News & Updates
Ian Sanderson
Joanna Macy Earth Guardian Fellow; Visiting Instructor
Joanna Macy Center for Resilience & Regeneration
Ian Sanderson, Mohawk Nation, Turtle clan, from the Grand River Reserve in Ontario, Canada, has spent over 25 years inspiring awareness and reconnection to self, community, and the rest of the natural world by exploring convergences of the philosophies and epistemologies found in Indigenous, Eastern, and Western traditions to realize empowered personal transformation and socio-ecological change.
Building off a love of the outdoors and a degree in Indigenous Studies from Trent University, he started his professional life in outdoor and experiential education with the Canadian Outward Bound Wilderness School. Following a move to Sante Fe, NM, he worked for many years with the Santa Fe Mountain Center, creating community-based social-ecological change programs with many Indigenous communities, designing and delivering De-colonization programs, and much more. Having moved to Colorado in 2010, he is currently a core faculty member with the Environmental Studies program at Naropa University, where he has taught for 13 years.
Over the last 25 years, Ian has facilitated many hundreds of single and multi-day group programs and other engagements, locally and throughout the country, and across extremely diverse populations and contexts. At any point you could find him with a group in the remote back-country, in downtown office buildings, with non-profits, or schools in both the pre- and post-secondary educational levels.
Additionally, he co-owns the Boulder Quest Center, which trains youth and adults in the transformative martial art of To-Shin-Do ninjutsu, which offers a modern approach to handling the threats and confrontations likely in our modern society through reality-based training, coaching students in ways to promote peace, security, well-being, and building the kind of inner strength and resiliency that leads to success in life. He is currently working towards the rank of “Godan,” 5thDegree Black Belt and has studied martial arts for over 20 years.
In his new role with the Joanna Macy Center, Ian intends to apply complexity, Indigenous systems-thinking, and regenerative design frameworks in the hope of inspiring the revitalization of the potential that resides amongst the chaos of transitions here at Naropa and in our broader communities.
He lives in regenerative community with his partner-in-life, dogs, cat, ducks, chickens, trees, plants, and many human housemates, just east of Boulder, CO.
