Apela Colorado Ph.D
About Speaker
Apela Colorado Ph.D., of Oneida-Gaul ancestry, has dedicated her life’s work to bridging Western thought and indigenous worldviews. As a Ford Fellow, Dr. Colorado studied for her doctorate at both Harvard and Brandeis Universities and received her Ph.D. from Brandeis in Social Policy in 1982. She founded the Worldwide Indigenous Science Network (WISN) in 1989 to foster the revitalization, growth, and worldwide exchange of traditional knowledge and to safeguard the lives and work of the world’s endangered traditional culture practitioners. In 1997, Dr. Colorado was one of twelve women chosen from 52 countries by the State of the World Forum (http://www.worldforum.org) to be honoured for her role as a woman leader. In addition to WISN’s many projects—which span the globe and range from research on migration stories of indigenous peoples in Central Asia to big cat conservation—Dr. Colorado founded the Indigenous Science and Peace Studies at the UN University of Peace, the first fully accredited advanced degree programme taught from an Indigenous perspective that consciously integrates western knowledge. She has also authored numerous articles, including several in peer-reviewed journals, and is the author of Woman between the Worlds (2021).