Featured Speakers
Manulani Aluli Meyer
Manulani Aluli Meyer is the fifth daughter of Emma Aluli and Harry Meyer. She is from a large family with roots in Wailuku, Kohala, Hilo and Kailua. Her ohana are dedicated to Hawaiian health, law, education, arts, music and justice. She was an outdoor experiential educator and coach who entered the philosophy and teacher-education field because of the needs of our time. She earned her doctorate from Harvard researching Hawaiian epistemology, or an indigenous philosophy of knowledge specific to her homeland Hawaii-nui-akea.
Manu is dedicated to transforming ideas of intelligence, research, and science to better address the needs and honor the unique contributions of native peoples. She is currently an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Hawaii in Hilo and a founding member of Halau Wanana, a Hawaiian Center of Higher Learning preparing teachers for licensure in the Hawaiian charter schools. She was also part of the first WINHEC accreditation team – World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium, who worked to accredit programs in the Maori system of higher education. She helps in the Food Sovereignty movement on all islands and is part of a large community garden at the Hilo Boys and Girls Club. She is widely published and travels throughout the world enjoying her relations in a multitude of movements. Her book: Ho`oulu: Our Time of Becoming, is in its second printing. She grew up in the ocean surfing and exploring beaches and mountain streams. She is a wahine kalai pohaku, a woman who carves stones.
Velcrow Ripper
Velcrow Ripper is a lot like his movies -- friendly, hopeful, full of electrifying ideas.
Ripper, 45, is an award-winning filmmaker with dozens of films and videos under his belt, including Bones of the Forest and Scared Sacred; the latter was named one of Canada's Top 10 movies of 2004, and won the 2005 Genie (Canadian Academy Award) for best feature documentary. Bones of the Forest, his 1995 environmental meditation,was co-directed with Heather Frise and won nine major film awards, including a Genie for best feature-length documentary and best of the festival at Hot Docs.
His other movies include Open Season and In The Company
of Fear; he's also the award-winning sound designer on
such films as The Corporation and Eve and the Fire
Horse. Busy guy.
Ripper's newest movie, Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets
Action, was shown here last weekduring the Hot Docs!
documentary film festival, wowing audiences with its
investigation of how we are connected to each other and
to this planet.
Ripper's film takes us around the world, and he talks to philosophers, wise men,politicians, human-rights activists and environmentalists. The film's message of hope and change is delivered via magnificent visuals.
"On the deepest level, the film is about bringing together the head and the heart. I've been a spiritual seeker my whole life, but I've had a tendency to think of spirituality as something out there, or upthere," says the filmmaker, gesturing in the usual celestial direction."And in my own life I'm realizing more and more that spirituality is down here on earth, in every interaction, in the way we move through this life we have, this one precious life. It's not about something later on, or someplace else. It's right here in this moment, in every breath."
-Liz Braun, Toronto Sun READ MORE
For more information please visit this site:
http://www.fiercelight.org/thefilm/director/velcrow-ripper