Sacred Remembering in Times of War: Dr. Jaiya John (Mshkiki Odeh Inini, Medicine Heart Man)

Recorded live at a SAND Community Gathering (April 2026) Hard times are here, we hunger for voices that can see beyond the fear, beyond the noise, beyond the technologies consuming our attention. We need poets and visionaries. People who remember freedom. Dr. Jaiya John (Mshkiki Odeh Inini, Medicine Heart Man), medicine poet, freedom worker, is one of those voices. He has spent his life gathering words that heal. In this conversation, we enter the beauty, the grief, and the medicine together. We sit with the devastation tearing our world, the sorrows cracking us open, the ancestors still holding us—and the radical insistence that collective freedom is not something we chase. It is something already alive in and between us, waiting to be birthed. Dr. Jaiya John (Mshkiki Odeh Inini, Medicine Heart Man) was orphan-born on ancient Indigenous Anasazi and Pueblo lands in the high desert of New Mexico. He is an ancestral Baba, freedom worker, medicine poet, and the founder of Soul Water Rising—a global mission to eradicate oppression through re-humanization, book donations, and grants to displaced youth. He is the author of numerous books including Freedom: Medicine Words for your Brave Revolution and Fragrance After Rain, and the creator of the podcast I Will Read for You. A former professor of social psychology at Howard University, he holds a doctorate from UC Santa Cruz and has spoken to over a million people worldwide. His Indigenous soul dreams of frybread, sweetgrass, bamboo in the breeze, and turtle lakes whose poetry is peace. &nbsp; Watch the full video version of this conversation. &nbsp; Topics &nbsp; 00:00 Welcome and Land Acknowledgment 02:31 Guest Bio and Introduction 03:51 Opening Blessing and Heart Question 05:10 Reclaiming Anger as Medicine 08:08 Libation Prayer for the World 15:57 Anger Rage and Lifted Veils 20:19 Rethinking War and Remembering Water 25:18 Gather Your People Reading 33:04 Grief Poetry and Inner Wars 36:13 War Wants Us Small 40:30 Soul Conditions That Grow War 42:14 Oxygen of War 44:12 Harvesting Clear Vision 47:05 Ferocious Grief Revival 49:38 How Grief Behaves 51:59 Poetry Against Silence 55:08 From Muteness to Voice 58:33 Artistry as Resurrection 01:03:42 Womanhood as Creativity 01:07:23 History as Sacred Hoop 01:12:45 Composting Harm into Healing 01:16:33 Intentional Living Practice 01:19:22 All These Rivers Choose Love 01:23:01 Blessings and Farewell &nbsp; Dr. Jaiya John — Guest <span style="font