Rupa Marya

Dr. Rupa Marya is a physician, activist, writer, mother, and a composer. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where she practices and teaches internal medicine. Her work sits at the nexus of climate, health and racial justice. She is a co-founder of the Do No Harm Coalition, a collective of health workers committed to addressing disease through structural change. At the invitation of Lakȟota health leaders, she is helping to set up the Mni Wiconi Health Clinic and Farm at Standing Rock to decolonize medicine and food. Dr Marya is also co-founder and executive director of the Deep Medicine Circle, an organization committed to healing the wounds of colonialism through food, medicine, story and learning. Working with Association of Ramaytush Ohlone, she developed the Farming is Medicine project, where farmers are recast as ecological stewards under Indigenous leadership, and food is liberated from the market economy. Dr Marya was recognized in 2021 with the Women Leaders in Medicine Award by the American Medical Student Association. She was a reviewer of the American Medical Association's Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity. Dr. Marya was appointed by Governor Newsom to the Healthy California for All Commission, to advance a model for universal healthcare in California. She has toured twenty-nine countries with her band, Rupa and the April Fishes, whose music was described by the legend Gil Scott-Heron as “Liberation Music.”