, Rose has spent her life as an educator of immense stature working in the world of Maori and non-Maori. She was the Young Maori Woman of the Year in 1972, awarded the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration medal. C.M. and became a Commander of the British Empire receiving her C.B.E. in 1996.
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Inija Trinkuniene
Inija Trinkuniene is the Krive (highest priestess) of the indigenous Baltic religion community of Romuva in Lithuania, and is a founding member of the European Congress of Ethnic Religions. As a young woman, in defiance of the Soviet authorities, she learned the pre-Christian traditions of her ancestors from the farmers and villagers who still preserved them. This led to the formation of Romuva, the community that has revitalized the Baltic indigenous religion in Lithuania. For many years, Inija Trinkuniene has played a central role in leading Romuva, and last November she became the first woman in the history of her country to be elected Krive. Inija Trinkuniene received an MA in Psychology from Vilnius National University, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Dev Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya University in Haridwar, India. She has published dozens of articles on ethnocultural studies, and has been a speaker at conferences in Europe, Asia and North America.
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Grandmother Flordemayo
Grandmother Flordemayo - Curandera Espiritu of the Maya People. Flordemayo was born and grew up in the highlands of Central America in a family of healer Mayan healers and raised by her mother a midwife. She travels the globe to share her healings and to foster a more spiritual understanding among humanity. She has been a founding member of the Church of the Spiritual Path, the Confederation of Indigenous Elders of the America, Institute of Natural and Traditional Knowledge, International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, and The Path.
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Margaret Lokawua
Ms Margaret Lokawua is a Karamojong indigenous woman from Uganda trained in the field of human rights specializing in conflict resolution. Ms. Lokawua is a coordinator or an indigenous women's organization the Northeastern part of Uganda and a former member of the UN Permanent forum on indigenous issues. She is also the Chairperson for Civil Society for Indigenous Organizations in Karamonja, as well as the Director of the Indigenous Women Environmental Conservation Project.
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Steven Newcomb
Steven Newcomb’s book "Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery” was published by Fulcrum in 2008. Newcomb’s scholarship challenges the Vatican pattern of domination and dehumanization found in papal documents from the fifteenth century that deeply influenced U.S. federal Indian law and policy. Filmmaker Sheldon Wolfchild (Dakota) and Mr. Newcomb (Shawnee, Lenape) have completed a compelling documentary entitled “The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code,” based on Newcomb’s research and scholarship.
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Wilson Aronilith
A well-known philosopher, educator, and spiritual leader who comes from the Navajo tribe, he is a self-identified Navajo man. He was born and raised in Tohanali, New Mexico and raised by his grandparents who passed down information about creation and sacred peyote ceremonial way of life, which began his journey to teach of the Navajo and Paoli ways of life within the Native American Church of North America. He incorporates modern and traditional ways of teaching and is well-known amongst the scholar community and Native American communities. He became a prestigious advocate and teacher for then NACNA an ABNDN.
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Darlene St. Clair
Professor St. Clair is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at St. Cloud State University and Director of their Multicultural Resource Center. St. Clair, an enrolled member of the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Morton, Minnesota, has taught courses in Dakota Culture and History in addition to serving as a program associate for the Dakota Language at the University of Minnesota.
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Uncle Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq
 Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, shaman, healer, storyteller and carrier of the Qilaut (winddrum) is a Kalallit Elder whose family belongs to the traditional healers of the far North from Kalallit Nunaat, Greenland. Angaangaq is an internationally respected Elder for the native communities of the Circumpolar Arctic, North and South America and Europe. Angaangaq bridges the boundaries of cultures and faiths in people young and old. His work has taken him to five continents and over 50 countries around the world. “Only by melting the ice in the heart of Man, does Man have a chance to change and begin using his knowledge wisely.” |
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 Arnold Thomas
Arnold W. Thomas is a member of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribal Nations of the Great Basin region in the western United States. Mr. Thomas has received National certification as the first ever Chaplin from the American Indian Tribal Faith traditions. In 2011 he was ordained as a "Holy One." From 2004 to 2014 he conducted traditional ceremonies for the Salk Lake City Veterans Medical Hospital. Arnold obtained a Master's in Social Work in 1999 and is the owner of a successful motivational consulting speaking firm, White Buffalo Knife Inc., Salt Lake City, Utah.
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Lewis Cardinal
 Lewis Cardinal, a Parliament of the World's Religions Trustee, has spent most of his professional life in public service. As a communicator and educator, he has dedicated his work to creating and maintaining connections and relationships that cross cultural divides. His long track record of public service includes his involvement with many Human Rights and Social Advocacy Boards. Lewis is also the owner of Cardinal Strategic Communications, a consulting company that specializes in Education, Governance, and Communications. He recently received Canada’s highest Aboriginal recognition award the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Public Service, as well as several other awards. |
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“Plenary Sessions” are sessions that are meant for everyone to attend. They are the only event taking place in their respective time-slots so you won’t miss anything; they are in halls large enough to accommodate the entirety of the Parliament, they deal with subject matter that is broadly relevant, and they contain performances that you won’t want to miss!
Don’t let the names mislead you. The “Emerging Leaders” plenary is not meant to be attended exclusively by youth; rather, it is an event organized and performed by emerging leaders, and it promises to be an energetic and dynamic night for all.
Likewise, the “Indigenous Peoples” plenary is not targeting only the indigenous members of the Parliament; it is a celebration of indigenous heritage and culture, designed to be shared with all attendees. The Plenary Sessions have been unforgettable at each of the past Parliaments, and this year’s Plenary Sessions will be no exception! We will see you there!
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We cannot emphasize enough the importance of downloading and using the Parliament app. You can browse all of the events and speakers and create your personal schedule. The app is your key for navigating the 2015 Parliament.
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