Gender equality is pending issue for indigenous organizations.

"Mother Earth gives us life, and women give life too, so to defend life is defend the Earth," said Leonilda Zurita, leader of Bolivia´s Bartolina Sisa Federation of Campesina and Indigenous Women. Speaking at the first regional summit of indigenous women in the Peruvian highland city of Puno, Zurita and other prominent indigenous women leaders spoke out about the state and priorities of native women in Latin America.

Women shamans from around the Americas met in Colombia in late August to try to outline how best to integrate ancient teachings and wisdom with Western practices to improve the lot of their communities.

The shamans, from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela met in the southwestern Colombian city of Pasto Aug. 25-30 in the first ever International Meeting on Andean Cultures.

Bayanjargal laughed as she watched the three of us from NBC News turn on our cell phones for the first time in 24 hours and maniacally start emailing and texting. We probably were a ridiculous sight – hungry, dishevelled, basically slightly worse for wear after having flown two hours and then bumped along another ten hours inside a Russian UAZ van. But that wasn’t why Bayanjargal was grinning so widely.>>>

Speaker claims religious rituals help humans evolve

What do apes, shamans and getting high have to do with religion and the evolution of life? According to retired Arizona State University professor Michael Winkelman – everything.

Thursday evening, Winkelman visited the Marjorie Barrick Museum Auditorium to present his lecture “Supernatural as Natural: Religion and Human Evolution” to a full house of scientists, priests, believers, nonbelievers and the confused.

Cosmic Creatures: Textiles from Northeast Lao Communities / Cosmic Creatures, an exhibition of textiles from Northeast Lao communities at the East-West Center Gallery, will delight anyone with an interest in fiber arts and/or an interest in the cultures of southeast Asia. But it is also more generally enticing, invoking as it does an impulse, both aesthetic and spiritual, to weave a world entire.