Crossing Thresholds: From Violence to Healing with Nidia Bustillos Rodriguez (Episode 4)

Welcome to Episode 4 of Crossing Thresholds: Religion, Resilience & Migration, a special mini-series of Walk Talk Listen produced in connection with new research by the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith & Local Communities (JLI) and Christian Aid on faith and climate migration. In this episode, Maurice Bloem speaks with Nidia Rosmery Bustillos Rodríguez, a Bolivian traditional healer and herbalist born in Cochabamba, whose life and work bring together lived experience, academic training, and Indigenous knowledge. Nidia is trained in information management, development studies, and transpersonal psychology, and her professional path integrates research, cultural management, and institutional work in the fields of intercultural health, development, and the rights of Indigenous women. Their conversation explores migration not only as physical movement, but as rupture and transformation. Born to parents who migrated for work and later forced to leave Bolivia to escape violent abuse, Nidia reflects on how family migration shapes identity across generations and how displacement, trauma, and spiritual meaning intersect. Her story reveals how survival can become a pathway toward healing, both for oneself and for others. Nidia’s professional work mirrors these themes. She has conducted research on traditional women healers, the use of natural resources, and information and communication technologies for the empowerment of Indigenous women, as well as on tambos and the Qhapaq Ñan. She currently serves as a Program Officer at the Pawanka Fund for the Arctic, Pacific, and Eurasia regions, and is responsible for the traditional medicine laboratory GAIA-TERRA. She is also CEO of DREAMCO SRL and the Cruz del Sur Foundation, and has collaborated widely with international organizations and feminist and Indigenous networks to strengthen initiatives related to traditional medicine, cultural heritage, and the preservation of ancestral knowledge. Nidia’s reflections echo key findings of the JLI–Christian Aid evidence review, which shows that faith and spirituality shape how people interpret displacement and that resilience often takes forms that policy and humanitarian systems struggle to recognize, including emotional, relational, and spiritual dimensions. Her life story gives human form to these insights, illustrating how loss, movement, and meaning are deeply intertwined. Rather than a formal interview, this episode is a listening dialogue about what it means to leave home, to survive violence, and to transform pain into care. It is also a conversation about knowledge, memory, and the enduring role of ancestral wisdom in times of upheaval. Learn more about the research behind this series: [link to JLI–Christian Aid report] Listener Engagement:

• Learn more about Nidia via her LinkedIn and Facebook. Although not finished yet, her website will be soon available via: http://www.nidiaingaia.com
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