Healing Story Alliance is a not-for-profit, educational, arts organization which provides online resources and concert, workshop, and community programming in support of storytelling as a healing art.
Description
Join the Healing Story Alliance for a special gathering to share and explore stories of social justice in action in its many faces and forms. Through folk tales and personal stories, we will dive deeply into multiple experiences of justice in action.
A told story is a living experience of social justice. This evening's tellings exemplify the radical kindness of being swept into a story, regardless of situation and lifted out of preoccupations that distract or fuel aggression. What obstructs us from being together, and present, is vanquished in the act of true listening.
Date: April 17th, 2026
Time: 7:00pm-8:30pm EDT
(Open Mic Story Share and Reflection: last half hour)
Format:The story session opens with a concert of seasoned tellers exploring our theme with stories, and community tellers sharing stories of how they promote social justice as storytelling and kindness. The second half of the event invites listeners to respond and reflect on what emerged for them on the nature of storytelling as an act of profound social justice and kindness in these troubled times.
Purpose: We all need a little more justice and kindness in our lives. Perhaps a story can take us there.
“If we want a beloved community, we must stand for justice.” Bell Hooks
About the Storytellers
Johnny Moses is a Tulalip Native American raised in the remote Nuu-chah-nulth village of Ohiat on the west coast of Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada. He was raised in the traditional ways by his grandparents, and sent by his elders to share their teachings with all people. Johnny is a master storyteller, oral historian, traditional healer and respected spiritual leader. Johnny, whose traditional name is Whis.stem.men.knee (Walking Medicine Robe), carries the Si.Si.Wiss (sacred breath, sacred life) medicine teachings and healing ceremonies of his Northwest Coast people. Fluent in eight Native languages, he is a traveling ambassador for Northwest Coast cultures. He shares the knowledge and richness of his spiritual and cultural traditions with people across the United States and Canada through storytelling, lectures and workshops.
Rafe Martin is the author of over 20 books that have been translated into many languages including Swedish, French, Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans, Korean, Japanese and Portuguese. Speaking as both an author and a storyteller, Rafe has appeared in thousands of schools, libraries, festivals, and conferences in nearly every state—including Alaska and Hawaii—and as far away as Japan. In schools he works with all grade and ages, kindergarten through college and adult, telling stories and sharing an empowering vision of language, writing, creativity, and imagination. He leaves listeners with an awareness of their own power to create. He offers writing, storytelling and professional development workshops, as well as adult and family performances.
His noted writing has appeared in Parabola: The Magazine of Myth and Tradition; Blind Donkey; The Sun; Enquiring Mind; Storytelling Magazine; Mountain Record; Zen Bow; Buddhadharma; Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and The Animals’ Voice as well as in the books Who Says? Essays in Contemporary Storytelling; Between the Lines: A Modern Midrash; Peace Tales; Stories for the Spirit; Stories of the Heart; The Ghost and I; Read-to-Tell Tales, More Best-Loved Tales from the National Storytelling Festival and in A Treasury of Stories Recorded Live at the 20th Anniversary National Storytelling Festival
Rafe holds a Master’s degree in English literature from the University of Toronto where he studied with such notable figures as Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan. He was the first person to ever be granted Highest Honors in English from Harper College (now Binghamton University) where he graduated magna cum laude.
Laura Simms is an internationally acclaimed storyteller, writer, teacher and humanitarian. She combines traditional stories with personal narrative. She is artistic Director of the Hans Christian Andersen Storytelling Center in NYC and served as a Senior Research Fellow for Rutgers University Peace Center under the auspices of UNESCO. She is a founding member of the Healing Story Alliance and serves on their programming committee. Laura saved a zoo in Romania, and won the Sesame Street SUNNY DAYS AWARD for work with children worldwide. She received the Hasbro September 11 Grant designing a manual and training for storytelling for children in crisis. Laura has worked in post conflict and climate disasters with International Medical Corps, and Mercy Corps, Inc. She is a certified dharma art teacher and a senior meditation instructor in mindfulness awareness practice. She has five books and many recordings. Recently Laura was story advisor for the Fetzer Foundation Sacred Story Project. She continues to work with The Constellation. www.laurasimms.com
Community Tellers
Aldo Civico is an Associate Research Scholar at the Center for International Conflict Resolution (CICR) and an Affiliate of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. Currently, he is the founder and the director of the International Institute for Peace at Rutgers University, Newark. An anthropologist, he has been conducting fieldwork in Colombia since 2001, focusing on internally displaced people and the paramilitary. Since 2003, Civico has worked to facilitate the country’s peace efforts with the National Liberation Army, or the ELN guerrilla. For the CICR, he designed and conducted several conflict resolution workshops in Colombia and Haiti.
Civico’s research interests include democracy, state, sovereignty, political violence, human rights, conflict, refugees, resistance, and civil society. He teaches courses in anthropology (of political violence, human rights, and religion) at the New School University of New York and at the William Paterson University in New Jersey. He also leads conflict resolution seminars organized by the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín and in Turbo.
Civico has worked as a consultant for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and for post-conflict assessment in the Balkans region, and is a contributor to the UNDP Colombian magazine Hechos de Callejón. With the president of the Sicilian Renaissance Institute Leoluca Orlando, Civico consulted the Secretaría de Seguridad Pública of Mexico City on issues related to civil society and the fight against organized crime. He is a member of the Club of Madrid working group “Dealing with Violence” and was among the scholars who participated in the International Conference on Democracy and Terrorism in March 2005 in Madrid.
Rangira Béa Gallimore, Ph.D., is the founder and president of Step Up. She is also a co-founder and member of the board of the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center in Rwanda. Dr. Gallimore is an associate professor at the University of Missouri—Columbia where she teaches and researches on women and violence. She has published books and articles in the area of Francophone Studies and on the genocide in Rwanda. She served as an expert consultant to UNESCO and other international organizations on the role of women in post-conflict recovery. Dr. Gallimore is fluent in English, French and Kinyarwanda, the official languages of Rwanda. She is also a trained trauma counselor and a member of the Step-Up trauma training team.
Emcee
Milbre Burch is a GRAMMY-nominated spoken word recording artist, an internationally known Oracle-Award-winning storyteller, and a sought-after teaching artist. The preeminent interpreter of Jane Yolen stories, she has performed and taught across the US, Europe and Asia since 1978. She has created nationally recognized residencies, workshops and pre-conferences, as well as locally lauded community outreach events. A produced and published playwright, Milbre holds a PhD in theatre and performance studies from the University of Missouri. She is dedicated to addressing issues of diversity, equity and inclusion, to working for peace and justice and reconciliation, and to speaking the truth of women’s experiences.
Date & Time
Sun, May 17, 2026 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM