Animals & Us - Voices of a New Paradigm Avantika Mathur & Dr. Barbara Shor

If you have ever been interested in Native American perspectives on the natural world, animal stories, and how we can heal the Earth, Dan Wahpepah is your guy. He has a wealth of knowledge and wisdom, based on years of experience in learning about the Red Road. Here are some of the topics he shared on this interview:
The importance of food in native life, including a discussion about food forests vs gardens. How the “grain culture” has had such a great impact on our world. Plants and animals as “elder relatives.”Egosystem vs ecosystem. How colonization created cognitive dissonance.Everything is connected and how each elder relative has something to teach us, some particular kind of medicine.Dan shares some wonderful animal stories, including two versions of a creation story about how Turtle Island, or America, was formed.How to live with an abundance mindset, using give-aways and plantings, to create an economy based on nature.We all chose to be here now because we each have medicine to give. We are here to bring hope in this time of great transition.Daniel Wahpepah grew up immersed in American Indian Movement culture and traditional ways. His father is a spiritual leader and his uncle founded the West Coast AIM. Dan switched schools 18 times as he traveled extensively with his father, learning about the Red Road. He eventually landed on the reservation where he participated and held an officer's position in ceremony at the age of 18. He eventually moved away from the rez and now lives in Oregon on Rogue/Shasta unceded territories.
Dan is a trained permaculture designer as well as an esteemed teacher, consultant, and speaker about native American ways. He founded Red Earth Descendants, a Native based non-profit serving Southern Oregon since 2005.

For more information about Dan, visit his website at:
https://www.danwahpepah.com

In this episode, we talk about the upcoming 2023 International Multispecies Methods Research Symposium - what it is, why it's happening, and who should come. We discuss the event in detail, which is taking place virtually from May 8-12, 2023. 

Tickets are available until May 5, 2023. 

For more info, visit https://iic2023.eventbrite.com/ or check out @iic.symposium2023 on Instagram.

Scott Beckstead is the director of campaigns for Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action. He worked as an attorney in private practice for 17 years on the central Oregon coast before going to work full-time in the animal protection sector. During his time on the coast he also served as the mayor of Waldport, Oregon from 2002 to 2007.

He became known for his special expertise in the field of animal law, and has taught that subject at the University of Oregon and Willamette University law schools. In 2000, he co-authored Animal Law, the first casebook on the subject, and continues to teach animal law, wildlife law and policy. 

From 2008 to 2020, Scott served in a multitude of roles for the Humane Society of the United States, including Oregon state director, equine protection specialist, and Rural Outreach director; he also helped lead a successful ballot measure campaign in 2016 to ban the trade in endangered wildlife in Oregon.

Because of his close familiarity with horses, livestock, and farm animals, Scott provides training to law enforcement agencies on how to handle and work with those animals, and how to investigate equine and livestock cruelty and neglect. He lives in Sutherlin, Oregon with his family, which includes four adult kids and two grandkids, as well as three dogs.

Here are some topics we discussed:
What led Scott to become a lawyer specializing in animal law after growing up as a rancher.How he copes with the sadness and disappointment he encounters every day in his legal work, dealing with animal abuse.His passion and focus on important wild horse issues.Scott's silly dogs and how they appear on their own social media sites.Why he loves cows.Scott's views about animal sentience, intelligence, and consciousness.What people can do to help animals avoid suffering and neglect.
https://www.facebook.com/scott.beckstead1

Zoom Atti Zoom on instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/zoom_atti_zoom/

50 Shades of Divvy on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100067056872969

In this episode, we sit down and chat with Dr. Colleen Dell, an award winning researcher who focuses on animal assisted therapy and mental health research. Colleen and her animal companions have gone into hospitals, prisons, COVID vaccination clinics and many other places to help humans with their health and well-being. The therapy dogs seem to know just what we humans need, and are able to comfort us, love us, and support us in so many ways. Colleen shares some beautiful stories about the impact that dogs have made on the lives of prisoners, people who were scared of getting vaccine injections, etc. She shares how emotionally intelligent and sentient these dogs can be, knowing exactly what people need, how to connect with them, and how to give them love and comfort.  
We talk about how she got started in the field of animal assisted intervention research, some of the work that her and the dogs have done together, animal consciousness, the human-animal bond and relationship, and interspecies communication. 

She also tells us about a randomized control trial (the first of its kind!) where they took dogs into the ER of a hospital and observed the outcomes. This study has been downloaded over 10,000 times! 

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Colleen Anne Dell (PhD) was appointed the Centennial Enhancement Chair in One Health and Wellness at the University of Saskatchewan in 2016 for a five year term, with a focus on addiction and mental health. Her position was renewed for a second five year term in 2021. 
Dr. Dell has a Google Scholar h-index of 30. She has been awarded $5.4 million as a Principal Investigator in CIHR grants alone, and an additional $20.3 million as a co-Investigator and Supervisor. As a Professor, she has published over 85 innovative peer-reviewed journal articles, with lead authorship in over half, contributed over two dozen book chapters, and 57 technical reports.  
Dr. Dell is a public sociologist and Professor in the Department of Sociology, with an Associate appointment in the School of Public Health. She is also a Senior Research Associate with the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, Canada’s national non-governmental addictions agency. Dr. Dell is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University and a past Research Associate with the Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Centre. She is a 2013 graduate of the Canine Behaviour Psychology Academy, Extreme K-9 Professional Dog Training school, in Illinois, USA and completed a certificate course in animal assisted therapy and activities at Harcum College in 2014. In 2020 she completed the Nonhuman Nature Research Methods course at the Kerulos Centre for Nonviolence. She has thousands of hours of practice providing community-based animal assisted intervention (AAI) services since 2013, and has been a committed community volunteer in the areas of social justice, inclusion and equity since 1993. 

Find out more about Colleen at https://colleendell.com/

Recently, Janean Strong invited me, Barbara Shor, to be interviewed on her podcast. The name of her podcast is Keepin It Real with Janean.

We had a delightful conversation that I would like to share with you. Janean also communicates with animals, so it was fun to trade stories.

In our conversation, I share about how I went from working as a veterinarian to becoming an animal communicator more than 30 years ago.   We discuss what animal communication is, how it works, and how you can know if you are on track by paying attention to validation signals.

We talk about elephant consciousness, who they are and why they are here. And about my new book, soon to be published, called Soul of the Wild Book ll: The Wisdom of Elephants.

I share about my recent trip to Africa. If you would like to go to Bit Chute or Rumble and watch this podcast, you'll see a slide show of some of the animal photos I took while I was there.

Janean and I also talked about how to win the love and trust of animals, especially wild ones. And about my experience of swimming with a humpback mother whale and her baby in Tonga. And finally, I share about the brilliance of our own companion animals and give some tips about how to connect with and communicate with them.

I hope you will enjoy it!

You can find Janean and this podcast, with links to other venues where you can see the slides while you listen to the interview at: https://realjanean.com/index.php?podcast=1493

Here is Janean's podcast site: https://www.realjanean.com/

In this episode, we speak with animal communicator Liz Murdoch from Talking With the Dogs! If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to actually communicate with an  animal, and how an animal communicator can help with decision making and with the dynamics in your family between the humans and the animals, then this is the episode for you. We talk about all of that, and much more, with Liz as she takes us through story after story about her encounters with the animals. At just the age of 5, Liz realized that she could understand what a dog was thinking! She went on to win awards, as a child and as an adult - in dog training. In fact, she got her first award competing against adults, at the age of 8. Liz is passionate about helping families enhance their relationships with animals and improve their communication skills so that families, with their companion animals, can live in greater harmony throughout all stages of life. She has helped professionals like veterinarians, animal rescue and foster organizations, and she’s done work in animal assisted therapy as well.

In this episode, we talk about how she receives incredibly specific information from the animals, including things about their health and well-being. Liz feels, hears, sees and knows things when she is talking to them, and feels that others who tune into their intuitive gifts can do so as well. We talk to her about end of life communication and decision making, and how communicating with the animal can help navigate through the complex emotions that arise when we say goodbye to our loved ones. Liz also shares how she helps dogs make "bucket lists" and helps their humans understand what they want before they leave the physical world.

All that and more in this episode with Liz Murdoch!

You can find her at:
Website - https://talkingwiththedogs.com
Instagram - @talkingwiththedogs
Talking With the Dogs Podcast