Congratulations, Cosmic Sister Emerging Voices Award (CS EVA) recipient Kumiko Hayashi (@kumiihayashi)!

Kumiko is a Japanese-American filmmaker and medicine woman born in Tesuque Indigenous territory in New Mexico. She has presented her work in conferences and gatherings around the world, including the ICEERS World Ayahuasca Conference in 2019.

She is a producer and cinematographer for “Women of the White Buffalo,” a documentary about Native American Lakota Women to be released in 2021. She directed her first feature-length film, “The Roots Awaken” (@therootsawaken), about her journey from the Andes to the Amazon rainforest, living with 15 Indigenous tribes transforming the environmental crisis through culture, ceremony, and community.

Kumiko’s journey started when she joined representatives from tribes across the Americas at a Pachakuti gathering in Ecuador, a long weekend spent listening to wise elders and participating in rituals from their respective cultures. She had a vision that Indigenous people in the Amazon Rainforest were in great danger and decided to travel alone from the high Andes to the jungle. She discovered that the Amazon Rainforest is at a tipping point, witnessing disastrous oil drilling near Yasuni National Park and in the Ecuadorian Amazon. “There are tribes that forecast the environmentally destructive nature of our economic models before the term climate change was even coined,” she says. “I participated in many rituals and ceremonies that all led me to the same awareness: we are one and inseparable from our environment.”

Kumiko obtained a BA in Humanities from Soka University of America in 2014 and a BA in Communication and Media Studies from Universidad San Francisco de Quito in 2013. She is a board member for the Coach2Edify Foundation, promoting transformational solutions for wellbeing.

In partnership with Spirit Plant Medicine Conference, the CS EVA increases visibility for talented women in psychedelics and cannabis who work tirelessly in behind-the-scenes roles, as well as newcomers who bring unique voice and talent to the community and/or who shine in spotlight positions.

Nominated by Jasmine Virdi (@jazz.virdi).

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