Dr Apela Colorado is Oneida-Gaul and a traditional cultural practitioner and indigenous scientist. She is 
dedicated to bridging dialogue between Western thought and indigenous worldview. She founded the Worldwide Indigenous Science Network in 1989 to foster the revitalization, growth, and worldwide exchange of traditional knowledge and to safeguard the lives and work of the world’s endangered traditional practitioners. In 1997, Dr Colorado was one of twelve women chosen from 52 countries by the State of the World Forum to be honoured for her role as a woman leader. She created the first doctoral program in traditional knowledge at the California Institute of Integral Studies. For twenty years she directed the Indigenous Mind Program, which led students into ways of exploring their ancestral and earth-based, holistic consciousness within a Western academic framework. She continues this work offering workshops in the ancestral remembrance process.