Parliament of Worlds Religion 2009 Melbourne Australia

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

Page 337

PROGRAM DE
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
2:30-4:00pm ENGAGEMENT SESSION
for Ainu & Indigenous Studies. Her focus of study is Ainu Child Raising Traditions and Their Effect on Future Generations Tsugio Kuzuno is an Ainu elder and spiritual speaker from Shizunai. Hokkaido, Japan. Mr Kuzuno is noted for winning first prize in the 2nd Ainu Oratorical Contest in November of 1998. This is an event that brings participants, students, elders and the community together to get in touch with the Ainu language and culture. Oki Kano was born near Tokyo, Japan, in Kanagawa Prefecture. He shares his Ainu heritage through his music by playing the ancient Ainu stringed instrument, the tonkori. He has been involved with the United Nations Committee for Human Rights on the subject of land rights and discrimination against Indigenous Peoples, particularly the way those issues have affected his Ainu community.
Murray Darling Basin. Sylvie Shaw will then present on the Brisbane River and discuss the emergence of a 'River Ethic' as a potential approach to renewing our human-river relationship. Participants of this session will be taken on these journeys and learn about issues of sustainability. relationship and transition in these water-dependent regions. We will then invite participants to work with the relevant themes of water, community and spirituality in relation to contexts of ecological degradation. Elyse Rider has worked in community development in Australia and internationally. Her project work is based in Borderlands Cooperative, a community development and social work cooperative in Melbourne where she is on the Board of Directors. She works with disadvantaged communities in health promotion. Elyse is a PhD candidate in the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University. She is Chair of Green Faith Australia, an organisation she was active in founding. Sylvie Shaw lectures in religion at the University of Queensland. She is a passionate advocate for the environment and is currently researching the social and spiritual impact of the decline of fisheries on fishers and their families. She has co-edited 'Deep Blue: Critical Reflections on Nature, Religion and Water' with Andrew Francis (RMIT University). Her desire is to embrace the blue as an essential element of our beautiful green world. Carol McDonough is a community designer and organiser passionately committed to local water futures for survivability of seriously at-risk farm town communities. She has a long history working at the community level on issues of sustainability, poverty and Indigenous rights. A member of GreenFaith Australia, she is currently Convener of Water is Life, Mount Alexander, and a Steering Committee member of both MAP2020 the Shire Community Plan and Transition MA. Jamel K Dhillon has been working with communities and cross-cultural understanding since the age of seven when her parents started the MultiFaith Association of South Australia. Since then she has worked with Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities around the world. She has a degree in Administration Management, majoring in Aboriginal Affairs and Psychology. Recently, she has taken on positions in the Centre of Melbourne MultiFaith & Others Network (COMMON) and is currently the Project Manager for Green Faith Australia.
Ainu Indigenous Spirituality and Culture of Japan Asayo Horibe, USA: Buddhist Ryoko Foose, Japan: Ainu Tsugio Kuzuno, Japan: Ainu elder Oki Kano, Japan: Ainu Room 214 Special Panel
Building Cities of Harmony A team of local government representatives, led by
Rabbi Aviva Kipen Athalia Zwartz Room 215 Panel Discussion
Building Cities of Harmony is the vision of all communities. For two years, the Parliament of the World's Religions has worked with Melbourne's international Symposium Team to create a new type of interfaith program for cities, using a model of teamwork as the requirement of community engagement. This session narrates the process of the International Team Building Symposium's creation and development, telling the story of the strategic partnering alliance formed with the Victorian Local Governance Association (LGA), which has been the link to city municipalities in Victoria. Rabbi Aviva Kipen, the Symposium's Program Director for 2009 will MC the presentation team. The team includes: local city officers in discussion about team building and policy development within their own municipalities; Dr David Wilson, who will launch the structural legacy of this phase of preparation, and VLGA partners, whose experience in a range of communal settings will demonstrate the range of performance benchmarks at work in assessing the progress of the interreligious efforts here. In complex layers of accountability, elected Mayors and Councillors, paid employees of cities and residents who pay local city taxes grapple with sometimes-conflicting agendas to deliver programs for the good of residents. Their tensions, successes and failures are the crux of this commentary session. Rabbi Aviva Kipen, the first Australian woma rienced in international interreligious dialogue, education and innovative programming. Former Executive Secretary for the World Conference of Religions for Peace in Australia and a 2008 Australian Association of Southeast Asian Nations interfaith dialogue participant, she designed and delivered Victoria's Multi-faith Celebration of the Australian Centenary Her core ministries have been as congregational rabbi, funeral and loss specialist, and researcher into the work of clergy in Human Research Ethics Committees. Athalia Zwartz is a research and project officer at the Australian Multicultural Foundation
After decades of forced assimilation and dispossession of their Indigenous landbase, in 2008 the Ainu won recognition as Indigenous inhabitants of Japan by the government of Japan. The years of invisibility have cost the Ainu communities their culture, language and self-governance. This panel will discuss this recognition and what it means for the Ainu to reclaim their place in Japan as an Indigenous people. Asayo Horibe is the President of the Buddhist Council of the Midwest, an organisation for all Buddhist groups in Chicago and the Midwest region In 1989, she also became the first President of the Heartland Sangha in Evanston, Illinois. She serves as a secretary for the Asian Advisory Council for the Illinois Secretary of State, Jesse White. She is a lay minister and has also worked as a registered nurse for over 45 years. Ryoko Foose was born in 1962, in Hokkaido, Japan, in the Pacific Ocean coastal town of Niikappu. Her mother Emiko was of Ainu descent. In 1988, Ryoko became a member of the spiritual organisation Shinji Shumeikai. In 2007, Ryoko became a member of the Hokkaido University Centre
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