Wisdom Fellowship Award Ceremony
Date and time
Location
David Brower Center
2150 Allston Way Berkeley, CA 94704Description
Please join us as we gather to honor Unangan Elder Illarion Merculieff for his leadership, wisdom and dedication to his Peoples and to the world.
Larry “Kuuyux” Merculieff is of the last generation of Aleuts of the Alaskan Pribilof Islands to be fully raised in the traditional way. Kuuyux, a name given once a generation, means extension, like an arm extending from a body.
Living this destiny, Larry served 35 years as a community leader on St. Paul Island, his home. His work now extends internationally, as he facilitates the use of traditional ways of dialogue, decision-making and consensus building, and talks about indigenous elder wisdom for modern times.
The Wisdom Fellowship Award is presented annually to honor the work of an elder who has demonstrated lifelong achievement in bringing wisdom, leadership and learning to their people and their community.
In this time of turmoil and change, the deep knowing that Indigenous Peoples hold is invaluable if we are to survive. The wisdom of their ways, the respectful relationship they maintain with everything around them, the way in which they demonstrate gratitude, are qualities we could all learn from.
Elders the world over are the keepers of tradition, of profound relationship with the living world and the Sacred. They are the ones who look out for their communities, guiding and teaching them. The work they do is vital, not only to their own communities, but to each one of us. By acknowledging and honoring them, we bring awareness to the importance and relevance of their wisdom and perspective.