Ancient cultural practices were used to create something completely new in San Diego last week.
In a first-of-its-kind event in San Diego, cultural ambassadors and leaders assembled to present the first Indigenous Sustainable Design Forum downtown and several days of cultural exchanges and activities.
The forum, which was co-hosted by the Kumeyaay and Maasai peoples, emerged from a partnership between the San Diego International Sister Cities Association and UCSD Global Initiatives.
It covered topics such as ecological health, welfare, art, culture, resource sustainability, traditional knowledge, and cultural heritages that can be adapted into existing sustainable practices.
The event also featured panels, traditional dances, music, and storytelling, and an Indigenous Bazaar, which provided a space for traditional clothing and crafts.
The event brought together Indigenous people from San Diego’s sister cities, said Jessica Censotti, executive director of the San Diego International Sister Cities Association and founder of My Chosen Vessels, which offers clean water and cultural conservation in Kenya under the care of Maasai elders.
“It’s about building friendships between nations and creating peace between nations,” Censotti said.
U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower started the program in 1956 in order to foster better international understanding and to promote citizen diplomacy, she added.
“He said when governments fail, it’s people to people like you and I that can make peace, and we need to bridge our nations and make friendships. So San Diego now has 24 partnerships in 23 countries, and one of them that we started is between the Kumeyaay and the Maasai –Indigenous to Indigenous.”
There are multiple cultural connections between Indigenous people living in each region, just as there are between the non-Indigenous. For example, the Maasai people live on an international border — Kenya-Tanzania — just as traditional Kumeyaay territory encompasses land in California and Baja California.
The “Sister Cities” relationship is an agreement between two cities to establish lasting cultural ties. San Diego has sixteen “Sisters.” One such city is Perth, Australia.
“WAITOC has been around for over 22 years now, and a lot of countries are interested in what we do and how we do it,” said Robert Taylor, who is Nhanda from the Yamaji Nation in western Australia and the chief executive officer of the Western Australian Indigenous Tourism Operators Council, or WAITOC.
Their tourism model is successful enough that other regions would like to emulate it, Taylor said.
“We hope to be able to share our knowledge with other indigenous countries and groups so they can mirror what we do.”
He added that they would also like to continue the international conversation with other Indigenous people.
“Our cultures are actually quite aligned — similar beliefs, similar systems. You don’t know that until you go and work with other indigenous communities.”
Maasai cultural representative Jacob Parit Noomek facilitates humanitarian programs with the nonprofit My Chosen Vessels. He is also a yoga instructor. He says he hopes to see people everyone learn to care for one another more, and that traditional knowledge can facilitate better ways to live together.
“When we give love to each other we we are all one, and Mother Earth will be very happy to love us all and we can make peace within our borders,” he said. “Also, read the history of indigenous knowledge.”
Locally, artist Johnny Bear Contreras — a member of the San Pasqual Band of the Kumeyaay nation — first became aware of the Sister Cities program through his contacts with San Diego Comic-Con International.
“We were able to have everyone up at San Pasqual’s cultural center and we did like a little min-Comic-Con breakout and talked to folks from Okinawa, Australia, the Maasai… and how what we’ve done here with comics and bringing out Kumeyaay history, we’d like to do the same in these different nations.”
Contreras said the event was illuminating, not just for the collaboration aspects but because of the similarities between attendees from all over the world.
“What’s significant about this group of people this action the whole energy of what we have — we have more in common than we have not in common. Our stories parallel.”
The forum was a one-time World Design Capital project, but organizers and attendees say they hope it becomes a regular event.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
