- Webinars
- Transforming Our Relationship with Power
April 12, 2026 – Cultural integrity is essential for WTR facilitators, yet many of us feel disoriented around how to relate to the cultural influences of our practices and teachings, and even to our own personal cultural heritages. Lydia Violet, long-time WTR facilitator and colleague of Joanna Macy’s, and co-creator of the Turning to Our Roots program, is committed to supporting community members, facilitators, teachers, and guides in developing orientation and strong practices rooted in cultural integrity. In this workshop, she supports participants of any identities in finding their way towards cultural right relationship.
Cultural integrity isn’t a destination, but a compass that helps us move in a way that cultivates ongoing right relationship. Based on the Turning to Our Roots program curriculum, this workshop will share a system for understanding and locating ourselves within the terrain of cultural interaction. This includes but is not limited to:
- cultural inspiration
- cultural exchange
- cultural resonance
- cultural appropriation
- cultural erasure
In a compassionate space, where questions are welcome, and we can work together as we find our way.
The Work that Reconnects is a body of work informed by multivalent cultural practices. In leading WTR workshops, facilitators are in positions of privilege and power. It’s important for us to find and use our influence in a positive way in the conversation around cultural relationship.
Lydia Violet Harutoonian, grew up in the Iranian-Armenian-American diaspora with a steadfast curiosity for culture, spirituality, and community service. She is dedicated to navigating her own ever-evolving relationship with cultural integrity. She is working to tend to this aspect of cultural healing, relational healing, and inter-community healing.
Lydia is always joyously committed to sharing the Work that Reconnects with others, conjuring emotional resources for our time. She serves as a dedicated keeper and steward of the lineage of deep ecology elder and wisdom keeper Joanna Macy. After 17 years of sustained study, mentorship, and co-facilitation of WTR workshops with Macy, as well as immersion in adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy, Lydia is excited to empower the next generation of WTR facilitators.
Notes shared by participant during webinar – These are Lydia’s written words (my notes based on what she said)
(5 ways that culture can interact:)
(cultural) appreciation (attributing value to a cultural artifact in its context)
(cultural) resonance (seeing how, through our shared humanity, the culture from somewhere else can resonate in ourselves)
(cultural) exchange (we each bring something, and we share, learn, etc.)
(cultural) appropriation (taking something from others and claiming you made it, or selling it, or divorcing it from its source)
(cultural) erasure (the sufferings of war, or taking things to mean something different than their original purpose)
Right relationship (Practices that enhance cultural integrity):
Considering context – current, historical, trends (trying not to divorce artifacts from their culture, but instead understand their culture more)
Consider if it’s for you (don’t confuse resonance with “mine”)
Listening
Being willing to pause
Personal relationships
Tell story as you share
Love, appreciation, hospitality (understand the power)
Reciprocal exchange – if those people were in the room, how would they feel? (would they be proud)
Certain contexts ask you not to share, or to share and be ready for trigger (be compassionate and understanding – if pain is triggered, it might not be personal)