Maternal Gift Economy: Breaking Through -
Ongoing Salons
Every two weeks
6th Annual Maternal Gift Economy Movement Conference
Maternal Human
Featuring Darcia Narvaez, Pat McCabe, Sherri Mitchell, Miki Kashtan and Genevieve Vaughan.
Moderated by Letecia Layson.
Nov. 28, 2025
Darcia Narvaez, PhD
Darcia Narvaez is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame, and Fellow of the American Psychological Association, American Educational Research Association, Association for Psychological Science, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Born in Minnesota (USA), she grew up living around the world as a bilingual/bicultural Puerto Rican-German American but calls Earth her home. Her earlier careers include professional musician, business owner, classroom music teacher, classroom Spanish teacher, and seminarian, among other endeavors. She uses an interdisciplinary approach to studying evolved morality, child development and human flourishing. Her most recent books include Restoring the Kinship Worldview, and The Evolved Nest: Nature’s Way of Raising Children and Creating Connected Communities. Her book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom won the 2015 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association and the 2017 Expanded Reason Award. Her recent short films are Breaking the Cycle, The Evolved Nest, and Reimagining Humanity. She hosts the webpage EvolvedNest.org and serves as president of KindredWorld.org.
Miki Kashtan
Miki Kashtan is a practical visionary pursuing a world that works for all, based on principles and practices rooted in feminist nonviolence. Miki is the mother of the Nonviolent Global Liberation (NGL) community, whose purpose is to integrate nonviolence into the fabric of human life through ongoing live experiments with truth focused on individual and collective liberation. About sixty people actively contribute to NGL in distributed leadership without there being bosses, employees, or boards, of whom about thirty depend on financial gifts given to NGL and distributed based on need, as part of a commitment to prototype a global maternal gift economy.
More information @ nglcommunity.org and TheFearlessHeart.org.
Pat McCabe – Weyakpa Najin Win
An artist, activist, and grandmother, Pat McCabe is a bridge between indigenous wisdom and the modern world. Her openness of heart and clarity of vision have touched people all across the globe. Through her speaking, writings, art and ceremony, Pat reframes questions about sustainability, balance, power and gender. Pat devotes her work to supporting the next generations in being functional members of the “Hoop of Life” and upholding the honour of being human.
More information @ patmccabe.net
Sherri Mitchell – Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset
Sherri Mitchell – Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset was born and raised on the Penobscot Indian reservation. She received her Juris Doctorate and a certificate in Indigenous People’s Law and Policy from the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law. Sherri is an alumna of the American Indian Ambassador program, and the Udall Native American Congressional Internship program. Sherri also received the Mahoney Dunn International Human Rights and Humanitarian Award, for research into Human Rights violations against Indigenous Peoples. She was a longtime advisor to the American Indian Institute’s Healing the Future Program and currently serves as an advisor to the Indigenous Elders and Medicine People’s Council of North and South America. She is the Founding Director of the Land Peace Foundation, an organization dedicated to the global protection of Indigenous rights and the preservation of the Indigenous way of life. Prior to forming the Land Peace Foundation, Sherri served as a law clerk to the Solicitor of the United States Department of Interior; as an Associate with Fredericks, Peebles and Morgan Law Firm; a civil rights educator for the Maine Attorney General’s Office, and; as the Staff Attorney for the Native American Unit of Pine Tree Legal. Sherri is the author of the award-winning book Sacred Instructions; Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change.
More information @ sacredinstructions.life.
Genevieve Vaughan
Genevieve Vaughan is an independent researcher who lives part time in Italy and part in Texas. She created the multicultural all-woman activist Foundation for a Compassionate Society (1987-2005) and the Temple of Sekhmet in the Nevada desert (1992 – ongoing) and she co-created the network: International Feminists for a Gift Economy (2001 – ongoing). Her books are For-Giving, a Feminist Criticism of Exchange (1997), Homo Donans (2006), and The Gift in the Heart of Language: the Maternal Source of Meaning (2015). She has edited Il Dono/The Gift (2004), Women and the Gift Economy (2007), and The Maternal Roots of the Gift Economy (2019). A volume of the Canadian Women’s Studies Journal dedicated to the maternal gift economy has just appeared (2020). More information @ www.gift-economy.com.
Letecia Layson
Letecia Layson is a Filipina, Feminist, Futurist, Priestess of Morphogenesis (Form Coming Into Being), High Priestess of Diana; Priestess Hierophant in FOI/TOI-LA. Letecia is one of the founding Mothers of the Center for Babaylan Studies; a member of International Feminists for Gift Economy, Modern Matriarchal Studies Network