Tawni Tidwell, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Center for Healthy Minds

Tawni learned about her heritage from her paternal grandfather in the Ozarks with kinship to the Western Cherokee and her maternal grandfather, who grew up as part of the Assiniboine (Nakhóta) in Montana — exploring how to read the land and the stories it tells of our shared history. Eager to learn more, Tawni immersed in five years animal tracking, nature awareness, wilderness survival and traditional ecological knowledge training on Lenni-Lenape land in the Pine Barrens of southern Jersey, and taught survival and tracking children’s programs in which First Nation youth from various North American tribes participated. Traditions from which she studied include Lipan Apache, Eastern Band Cherokee and Akamba transmitted primarily by her tracking teachers.

An eagerness to learn heritage knowledge of sustaining cultivated relationships with the natural world, wild harvested food practices and medical knowledge rooted in ecological relationship, Tawni traveled to Tibetan regions throughout the Himalayas in north India, Ladakh, and Tibet, as well as to mountain and Amazonian communities in Peru and Bolivia - such as the Nacion Q’eros and Machiguenga. Tawni developed cultural ecology programs in the Himalayas, Andes and Amazon, working with youth in learning indigenous practices and knowledge of the land and well-being. This work led her to pursue training as a traditional Tibetan medical doctor and biocultural anthropologist to help translate knowledge of well-being across contemporary epistemic paradigms and into people’s bodies and relationships with the earth.