Orland Bishop
Orland Bishop is the founder and director of ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation in Los Angeles, where he has pioneered approaches to urban truces and mentoring at-risk youth that combine new ideas with traditional ways of knowledge. ShadeTree serves as an intentional community of mentors, elders, teachers, artists, healers and advocates for the healthy development of children and youth. Orland's work in healing and human development is framed by an extensive study of medicine, naturopathy, psychology and indigenous cosmologies, primarily those of South and West Africa.Videos featuring Orland Bishop
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Oneness is Abundance
L.A.-based community activist Orland Bishop explains how the American economic system that assigns value to competition and scarcity of resources undermines oneness, which is inherently relational and abundant. Although the capitalist system as a whole resists investing in human development, people can create new systems that reinforce each individual's value instead of encouraging struggle and competition by making alternative agreements based on collective inspiration.
(5 min 15 sec) -
What Would It Look Like?
What if the world embodied our highest potential? What would it look like? As the structures of modern society crumble, is it enough to respond with the same tired solutions?
Or are we being called to question a set of unexamined assumptions that form the very basis of our civilization?
This 25-minute retrospective asks us to reflect on the state of the world and ourselves, and to listen more closely to what is being asked of us at this time of unprecedented global transformation.
(24 min 54 sec) -
The Earth is a Oneness Idea
L.A.-based social activist and community leader Orland Bishop explains that a cultural worldview that fails to recognize earth's primal qualities can only produce violence. Evoking transformative ideas such as foundation, stability, abundance, accessibility, reconciliation, and peace, says Orland, allows a human being to move beyond limitation and conflict into one's true non-violent nature.
(2 min 12 sec) -
Sawubona
Youth worker and community leader Orland Bishop explains the meaning of the Zulu greeting Sawubona ("We see you") as an invitation to a deep witnessing and presence. This greeting forms an agreement to affirm and investigate the mutual potential and obligation that is present in a given moment. At its deepest level, Orland explains, this "seeing" is essential to human freedom.
(3 min 46 sec) -
Intuition
L.A.-based community activist Orland Bishop explains that oneness is the source of intuition, which allows us to touch a common truth beyond our memory, culture and conditioned responses. By choosing to reflect on the reality "behind thinking," human beings have access to incredible freedom.
(2 min 11 sec) -
The Authentic Expression of My Voice
Orland Bishop describes the unique blend of mentoring, peacemaking, and community leadership that takes place at his L.A.-based Shade Tree Multicultural Foundation. Orland explains how mentoring dialogue integrates human cognition with the continuities of nature, releasing energy into the human personality in the form of willpower and inspiration.
(2 min 52 sec) -
Mutual Consent
Youth worker Orland Bishop explains how young people learn about power from adults. In the absence of elders who have cultivated wisdom in their lives and know how to transmit it to younger generations, young people see power abused and either reject it altogether or take it to an extreme. Violence, which Orland calls power without consciousness, is their cultural inheritance. And yet, when based on respect and consideration, human power is magical. Can we imagine if humanity collectively exercised power with love and mutual consent?
(5 min 23 sec)