About
Melissa K. Nelson is a professor of Indigenous Sustainability at Arizona State University's School of Sustainability, and an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians (Anishinaabe, Cree, Métis heritage). An Indigenous ecologist and scholar-activist, she previously taught American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University (2002–2020). Nelson directs community-based projects focused on Indigenous environmental rights, biocultural heritage, food sovereignty, and cultural preservation. She directed The Cultural Conservancy, an Indigenous-led organization, from 1993 to 2021.
Teaching focus
Nelson's teaching at Upaya sits inside the center's Soto Zen container. The basic form is zazen, just sitting, with the posture and breath held lightly and the mind allowed to settle without force. Around that core, Upaya's programs build out a wider arc that includes the Bodhisattva precepts, oryoki meal practice, walking meditation (kinhin), dharma talks, and the GRACE framework Roshi Joan developed for clinicians working at the bedside. Nelson teaches inside that framework, which means the work isn't just on the cushion. Students are asked to bring practice into the spaces where it actually gets tested: at the bedside, in conversation, in moments of grief or political reactivity, in the long, slow work of climate and justice. Upaya's approach is recognizable for its refusal to keep zazen and the world in separate boxes. The cushion and the clinic, the cushion and the kitchen, the cushion and the protest line are all treated as the same field of practice, not different ones. Nelson's contribution stays in that key. Teaching sessions emphasize uprightness, attention, and the Bodhisattva vow as something lived in specific situations rather than recited as an idea. There's room for silence. There's also room for hard conversations about what practice asks of a person in a world under pressure.
Background
Melissa K. Nelson, PhD appears in Upaya Zen Center's teacher and faculty roster as part of the wider contemplative community Roshi Joan Halifax has gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over the past four decades. The biographical material on file is drawn directly from Upaya's own teacher page and reflects what Nelson has chosen to share there. Melissa K. Nelson, Ph.D. is a professor of Indigenous Sustainability in the School of Sustainability, College of Global Futures. Dr. Nelson is an Indigenous ecologist, writer, editor, media-maker and scholar-activist. Before joining the School of Sustainability, ASU in 2020, she served as a professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University (2002 - 2020), specializing in Indigenous Environmental and California Indian Studies. Dr. Nelson is a transdisciplinary and community-based scholar dedicated to Indigenous rights and sustainability, biocultural heritage and environmental justice, intercultural solidarity, and the renewal and celebration of community health and cultural arts. She actively advocates for Indigenous Peoples rights and sustainable lifeways in higher education, nonprofits, and philanthropy, and is particularly passionate elevating Indigenous sciences and Indigenous food sovereignty at local, regional and global levels. Dr. Nelson has led numerous community-based projects through her work at The Cultural Conservancy, an Indigenous-led organization, which she directed between 1993 and 2021. She is Anishinaabe, Cree, Métis, and Norwegian (an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians). That body of work places Nelson inside a center known for blending Soto Zen practice with contemplative care for the dying, climate work, neuroscience dialogues, and a long-running program for clinicians and chaplains called GRACE. Upaya's roster mixes resident priests with visiting scholars, doctors, scientists, poets, and indigenous knowledge holders, and the programs reflect that blend. Nelson's appearances at Upaya situate this work inside that wider conversation between zazen and the world it sits inside. For practitioners who arrive at Upaya through a sesshin or a Being with Dying training, the common thread is a posture of upright, alert presence under whatever conditions show up. The forms are recognizably Soto Zen: zazen, kinhin, oryoki, the Bodhisattva precepts, dharma talks, and dokusan with senior teachers. The framing is wider than any single discipline, which is part of what has made Upaya a meeting ground for working clinicians, scientists, artists, and long-time Buddhist practitioners. Nelson contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Nelson's career outside Upaya can follow the linked website and external publications listed on the Upaya page itself, which is where any deeper biographical detail belongs.
Lineage
Nelson's teaching home for the work documented here is Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, founded by Roshi Joan Halifax in the 1980s and rooted in the Soto Zen lineage. Upaya's broader faculty includes resident priests, visiting senior teachers, scientists, clinicians, poets, and indigenous knowledge holders. Nelson contributes as part of Upaya's wider faculty rather than as a Zen priest. Information about specific dharma transmission lines, ordination, or external lineage roots belongs on Nelson's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Nelson at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Nelson's own area of focus. Days follow Upaya's rhythm of sittings, walking meditation, meals, talks, and time for questions. Silence is taken seriously, but so are the conversations that come out of it. The framing is wide enough for people from outside Buddhist practice to take part fully. Long-time Zen students will recognize the forms; newcomers will be supported through them. Expect to leave with a clearer sense of how practice meets the specific subject Nelson is teaching.
