Does our history of colonization, white supremacy and genocide affect people’s health and wellness today, especially Black, Brown and Indigenous people? Absolutely, says Dr. Rupa Marya. In this fascinating talk, Dr. Marya highlights the history of colonization and how it affects everything around us, including diseases and our long-standing beliefs about healthcare. She shares her journey in recognizing the intersection of society and the human body and our health, and her work on healing the wounds of colonialism through food, medicine, story and learning at Standing Rock Reservation.

As a hospital doctor serving on the frontlines of health care for nearly two decades, a musician who’s traveled the world to examine the social forces on health, and as a mother and a farmer’s wife, Dr. Rupa Marya has seen it all. And through these experiences, she started to notice a pattern: Our health is being affected by current land use and farming practices around the world. In this riveting talk, Dr. Marya will share her story of investigating health deeply down to the very fibers of our social fabric and how human health starts in the soil. The earth is a body like her own, she says, and the soil is the gut. It’s the place where nutrient recycling accrues and immunity is supported. Dr. Marya talks about the need for a new mindset to address the challenges we face. One of the most important of these mindsets is agroecology. By tending the soil and the relationships around it and giving the soil what it needs to thrive, the plants around it will thrive and we will thrive as an outcome--securing the health of future generations.

The COVID pandemic and the shocking racial disparities in its impact. The surge in inflammatory illnesses such as gastrointestinal disorders and asthma. Mass uprisings around the world in response to systemic racism and violence. Rising numbers of climate refugees. These incidents have caused our bodies, societies and planet to become inflamed. So, is there any solution? Through the latest in scientific research, her work with patients in marginalized communities and the wisdom of Indigenous groups, Dr. Rupa Marya illuminates the hidden relationships between our biological systems and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems. She shares what it will take to heal not only our bodies but also the world.

Highlighting histories of how colonialism has severed critical relationships and responsibilities between people and the web of life, Dr. Rupa Marya illustrates how a mindset based on domination and control, rather than reciprocity, impacts the body and the planet. Solutions to address the climate crisis and the health impacts of climate change cannot come from the worldview that has been exploited and extracted from the web of life in the name of so-called progress. Humans that have remained in relations of care with the world around them are currently stewarding the greatest amount of biodiversity, which is critical for mitigating the impacts of climate change on the web of life and on human health.

Physicians interrupt their patients within 11 seconds of their first encounter, but the stories our patients tell reveal everything about their experience and understanding of illness and wellness. Stories are a form of knowing that has been systematically excluded from Western science, yet they are a critical mode of passing knowledge in traditional societies. In order to understand why we are sick and how we can be well, physicians engage in diagnosis, which is a story told out of order to understand where the derangement came from and how to return the body to health. The word diagnosis comes from the Greek roots, dia—to take apart—and gnoskein—to know. Art, music and storytelling bring things together to understand, offering other ways of knowing that can complicate and offer complexity to our understandings of sickness and health, from the microscopic to macroscopic derangements. Dr. Rupa Marya, an accomplished composer and performer, will talk about the art of diagnosis and demonstrate how incorporating the arts into medicine more directly can bring more complete ways of knowing and, consequently, healing.