Cultural

We invite you to join us for our signature World Café event this winter quarter! Mark your calendars and come taste complimentary coffee, teas, & snacks from around the world! The entire UCLA community is welcome to attend this free event. This event is a great opportunity to meet and mingle with other globally-minded folks at UCLA! Dashew swag for the first 150 attendees, and other prizes from Dashew and Wescom Financial will be given throughout the event! This event is presented by Dashew Center, Wescom Financial, and ASUCLA.

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BRAID Community Gathering: Books, Stories, and Collective Care for Incarcerated American Indian & Indigenous Peoples Come to a gathering centered on connection, learning, and collective care, hosted in collaboration with the UCLA American Indian Studies Center. The afternoon will bring together community members, artists, educators, and advocates to reflect on the work of the American Indian Studies Center’s BRAID Program (Books & Resources for American Indians in Detention), a community-led initiative that provides culturally meaningful books and educational resources to incarcerated American Indian and Indigenous relatives. Through storytelling and cultural practices, the gathering will create space to address resilience, responsibility, and the importance of maintaining relationships across systems of confinement and separation. The program will feature reflections from American Indian community members with lived experience of incarceration, alongside Shannon Rivers, Native American spiritual leader, human rights activist, and cultural advisor. Speakers will share insights into cultural continuity, healing, and the role of knowledge-sharing as a form of care. The afternoon will include an opening prayer, music and dance, Native American community resources tables, and a guided tour of the Fowler Museum’s Fire Kinship exhibition. Participants will also have the option to learn more about BRAID’s work and contribute to the community book drive by bringing gently used books or educational materials. This program is in partnership with the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA, the Bruin Underground Scholars program at UCLA, and the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy

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Join us on Tuesday, February 10, from 12 PM - 2 PM in the Dashew Center (Bradley Hall) to watch the Winter Olympics! We’ll be streaming Women’s Hockey as Finland competes against Switzerland! This event is presented by UCLA Dashew Center and Wescom Financial. We will be offering light refreshments and free swag for the first 30 attendees. Registration is recommended but not required.

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In this program, Allison Fischer-Olson, repatriation coordinator & curator of Native American cultures at the Fowler Museum, will discuss the NAGPRA process and share insights into what it conducting compliance work within the museum. Allison Fischer-Olson is the repatriation coordinator and curator of Native American cultures at UCLA, where she leads the university’s efforts in compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). A UCLA alumna (B.A. ’10, M.A. ’14), she previously served as the Fowler Museum’s assistant curator of archaeology and was a project coordinator for Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles. Before returning to UCLA, she worked as an archivist, researcher, and co-executive director at the Lane County History Museum in Eugene, Oregon. She holds degrees in anthropology and American Indian/Native American studies.

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Mindfulness educator Mitra Manesh will lead a contemplative art viewing session in the exhibition Intersections: World Arts/Local Lives. Held 11 am–12 pm, before the museum opens to the public, this quiet hour will offer a rare opportunity to experience the galleries in peace and stillness. Through mindfulness practices, participants will deepen their connection to both the artworks and their own self-awareness. Mitra Manesh, a graduate of UCLA’s mindfulness facilitation program and senior mindfulness educator, brings decades of experience coaching leaders in diverse fields, from Fortune 500 companies to art institutions, including collaborations with Amazon, UCLA Anderson School of Management, the Hammer Museum, and more. A former Human Rights Commissioner and recipient of the 50th Golden Jubilee Medal from Queen Elizabeth II, Manesh integrates a unique blend of mindfulness, creativity, and insight. This program is in partnership with UCLA Mindful

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Join us on Tuesday, February 17, from 10:30 AM - 2 PM in the Dashew Center (Bradley Hall) to watch the Winter Olympics! We’ll be streaming the Men's Freeski Final & the Men's Hockey Playoff. This event is presented by UCLA Dashew Center and Wescom Financial. We will be offering light refreshments and free swag for the first 30 attendees.

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12:30–1 PM – Curator-led walk-through of Fire Kinship 1:30–2 PM – Screening of the extended trailer for MAATHAAW 2:15–4 PM – Panel conversation in Lenart Auditorium 4:30–6:30PM – CIBA demonstration and open workshop on the Terrace *Schedule is subject to change. Join us for a special screening and conversation centered on MAATHAAW: The Fire Within Us, an Indigenous-led documentary exploring the cultural, emotional, and scientific relationships Southern California Tribes have with the gift of fire. Featured in the exhibition Fire Kinship: Southern California Native Ecology & Art, the film highlights the enduring resilience of Indigenous communities and the vibrancy of traditional ecological knowledge. As the greater Southwest faces intensifying wildfires and the escalating impacts of climate change, MAATHAAW foregrounds Indigenous leadership in climate adaptation, land stewardship, and cultural revitalization. Following the screening of the extended trailer, director and producer Andrew Pittman will be joined by Indigenous experts Wes Ruise, William Madrigal, and Joelene Tamm for a panel conversation on traditional fire stewardship in Southern California, moderated by Daisy Ocampo Diaz and Lina Tejeda. Panelists will discuss cultural burning practices, tribal approaches to vegetation management, and how longstanding fire knowledge can inform contemporary strategies for resilience and ecological care. The afternoon concludes with a demonstration and open workshop led by the California Indian Basketweaving Association (CIBA), exploring the relationship between fire, ecology, and traditional basketweaving. Dr. Daisy Ocampo Diaz (Caxcan) is an Associate Professor of History at CSU San Bernardino. Her research in Native and Public History informs her work with museum exhibits, historical preservation projects, and community-based archives. Her book Where We Belong dispels the harmful myth that Native people are unfit stewards of their sacred places. This work establishes Indigenous preservation practices as sustaining approaches to the caretaking of the land that embody ecological sustainability, spiritual landscapes, and community well-being. William Madrigal (Cahuilla and Luiseño) is the Tribal Capacities and Partnerships Program Manager at Climate Science Alliance. He works with Southern California Tribal Nations to advance Tribally-led climate resilience projects. Will is a Native educator, language teacher, and cultural resource manager with extensive experience in tribal government and intertribal programs. His scholarship centers on California Indian history, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and decolonial perspectives, emphasizing the preservation and transmission of Indigenous knowledge and culture. Andrew James Pittman (Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla and Cupeno; Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel) is a video producer and co-owner of Condor Visual Media, a family-run production company with over a decade of experience. He and his wife, Lisset Valencia-Pittman, documents and amplifies Indigenous voices and stories through visual media, supporting the preservation and sharing of tribal history, culture, and contemporary creativity. Wesley G. Ruise Jr. (Luiseño, Digueño, Mojave) is the Chairman of the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, a third-generation wildland firefighter, fire chief of the La Jolla Reservation Fire Department, and Indigenous Forestry and Fuels Crew Advisor with the Climate Science Alliance. With nearly 40 years of fire and emergency service experience, he supports Tribal fire management, cultural burning initiatives, and climate resilience projects while training and mentoring the next generation of Tribal fire stewards. Joelene Tamm (Squaxin Island Tribal Member) is a researcher and community leader recognized with the 2023 Climate Leadership Award. She is the Director of Natural Resources for the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, and spends her time researching oak mortality in Southern California. She focuses on forest health, invasive species mitigation, and cultural fire practices, building capacity and resilience within Tribal communities. Joelene is a founding member of the Southern California Fire, Fuels, and Forestry Cadre and works to integrate Indigenous knowledge with climate adaptation strategies. Lina Tejeda is Pomo from her tribal homelands in Northern California and of Mexican heritage from Nayarit. She holds a Master’s degree in History from California State University, San Bernardino with a focus on California Indian studies, museum studies, and public history. Tejeda is deeply committed to advocating for the return of sacred cultural items to the tribal nations from which they originate and to telling the true histories of California Indian peoples within institutional settings. In her spare time, she is a traditional Pomo dancer and actively engages in learning and performing such cultural practices as basket weaving, materials gathering, regalia making, singing

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In our deeply fractured world, religion serves both to connect and offer wisdom and to foster conflict and division. Over the course of centuries, it has been frequently invoked to justify brutal violence, but can it be an effective tool to advance justice? To explore different perspectives on the topic of faith, forgiveness, and justice, we will be joined by a distinguished panel of religious leaders: Father Greg Boyle, Rabbi Sharon Brous, Valarie Kaur, and Imam Dr. Jihad Turk. Father Greg Boyle is a Jesuit priest and director of Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program. Rabbi Sharon Brous is the senior and founding Rabbi of IKAR, a Jewish spiritual community in Los Angeles. Valarie Kaur is a civil rights leader and activist, filmmaker, educator, best-selling author, and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project, a movement to reclaim love as a force for justice. Imam Dr. Jihad Turk is the founding President of Bayan Islamic Graduate School, a preeminent Muslim institution of higher education. Event time TBD. Registration link coming soon.

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