#009: Mandisa Amber Wood is a California Bay Area, artist, dancer, educator, a food justice activist, and a Ph.D. student in the Sustainability Education program at Prescott College. She is a tenure-track faculty member at a local California community college in the Philosophy/Humanities Department. Her courses are grounded in theories and approaches that are inclusive and accessible to those impacted by systems of oppression, while also providing a critical lens for the analysis of structural racism, femicide, and other social issues.  Mandisa incorporates intuitive painting, performance, regenerative and permaculture design, and transformative learning in all of her teachings. Her emergent sacred research focuses on the embodied practices of women who perform indigenous dance forms for personal and collective healing. Mandisa is initiated in the Lucumí tradition; a nature-based spiritual tradition indigenous to West Africa and present throughout the diaspora. She is grateful for the opportunity to travel, teach, and learn in places where love is a key to resilience, wellbeing, and liberation.

Points covered in this episode: 

• Intersectional Feminism
• Shifting Structural Oppression 
• Cultural Appropriation
• Resources shared by Mandisa
• Love vs fear