HealStory Ep. 9 - The Ritual Of Naming w/ Thom White Wolf Fassett

The HealStory Podcast

Rev. Dr. Thom White Wolf Fassett is our next storyteller For decades, Dr. Fassett has been an internationally recognized champion of human rights and indigenous rights. He's traveled throughout the world to assist those whose voices need to be heard, from Zimbabwe as part of a team investigating human rights abuses to Guatemala as a leader of the International Justice Forum to Copenhagen as a leader. Dr. Fassett is well known for his activities in conflict resolution and mediation, participating in White House negotiations on peace missions to Haiti, traveling to Ireland on a peace mission with the President of the United States, negotiating principles of religious freedom face -to -face with Fidel Castro, and famously playing a determining role in the breaking of the impasse between the United States and Cuba in the case of Ilion Gonzalez. Thom has served as General Secretary of the International Public Policy Organization of the United Methodist Church. He served as an advisor to the U .S. President's Commission on Race. He is published extensively, including his book Giving Our Hearts Away, Native American Survival, co-authoring four other books and over 200 articles in scholarly publications. Thom will begin to bring you into his early years as a Native American child adopted into a white upstate New York family and his journey to reconnect with his Seneca birth mother. Thom will share with us snapshots from an extraordinary life of deepened connections with his own ancestors and the larger Native American community. From the moment he received his name White Wolf in a sacred ceremony to being an organizer of the legendary 1978 Longest Walk, a march all the way across the country from California to Washington DC in support of Native American rights. Thank you, Thom, for joining us and for sharing your story with us.