Jon (far left) officiates at the consecration of the
Interfaith Healing Sculpture at the opening congregation of the URI - United
Religions Initiative initial gathering at Stanford University in June of
1998, with Hovey Lambert and Manley Bush of the Pacific Islanders Cultural
Association, Melissa Nelson of the Cultural
Conservancy, and Father Gerald
O'Rouke, special interfaith envoy of the Catholic Diocese of San Francisco
and many representatives of the worlds faith communities..
KAREN
LARSON
Karen ...(to be completed..)
Karen Larson
J.
DEREK LARSON
I have been coordinating Outdoor Education programs at three different schools
since 1989. At San Francisco's University High School, I inherited a modest
outdoor program and built it up to attract nearly 1/3 of the student body each
year. I worked hard to attract the students from less privileged backgrounds,
and many of them found a place for themselves through "Outdoor Ed",
a sense of community that eluded them elsewhere in high school.
In 1998,
I moved to the Lake Tahoe Area and worked as a founding faculty member at The
Sage ridge school in Reno, where I started their outdoor program from scratch.
In 1999,
I started a guide service called Tahoe
Adventure Outfitters. While a rewarding
endeavor, it brought me away from the youth work and field teaching that I
love so much. So I created the non-profit TAO
Education, Inc. to build a
collaborative of the very best teachers and outdoor guides and to be able to
offer our services at low cost to the disadvantaged students of the schools
and student organizations of California and Nevada. You are invited to help us build this public
service!
To
read Derek's teaching resume, click
here.
Derek Larson
Derek (4th
from the right, top) leads a group of California youth speelunking deep into a
cave in the Sierra Mountains.
HIEN
LARSON
1999-Present
University of Nevada Reno, NV
PhD, Educational Leadership (in progress) Emphasis in administration and
policy analysis.
1998 San Francisco State
University SF, CA
Master of Arts in Elementary Education Emphasis in administration and
policy analysis.
1996 San Francisco State
University SF, CA
Multiple Subject Credential Emphasis in cross-cultural language and
academic development (CLAD).
1993 University of California
Davis, CA B.S. Human Development
My outdoor interests started in college.
I began teaching in 1995. I now teach science
and math at North Tahoe Middle School in Tahoe City. I have worked in
Washington DC under the Secretary of Education, and I am now working toward my
PhD in Educational Leadership.
I am a Vietnamese immigrant who came to the US in 1980.
As a city-locked kid
growing up in the projects of Los Angeles, I would have benefited immensely from
some exposure to the beauty of the natural world. As an officer in both TAO
Education, Inc. and the Jon and Karen Larson Family Foundation, I hope I can
extend these outdoor opportunities to young people in the schools of California
and Nevada while making sure cost is not an
issue.
To
read Hien's teaching resume, click
here.
Hien Larson
Hien takes
Zachary for a ride in the Sierras (above) and shares some space with a friendly
shark in Mexico (below).
Advisors
PAUL
CHAFFEE
Paul was born in Buddhist Thailand to Christian missionaries. He is an ordained
minister of the United Church of Christ. He has dedicated his life to building
relationships between peoples of faith.
Paul left the active ministry to become the Director of The
Interfaith
Center at the Presidio
at its inception in the middle '90's. The ICP is a regional
grassroots organization dedicated to building friendly, mutually supportive
relationships among people from different faith traditions for the good of us
all.
The Center cares for and operates the Main Post Chapel in the Presidio of San
Francisco, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area of the National Park
Service. The view from the Chapel takes in the San Francisco skyline. The Chapel is available to all, opening its doors for worship and
meditation, for personal ceremonies such as weddings and memorials, and for various interfaith, community, and performance events.
"The Presidio's new role symbolizes the
swords-into-plowshares concept. At this site of incomparable beauty and history,
we can link our military past with a future full of promise and possibility. The
transformation is inspired by a newly emerging definition of protection -- one
that recognizes that security is no longer based solely on political and
military strength, but on stewardship of the world's human and physical
resources through global cooperation."
From the "Vision Statement" of the
General Management Plan for the Presidio Park
In March 1996 the National Park Service
invited Paul as Director of a group of 24 Bay Area interfaith organizations to care for and operate the
Main
Post Chapel at the Presidio. Since then thousands of individuals and groups
have used the Chapel, some for private ceremonies including weddings and
memorial services, some with their faith
families in worship, and some for Bay Area community and worldwide interfaith efforts.
Paul has been assisted in all his endeavors by his wife and partner Jan Chaffee who
manages the popular ICP weddings program which currently is the ICP's main source of
revenue which supports all the activities of the ICP. Under Jan's patient
nurturing, The Presidio Chapel has become one of San
Francisco's favorite places for couples of all faiths to start their married
lives together.
Paul Chaffee
Paul
(2nd from left) joins the Kohola carving team at the Presidio of San Francisco
on Earth Day in February of 1997 to welcome the arrival of ten gigantic old
growth Alaskan
yellow cedar logs salvaged from the historically significant US Navy's former
Port Chicago ammunition depot in the northeast San Francisco Bay.
SHANE
EAGLETON
"Throughout his life, Shane Eagleton has been in
touch with issues involving sustainable practices and with environmental groups
and activists who stand for principles that are in harmony with environmental
concepts for the good of Mother Earth..
Shane is a master
woodcarver, ecologist, and educator. For 20 years he has created a multitude of
sculptures. Trees are not sacrificed for his
artwork. He only uses naturally fallen timber or recycled wood. The tree becomes
the medium for the message.
Shane's artwork abounds with
images from the natural world, bringing attention to the plight of endangered
species. His carvings are enduring and inspirational monuments to our
precious Earth and the need to preserve her for future generations.
Shane is son of a British Royal Air
Force officer who found his bride in Fiji. The family left Fiji when Shane was 6
to move to New Zealand. There he stayed until 17, when he set out to see the
world. Shane spent years traveling through Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.
He made his way to the United States for the first time when he crewed on a
yacht crossing the Atlantic.
In America Shane learned the art of
tree surgery, a vocation which led him in two directions at once. He found a
cause - recycling trees instead of consigning them to landfill or a buzz-saw.
For Shane the cause has become spiritually grounded; giving trees a second life
is symbolic of treating the whole planet and its endangered life-forms with more
care and respect. Tree surgery also gave him an amazing tool, a new kind of
artist's brush - the chain-saw. He has more than a dozen saws, ranging from
small delicate machines to one with a chain arching out six feet. Whether he is
sculpting a 40-foot whale from of a single 2,000-year-old redwood, carving small
"fish" to make art-collectors out of awestruck children, creating
furniture, raising healing poles, or crafting puppets, Shane is a master with
anything made of recycled wood.
Shane's work has been collected all
over the world. In the Bay Area it can be found at the Shoreline Amphitheater,
Strybing Arboretum, the Mission Cultural Center, and St. Gregory of Nicea
Episcopal Church in San Francisco, and in the Presidio Native Plants Nursery.
His work is also installed in Australia, Czechoslovakia, England, Hawaii, and
Samoa. He is an artist-in-residence at The Cultural Conservancy and is involved in a continuing series of projects with the Interfaith Center at the
Presidio. He was recently invited to create a "Center for Trees, Culture, and
Sustainability" at the Windward Campus of the University of Hawaii. He will continue his relationship with the Conservancy and
the Interfaith Center.
Shane Eagleton - master eco-carver
Shane
(far right) describes the meaning behind his eco-sculpture carved from a
fallen 60' redwood log at the
consecration ceremony of the gifting of the Childrens Healing Pole from
the Pacific Islanders Cultural Association to the First Peoples of
California.
TOM
FURRER
"Since 1983 I've watched these young people (of the United Anglers of Casa
Grande) struggle year after year, through setbacks and frustration. The problems of poachers, pollution, and litter constantly pained
them, the insensitive words of non-caring individuals hurt them deeply - and
through all this, they never gave up.
There is
no-one out there who could ever tell me that what these kids have accomplished
is not one of the most significant environmental events in America today.
THEY HAVE
SAVED ADOBE CREEK STEELHEAD FROM EXTINCTION. "God
Bless My Kids"
A
passionate outdoorsman, Tom has worked as a park ranger in Northern California.
He relished introducing kids to the magic of the natural world which was why he
chose to teach high school wildlife and forestry at Casa Grande High School in
Petaluma, California. Learning of the possible extinction of the local species
of steelhead in the Adobe Creek which runs right through the school's own
back yard, Tom called a group of students together in the spring of 1983 and
asked them to join him to meet the challenge. Click here for more information
about Tom's
Miracle at Adobe Creek.
Tom Furrer
Tom
leads his students, young men and women of United
Anglers of Casa Grande High School
in
Petaluma, California in a prayer of thanks and consecration of the 20,000
chinook salmon fingerlings they raise each year in a special fish hatchery
they constructed on the school campus. They release each year's new hatch
of mature 5" fingerlings into the San
Francisco Bay in May each year near the Golden Gate Bride, in the hope and
expectation that some of them will return at the end of their four year cycle in
the Pacific Ocean to increase future stocks of eggs to protect and maintain the
species.
JIM
HALEY
Jim is the VP and secretary of
the Iliahi Foundation of Hawaii. As manager of Oahu operations, his focus is the operation of
the native plant nurseries, out-planting sites, and native seed collection
activities. Jim and Jon Larson have been engaged best friends since growing
up together in Hawaii in the 1950's
Jim retired from two careers, one with Sears
Roebuck & Co., and one with the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve. While with the
Coast Guard Jim was the Commanding Officer of two environmental protection
units; one in Honolulu and one in Hilo.
Jim is active with the Coast Guard
Auxiliary. He is a graduate of The Volunteer Leadership seminar conducted by The
Nature Conservancy of Hawaii. Currently,
he teaches Life Science to 7th graders in the Pearl Ridge district of Honolulu
when he is not out tending the native tree plantings in the Iliahi Foundation
shadehouses and new native forests of the Waianae he is nurturing.
Jim Haley
Jim (center
right) with the Board of Directors of the Iliahi Foundation of Hawaii
MELISSA
NELSON
Melissa Nelson is a writer, educator, and activist who focuses on the
protection and restoration of indigenous lands and cultures. For the
past eight years she has served as the executive director and president of
The Cultural Conservancy. She also teaches ecological studies at the
California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco
and is
the Associate Producer of the Bioneers Conference.
Melissa completed her dissertation, "Towards a Postcolonial
Ecology: Native Americans and Environmental Restoration," for a Ph.D.
in cultural ecology from the University of California at Davis. Her
doctorate program combined the fields of conservation, restoration ecology, and Native American Studies to examine the link between biological and
cultural diversity and to articulate an indigenous vision of environmental
justice and cultural restoration.
She has also been involved with the deep ecology and eco-psychology
movements and worked with philosopher Arne Naess at UC Santa Cruz and
author Theodore Roszak editing The Eco-psychology Newsletter. Having a
strong background in religious studies and environmental philosophy,
Melissa is deeply committed to finding "upstream" cultural solutions
to
environmental problems. She is trained in communication and
facilitation from the Indian Dispute Resolution Services and has spent ten years
experimenting with the group process of dialogue as proposed by the
late physicist and philosopher Dr. David Bohm, who was a personal friend.
Melissa has published articles and essays in various journals such as
Orion Magazine, Restoration & Management Notes, ReVision Journal, Abya Yala News, The Trumpeter, and Turtle Mountain Times. In 1999 one of her essays,
"Becoming Métis," was published in the anthology, At Home on the
Earth -
Becoming Native to our Place, edited by David Landis Barnhill
(University of California Press, 1999). In the fall of 2000, two of her other
essays will be published: "Contemporary Native American Responses to
Environmental Threats in Indian Country," co-authored with Dr. Tirso
Gonzales for the anthology, Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: The
Interbeing of Cosmology and Community, edited by John Grim (Center for
the Study of World Religions, Harvard University Press, 2000) and
"Constructing a Confluence: Water Stories and the Restoration of an Urban
Watershed,"
for the anthology Aqueous Reflections, edited by David Rothenberg and
Marta Ulvaeus (MIT Press, 2000).
Melissa currently serves on the board of directors of the Golden Gate
Biosphere Reserve, the Interfaith Center at the Presidio, and the
Collective Heritage Institute. She is also on the editorial board of
Terra Nova, a journal of Nature and Culture and Revision, a journal of
Consciousness and Transformation.
In terms of awards and achievements, Melissa received Highest Honors
for her independent major in Integrated Ecology from UC Santa Cruz in 1991.
In 1995 she received a UC Davis Public Service Research Bioregional Grant;
in 1996 she was a Switzer Environmental Fellow; in 1997, a Research
Mentorship Recipient with bioregional writer/photographer David Robertson; and
in 1999 she received a Switzer Environmental Leadership Award.
In the governmental and nonprofit sectors Melissa has
received awards,
honors, and scholarships to participate in work related to the United Nations
Environmental Program, the Biodiversity Convention, Pew Scholars for
Conservation, National Parks Conservation Association, National Trust
for Historic Preservation, Natural Resource Conservation Service, and
UNESCO's Biosphere Reserve program.
Melissa is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa
Indians and is of mixed-blood heritage: Chippewa (Ojibwe) and French
(Métis) from her mother and Norwegian from her father. She was born and
raised in northern California. Melissa and her partner, composer and
musician, Colin Farish of StillWater Sound
Studios,
live and work in the Presidio of San Francisco.
Melissa Nelson
Cultural
Conservancy board, staff, and volunteers with other native leaders at Richard
DeerTrack's home at Taos Pueblo, November 2000. Melissa is second from the
left.
