Join host Martha Williams as she talks about healing racism in America with Dr. Gail Christopher, the visionary for and architect of the Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation effort for America, launched in 2017 by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and several other foundations.
Martha Williams:
Dear Culture Shifters, I'm Martha Williams, your host today. Thank you for joining us at the culture shift podcast, where we work to shift the conversation to inspire a more balanced, peaceful, compassionate, and collaborative world. We believe culture shifts come from a profound change in how we relate to self others and our planet. Our guest today is Dr. Gail Christopher. She is the Executive Director of the National Collaborative for Health Equity and a Senior scholar at George Mason University Center for the Advancement of Wellbeing. Dr. Christopher is an award-winning social change agent and former Senior Advisor and Vice president of the WK Kellogg foundation. One of the world's largest philanthropies, where she led the Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Effort for America. TRHT is an adaptation of the globally recognized Truth and Reconciliation Commission model. Dr. Christopher recently left her leadership position with WKKF to launch the Maryland base Ntiano Center for Healing and Nature, and to devote more time to writing and speaking on issues of health, racial, healing, and human capacity for caring. Dr. Gail Christopher advocates for our collective and individual healing from centuries of believing in false hierarchy of human value. She teaches that what we believe about ourselves and other people shapes our decisions and our actions. Welcome Dr. Christopher to the Culture Shift Podcast. It's great to have you today.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
Great to be here. Thank you,
Martha Williams:
Dr. Christopher, you have had a distinguished career in public service and are a nationally recognized leader in health policy. Your extensive expertise includes experience in social determinants of health, health inequities, and public policy issues that concern our nation's future. And overall, you talk about devoting, your efforts to health, racial healing, and human capacity for caring. Can you tell us how you got here and why these three things, health racial healing and the human capacity for caring, why and how are they linked?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
My journey started in holistic health and wellbeing. And one of the core tenants of my training as a holistic doctor is about connection and about our connective tissue system and our interrelatedness and connectedness both within the human body and within the human family. The fundamental fallacy upon which we built this country, the idea of a hierarchy of human value, racism, is definitely an anathema to health and wellbeing. As two legged mammals, our inner most imperative is to be connected to other human beings. And this notion of forced distance and separation making it a part of the design of our society, it triggers stress. And if that stress continues, that becomes distress, which translates into the term they use for it is allostatic load, but it wears and tears the body down. And so if we can eradicate that idea and replace it with a deep capacity for caring for one another as human beings, it will promote greater health and wellbeing.
Martha Williams:
So what you're saying is really racial disparity or hierarchical thinking actually creates sickness.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
Yep. That's it. In a nutshell.
Martha Williams:
So you say the word racial healing. So what is racial healing? What does it look like?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
You know, it's helpful for me to answer that question sometimes by saying what it's not. It's not a conversation about race. It actually is not anti-racism work. The focus of racial healing is really on eradicating the fallacy of a hierarchy of human value and replacing it with a deep sense of our interconnection as human beings. So the difference between anitracism work and racial healing work is that an antiracism work, the subject is racism and in racial healing work, the subject is healing. Becoming whole, becoming balanced, becoming our better selves as human beings and recognizing our interrelatedness between one another and between the environment in which we live. So racial healing recognizes that there are certain things we believe that stand in the way of our connectedness as a human family.
Martha Williams:
Can you talk about eradicating the idea of the hierarchy of human value, but you're focused on racial healing. Why not just call it hierarchical human healing?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
We're asked a lot that question. Some people want to take the word racial out of it. And my response to that is that this country was built on the fallacy of racial hierarchy. The land was stolen from indigenous people because largely of the fallacy of racial hierarchy – that this group of people from this continent with a different culture and way of being and looking, that they were not valued as human beings. And so anything could be done to them. This idea, enslavement of Africans for not a while, not for 40 years or 30 years, but for more than two centuries, it was based on the idea of a taxonomy of humanity. That was a racial taxonomy. And so we will eventually eradicate all false hierarchies just as the civil rights movement ushered in the disability rights movement. And you know, the woman's rights movement and, you know, the gay rights movement.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
There's so many things that will come when we eradicate racial hierarchy. But for America, we have to deal with some people call our original sin – if that's what you believe – others call it our deepest wound and the soul of America. The deepest wound in America's soul is the fact that we became a nation because of this ability to devalue human beings. We built our economy, because of this ability to devalue human beings as a race of people. And we continue to let that be the normative organizing theme of our society. And so we have to do that work and I refuse to minimize it.
Martha Williams:
Nice, I like to hear that. That makes a lot of sense, actually, you know, what you're saying. So I want to ask you, so the model we have now is patriarchal white supremacist model that you just eloquently spoke about as based on centuries of believing in false hierarchy of human value. But human beings don't have a good record when it comes to relinquishing power, regardless of how good it might look for the collective. How's this going to work? What's your take on that?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
Yeah, that's a really good question. And when it's framed as a us and them or power dynamic, it's almost doomed to failure. I believe this work is a deeply spiritual work. It's one of the reasons I wish there would be more engagement on the part of the spiritual or religious community. This isn't about a zero sum game. It isn't about you having to give something up so that I can have something. It is about expanding the circles of possibility and using our creative power to create together something new. So I think it's, it has to do with the framing. I often do this work with advocacy communities and they begin with a power analysis and they will say, what did Frederick Douglas say? You know, power, it gives up nothing without a fight in essence. And that's a very male, very patriarchal framing of this challenge. I like to think of it more as an evolution and expanding of our possibilities. I believe that as a woman, as a woman of color, as a human being, as a spiritual being that my power is connected to the infinite power of the universe and that I can, and any human being when connected to that power can create. And that creation doesn't take away from someone else's power or someone else's creativity. So I think it's a matter of how it's framed.
Martha Williams:
You know, I'm always encouraged by people like yourself who I have such a high regard for, and are so accomplished that you draw so much of your strength and wisdom from a spiritual foundation. So thanks for sharing that, but I want to just take a turn here and talk about how your work intersects with the work of activism and Black Lives Matter specifically, especially since that's what's at the forefront right now.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
Ultimately every movement is comprised of people following what they feel compelled to follow, to act on their passion. And most importantly, what they have the energy to do. And so I've worked constantly with many activists and the intersection has to do with self care and self compassion and enabling, if you will, a reservoir of energy to be tapped into energy that is necessary for all the different kinds of work. Sometimes we need the symbolic disruption of the narrative in the form of mass protests and mass marches in order to get the attention of the legislatures and the legislators. And sometimes we need those to continue because, you know, if they go away, so does the attention on the issue, but movements, you know, have arcs. And they, I think this Black Lives Matter movement has had a very, very, very long arc and it will have a longer arc. I hope after this moment that we're in right now the movement is one that requires and naturally has organic phases. And so I don't necessarily think that the inner work is in any way or the healing work is in any way, juxtaposed to the advocacy and the marching. They're just different types of work and we need all of it.
Martha Williams:
Yeah, I would really agree. We do really need all of that. And I love hearing that because so much of the work we do at Culture Shift Agency is about the inner and outer attention that is imbalanced in our society. And we often relate the inner attention with feminine energy and the outer with masculine energy, the inner being more emotional or lateral, and then the outer masculine being more vertical or building, or, and you could call, you know, activism as really masculine, upward, outward work. But also that the inner work is really important inside of this work. So I love that you, you point that out. So thank you for that.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
I agree with that a hundred percent. And I think every human being carries both energies and more of one is expressed at different times in our life journey. But the universe I think, is made up of the balance of those energies. I think we've made a mistake as humanity in suppressing the feminine for far too long, at least here in the United States. When you look at the lack of balance in terms of representation, and it isn't just how it's embodied, you know, sometimes when you begin to integrate professions. I remember when the medical professions first started to allow women to be, you know, doctors in abundance, so to speak, some of the women in the medical profession were exhibiting more male energy than the men in an attempt to identify and to be seen as valued and, you know, as effective. And so I don't know that that energy necessarily is defined by the physical vessel that it's in. But I do think that this idea of the feminine and the masculine, I think they are divine and universal principles and our journey for each of us is to find the balance and the expression of both.
Martha Williams:
No, I totally agree that there's something really universal about masculine and feminine energies, separate from the bodies of male or female, or even binary folks, but just to come back to the activism piece, do you think things are actually changing?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
I do, you know, if you were to talk to a clinical psychologist, they would tell you that the opportunity for the real growth for the patient or the family, or the couple, the opportunity for the real growth is in the midst of the crisis. And I think that's true, even for countries, we are in an unprecedented upheaval moment, right? It is a crisis of proportions, the likes of which I know I haven't seen in my lifetime. Some people say it's as bad or almost as the Great Depression, but out of these types of crises, economic crises, threats to our very lives crises, Wars, out of those can come amazing new developments, you know, new creativity, new models. And so I think that that's what's happening right now. And I just believe that five years from now, we're going to look back on 2020 as the year. You know, there used to be a TV show decades ago called "That Was the Week That Was," you know, and we'll say, well, "That Was the Year That Was," and it really brought us into a new level of being as a country.
Martha Williams:
It seems like there's an opportunity for racial healing and transformation through the program you developed Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation, or TRHT. Where is that program now? What's the status?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
We're very excited about it. We have 14 geographic areas, cities, towns, states, counties that are in their third year of implementing the model. And I was on the phone with them this week. And some of the creative things that they have undertaken from really trying to manage how housing dollars are being distributed in terms of development, that is for racial equity, and for fairness, working on the school systems and how they're funded, getting public health departments and city councils to declare racism as a public health crisis. Chicago has trained 300 people to be racial healing practitioners. And the city of Chicago is about to announce from the city government, a major racial healing initiative. So I'm excited. We have about 40 college campuses around the country that are embracing the work 24 that have been able to receive funding to do the work and another 20 that are willing to step up themselves.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
So it is an exciting time. Public libraries have gotten involved and they feel like because they embody stories that they can use their natural purpose to tell stories that help to bring about the change in consciousness and the change in belief systems. And then what I really am excited about is in Congress right now, there is a resolution that's been initiated by Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and it's a first step before actual legislation, but the resolution itself now has 147 co-sponsors. We want to get up to 218, and then we'll be very close to what we need for the legislation to move. And it will be a US commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation, which should have the gravitas and hopefully in the next administration, the support to help our country move through the change that has to happen.
Martha Williams:
I was actually just going to ask you about HR 100, because it seems like such an incredible opportunity and we will make sure to post that link for our listeners. Also, it seems like great timing since you have already developed, and you have your program up and running. I think Racial Healing and Transformation has been in progress since 2010. Is that correct?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
Well, the Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation work began in 2017. The design phase was in 2016, but it's predecessor America Healing, we called it, that did start in 2010. So we learned a lot from the investments that were in America healing, and it enabled us to have the courage to say it's time for Truth, Racial healing and Transformation. And it's been a journey. And for me personally, I've been doing this work all of my professional career in one form or another.
Martha Williams:
Yeah. So that's interesting, you know, you've spent your career working in the system, the government, as well as nonprofit sectors, yet you quote Buckminster Fuller. When he says you never change things by fighting the existing model, you must create a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. So what is that new model? And who's going to come up with it or has it already been done?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
I love Buckminster Fuller, he was such an amazing architect and thinker. I think all creation begins with the mind and with what one believes, what one envisions. And so, you know, I encourage people not to waste their energy on what's in front of them, but to use their energy, to bring something new into being as it were. And so everyone that's involved in TRHT, which differs from Truth and Reconciliation Commission's. The work for TRHT begins with the visioning process. It begins by asking the question, what will America be like when it has jettisoned, I'm a Star Trek fan too, when it has jettisoned the fundamental idea of a hierarchy of human value, what will our story be? What will our narrative be as a country? What will our relationships be? How will we live and how will we relate with one another? Then we ask, what will we have done with our old models of separation and our legal system that was designed to enforce the hierarchy and what kind of economy can we create?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
We started out with about 150 organizational representatives, major organizations in this country, collectively, they represented almost 200 million people, and we took them through a process of seven month process of engaging in that kind of visioning. And if you go to the Association of American Colleges and University website, they devoted a full issue of their magazine, Liberal Education to capturing those visions of the teams we divided into teams and each team, the lion's share of their work was to actually imagine a future without racism. And that's what we ask all the communities to do. What's going to be different about their communities. So everyone that engages in the process helps to create the new model I've created a model for facilitating better relationships, healing circles that we call them where we bring diverse people together. And we have co-facilitated experiences of sharing our authentic narratives so that we connect at a deeper level for our humanity. But this new America that has to be created, you know, it comes from believing in the aspirational tenants of the United States, but being determined to actualize them as the late John Lewis was all of his life.
Martha Williams:
Actualize them in their purest form and a one that does respect all people and does treat them as equals.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
Yep.
Martha Williams:
But, you know, I would argue that gathering people in circle is one of the new models.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
It is, we call our approach to it, RX or prescription racial healing. We do it because we want people to be reminded of the health benefits of doing this. You know, isn't it interesting that you've had reductions in infant mortality and premature birth upwards of 70% and, you know, OBGYN and the maternal and child health community is saying, what is happening here? What are we doing that is improving the birth outcomes all over the world? What is it about sheltering in place? You know, I think it has to do with the time that people are spending together. You know, we think about food, air and water as basic human needs. We underestimate how much we need other people. We need connection with other human beings. And that, you know, that's kind of where we started this interview today, but it's a basic need. We derive our energy and our humanity from our interaction with other human beings
Martha Williams:
And to bring it back around. I think that circle really emphasizes the value of being together. You know, it's so relational and about human interaction and actually is like, literally not hierarchical.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
The model itself is not for that moment. We're all equal.
Martha Williams:
It's also interesting because communing in circle is really ancient.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
Absolutely. It's an indigenous culture phenomenon circle. I mean, if you look at many indigenous cultures, they take their guidance, their wisdom from nature. And whether it's the trunk of a tree or the habitat of a bird in a nest, the circle is a symbol of nature. The horizon, the sun, the moon circles are all around us and many indigenous cultures saw that as sacred and built it into their healing, their celebration, their reverence for nature.
Martha Williams:
So this brings me back to a question about healing because in your Body Owner's Workshop video, you talk about how the average person has no idea of the innate healing capacity of the human body. Is there an analog in society, meaning, you know, what are the healing mechanisms in society and culture?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
Wow, that's a beautiful question. Herbert Benson talks about remembered wellness. You probably are familiar with this story, but you know, the leaders in transcendental meditation came to him when he was a young physician at Harvard and asked him to validate that the process of deep breathing and transcendental meditation and the focusing that it actually lowered blood pressure. And he was an up and coming physician and a major medical institution. And he was like, I can't do that. That's not science, but they were persistent. And so he secretly studied their results and he found a remarkable impact on blood pressure without the side effects of the pharmaceuticals. And he decided he had to search for why was this happening? And he studied cultures, ancient cultures, contemporary cultures, all over the world. And he came up with the fact that every culture had some system that might be comparable to transcendental meditation, some system of deep focus and deep relaxation that led to greater health outcomes that led to greater healing.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
And he termed it, the relaxation response and built the rest of his medical career on promoting this capacity to have a deep centeredness, if you will, a deep letting go of the stresses and the worry and the future focus in a, in a sense of an anxiety driven future focused, right? And so I think one of the things that's healing in our society is the opportunity to do that, the opportunity to stop and to breathe deeply and to focus on thoughts and feelings that unleash our innate restorative capacities. You know, the human body creates itself from a single cell. Just sit with that for a minute. You know, the cells are not added. They are divided into these trillions of cells that make up the human body. The wisdom, the blueprint, the knowledge of creation is embedded within us. I believe that if we had a medical system that was grounded in that reverence and respect, you know, we would probably do a lot better in terms of our health outcomes, because we would be working with the human body and not against it.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
So the Body Owner's Workshop is designed to connect people to that understanding of the myriad ways in which the body heals and restores itself, but also those ways that we need to live and with one another in nature and in relationship that will optimize that. I think the work of Stephen Porges and the polyvagal theory has probably done the most in the last maybe 20 years to attune people, to this idea that we have an innate neurological physiological response that is designed to heal and restore and to bring balance. And we, as human beings must feel safe. We must feel protected. We must feel comfortable. And when we are not, when we are threatened when our environment or we believe our environment or our relationships are a threat to our being, it is like planting the seeds of illness and degeneration.
Martha Williams:
There's a couple of things in there that are really interesting. First of all, for me, I've been on this path for a long time of slowing down of relaxing and sinking, but it's really been brought to light, I think for so many people when Covid hit, and we live in New York city, and you're not getting on the train, you're not running to the next thing, you're not going to a hundred, events, talks, shows, et cetera. And so many people were, let me qualify non essential workers and those without young kids, for many people, there was a real relaxing that has happened or is happening. So slowing down has been pretty powerful and continues to be. But I also liked the idea of feeling protected or safe because we all need to tend to our inner healing and our inner wisdom. And we also need to pay attention to protecting ourselves while on the inner journey. So how do we weave in protection and safety into the way forward, especially as we move through racial healing.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
I believe that there are two primary emotions. There is either love or fear. And so I think trying to be in that space of love of the expectation of love, of the capacity to extend love, to receive love. I think it mitigates fear and it takes our creative energies into a realm that makes us, I don't want to say less in need of protection, but certainly less vulnerable. And when I use the term protection earlier, I was drawing from Porge's work specifically because he really talks about creating environments particularly for children. But for everyone that sends a message to the physiological and neurological body, right, to the systems that says, basically you don't have to retreat. You don't have to be afraid. You can relax. You can be fully expressed and there is no harm here for you.
Martha Williams:
And what's so interesting is we're in a time where there is so much growing love towards a solution around the racial divide, but there's also so much fear and so much ignorance. So how do we move into community, positive power and radical transformation when we're in the face of this polarity?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
And I, I go back to the healing circle methodology and into expanding circles of connection and engagement. People are doing this, you know, all over the country. And we know when we have touched one another's hearts, we know when something is right, and when something is good or wholesome. And I think we're challenged because of the internet and social media. And we're also challenged because we have a bully pulpit right now, that's being amplified. That is one that is rooted in division and the lack of civility and the lack of love. But I think this reaction that we're seeing right now in the country is a natural counterweight to that. I have faith that there's more love than there is fear. And I think those of us who are gifted with that faith, we just have to be heard. And that's why I applaud your efforts in terms of your podcast. I think you're doing good work and I'm honored to have been invited to be part of it.
Martha Williams:
Wow. That feels really good to hear, especially from you Dr. Christopher. So thank you. So how do we stand up to power that uses fear to control?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
I think that if we're doing the inner work, really doing the inner work, we won't find ourselves in situations of confrontation. As often as we'll find ourselves in situations of creating, then creating the counterbalance and the counterweight, the inner work is what becomes the architecture of our path forward. And we'll draw into our lives, the opportunities for the expression of our work and the work that is counter to that against a shrink in its evidence in our lives.
Martha Williams:
I like that emphasizing the idea of belief as the principle driver behind any kind of design and in any kind of thing that you're building in your life, the relationships you have, what you draw towards you, but you also mentioned media and social media, which is so often based on perpetuating a narrative of fear, not love and connectedness. Do you know anyone doing work around transforming that?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
I appreciate the question and I appreciate it. The fact that you all have honed into that as the heart of the work. One of the reasons we may, the five-part framework for truth, racial healing and transformation. The first part of this is narrative change. And the idea was to engage the media and it's multiple forms in that process of a narrative that is driven by an embracing of our full humanity. And we had about 50 people representing the entertainment industry and other groups musicians, artists, producers, directors, signing on that. It was the industry's job to create a new narrative. Now, there are different layers of that. You know, that focus is a new narrative of how we became who we are. It's a new, more inclusive and expansive look at history in order to create a new future. But a lot of people around the country are, I think, getting the fact that there's power in the stories that we tell there's power in the messages that we repeat and that we lift up and what we believe about our country, you know, is important. So I can't name specifically, but I think that the movement for that, for using the tools, you are an example for using the tools of communication to put forth a new way of being that is really beginning to take root. It's really happening.
Martha Williams:
I think you're, I mean, I think you're right, dr. Christopher, there really is a shift in storytelling across so many artistic mediums, but I, you know, I'm hopeful, these changes will continue. But I just want to bring it back to something personal. I've been working in culture change for a long time, but it's not always easy. How do you keep hope alive when you hit those roadblocks? Cause I imagine you hit them just like all of us do.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
I have somehow been given a depth of faith and belief that I don't take credit for, but it's part of my personality. So I've had major tragedies in my life that I've had to grieve and I've been very good at not grieving them appropriately. I'm getting better at that, but in terms of depression and loss of faith or hope, and I'm not up to this point, not been affected, I have somehow always believed in the possible, in the probability of life becoming better. It may Martha have to do with being an African American woman and seeing from where my people have come from and what we've come through and who we've become in spite of the oppression. Now, my mother was born, she was one of 14 children in a one room shack in Alabama, and she became one of the hundred, most influential African American women in America in her lifetime.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
She was the only one of those 14 children to get a college degree. And, you know, I had to look at the fact that she could do that. And my dad was just the embodiment of love, although he was orphaned as an infant and spent his life trying to make sure that that didn't happen in any way to his children, that they had the love of both parents, stable family. And, you know, my story is one of millions of stories against the odds. So I don't think that, you know, not having hope or faith has been a burden that I've had to carry. I had to carry other burdens many. But somehow I'm able to, my dad would say, how is it that you managed to land on your feet no matter what happens? But I don't think I'm in this by myself. I think my ancestors and my angels and, you know, use your term, there's a protective element in my life.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
And so my hope is my wellspring of hope and is really a deep, deep, spiritual faith. I think someone asked me recently, they said, what do you think is the most important thing that a parent should give a child? I thought about it. And I think my parents gave it to me, although they didn't ever verbalize it that way, but I've verbalized it with my kids. But I think the most important thing you can give to a child is belief in themselves, you know, and the knowing that they are connected to the ultimate force of love and creativity and the universe, and they can do, they can be none of these fallacies can really stop them. And if you can have a child know that the sky's the limit for them, and then actualize that.
Martha Williams:
I'm very intrigued by how you link your strength, your compassion, and your very obvious, deep heartedness that I feel, how you link that back to your family and ancestors.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
The first work that I did in this space of racial healing was a K through 12 curriculum that revisited the history of the United States from multiple racial and ethnic perspectives. Right? And we developed this amazing set of resources working with hundreds of educators, representing native American history scholars, African American history, Filipino, Asian, American history, Puerto Rican, European. What was unique about it is that we brought the European diversity into the mix. You know, it wasn't European and others, you know, it was all of us. And it was my first exposure to the stories, the history that I had never been taught. I didn't know anything about Angel Island on the West coast and the detention of immigrants through that Island. I didn't know people from the Caribbean came through Ellis Island. You know, I didn't know the Puerto Rican story. And, and that moment early in my career immersion in these multiple stories of history and watching classroom teachers go through the same kind of, you know, overcoming being dumbfounded, but being able to use the materials to teach their students. It was, it was powerful and getting me to believe that it was possible through history to change people's understandings and perceptions of reality.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
My first book was on parenting, it was called Anchors for the Innocent. The subtitle was Inner Power for Today's Single Mothers and Fathers. And I always tell people, children become who we are, not what we say. And I think in many ways I embody the spirit of both my parents. Although, you know, we didn't have long intimate conversations about what I'm doing or what I would become. They were busy surviving, but they were showing me that, you know, you can do that. You can do anything. And I think in that sense you know, it was what I saw more so than anything else.
Martha Williams:
I have one last question, and then we'll start to wrap it up. So you talk about your roots, your mother's roots and where you landed as a family, even your father and the power you draw from knowing and honoring your roots. Do you think one of our ills in America is that we have forgotten our roots or have allowed ourselves to become disconnected from our roots?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
I, you know, I don't know that that is that I could say that and that straightforward away, I think much of what is the root of America is the fallacy of a hierarchy of human value. I think that is really the taproot as it were. And even though we have expressed other values, aspirational values that all are created equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights, I think the inner workings, the taproot that holds us to the ground is this deep seated belief that some people just don't matter. And we have not left that at all. We are very much in that as a country. And I think that that is the opportunity that this new century presents for us to, to replace that and to tap into the wisdom of the many, I think our greatest strength as a nation is our diversity. And within that diversity comes the wisdom of so many indigenous cultures from all over the world, as well as the indigenous culture here, the native American culture, there is so much wisdom in African history in Asian history, European history. There's so much actual wisdom that we could tap into that would help us be a better America. And I'm hoping that this moment allows that to happen.
Martha Williams:
I love that. And I think you hit the nail on the head. And in fact, in our next episode, we'll talk with Reverend Sarah. Jolena Walcott about solving ecological and social problems by understanding more rightly and deeply their origins. So I'm so glad to talk to you and talk with you, Dr. Christopher, because you're helping us find new ways to relate to each other and to heal and deepen our connection with one another. And I think this idea of false hierarchy is at the root or the taproot as you so clearly stated. And it's essential to our understanding and our healing. So I just want to ask you, and we always ask this to our guest. You have so many things that you're working on. If you could scale one project or take one idea into the world, what would it be?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
That's a really good question. I think it would be a different way of relating to our bodies, not as harbingers of disease, but as innate self restoring self regenerating and self-maintaining systems. And that's the essence of the Body Owner's Workshop. I think to do that has to generate a great deal of love for the gift we've been given in terms of our bodies and our life and our health. And if we have that love for ourselves, we have to extend that love to others.
Martha Williams:
Where can people find out more about you and how can they get in touch with you?
Dr. Gail Christopher:
My website, drgailcchristopher.com the policy work, the leadership development work, all of that, the data and the research, you can find that at the National Collaborative for Health Equity and people can reach out to the national collaborative for health equity. Also .org. Mine was .com for Dr. Gail C Christopher, you just Google me and I'll pop up on the web. So, find Ntianu center here, my Center for Healing and Nature, you can also reach us through the Ntianu center.
Martha Williams:
We very much appreciate chatting with you today, Dr. Christopher, thank you for all your commitment and your deep well of wisdom and love that you bring.
Dr. Gail Christopher:
Thank you.
Martha Williams:
Thank you so much for joining us today on the Culture Shifts podcast, where we dig into critical conversation with those who are shifting culture by defying the status quo, the transcript and links related to this podcast, as well as other episodes are available at cultureshiftagency.com.