Parliament of Worlds Religion 2009 Melbourne Australia

Author(s): Parliament of the World’s Religions
Publisher: USA Parliament of the Worlds Religions

Page 217

PROGRAM
Saturday, December 5, 2009
4:30-6:00pm OPEN SPACE
OPENSPACE 4:30-6:00pm
Dr Ahangamage Tudor Ariyaratne is the founder and president of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement. He was the recipient of the 1996 Gandhi Peace Prize, the Niwano Peace Prize, the King Beaudoin Award and many other international honours for his work in peacemaking and village development in Sri Lanka,
Movement Mudra of Traditional Solonese Dance Eko Kadarsih Room 102 Interactive Workshop
Landscape of Faith: Sharing Wisdom for a New Vision of Community - Part III: Addressing Alienation within the Human Family and with the Natural World Oren Lyons Jake Swamp Room 220 Seminar This one-day, interfaith educational seminar seeks to provide a context for community building by addressing the challenges of prejudice, injustice and alienation from the earth while weaving the theme of the possibility of transformation through the arts throughout the day. Participants are asked to attend all four sessions. Chief Lyons will give the history of colonialism in the United States during which time the First Peoples were stripped of their rights as stewards of the land they had been living on for generations. In 1493 the Doctrine of Discovery was the legal document that set the precedence for disenfranchising Indigenous peoples. The loss of stewardship by the First Peoples created a number of problems, resulting in an alienation that has had serious ecological consequences. Jake Swamp will describe his environmental nonprofit organisation, 'The Tree of Peace Society, and his work to inspire the planting of over 200 million trees. He will also explain the work that he and Chief Lyons began at the Grand Council meeting in July of 2009 of the Haudenosaunee Six Nations. During this session they will call for action from the religious community to address these legal and ecological issues. Chief Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy, is a powerful and passionate spokesperson for Indigenous human rights and spiritual perspectives. An environmental champion, he speaks around the world, is active at the United Nations, and is widely known through his writings. He is a Professor Emeritus, in American Studies, SUNY Buffalo and the co-author of 'Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations and the U.S. Constitution'. Jake Swamp is employed with the Men for Change Program, part of the lethini'sten ha Family Violence Shelter. He is a former leader of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation and was involved directly in the creation of the Akwesasne Freedom School - an acclaimed Mohawk language immersion school that has been an inspiration to many First Nation peoples in the United States and Canada.
Yayasan Dharma Samuan Tiga is a nonprofit public foundation in Bedulu, Bali, Indonesia dedicated to maintaining and supporting the spirit of conciliation that arose in the interfaith meeting at Samuan Tiga Temple in the year 1011. The foundation strives to promote intercultural collaboration through sharing in the arts and religiosity among cultures in Indonesia and among nations throughout the world. In this program, Eko Kadarsih will guide participants through a sequence of movement mudras from the traditional Solonese dance of Central Java. Meditative silence transforming in posture and gesture cultivates fluid equanimity, awareness, dignity and inner and outer harmony. Eko Kadarsih, of Solo, Central Java, Indonesia, is a leading performer of classical palace dances of the Karaton Surakarta. Since 1986, Eko has performed with the karaton artist's delegation and as an independent artist in several Indonesian provinces, and in Jakarta, Asia, Europe and the USA. She holds a degree in literature.
The Practicalities of Getting from 'Is' to 'Ought': Religion, Science and Ethics James Doty Antje Jackelén Soloman Katz Nomanul Haq Room 105 As social, political and ecological crises mount round the world, the collaboration between religion and science is urgently needed to address these challenges. Sadly much of the current public debate about the relationship between religion and science deals with outmoded categories, paradigms and trains of thought from two hundred years ago or more. The proper and practical roles that religion and science each needs to play in today's world are still linked by the discipline of ethics, and the perennial underlying philosophical question of the relationship of 'is' to 'ought. While this question may be ultimately philosophical in nature, now implications of how we answer it could not be more practical. What do science and religion each bring to contemporary ethical deliberations? Using case studies examples, this program will highlight the relevance of a proper understanding of the relationship of religion to science, and its practical application, in matters of public discourse, societal values, and humane progress. James Doty is the director and founder of Project Compassion and a Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery at Stanford University. In addition to being a neurosurgeon, he is also an inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist. As founder of Project Compassion, Dr Doty works with both the
www.parliamentofreligions.org 213