ABOUT RABIAH:
Rabiah Nur is an Indigenous healer, activist, storyteller, speaker, ceremonialist and daughter of the Great Mother. Her work in the world is to heal and empower women through connection to nature, to spirit, and to their innate wisdom. She works to facilitate a rebirth of a new and healthy society where women are valued, empowered, whole and are held as the sacred beings that they are. If women are unhealthy, the whole society is unhealthy.
Currently, Rabiah consults with and teaches at conferences, gatherings, schools, religious organizations, and retreat centers to offer Earth-based spiritual teachings, grounding energetic work, collective healing for teams and work groups, and education about appropriate use of Indigenous practices and traditions.
Rabiah recently co-designed an initiative in partnership with the Patuxent Riverkeeper called Honoring Our Sacred Waters, which exists to increase awareness of the spiritual connection between people and water through honoring, ceremony, and education. Rabiah was given an initial vision for this initiative which has been adopted by numerous organizations in the Chesapeake Bay area. This initiative provides an opportunity to experience the river using the ancient rites of the river’s indigenous first residents. Non-denominational, participatory and soulful, this immersive experience gives greater insight into the ways of indigenous ancestors.
As a dedicated activist and educator, Rabiah has spent the past 30 years hosting leaders and wisdom keepers from Maori, Mayan, Aztec, and Senegalese Indigenous communities to organize cross-cultural and immersive educational gatherings and ceremonies. For 17 years, she worked on the organizing committee for the annual gathering called A Prayer Vigil For The Earth. This was a gathering which existed to bring members of diverse Indigenous communities, traditional cultural groups, and faith-based organizations to Washington DC to share their traditions with the public and lead ceremonies and teach-ins highlighting women’s roles in knowledge, healing and spirituality.
Rabiah attended multiple iterations of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and she was part of the delegation of Indigenous people from North America invited to Bolivia to craft the Rights of Mother Earth document that Evo Morales delivered to the United Nations. Rabiah was also a key organizer of the 1998 Belonging to Mother Earth Conference. Belonging to Mother Earth was part of an overall plan to create and develop a long term commitment to enable Indigenous peoples everywhere to be heard by each other, and the world, providing the opportunity to share their enduring wisdom and healing with the rest of humankind in a significant way. Rabiah assisted in ceremony, fed the attendees, and was gifted a Maori mask by Tepti Curtis at this conference. In the late 1980s, Rabiah was part of a council of scholars and grassroots organizers that pushed the Washington DC area public schools to adopt more African-centered educational content into their curriculum.
