For The Wild Podcast: Recent Episodes
For The Wild
For The Wild Podcast is an anthology of the Anthropocene; focused on land-based protection, co-liberation and intersectional storytelling rooted in a paradigm shift away from human supremacy, endless growth and consumerism.
What does it mean to settle, to be in a settled place? This week’s guest, AbdouMaliq Simone has dedicated his work to investigating the specifics of urban organization as they are created by people. In this erudite and globally-positioned conversation, Ayana and AbdouMaliq meditate on how the design of our environments shapes us.
AbdouMaliq talks us through the uncertain, vulnerable, and dynamic positions in the choreography of global cities, and contemplates what it means to live an urban life. From the entanglements of resistance and protest, to surveillance and governance, to the effects of climate change on the city environment, AbdouMaliq brings nuance and depth to this vital conversation. As humanity shapes the city, it shapes us in turn, and as the world rapidly urbanizes, AbdouMaliq calls listeners to think about what an urban politics could be.
AbdouMaliq Simone is Senior Professorial Fellow at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield and co-director of the Beyond Inhabitation Lab, Polytechnic University of
Turin. https://beyondinhabitation.org/
Music by Jahawi. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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In an episode that cuts straight to the soul, this week’s guest Andrea Gibson joins Ayana in a conversation that asks what it means to truly live. Andrea contemplates the ways we cope with loneliness and the deeply rooted societal fears of disconnection and of death. Facing fear, confusion, and loss head on, Andrea reminds us that healing is a return to the self, a return to community.
Andrea’s openness about their diagnosis and emotional journey, brings depth and emotion to the conversation. Through poem and spirituality, Andrea draws us to see the beauty in being alive in this particular life, in our particular bodies, at this particular time. Their presence and attention is life-giving.
As Andrea shares their journey connecting to the eternal, genderless “We,” they invite listeners to contemplate their identities beyond this life alone. As we let the need to know fall away, what miracles might reveal themselves to us?
Andrea Gibson is one of the most celebrated and influential spoken word poets of our time. Best known for their live performances, Gibson has changed the landscape of what it means to attend a “poetry show” altogether. To hear Gibson is like hearing songwriters play their music, their trademark honesty and vulnerability are on full display. Gibson’s poems center around LGBTQ issues, gender, feminism, mental health and the dismantling of oppressive social systems. The winner of the first Women’s World Poetry Slam, Gibson has gone on to be awarded the LGBTQ Out100 and has been featured on BBC, NPR and CSpan. Gibson is the author of seven award winning books and seven full length albums. Their live shows have become loving and supportive ecosystems for audiences to feel seen, heard, and held through Gibson’s art.
Music by John Carrol Kirby (generously provided by Patience Records), Kesia Negata, and Katie Gray. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Death is a process of decomposition, how can we come to embrace this reality? This week, guest Katrina Spade joins Ayana for a fascinating conversation on the possibilities of burial practices, ways to connect with death, and the value in thoughtful death plans. Sharing her journey to founding Recompose, “a licensed, full-service, green funeral home in Seattle offering human composting,” Katrina shares that the way we design death rituals matters in how connected we feel to the process of death.
Detailing the science, logistics, and art behind human composting, Katrina imbues the conversation with passion, concern, and a spirit of learning. Through Recompose, Katrina has witnessed the beauty that comes from watching new life blossom from death, and from the connections family members of the deceased can have with the soil created from the composting process. The intention and compassion we put into death-care matters. As Katrina reminds us, there is so much to be gained from intimacy with death.
Katrina Spade is the founder and CEO of Recompose, a public benefit corporation leading the transformation of the funeral industry. Katrina is a designer and the inventor of a system that transforms the dead into soil (aka human composting).
Since founding in 2017, Katrina and Recompose have led the successful legalization of human composting in Washington State in 2019. Recompose became the first company in the world to offer the service in December of 2020. The process is now also legal in Oregon, Colorado, Vermont, California., and New York.
Katrina and her team have been featured in Fast Company, NPR, the Atlantic, BBC, Harper’s Magazine, and the New York Times. She is an Echoing Green Fellow, an Ashoka fellow, and a Harvard Kennedy School Visiting Social Innovator.
Music by Yesol. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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It is with a heavy heart that we share that Tokitae, a Southern Resident Orca held unjustly in captivity for 53 years, has passed away. To honor her memory, this week we are rebroadcasting our episode with Kurt Russo on the People Under the Sea, originally aired in October of 2018. This conversation explores the powerful memory held by Southern Resident orcas, the threats they face from vessel noise, chemical pollutants, and declining Chinook salmon population, the health of the Salish Sea, and the efforts of the Lummi Nation to return Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut (also known as Tokitae/Lolita), from where she was being held captive at Miami Seaquarium, to her natal waters in the Salish Sea. Tokitae’s life ended while in captivity, but we hope that her memory may serve to inspire the fight for right-relationship and reciprocity with our more-than-human-kin.
Kurt Russo is the executive director of Se’Si’Le, an Indigenous-led nonprofit dedicated to the perpetuation and practical application of Indigenous ancestral knowledge. Kurt has worked with Indigenous communities since 1978 in the areas of sacred site protection, Indigenous treaty rights, environmental cross-cultural conflict resolution, and the intertextualization of ways of knowing nature. He was co-Founder and Executive Director of the Florence R. Kluckhohn Center for the Study of Values and the Native American Land Conservancy, helped establish the International Indigenous Exchange Program (Northwest Indian College), the Sacred Lands Conservancy, and the Foundation for Indigenous Medicine. He has a BS in Forestry from the University of Montana, an MS in Forestry from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of California (Riverside). He is a veteran and served in Vietnam where he worked with Montagnard Indigenous communities.
Music by Monplaisir and Amoeba. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Introducing listeners to her fierce devotion to community and care for the animal world, Keiara Wade, the Compton Cowgirl, considers the ways care work includes the human and more-than-human. Though the connection between humans and animals is often unspoken, it is a vital tie, and Keiara emphasizes the way the specific tie between human and horse can be incredibly therapeutic, healing, and nourishing.
Keiara shares her journey with the Compton Cowboys and her experiences as a Black cowgirl. The Compton Cowboys were founded in 2017 by a group of Compton locals who had grown up riding together. Recognizing the importance of intergenerational community and influence, Keiara hopes that this program and connection to the horses can continue for generations to come. Compton Cowboys is about so much more than just riding, and Keiara shares the significance of making spaces for young people to feel heard and valued . The respect and accountability necessary for a good relationship with a horse is also necessary for a good relationship with each other. How might animals be our guides and companions in making the world more equitable?
Keiara Wade is The Compton Cowgirl of the Compton Cowboys.
She is in the process of pursuing her barrel racing career and becoming the first black woman to make it to the NFR. Horses have always been her positive outlet to the traumatic world in which she grew up. She believes in giving back to our younger generations by allowing them the experience of the equine world and possibly leading them away from the streets and gang violence. She recently moved to Houston to accomplish her dream, supported by the Compton Cowboys and the Compton Junior Equestrians program. She is a mother of two children Taylor and Michael.
This episode of For The Wild is brought to you by Catori Life.
Music by Jess Williamson, Kaivalya, and Sarah Maricha White. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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What is intelligence beyond, preceding, and following human intelligence? This week, Ayana is joined by guest James Bridle in a conversation that considers multiple forms of intelligence and ways of being.
Bringing a rich background of research on forms of intelligence, from artificial to mycelial, James posits that it is a critical failure to use human intelligence as the benchmark for all forms of knowing. Seeing intelligence as both relational and embodied, James points out that knowing has never been an independent or alienated act. Rather, it is our specific set of modern conditions which primes us for alienation and separation – both from ourselves and from the earth.
James encourages listeners to move from helplessness and fear to agency. In the same way that human agency created these systems and methodologies, we can also harness our agency to change the way they are used, to rethink our relationships to technology itself. How we heal our relationships is how we heal the world.
James Bridle is a writer, artist and technologist. Their artworks have been commissioned by galleries and institutions and exhibited worldwide and on the internet. Their writing on literature, culture and networks has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Wired, the Atlantic, the New Statesman, the Guardian, and the Financial Times. They are the author of 'New Dark Age' (2018) and 'Ways of Being' (2022), and they wrote and presented "New Ways of Seeing" for BBC Radio 4 in 2019. Their work can be found at http://jamesbridle.com.
Music by Memotone. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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This week’s guest, Toko-pa Turner, invites us to consider that our dreams may serve as important guides throughout our lives. Diving into the intimately intertwined world of psyche and matter, Toko-pa considers the ways we may rehabilitate our imaginative capacities. We cannot simply dispose of that which goes beyond physical observation. Instead, centering the importance of feelings and sensing, Toko-pa encourages us to take time and pay attention to dreams.
Dreams and our interior worlds, according to Toko-pa, are deeply important within our personal searches for belonging. Modern society demands that we estrange parts of ourselves in order to “belong,” but this false belonging will never satisfy. Rather, Toko-pa focuses on finding interior belonging. What is internally guiding us towards our potential?
Blending the mystical teachings of Sufism in which she was raised with a Jungian approach to dreams, Toko-pa Turner is a Canadian author, teacher, and dreamworker. She founded The Dream School in 2001, from which thousands of students have since graduated. She is the author of the award-winning book, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, which explores the themes of exile and belonging through the lens of dreams, mythology, and memoirs. This book has resonated for readers worldwide, and has been translated into 10 different languages as well as winning multiple awards for excellence in publishing. Her work focuses on the relationship between psyche and nature, and how to follow our inner wisdom to meet with the social, psychological, and ecological challenges of our time.
Music by Magnetic Vines and Tarotplane. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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In this week’s episode, guest Amy Glenn invites listeners on a journey to consider the value in caregiving and companioning. Rooting the conversation in her experience as both a birth and death doula, Amy details the deep work of holding space for all of life’s moments.
Amy points out the thresholds of everyday life, and the value in sitting with uncertainty. Companioning, storytelling, and ritual making are all vital as we come to contemplate what it means to hold space for death. Offering breathing techniques and a meditation on the breath that holds us between birth and death, Amy calls to mind the importance of making space for contemplation. How can we make space for self-care and self-regulation as we cope with the journeys of life and death?
Amy Wright Glenn earned her MA in Religion and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She earned her BA from Reed College in the study of Religion. Amy taught for eleven years in the Religion and Philosophy Department at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey earning the Dunbar Abston Jr. Chair for Teaching Excellence. She is a birth and death doula, hospital chaplain, Kripalu Yoga teacher, and founder of the Institute for the Study of Birth, Breath, and Death. From 2015 to 2020, Amy served as an active contributor to PhillyVoice writing on topics relating to birth, death, parenting, and spirituality. Amy is the author of Birth, Breath, and Death: Meditations on Motherhood, Chaplaincy, and Life as a Doula and Holding Space: On Loving, Dying, and Letting Go. Amy has trained thousands of professionals in the work of holding space for life’s transitions ~ and focuses specifically on grief and bereavement care. To learn more, visit: www.birthbreathanddeath.com
Music by Larkhall, Doe Paoro, and Amber Rubarth. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Continuing the conversation series, “The Edges in the Middle,” presented in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, For The Wild is delighted to share this conversation between Báyò Akómoláfé, Naomi Klein and Yuria Celidwen.
Speaking about climate grief and hope, Báyò, Naomi, and Yuria build together to consider the value in tapping into the depth of emotion as we feel it, not as we are told we should feel it. In a time marked by disruption, loss, and demise, grief may be an invitation into depths that demand to be listened to, and as we embody the grieving process we are called to surrender to feeling.
“The Edges in the Middle” is a series of conversations between Báyò Akómoláfé and thought companions like john a. powell, V, Naomi Klein, and more. These limited episodes have been adapted from Báyò’s work as the Global Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute. In this role, Báyò has been holding a series of public conversations on issues of justice and belonging for the Institute's Democracy & Belonging Forum, which connects and resources civic leaders in Europe and the US who are committed to bridging across difference to strengthen democracy and advance belonging in both regions and around the world. Báyò's conversations encourage us to rethink justice, hope, and belonging by sitting amidst the noise, not trying to cover it up with pleasant rhythms. To learn more about the Democracy & Belonging Forum, visit democracyandbelongingforum.org.
**Music by Sitka Sun, generously provided by The Long Road Society Record Label and Mikalya McVey. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
To listen to the extended episode, join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild.**
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In an increasingly unequal and precarious world, how might we come to combat disconnection and disillusionment? In this episode, guest Cuck Collins dives deeply into the world of wealth hoarding and staggering inequality. Recognizing the complexity of these issues, Ayana and Chuck engage deeply with questions of philanthrocapitalism, tax spending, the wealth defense industry, and power inequities across society.
Chuck explains that as wealth concentrates in fewer and fewer hands it perpetuates and increases anti-democratic values and economic instability, leading to uncertain and uneven futures. This growing inequality is deeply intertwined with the capitalist extraction that has led to the climate crisis. As the fossil fuel industry has worked to shape public response to the climate crisis through denial, doubt, and delay, it is clear that the politics of our times are ensnared within corporate interest and greed.
At the same time, the climate crisis calls us to reckon with our value systems and to question the cultural conditionings by which we have been surrounded. It is delusional to think that even the wealthiest among us will be able to escape climate crisis entirely. Instead of relying on broken and untrustworthy systems, how can we seed a new economy of solidarity as we work to live within Earth’s boundaries?
Chuck Collins, co-editor, Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of numerous books including Born on Third Base, The Wealth Hoarders, and Economic Apartheid in America. Altar to an Erupting Sun is his first novel.
Music by Vide Geiger, Sean Smith, and The Ascent of Everest. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Embracing the mountains, desert steppe, and islands of Patagonia, this week’s guest Diana Friedrich grounds listeners in an expansive and profound landscape. As she describes her work to protect swaths of land through Rewilding Argentina’s Patagonia Azul project, Diana and Ayana share in a love for landscapes that offer both challenge and refuge.
For Diana, conservation work is a calling to enter into deep community and to build trust over a shared love for the land. This means reimagining economic systems, challenging industrial greed, and countering our current culture of consumption and exploitation. Diana brings expert insight as she talks listeners through the complexity of international biodiversity goals and declarations. Though this, Diana emphasizes the importance of creating truly protected local areas rather than just relying on regulations and declarations. The deep commitment and intentional work of rewilding is vital as we work to support and to be a part of a world teeming with biodiversity.
Diana is a naturalist and adventurer. From a very early childhood, her parents took her and her four siblings traveling to the wildest and most remote places of Argentina and Chile. Right after finishing high school, she volunteered and worked at several conservation organizations in Argentina. She received a degree in Nature Conservation in South Africa and worked in nature reserves and communities in Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Tanzania. In Argentina, Diana coordinated field activities at the hooded grebe Project for three seasons and worked as a field technician on Rewilding Argentina’s projects to reintroduce giant anteaters and red-and-green macaws. She currently lives in Patagonia and manages the Patagonia Azul project’s Parks and Communities Program.
Music by Bird By Snow, Papa Bear and the Easy Love, and Aviva Le Fey. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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How are the crises of our times crises of being, crises of becoming? In this week’s conversation, Ayana is joined by returning guest Dr. Báyò Akómoláfé. Ayana and Báyò dance together through questions of crisis, identity, and rupture. As we attempt to break from the monoculture that cements us as citizen subjects of empire, Báyò suggests that we need an ontological mutiny.
Pointing out the possibilities of a more generous and spacious politics, Báyò calls listeners’ attention to the duplicity of safety. Perhaps the things from which we recoil contain promise. As we try to stabilize, cracks will emerge, and Báyò invites us to nurture each other through the ruptures. How might we descend to the crises of our times, and embrace the decay and compost that modernity has come to detest?
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’.
For an extended version of this episode join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild.
Music by Julio Kintu (Chloe Utley), Jahnavi Veronica, Leyla McCalla, and Los Hombres Calientes. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Engaging crucially with food as a cultural, spiritual, and generational experience, this week’s guest Abena Offeh-Gyimah highlights the connections between ancestral foods, and the soil, seeds, and people who play a part in sustaining ancestral foodways. Focusing on the ancestral foods of Africa, and specifically her home-country of Ghana, Abena shares stories of connection, trust, and community fostered by food.
Abena calls listeners to pay attention to the technical and spiritual aspects of seeds that connect them to past, present, and future landscapes. Through this deep connection, Abena points out the absurdity that certain companies claim to own seeds as if they could own life itself. Seeds carry with them the miracle of life and abundance, how might we shape our food and agricultural systems to honor this sacred reality?
Abena Offeh-Gyimah is the founder of BEELA Center for Indigenous Foods in Ghana, a project that seeks to preserve indigenous African seeds, foods, and practices. Prior to this role, Abena worked as the Project Lead for the Jane Finch Community Research Partnership, with extensive experience in community engagement, ethical research, program development, partnerships & collaboration, and with previous organizations like North York Community House, Black Creek Community Farm, Jane Finch Center, and with Building Roots Toronto. Abena brings years of experience in conducting ethical community engaged research practice, work in local food systems, seed sovereignty, and collaboration in food sovereignty movements. Abena is a writer, a poet, a researcher, a naturalist, and a conservationist.
For an extended version of this episode please join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild.
Music by Buffalo Rose, Eliza Edens, and Marian McLaughlin. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Continuing the conversation series, “The Edges in the Middle,” presented in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, For The Wild is delighted to share Báyò Akómoláfé in conversation with scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Speaking on the theme "What if justice gets in the way?,” Báyò and Keeanga engage in a lively conversation that considers how our quest for justice shapes us and is simultaneously shaped by systems of power and control. Together, they ask: how can we move justice out of the existing political paradigm and move beyond a normative sense of justice and reform?
“The Edges in the Middle” is a series of conversations between Báyò Akómoláfé and thought companions like john a. powell, V, Naomi Klein, and more. These limited episodes have been adapted from Báyò’s work as the Global Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute. In this role, Báyò has been holding a series of public conversations on issues of justice and belonging for the Institute's Democracy & Belonging Forum, which connects and resources civic leaders in Europe and the US who are committed to bridging across difference to strengthen democracy and advance belonging in both regions and around the world. Báyò's conversations encourage us to rethink justice, hope, and belonging by sitting amidst the noise, not trying to cover it up with pleasant rhythms. To learn more about the Democracy & Belonging Forum, visit democracyandbelongingforum.org.
Music by Sitka Sun, generously provided by The Long Road Society Record Label. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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How might we tend to our bodies if we saw them as an ecosystem? In this week’s episode, guest Samantha Zipporah reminds us that our bodies and their cycles are a part of nature, not separate from it. Honoring the seasons of life, of the earth, and of our bodily cycles, Samantha highlights the importance of both fallow and fertile times, with particular attention to how this manifests for those with wombs. These intimate connections between body and earth inspire Smantha to dive deep into the power within cycles of menstruation and ovulation.
Samantha also calls us to consider the type of culture we are cultivating surrounding body sovereignty. How can we strive towards an end to rape culture that comes from an understanding of consent that occurs in connection with others and centers power with others rather than power over others? The dominant overculture encourages an intense dissociation from our bodies, but when we tune in and are present to what is occurring within our bodies and our relationships, what might we learn?
Samantha Zipporah is a midwife, author and educator in service to healing & liberation. Sam’s path rises from an ancient lineage of midwives, witches, and wise women with expertise spanning the continuum of birth, sex, and death. She is devoted to breaking the spells of oppression in reproductive and sexual health by connecting people with the innate pleasure, power, and wisdom of the body. Her praxis weaves scientific and soulful inquiry that integrate modern medicine and data with ancestral practices and epistemologies. Sam's most recent publications and offerings center the radical reclamation of contraception and abortion. Her online membership, The Fruit of Knowledge Learning Community, features access to her heart & mind via books, courses, QandAs, curated resources and more.
Music by Jeffrey Silverstein, Samantha Zipporah, and Yesol. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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In a profoundly informative and thought-provoking episode, returning guest Ismail Lourido Ali considers how we can create spaces for people to safely explore themselves and their consciousness. Ismail’s work to build an informed drug culture calls us to consider the ways we might prioritize balance and humility in conversations over moral judgment and cultural shame. Focusing on moving away from repression, the conversation weaves together nuanced ideas about pleasure, education, and societal structures.
Ismail’s approach to drug policy centers around finding spaciousness as an advocate, and making room for the growing body of knowledge around the uses, harms, and benefits of drugs. He invites listeners to dream of a conscious, compassionate, and safe world in which justice, peace, and balance are prioritized. How might the practices of harm-reduction and substance education expand to create a society that makes space for deep emotions, for crisis support, and for holistic healing?
Ismail Lourido Ali, JD (he/him or they/them) is the Director of Policy & Advocacy at the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), has been personally utilizing psychedelics and other substances in celebratory & spiritual contexts for over fifteen years. Ismail works with, is formally affiliated with, or has served in leadership or board roles for numerous organizations in the drug policy reform ecosystem, including Alchemy Community Therapy Center (formerly Sage Institute), Psychedelic Bar Association, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Chacruna Institute, and the Ayahuasca Defense Fund.
For an extended version of this episode, join our Patreon community at patreon.com/forthewild
Music by Santiago Cordoba, Public Access, and Camelia Jade. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Continuing the conversation series, “The Edges in the Middle,” presented in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, For The Wild is delighted to share Báyò Akómoláfé in conversation with Indy Johar of Dark Matter Labs.
Speaking on the theme “A New Theory of the Self,” Báyò and Indy dive into the milieu of life forms entangled together on earth. The conversation asks listeners to reconsider the objective nature of self and the word around us that has been so deeply ingrained within the architecture of society. Rejecting these notions of completion and singularity, Báyò and Indy engage in a conversation that calls attention to the aliveness of the world, to the agency and intelligence of our entangled minds, and to life as an ongoing process. How might we move beyond constraining ideas of order, power, and control in order to recognize and take part in relational ecological emergence?
“The Edges in the Middle” is a series of conversations between Báyò Akómoláfé and thought companions like john a. powell, V, Naomi Klein, and more. These limited episodes have been adapted from Báyò’s work as the Global Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute. In this role, Báyò has been holding a series of public conversations on issues of justice and belonging for the Institute's Democracy & Belonging Forum, which connects and resources civic leaders in Europe and the US who are committed to bridging across difference to strengthen democracy and advance belonging in both regions and around the world. Báyò's conversations encourage us to rethink justice, hope, and belonging by sitting amidst the noise, not trying to cover it up with pleasant rhythms. To learn more about the Democracy & Belonging Forum, visit democracyandbelongingforum.org.
Music by Sitka Sun, generously provided by The Long Road Society Record Label. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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How do we face the scope of global extraction in the name of oil and gas production? Guest Amy Westervelt joins us this week to consider the full story behind these extractive industries and the role they play in shaping global structures from shipping ports, to government policies, to media talking points. Together, Amy and Ayana consider what it might mean for these organizations to be held accountable to the local and global disasters they have wrought in pursuit of profit. Amy brings specific insight to ExxonMobil’s rapid development of oil production in Guyana, which she investigated for season eight of her podcast, Drilled. Discussing this specific case and extraction across the world, Amy details the global complications and power dynamics at play, and considers the obscene level of influence huge corporations have in perpetuating global injustice.
Understanding the contours of power as it works now, this conversation also invites dreams of how we may change these systems. A world in which we hold corporations accountable and curb energy consumption in just and accessible ways is possible. How might we shift the narrative to bring visions into action?
Amy Westervelt is an award-winning investigative climate journalist. She writes regularly for The Guardian and The Intercept. Westervelt also runs the independent podcast production company and network Critical Frequency, where she reports and hosts Drilled, a true-crime podcast about climate change, and runs the company’s production team on other shows, like the Peabody-nominated This Land.
Music by Jonathan Yonts, Hana Shin, and Charles Rumback and Ryley Walker.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Adding deep nuance to conversations around herbalism and the botanicals industry, this week’s guest Ann Armbrecht shares her extensive knowledge about herbal supply chains and the effects of herbal commodification. Ann focuses much of her research on the stories behind the herbal products available to consumers, detailing the complicated and often exploitative supply chains involved in the mass production of botanical products.
Ann and Ayana discuss how we might come into right relationship with the plant world. As plants invite us to imagine and create medicine, what might true health look like?
Ann Armbrecht is an anthropologist (PhD, Harvard 1995) whose work explores the relationships between humans and the earth, most recently through her work with plants, herbal medicine, and the botanical industry. She is the director of the Sustainable Herbs Program, a program of the American Botanical Council, which she established in 2016 to help bridge the gaps between the values of herbal medicine and the reality of sourcing and producing herbs on a global scale.
She is the author of The Business of Botanicals: Exploring the Healing Promise of Plant Medicines in a Global Industry, that documents her journey following herbs from seed to shelf. She is also the author of the award winning ethnographic memoir, Thin Places: A Pilgrimage Home, and the co-producer of the documentary on traditional western herbalism, Numen: The Healing Power of Plants. Ann was a 2017 Fulbright-Nehru Scholar documenting the supply chain of medicinal plants in India and she lives with her family in central Vermont.
Music byFlo Perlin, Jeffery Silverstein, and Andy Tallent. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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How might we honor and follow the authentic call of our purpose? This week, guest Rachel Cargle shares in a rich and enthralling conversation with Ayana that calls forth themes of rootedness, truth, and renaissance. Rachel honors a rootedness that comes from deep connection to ancestry, to Blackness, and to the earth, and she recognizes the way the earth and its cycles offer us examples of what presence and reciprocity look like.
As Rachel points out in her forthcoming book A Renaissance of Our Own, we are in need of a renaissance. Attuned to years of intense work around race and racial consciousness within the United States, Rachel uses the dreams and desires from this time as the raw materials for revolution, Rachel envisions a collective renaissance that centers on intergenerational conversation. Rooted in trust, how might we reimagine this world together?
Rachel Elizabeth Cargle is an activist, entrepreneur, and philanthropic innovator. She is the founder of The Loveland Group; a family of companies including Elizabeth’s Bookshop & Writing Centre, a literary space that celebrates marginalized voices and The Great Unlearn, an adult learning platform that centers the teaching of BIPOC thinkers. In 2018, she founded The Loveland Foundation, offering free access to mental health care for Black women and girls. Cargle is a regular contributor to Cultured Magazine, Atmos, and The Cut, and her work has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. Her new book, A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir and Manifesto on Reimagining, comes out in the U.S. May 16th, 2023.
Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild for an extended version of this episode.
Music by Eliza Edens and Mikayla McVey (generously provided by The Long Road Society Record Label). Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Feeling into the state of our nervous systems and our relationships with each other and ourselves, this episode offers a powerful perspective on the importance of recognizing and tending to how life feels. Together, Ayana and this week’s guest Kimberly Ann Johnson discuss the depths of pleasure and the dimensions of healing. Kimberly brings deep knowledge regarding reproductive and sexual health, especially paying attention to the often untended somatic nature of sexual boundary repair and the complicated nature of what we bring into sexual relationships.
This conversation is steeped in trust and intimacy. Kimberly’s focus and understanding offers a guide to the ways we might come to handle and regulate our own nervous systems in order to act in alignment with our desires, rather than with the prescribed roles we have been put into through societal conditioning.
Kimberly Ann Johnson is a Sexological Bodyworker, Somatic Experiencing practitioner, yoga teacher, postpartum advocate, and single mom. Working hands-on in integrative women’s health and trauma recovery for more than a decade, she helps women heal from birth injuries, gynecological surgeries, and sexual boundary violations. Kimberly is the author of the Call of the Wild: How We Heal Trauma, Awaken Our Own Power, and Use It for Good, as well as the early mothering classic The Fourth Trimester, and is the host of the Sex Birth Trauma podcast.
Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild for an extended version of this episode.
Music by Lake Mary & Talk West and Katie Gray. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Continuing the conversation series, “The Edges in the Middle,” presented in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, For The Wild is delighted to share Báyò Akómoláfé in conversation with V (formerly known as Eve Ensler, playwright, author, and founder of V-Day and One Billion Rising). Speaking on the theme “The Promise and Limits of Restitution: Returning to ‘Congo,’” Báyò and V dance together in a conversation that shows us portals of possibility that edge us towards deep change. Discussing the Congo as both place and portal, Báyò and V contemplate the persistent and fugitive glimmer of possibility within trauma and repression. As we pay slow, deep attention and care to unraveling and processing our stories, how might we create the sacred space from which movement and growth may flow?
“The Edges in the Middle” is a series of conversations between Báyò Akómoláfé and thought companions like john a. powell, V, Naomi Klein, and more. These limited episodes have been adapted from Báyò’s work as the Global Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute. In this role, Báyò has been holding a series of public conversations on issues of justice and belonging for the Institute's Democracy & Belonging Forum, which connects and resources civic leaders in Europe and the US who are committed to bridging across difference to strengthen democracy and advance belonging in both regions and around the world. Báyò's conversations encourage us to rethink justice, hope, and belonging by sitting amidst the noise, not trying to cover it up with pleasant rhythms. To learn more about the Democracy & Belonging Forum, visit democracyandbelongingforum.org.
Music by Sitka Sun, generously provided by The Long Road Society Record Label. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Jenny Odell, initially aired in February of 2021. Our attention has operated as currency for the past couple of decades, but with the invasiveness of social media and technology, our ability to exit and enter the attention economy has been severely hindered. As we feel pressure to post and comment on everything for an unknown audience, do we inherently limit our capacity for complexity and vulnerability? And what are the extended ramifications of becoming illiterate in complexity? How does this ripple out into all of our relationships? In lieu of the demanding world buzzing inside our devices, guest Jenny Odell shares the brilliance of doing “nothing”, tending to the ecological self, and growing deeper forms of attention through a commitment to bioregionalism. Jenny Odell is a writer, artist, and enthusiastic birdwatcher based in Oakland, California. She is the author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Odell teaches digital art at Stanford University.
Music by Harrison Foster, Bosques Fragmentados, Samara Jade, and Kritzkom. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with john a. powell, originally aired in May 2019. If you enjoy this week’s episode, make sure you listen to the first episode in our special series The Edges in the Middle, which features a conversation between john a. powell and Báyò Akómoláfé .
Now more than ever, we are reminded of the vital importance of creating practices that strengthen and recognize our shared humanity. However, in order to do so, we must examine the systems, ideologies, and actions that have emboldened us to deny humanity in the first place. At the beginning of this week’s episode, john a. powell defines any practice which denies someone’s humanity as an act of “othering.” Both at home and abroad it seems we are witnessing a surge of "othering," whether it is reflected in election cycles, the rise of ethnonationalism, or the pervasiveness of violent acts. We must wonder, how and why do societies rely on the process of othering? And more importantly, how do we move into engagement, organizing, and “bridging?”
john a. powell (who spells his name in lowercase in the belief that we should be "part of the universe, not over it, as capitals signify") is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, structural racism, housing, poverty, and democracy. He is the Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, a research institute that brings together scholars, community advocates, communicators, and policymakers to identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just, and sustainable society and to create transformative change toward a more equitable world.
Music by Ani DiFranco.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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For The Wild is honored to present a series of conversations entitled, “The Edges in the Middle,” in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute. In the first of these conversations, Báyò Akómoláfé speaks with john a. powell, Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute.
Speaking on the theme “When ‘just getting along’ isn't enough: Is belonging possible in a world rooted in othering?,” Báyò and john contemplate the ontological weight of our desire for belonging. How might we learn how to belong together? Articulating both the harsh realities of modern day division and the simultaneous reality of our connection to each other and to the earth, Báyò and john examine what it means to be “other” and to invite in the “monstrous” and the “strange.”
“The Edges in the Middle” is a series of conversations between Báyò Akómoláfé and thought companions like john a. powell, V, Naomi Klein, and more. These limited episodes have been adapted from Báyò’s work as the Global Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute. In this role, Báyò has been holding a series of public conversations on issues of justice and belonging for the Institute's Democracy & Belonging Forum, which connects and resources civic leaders in Europe and the US who are committed to bridging across difference to strengthen democracy and advance belonging in both regions and around the world. Báyò's conversations encourage us to rethink justice, hope, and belonging by sitting amidst the noise, not trying to cover it up with pleasant rhythms. To learn more about the Democracy & Belonging Forum, visit democracyandbelongingforum.org.
Music by Sitka Sun, generously provided by The Long Road Society Record Label. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Tyson Yunkaporta originally aired in May of 2021. Struggling to change actual conditions, many have settled for changing the perceptions of the world around us. Tyson Yunkaporta begins by sharing the connections between perception, the branding of our identities, and the many forms of capital that become available and valuable in a perception-obsessed society. As we welcome the call to change our conditions and participate in the great “thousand-year clean-up”, we explore hybridized insight, the ramifications of clinging to dichotomous identities, and how genuine diversity is tangible preparedness and emotional resilience in motion. With this in mind, it becomes our task to figure out how we can sustain genuine diversity in our lives so we may work alongside folks with different capacities, worldviews, solutions, and thought processes in devotion to dismantling a system that necessitates abuse. Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who belongs to the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne.
Music by 40 Million Feet, Marty O’Reilly & the Old Soul Orchestra, and Violet Bell.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Rising against growing wealth inequality and resource consolidation, guest Morgan Curtis asks how we might, rather, shape our world in reciprocity, mutual aid, and intentional community. This week, Ayana and Morgan dive deep into the need for repair, healing, and acknowledgement as we face the historical roots of modern inequity. Morgan centers her work by listening deeply to the call for radical change. This heartfelt and expansive conversation calls for us to unlearn the ways racial capitalism has taught us wealth should be passed down. Perhaps the world that we are longing for is one where abundance is not wealth, but rather right relationship - with land, with ancestry, and with each other.
Guided by the call to transmute the legacy of her colonizing and enslaving ancestors, Morgan is dedicated to working with her fellow people with wealth and class privilege towards redistribution, atonement, and repair. As a facilitator, money coach, organizer and ritualist, she works to catalyze the healing of relationships with self, family, ancestors, community, and the land, enabling the surrender of power and control so that resources can flow towards racial, environmental, and economic justice. She is in the process of redistributing 100% of her inherited wealth and 50% of her income to primarily Black- and Indigenous-led organizing and land projects. Morgan is a resident of Canticle Farm, a multi-racial, inter-faith, cross-class, intergenerational intentional community in Lisjan Ohlone territory (Oakland, CA). She is currently a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School, where she is studying the spiritual dimension of the reparations work required of white people.
Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild for an extended version of this episode.
Music by Andy Tallent, Handmade Moments, and Ela Spalding. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Gabes Torres offers her thoughtful wisdom in this conversation that weaves through healing, interconnection, and embodiment. Focusing on holistic healing and mental health support, Gabes lucidly describes the ways our individual health and well-being are dependent upon our connections and the structures of the societies in which we reside. Together Ayana and Gabes dream of what we may be free towards (not just free from) as we divest from extractive mindsets. Reverberating on a call to expand love in deeply rooted directions, this conversation offers nourishment for body and soul.
Gabes Torres was born and raised in the countryside of the Philippines. She is a psychotherapist, organizer, and artist with her work focusing on the interplay of mental health, the arts, spirituality, and justice-oriented practice. She has an MA in Theology & Culture, and Counseling Psychology; both graduate degrees were accomplished in Seattle, the city where she organized with abolitionist and anti-imperialist groups at a local, grassroots level. In her clinical practice, Gabes pays attention to healing from racial and migration trauma, while decolonizing the therapeutic space from White Western modalities. Gabes writes for Yes! Magazine, an independent publisher of solutions journalism with stories that uncover environmental, economic, and social justice intersections. She is also a poet and singer-songwriter.
This episode of For The Wild is brought to you by Anima Mundi Herbals.
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Music by Amaara, Blue Doll, and Annie Sumi. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Rosemary Gladstar calls forth deep gratitude and mindfulness for the plant world as she walks with us through the world of herbalism in this precious episode. Reminding listeners of the value of connecting to the wellspring of Earth, Rosemary contemplates the ways plants shape us and make us into companions when we work with them. Woven throughout the conversation is an understanding that the Earth has a destiny of its own, one we cannot completely comprehend within our human lifespans.
Rosemary Gladstar has been practicing, living, learning, teaching and writing about herbs for over 50 years. Considered a star figure in the modern herbal movement and often referred to as the ‘godmother of American herbalism’. Rosemary is the author of twelve books including Medicinal Herbs: a Beginners Guide, Herbal Healing for Women, Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Well Being and Herbal Healing for Men.
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Music by Eliza Edens,Rising Appalachia, and Lea Thomas. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This episode of For The Wild is brought to you Anima Mundi Herbals.
Anima Mundi was founded by Costa Rican herbalist Adriana Ayales with the intention of bringing some of the finest plant medicines, medicinal mushrooms, vegan collagen boosters, and high-potency elixirs. Anima Mundi is made in the United States with certified organic, wild-crafted, and sustainably harvested plants and herbs that are sourced from small-scale farms around the world. Their products contain zero fillers, binders, or flow agents.
We’re proud to receive the support of this woman and BIPOC-owned business that creates magic from plant allies. Our personal pick for this time of year is Anima Mundi’s Relax Tonic for Nervous System Support. To learn more visit AnimaMundiherbals.com or @animamundiherbals.
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Giving listeners a glimpse into his new book, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, guest Malcolm Harris joins Ayana in a vast conversation dealing with the shape and form of Palo Alto’s specific place alongside overarching systems of capital. Cutting through the romanticization and myth that surrounds much of the allure around California as place and as metaphor, Malcolm offers well-rooted thought touching on the history of Stanford University, the internet, Palo Alto’s military connections, and more. This conversation reveals the values of understanding our material realities and the structures that support society as it stands. When we understand these intricacies, how might knowledge allow us to subvert domination?
Offering his critical thought to this conversation, Malcolm reminds us that this permutation of society was not inevitable, and neither is any particular future. As examples, the practices of Land Back movements, student resistance, and collective organizing spaces, offer hope for alternatives. If specific visions of justice are impossible within this system, how do we steward a future in which they are?
Malcolm Harris is a freelance writer and the author of Kids These Days, Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit, and the new book Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World.
Music by Little Foster Music (Harry Foster), Harrison Basch, and Ian George. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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This week, Ayana is joined by Francesca Lia Block in a heartfelt conversation recognizing the search for self and love through magic, literature, and deeply-felt presence. Francesca brings listeners into her writing practices as she navigates centering beauty in a world of intensity. Moving through the depths of empathy, pleasure, and presence, Francesca considers passion as a practice of gratitude to the world around us. As she discusses her most recent book House of Hearts, with Ayana, she emphasizes the healing and growth that comes from examining ourselves and our passions deeply. As we journey through life, what mentors, books, and practices give us the inspiration we need to keep moving forward?
Francesca Lia Block, M.F.A., is the author of more than twenty-five books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association and from the New York Times Book Review, School Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly.
Music by 40 Million Feet, India Blue, and Ariana Saraha & Flight Behavior. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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For The Wild is honored to be “episode swapping” with the How to Survive the End of the World podcast, hosted by adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown this week! Known for “learning from the apocalypse with grace, rigor, and curiosity” this episode, initially released in May 2022 is all about love.
“What is it? Why does it happen? Why does it hurt so bad? Why does it feel so good? And how might it help us survive as a species? All these questions and more get introduced, and some of them start to get answers.”
Autumn Brown and adrienne maree brown are two sisters who share many identities, as writers, activists, facilitators, and inheritors of multiracial diasporic lineages, as well as a particular interest in the question of survival. Together, they embark on a podcast that delves into the practices we need as a community, to move through endings and to come out whole on the other side, whatever that might be.
To learn more about How to Survive the End of the World or listen to their full season on love, visit endoftheworldshow.org.
Produced by Zak Rosen, music from Tunede Olaniran and Mother Cyborg.
For The Wild will be back next week February 15, 2023.
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Grounding this conversation within Teotitlan del Valle in Oaxaca, Mexico, guest Samuel Bautista Lazo, brings listeners into an insightful conversation on the value of craftwork that connects us to the past and plants seeds for the future. Here, Samuel outlines the weaving traditions of the Benzaa people, offering insight into a trade and lifeway shaped intimately by ancestry and the land. Through his family’s weaving business, Samuel emphasizes the importance of creating connection and meaning with the objects we need to sustain life. In an age of mass alienation and mass consumption, intimately knowing our relationship to the objects that sustain, to the skilled labor that creates, and to the land that provides is a radical act. How might we cultivate such connections within our lives?
Dr. Samuel Bautista Lazo is a Benzaa (Zapotec) weaver from Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico. In 2013 he obtained his PhD in Engineering from the University of Liverpool in the UK, doing research in the topic of Sustainable Manufacturing. After obtaining his PhD in the UK, Samuel decided to go back home and connect back with his community and family weaving heritage. Being back home struck a chord in his life and made him realize that his community was already practicing an ancient form of Sustainable Manufacturing that is still alive in the many craft traditions of the Central Valleys of Oaxaca and the eight regions in his state. From this place, Samuel has rooted even more within his community and family weaving business and from there and through the language of the ancient textiles he spends a great deal of time teaching, educating and planting the seeds for creating a future that heals the relationship of humans with the web of life.
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Music by Mariee Siou. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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How do we sustain nourishing roots in a time of displacement? This week, guest Alynda Mariposa Segarra invites listeners to examine their relationship to place, comfort, and survival as they discuss their newest album LIFE ON EARTH. Through the art form of music, Alynda holds together the complexities that come with wanting and needing to run away from oppressive systems while simultaneously having to confront what is happening right in front of us. Tapping into these themes, Alynda discusses their work with Freedom for Immigrants, emphasizing the urgency of action and compassion as we work to end systems of detainment and punishment.
Winding through the intricacies of making art under capitalism, finding humility in our purposes, and fostering the safe havens of mutual aid, Alynda reminds us of the capacious ability we have to continually queer our culture. Drawing anger and vulnerability together through love, Alynda leaves us with the resounding call to live deeply in this world and to love it hard.
Alynda Mariposa Segarra is a songwriter/storyteller who performs under the name Hurray for the Riff Raff. They are a Nuyorican queer artist born and raised in the Bronx, who got much of their musical/political education from the anarcho squatter punk scene of NYC. Alynda spent years as a freight train rider and eventually learned to make music on the street in New Orleans. Alynda has used the craft of songwriting as a tool for communication and protest. They have released 8 albums of music, most recently the critically acclaimed LIFE ON EARTH in February 2022.
Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild for an extended version of this episode.
Music by Hurray for the Riff Raff. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Calling listeners into a magnetic conversation about the power of photography and storytelling, guest Josué Rivas (Mexika and Otomí) opens up new ways of understanding art and creation. With so much capitalistic pressure on modern day creators, photography and content creation often slip into extractive mindsets. Josué invites us to challenge extractive and colonial lenses by embracing the overwhelming force of the creative urge. Humanity yearns to tell its stories. How might we break apart from the constant pressure of social media to envision the new modes of creation and creativity that these stories need in order to be told? Throughout the conversation, Josué taps deep into the healing and transformational power of Indigenous futurism. As we plant the seeds of resistance and growth for future generations, what stories do we want them to remember about us?
Josué Rivas (Mexika and Otomí) is an Indigenous Futurist, creative director, visual storyteller and educator working at the intersection of art, technology, journalism, and decolonization. His work aims to challenge the mainstream narrative about Indigenous peoples, co-create with the community, and serve as a vehicle for collective healing. He is a 2020 Catchlight Leadership Fellow, Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellow, founder of INDÍGENA, co-founder of Indigenous Photograph and Curator at Indigenous TikTok. His work has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, Apple, Nike and Converse amongst others.
Music by Gerardo Vaquero and Julio Kintu, The Mysterious They, and María José Montijo. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Bringing us into his world of nature, awe, and magical poetry, guest Jarod K. Anderson reminds us that our human journey is worthy of just as much love and affection as the natural world around us. When we come to nature with intention, how might it guide us towards love and inspiration? In a time where so many of us are feeling lost, confused, and not connected to a purpose, we often abdicate our power to make meaning in favor of buying prepackaged narratives about who we are based on what we consume. Tapping into the beauty of telling our own stories and making our own meaning, Jarod and Ayana counter what we have been taught about worth. This episode highlights the power of the humble in the face of the grandiose and attention seeking. We are people of a place, Jarod reminds us, and the intimate, internal, and local work we do matters, just as our small bodies in this vast universe matter infinitely.
Writer, Poet, and podcaster Jarod K. Anderson (creator of The CryptoNaturalist Podcast) has built a large audience of readers and listeners with his strange, vibrant appreciations of nature. Ranging from optimistic contemplations of mortality to appreciations of single-celled organisms, Jarod is forever writing love letters to the natural world.
Music is “Pine Chant” by Sara Fraker and Lachlan Skipworth. “Inspired by tree-ring growth data from the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, Pine Chant is a sonic embodiment of twelve Arizona trees and an emotional response to climate crisis.” An extended version of this episode is available on Patreon at patron.com/forthewild. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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Guided by her new book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto and fervent calls for real, deep rest, this week returning guest Tricia Hersey joins Ayana to unwind the complicated ties of exhaustion and exploitation. Tricia’s words serve as incantations against the brainwashing of grind culture as she and Ayana investigate the systems that benefit from keeping us operating. Drawing deep inspiration from her ancestors, histories of marronage, and long standing traditions of Black resistance, Tricia leans into the prophetic dreams that have long allowed for life outside of systems of exploitation. As Tricia reveals, these are times of spiritual crisis. We are asked how might we pray ourselves free? How might we dream ourselves free? Rest is a portal to new worlds, both inside and outside of the self.
Tricia Hersey is a Chicago native with over 20 years of experience as a multidisciplinary artist, writer, theologian and community organizer. She is the founder of The Nap Ministry, an organization that examines rest as a form of resistance and reparations by curating spaces for the community to rest via community rest activations, immersive workshops, performance art installations, and social media. Her research interests include Black liberation theology, womanism, somatics, and cultural trauma. She is the author of the book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto which was published in October 2022. You can learn more about her work and order the book at thenapministry.com
Join us on patreon at patreon.com/forthewild for an extended version of this episode.
Music by Real J Wallace and Fabian Almazan Trio. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
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This week, guest Veda Austin invites us to consider and grow closer to water – as both a preciously vital and often overlooked life source. Veda’s work researching and making art with water has allowed her an intimate look into water’s role on Earth and within our lives. Water is our companion, and more than just companion, it is what makes us. We are continually obliged to water, and it to us, as we are in an interdependent relationship with it. Veda calls us to investigate our liquid selves – the tears and sweat that make us human, the rituals of baptism and bathing that connect us to that which lies beyond. As Veda states, water is always in search of itself. How might understanding water begin to help us in our search for ourselves?
Touching on her healing journey, art, practice, and methods of working with water as collaborator, Veda highlights curiosity, closeness, and tenderness as guiding principles. Continually on a learning journey, Veda’s work shows what is possible when water is seen as source rather than as commodity. This episode reminds us of the wisdom we inherently hold alongside the grand scale of that which we have left to learn.
Veda is a water researcher, public speaker, mother, artist and author. She has dedicated the last 8 years observing and photographing the life of water. She believes that water is fluid intelligence, observing itself through every living organism on the planet and in the Universe. Her primary area of focus is photographing water in its ‘state of creation’, the space between liquid and ice. It is through her remarkable crystallographic photos that water reveals its awareness of not only Creation, but thought and intention through imagery.
Music by Strong Sun Moon/Camelia Jade and Doe Paoro. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
In spirit of the Winter Solstice and holiday season, For The Wild is taking a break this week. We hope you are taking great care of yourself as we near the end of this calendar year. We also want to share some updates about what you can expect from the Podcast and our Patreon in 2023.
Since we released our first episode in September of 2014, we've been so blessed to create and curate our weekly episodes as offerings to the times in which we live. We remain in deep gratitude to our guests who have simultaneously comforted and stretched us, as well as to you, our listeners, for accompanying us on this journey.
In an effort to continue this work and support our small but mighty team of four, we are enhancing our 2023 offerings...
Beginning in Jan all episodes released to the public via our website, digital streaming services, and radio syndicates will be standard episodes under an hour. Episode that exceeds an hour in length will be available on Patreon. We will be organizing a series of live hangouts between guests, friends of the Podcast, and Ayana. These live hangouts will be available to our Patreon supporters. We’re excited to announce that our first hangout will be with Sophie Stand in late Jan. We're also creating a series of digital zines that will be released via Patreon.
We’re adding new Patreon tiers:
– Support us at $1/mo to access episodes that exceed one hour + transcripts
– Join at a $5/mo for digital zines and live hangouts, + transcripts & extended episodes
– Give $25/mo or more to help sustain the podcast and receive the benefits above
Sign up by the end of the year at the $5 or more level to receive the free zine, "Embodying the Revolution with brontë velez Study Guide + Resource Zine" and access to our live hangout w/ Sophie Strand.
Patreon.com/forthewild.
This week For The Wild Podcast presents Part Two of a two-part conversation between guest host brontë velez and Dr. Tiffany Lethabo King. Circumferencing Dr. Tiffany Lethabo King’s book The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies, brontë and Tiffany explore sacred laughter, Black and Indigenous feminism, sexuality, liberation, ceremony, and protocol. This week we are cradled to explore where Black and Indigenous relations can meet beyond the wound. Part Two spans further inquiry into shoals, the physical desire to belong to Earth, agency, eros, spiritual correction, the pleasure and potential of failure, and that which cannot be translated, but instead has to be experienced or co-witnessed to be understood. Research for this conversation was curated by jazmín calderón torres.
Recorded in January of 2021, this interview is a companion piece to a project called Can I Get A Witness, a collaborative transmedia project between For The Wild and Lead to Life. Can I Get A Witness “traces two queer black latinx femmes, brontë velez and Stephanie Hewett, dancing before and being danced by the ecology, memory, and stories of the Tongass National Forests and Glacier Bay in southeast Alaska–unceded Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit territories, scored by field recordings and music, interviews with Tiffany King, Wanda Kashudoha, and Kasyyahgei, with a Groundtruthing Oracle by jazmín calderón torres.
Music by Jiordi Rosales and Ashia Karana. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week For The Wild Podcast presents Part One of a two-part conversation between brontë velez and Dr. Tiffany Lethabo King. Circumferencing Dr. Tiffany Lethabo King’s book The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies, brontë and Tiffany explore sacred laughter, Black and Indigenous feminism, sexuality, liberation, ceremony, and protocol. This simultaneously intimate and expansive dialogue allows us to rethink the stories and structures we’ve been told regarding Black and Indigenous relations. Guided by a unquantifiable love and trust in Black and Native freedom dreams, Tiffany prompts us to explore ritual, space, and connection as antidote.
Recorded in January of 2021, this interview is a companion piece to a project called Can I Get A Witness, a collaborative transmedia project between For The Wild and Lead to Life.
Tiffany Lethabo King is an Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Georgia State University which is located on the ancestral lands of the Mvskoke Creek. While here, she is also grateful to be able to touch the Georgia soil where her maternal and paternal ancestors survived slavery and created New Worlds of possibility. Her research is situated at intersections of slavery and indigenous genocide in the Americas. King is the author of The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies. King is currently working on a project tentatively titled Red and Black Alchemies of Flesh: Conjuring A Decolonial and Abolitionist Now.
Music by Larkhall, Stoney Creation, and MonteQarlo. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week, Ayana is joined by Dalit American civil rights activist Thenmozi Soundararajan in a profound conversation detailing the wounds of caste within the United States and across the world. Thenmozhi brings just conviction and soul-filled commitment to the fight to annihilate caste-based supremacy. The very involvement within systems of punishment, carcerality, and discrimination deepens a wound that separates us from each other and from the broad web of life. Speaking to the ways that carrying the trauma of caste manifests within the body, Thenmozhi emphasizes the importance of slowing down to process the grief and pain caused by mindless oppression.
Thenmozhi Soundararajan is a Dalit American Civil rights artist, organizer, and theorist who has worked with organizations around the world to address the urgent issues of racial, caste, and gender equity. Her intersectional, cross-pollinating work helps to create a more generous, global, expansive, and inclusive definition of South Asian identity, along with safe spaces from which to honor the stories of these communities. She was also an inaugural fellow of the Robert Rauschenberg Artist as Activist, Atlantic Foundation for Racial Equity, and is a current fellow at Stanford Center for South Asian Studies. She is also the author of the newly released book The Trauma of Caste by North Atlantic Books.
Music by Justin Crawmer, June West, and Te Martin. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
We’re taking a pause this week from our regular episodes to share a special snippet from our first Slow Study with Bayo Akomolafe. This offering originates from Bayo’s course “We Will Dance With Mountains: Into The Cracks!” and is an edited curation of recorded lectures, prayers, musical accompaniments, and practice prompts offered by Bayo and co-conspirators.
This week’s preview includes a brief portion from Session One, as well as the corresponding practice prompt by Jiordi Rosales. Each session within the course includes a practice prompt for deeper exploration.
To learn more about what the course entails, contributors, and cost, visit our website at forthewild.world
What can the forest teach us of grief, of joy, of humanity? This week, poet and scientist Maya Khosla invites listeners into the forests of Northern California to find deep reverence for the power of biodiversity. Maya’s expertise on wildfires shines through this deep and well-informed conversation as she and Ayana share a love for the forest and deep-seated awe for the complexity of forest life. Maya introduces listeners to the science behind forest fires and urges us to see fire as not simply “destructive,” but rather as one of the many cycles of earth. From practices of cultural burning to current studies on post-fire diversity, the creative and regenerative power of the forest cannot be overlooked.
Maya Khosla is a wildlife biologist and writer. She served as Sonoma County Poet Laureate (2018-2020), bringing Sonoma’s communities together through poetry gatherings and field walks after the 2017 fires. Sonoma County Conservation Council (SCCC) selected her as one of the 2020 Environmentalists of the Year. Her poetry books include “All the Fires of Wind and Light” from Sixteen Rivers Press (2020 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award), “Keel Bone” from Bear Star Press (Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize), and “Web of Water: Life in Redwood Creek”. Her writing has been featured in documentary films including “Village of Dust, City of Water,” about the water crises in rural India.
Music by Lake Mary, Forest Veil, and Bird By Snow. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
In this winding and lucid conversation, guest Sophie Strand invites us to investigate our relationality, to embrace rot and decay, to welcome our demons to the dinner table, and to prepare for uncertain futures with tenderness. Sophie brings to light the wisdom of the compost heap. What myths do we need for modernity, what wisdom is sedimented within our bodies? Sophie and Ayana tap into deep lines of thought and myth, weaving together conversations and concepts from thousands of years of human history. As the interview asks, “What is it to be human on our most basic level?” To be a human is to be in complicated and compromising relationships – relationships that implicate us within the other, that show us that love is a process of altering and of deep work. Purity is not an option. Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine will be published by Inner Traditions on November 22, 2022 and is available for pre-order. Her eco-feminist historical fiction reimagining of the gospels The Madonna Secret will also be published by Inner Traditions in Spring 2023. Subscribe for her newsletter at sophiestrand.substack.com. And follow her work on Instagram: @cosmogyny and at www.sophiestrand.com.
Music by Tan Cologne and Mitski. Cover image by Alexandra Levasseur. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
In this episode centered around global consciousness and rooted local action, returning guest Dr. Vandana Shiva reminds us of the power of commitment in the fight for the Earth. Reflecting on her lifetime of devotion to the land, Vandana highlights the value of paying deep attention and of bearing witness to the interconnectedness of Earth. These thoughts deeply counter the modern state of media and movements that fleetingly follow trends without deep connections to justice and connection. Together, Vandana and Ayana piece apart the threads of our culture that lead to exploitation and extraction - focusing on the policies of division and distraction that keep us from each other. As Vandana states, “Earth is alive and her expressions are diverse.” We are all anchored to each other and to the earth. The divisions that we focus so much time on are created in order to dominate and exploit the nature on which the earthly community depends.
Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental thinker and activist, a leader in the International Forum on Globalization, and of the Slow Food Movement. She is also the Director of Navdanya and of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and a tireless crusader for farmers’, peasants’, and women’s rights. Dr. Shiva is the recipient of over twenty international awards and the author and editor of a score of influential books, including her latest book coming out Oct. 27 from Chelsea Green Publishing "Terra Viva: My Life in a Biodiversity of Movements."
Music by Henry Johnson, Scinnlaece, and Doe Paoro. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
“With a prayer to imagine beyond the current structures and systems, and kind of weave ourselves into, and be wrapped inside of, the invisible cloak that is interdependence, that is mutual aid, that supports us to reach towards each other and reach towards a vision of mutually flourishing life.” This powerful vision is shared by this week’s guest, Dori Midnight. In this sweet, meaningful, and meandering conversation, Dori discusses magical and liberatory practices, ancestral Jewish healing traditions, and the necessity of reclaiming Judaism from Zionism in the name of collective liberation. She shares sweet stories of garlic and cedar, the generosity of belonging, and the blessing of our collective and intricate work as we stretch toward liberation. Dori Midnight practices intuitive healing, weaves collaborative, liberatory ritual spaces, makes potions, and writes liturgy, spells, prayers, and poems. For over 20 years, Dori has been practicing and teaching on ritual and remedies for unraveling times, reconnecting with traditions of Jewish ancestral wisdom, community care work, and queer magic and healing. Music by 40 Million Feet, Katie Gray, and Aviva Le Fey. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
It’s undeniable that right now we are in a rapidly changing and complex relationship with the consumption, production, and reality of drugs, substances, and medicines, and their usage. This week, guest Ismail Lourido Ali, J.D. guides listeners through an overview of where we are in our relationship with drugs in the American context, and how this relationship is indicative of our relationship with the Earth and with humanity broadly.We cannot move to a healthy and healing relationship with substances without acknowledging the violent realities brought about by criminalization, exploitation in drug production, and the exorbitant costs of pharmaceutical medicine. Ismail encourages us to move beyond the black and white view that some drugs are medicine while others are criminal. This expansive conversation encourages listeners to ask what deep, collective healing looks like, and to reflect on complicated relationships with consumption across substances. As we think more deeply on these issues, we must ask: what voids are we filling, what imagination do we need to tap into, what kind of reconciliation do we need? As MAPS’ Director of Policy and Advocacy, Ismail advocates to eliminate barriers to psychedelic therapy and research, develops and implements legal and policy strategy, and supports MAPS’ governance, non-profit, and ethics work. Ismail is licensed to practice law in the state of California, and is a founding board member of the Psychedelic Bar Association. He also currently serves on the board of the Sage Institute, contributes to Chacruna Institute’s Council for the Protection of Sacred Plants, and participates on the advisory council for the Ayahuasca Defense Fund. Ismail is passionate about setting sustainable groundwork for a just, equitable, and generative post-prohibition world.Music by Harrison Foster, Book of Colors, and Autumn Hawk Percival. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This Slow Study Course is a series of lectures and practice prompts from Bayo Akomolafe's 2021 edition of "We Will Dance With Mountains: Into the Cracks!" wherein 1000+ people gathered. It is a carnivalesque course in postactivism, a matter of fissures, fault lines, cracks, openings, seismic shifts, endings, and fugitive marronage. This learning journey is available for you to explore from home at your own pleasurable pace. Visit our website at forthewild.world to learn more.
The Mountain Valley Pipeline, which runs through West Virginia to Virginia is on the verge of completion following intense legislative and legal battles. This episode reminds us of the danger in this, and amidst such battles, Appalachians Against Pipelines shows us what might be possible if we allow ourselves to imagine a world outside of extraction. Lark Elodea joins Ayana to discuss the relentless and direct activism Appalachians Against Pipelines has been doing to stop the pipeline, build community resistance, and advocate for the needs of their communities in the face of developers, oil and gas advocates, and a continued disregard for Appalachian voices. Lark roots the conversation in reverence for the land and the complex legacies of violence and oppression within it. Fighting against the pipeline is, as Lark says, “not only fighting for a world with no pipelines, but also no borders, or prisons or colonialism.” Our decisions here matter for communities and matter for the collective future we are building. Lark is a person of settler descent living in the beautiful mountains of Appalachia. They have been working with Appalachians Against Pipelines in the campaign resisting the 300+ mile Mountain Valley Pipeline for over 4 years, and have lived in the region for years longer. Lark is one of many, many pipeline fighters and water protectors and forest defenders contributing to the fight against reckless fossil fuel infrastructure and extraction (across Appalachia, across Turtle Island, and all over the world).Music by 40 Million Feet, Alexandra Blakely, Camelia Jade, and Cold Mountain Child. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week guest Tusha Yakovleva calls on us to remember our millennium-old relationship with weedy beings and the gifts of wild and invasive plants. It’s estimated that worldwide spending on invasive species exceeds one trillion dollars annually. But if we were to cease our violent relationship with weeds and invasive species, what might we find? Cultural cooperation between plants and people? A whole slew of plant-relatives that are thriving in increasingly challenging landscapes? We are challenged to think about our capacity, or willingness, to know invasive plants - Tusha queries listeners to ask “Do we know their reasons for making home in unfamiliar soils? Or what gifts and responsibilities they carry?” We are left with much to think about in the realm of curiosity and acceptance, two muscles that need an exceptional amount of exercise in a time where so much is rapidly changing environmentally and socially.
Tusha Yakovleva is an educator, gatherer and ethnobotanist whose work revolves around generating strong, respectful relationships between plants and people. The foundations of her life-long foraging practice come from her family and first home - the Volga River watershed in Russia - where tending to uncultivated plants and mushrooms for food and medicine is common practice. Tusha is the author of Edible Weeds on Farms: Northeast Farmer’s Guide to Self-growing Vegetables. Tusha is currently completing graduate work at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry on Onondaga Nation homelands. Her research is in support of cross-cultural partnerships for biocultural restoration and takes place under the guidance of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.
Music by Ali Dineen and Violet Bell. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week, guest Yoalli Rodriguez brings us to the Chacahua-Pastoría Lagoons in Oaxaca, Mexico, to investigate deep connections with land, ongoing colonial violence, and the grief that comes alongside loving a place. The Chacahua-Pastoría Lagoons have long been vital spaces for Black and Indigenous communities, but continued colonial strategies have altered and quartered off the landscape in favor of nationalist and capitalist interests.
The conversation dives deep into an understanding of Mestizo geographies and the politics of refusal in the face of oppressive power. Despite the institutional acts of violence that limit sensual and sensorial relationships with the land, people continue to make spaces of their own and lay claims to land that go against colonial rule. With this context, Yoalli and Ayana come to a heartening conversation about the importance of ecological grief, rage, and sadness.
Yoalli’s work pays deep attention to the everyday lives of those who live around the lagoons, and she notes the care, love, and community that make grief and resistance possible. Here, hope and grief go hand in hand as strategies of resistance and fugitivity. Perhaps slow life and slow feeling can be a counter to the slow violence that has so marred life on earth.
Meztli Yoalli Rodríguez Aguilera is an educator, vinyl selector, and writer born and raised in Mexico but currently based in the U.S. They are currently an Assistant Professor in Anthropology & Sociology and Latin American and Latinx Studies at Lake Forest College, Illinois. They are interested in subjects of anti-colonial, anti-racist feminist struggles, political ecology, and State violence.
Music by Fabian Almazan Trio, Eliza Edens, and PALO-MAH. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Breathing in the joy and lessons of the plant life surrounding us, Ayana and guest Antonia Estela Perez share an enriching conversation on the power and magic of coming to know the world around us. Antonia dives into the tension that exists in living in and caring for lands that have been violently colonized, calling listeners to understand plants both in the ways that colonization has affected their legacies and within anti-colonial structures that suggest there are other ways to engage with the plants around us.
The natural world is, in fact, not separated from any one of us, and in detailing her work with Herban Cura, Antonia brings her insight on connections to plants and land within urban settings expanding the horizons of intimacy between humans and plants across human-imposed boundaries. As Antonia shares more about her New York City and Chilean roots, she reminds us of the value of connection to places for spiritual, ancestral, and medicinal means. Cultural and ancestral knowledge are vital to everyone’s survival in a world marred by colonial violence. What healing can be found within our own backyards, our own lineages? Perhaps the plants will lead us home once again – as they always have.
Antonia Estela Perez grows medicines, gardens, and networks that work to interrupt anthropocentric, individualist, separatist socialization and bring folks into deeper awareness of their ecological family and belonging. They are first gen, born and raised on Lenape territory in NYC, and descended from the Mapuche peoples of Chile. They have cultivated a deep relationship with their plant relatives since a very young age, and their passion for open-source pedagogy founded the inclusive healing, learning, and collaboration space Herban Cura along with its medicinal product line.
Music by Julio Kintu and The Ulali Project with Pura Fé. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Guided by her curated work Open In Emergency (a “hybrid book project” including a Tarot Deck and a “hacked” DSM), Dr. Mimi Khúc and Ayana share in a deep conversation touching on mental health, collective unwellness, and the power of communal care. Mimi provides listeners with a reminder of joyful slowness and the vitality of finding the agency to care for self and others.
Mimi’s work is grounded in the question: “How do we find new ways to talk about what hurts?” Flipping diagnosis on its head, Mimi guides us to find new ways to name what we feel and to decolonize the language of feeling itself. How is what we feel a reflection of what we have been told we must feel? How are our understandings of wellness centered around a productivity that benefits expansive capitalism over humanity?
Together, Mimi and Ayana reflect on the ethical callings and commitments to care for each other and begin to unpack the systems that must be dismantled in order to truly care for one another and find vulnerability together. These are spiritual and religious questions. Perhaps connection and care in this individualized, alienating world are true magic.
Mimi Khúc is a writer, scholar, and teacher of things unwell and visiting professor in Disability Studies at Georgetown University. She is the managing editor of The Asian American Literary Review and guest editor of Open in Emergency: A Special Issue on Asian American Mental Health. She is very slowly working on several book projects, including a manifesto on contingency in Asian American studies and essays on mental health, the arts, and the university. But mostly she spends her time baking, as access and care for herself and loved ones.
Music by Jeffery Silverstein, Samara Jade, Grief Is A River (Sarah Knapp). Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week, Ayana is joined by filmmaker and author Dr. Brett Story. Together, they ponder justice, accountability, and interconnection in a complex and rapidly changing world.
In this intellectual and timely conversation, Brett begins by unpacking how carceral logics and conceptions of the “criminal” work, mark and dictate the world spatially, while at the same time explaining the socially-constructed nature of crime. Brett’s work examines the ways we individually and collectively metabolize our anxieties, and through this lens, she makes connections across the broad issues of our current reality from changing climates to criminal justice systems that were designed to enforce control rather than to produce true justice.
At the center of the conversation is the question of interdependence– emphasizing the need for community and collective action in the face of neoliberal individualism. Mass-incarceration and climate change are not crises of the individual, but of our culture. The abolitionist imagination may be the key to a collective future– as Brett reminds listeners that our aspirations can be both practical and utiopan.
Brett Story is an award-winning nonfiction filmmaker based in Toronto whose films have screened at festivals and theaters internationally. She is the director of the award winning feature documentaries The Hottest August (2019) and The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016), both of which were also broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens. Brett holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Toronto and is currently an assistant professor in the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University. She is the author of the book, Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America. Brett was a 2016 Sundance Institute Art of Nonfiction Fellow and a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow in film and video.
Music by Jahawi Bertolli, Jahnavi Veronica, and Leyla McCalla. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week, guest Dr. Claudia Serrato opens our minds to the sensual, political, and vital nature of our relationship to food. Our bodies are a landscape in their own right and with Indigenous feminist theory in mind, this episode bears wittness to the cycles of gastronmies and of life that keep us tied to the earth. Claudia turns to her own landscape to remind us that there are times to dry up and times to bloom.
To consume food means that we enter into a relationship with it, we physically embody it. In this conversation Claudia and Ayana dive into what that relationship could be, and how embodiment may be a spiritual quest. Honoring foodways and the gifts of the earth is about more than just changing our diets, but is rather a cultural, spiritual, and political project. How might we honor both where we came from and where we are now in ways that respect traditional foodways alongside place-based geographies/ food ways?
Decolonizing the body and the landscape also means decolonizing the kitchen.Through the sacred work of food sovereignty, we can create a better kitchen, a better palate – one that resists the violence of colonization and globalization. This work is the toil of gardening, the pain of remembering, the prayers of the season. This is not easy work, but it is vital, human, and intimate.
Dr. Claudia Serrato is a cultural and culinary anthropologist, an Indigenous plant-based chef, and a food justice activist scholar. Claudia has been writing, speaking, and cooking up decolonized flavors for over a decade by ReIndigenizing her diet with Mesoamerican foods and foodways, cooking traditions and nutrition, and culinary ways of knowing.
Music by Justin Crawmer, JulioKintu, and PALO-MA (Paola De La Concha). Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
How might we steward relationships of generosity, see beehives beyond the human-imposed gaze? This week, guest Ang Roell leads us to better understand bees and our entangled relationship to them. Bees, from the honeybees we may be familiar with to the wide variety of bees local to areas across the globe, are a vital participant in our ecosystems in ways that go beyond pollination or agricultural production. Together, Ang and Ayana unpack the often colonial and capitalist assumptions behind the language we use to describe bees (from the “busy bee” to the assumptions Euro-centric views of hives make). The internal workings of the hive are far more complex, more collective, more wild than many have imagined.
Ang introduces listeners to the magic of the beehive as a superorganism – revealing the complex relations within the hive and the multitude of lessons if we listen rather than impose. Rooting into the rich history of beekeeping and the folk traditions of their ancestors, Ang reminds us of the deeply interconnected world humans and bees share and the reciprocity inherent in right relationship. The cycles, rhythms, and rituals of the hive may offer a balm in these times, just as they have before.
Ang Roell (they/them) is a beekeeper, facilitator and writer who lives and works on the East Coast of the US/Turtle Island. They are the founder and lead beekeeper at They Keep Bees, and a consultant with Mainspring Change Consultants.
Ang's work with bees includes cultivating queen bees who are adaptive to ever changing climates. In their consulting work they support organizations in making lasting change by shifting power structures & creating effective collaboration. In both of these roles Ang seeks to build resilient collaborations designed to stand the test of these transitional and transformative times.
Music by Anilah (Drea Drury), Alexa Wildish, and Violet Bell. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
“The fugitive is the figure of the Anthropocene, a political invitation to unlearn ‘mastery,’ to fall to the Earth, to learn how to commune with soil… In a sense, the fugitive answers the question that is hidden within the words of my Elders, when they say: ‘in order to find your way, you must become lost.’” In this week’s episode, Bayo Akomolafe guides listeners on a journey to lose oneself and leave behind the ties that bind us to world views that do not serve humanity’s wholeness. Touching on the historical roots of fugitivity, Bayo challenges us to lean into the “political un-project” that is fugitivity, blurring societally-imposed binaries, in order to better understand the human territory and to make more-than-human sanctuary through post activism. If justice is an action and not a static state, how can we embody it?
Twisting and turning through the contours of human consciousness and understanding, Bayo and Ayana dive into meaningful and existential questions. Rooted in trickster philosophy and abundant spirituality, Bayo encourages mindful and playful questions. At the heart of such complex questioning, lies the vital question of our time – what does it mean to be a human in times such as this?
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell Our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Visionary Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will dance with Mountains’.
Music by Dzidzor and Lady Moon and the Eclipse. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
In this new episode of For The Wild podcast, Ayana and guest Dr. Clint Carroll, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, discuss the mobility of Cherokee ethical frameworks as they are applied to environmental governance projects for Land Back. Exploring various forms of Cherokee relationality throughout time, Dr. Carroll pushes back against dominant settler histories about Cherokee migrations and relations to homeland and provides insight into what audience members ought to glean from Indigenous philosophies imparting practices of deep reciprocity, responsibility, and relationship to the land and each other. This episode shares about Cherokee Nation’s historic plant gathering agreement with Buffalo National River Cherokee Treaty Lands and details of the Cherokee Environmental Leadership program, spearheaded by Dr. Carroll. We learn of Cherokee treaty history, Cherokee relations to more than human kin encoded in origin story, Cherokee place names, and Cherokee linguistic concepts central to the Cherokee Environmental Leadership program that de-center human beings and re-center relationships and responsibilities with a community of other-than-human kin.
Clint Carroll is an Associate Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, he works at the intersections of Indigenous studies, anthropology, and political ecology, with an emphasis on Cherokee environmental governance and land-based resurgence. Currently, he is working with Cherokee elders, students, and Cherokee Nation staff on an integrated education and research project that investigates Cherokee access to wild plants in northeastern Oklahoma amid shifting climate conditions and fractionated tribal lands. Funded by the National Science Foundation and the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, this work aims to advance methods and strategies for Indigenous land education and community-based conservation.
Music by Buffalo Rose (Misra Records), Cold Mountain Child, Kendra Swanson, and Crispy Watkins and The Crack Willows.
This week we are joined by guest Alexis Shotwell to discuss how we might turn from the purity politics that govern many of our lives and this hurting world toward collective struggles for transformation and liberatory futurisms. Rather than forfeiting our complicity and implication in a world with mounting problems, we learn of a helpful heuristic for transforming inaction or the urge to be the perfect activist to a ground where we might be better- equipped to stick around for the long hall in struggles for social justice. According to Alexis, this practice calls for admitting our mistakes and centering repair.
In this episode, we dive into the relationship between purity culture and white supremacism, our complicit locations and implications in violence, and the importance of showing up to repair our broken and harmed relations inherited or otherwise. Alexis elucidates that it is only through the messy process of owning up to these broken relations throughout time and seeing how we might participate in and take on culturally appropriate relations of repair, responsibility, friendship, and comradeship in the struggles for liberation that we can survive these times. We hope this episode inspires your curiosity and (re)activates your commitments to this world.
Alexis Shotwell’s work focuses on complexity, complicity, and collective transformation. A professor at Carleton University, on unceded Algonquin land, she is the co-investigator for the AIDS Activist History Project (aidsactivisthistory.ca), and the author of Knowing Otherwise: Race, Gender, and Implicit Understanding and Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times.
Music by Anne Carol Mitchel and Daniel Cherniske.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
How might traditional Hawaiian lifeways and teachings usher in a reclaimed understanding of aloha and a world beyond capitalism? In this episode, Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio centers Pilinia, precolonial Hawaiian intimacy and relations, as technology for increasing capacity for relationships and pleasure, care and reciprocity, love for each other and the Earth, and the actualization of the Hawaiian concept of aloha ʻāina. Dr. Osorio opens this episode by charting iterations of Pilina throughout the history of sovereign Hawai’i, describing nets of intimacy within Pilina multiple partners, expansive ‘ohana family networks, and how queer lovemaking is reflected in the land as inherent in creation. From that grounding, Dr. Osorio guides us into a fuller understanding of aloha by returning the commodified phrase to the more extensive knowledge of aloha ‘āina, wherein the possibilities for abundance and other worlds are not only born but remembered and recalled from the long history of sovereign Hawai’i and traditional Hawaiian teachings and lifeways. Dr. Osorio reminds us that for Native Hawaiians and Indigenous peoples, the future beyond capitalism, settler colonialism, heterosexuality, and other forms of domination resides in the living knowledges from ancestral pasts. There are other ways of being for Hawai’i and the planet.
Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio is a Kānaka Maoli wahine artist, activist, and scholar born and raised in Pālolo Valley to parents Jonathan and Mary Osorio. Heoli earned her Ph.D. in English Hawaiian literature in 2018 from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Currently, Heoli is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian Politics at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Heoli is a three-time national poetry champion, poetry mentor, and published author. She is a proud past Kaiāpuni student, Ford fellow, and a graduate of Kamehameha, Stanford University (BA), and New York University (MA). Her book Remembering our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea was published this fall with the University of Minnesota Press.
Music by Pura Fé, Rising Appalachia, and Justin Crawmer,
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
In this episode of For The Wild podcast, we plumb into racial karma and healing systemic trauma in the American context with guest Dr. Larry Ward. Covering the neuroscience of trauma, the habit of racism, and various typologies of systemic trauma, Dr. Ward provides insight into how we might consciously choose to activate our neuroplasticity toward justice rather than collectively rewarding our neuroplasticity for violence and oppression. We are reminded in this episode that we are more than our colonial traumatic memory; we are, in fact, part of the one living reality of the natural world. According to Dr. Ward, cultivating a spiritual practice of awareness of our embeddedness with the world allows us to transcend the conditioning of the colonial mind. Harkening to the potential for anima mundi, the creation of a new world soul, we are invited to lead in the direction of the positive deconstruction of the current world order and to be vigilant in putting our minds and behaviors toward creating generative possibilities for the planet and generations to come.
Dr. Larry Ward (he/him) is a senior teacher in Buddhist Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village tradition, author of the book America's Racial Karma, and co-author with his wife Peggy of Love's Garden, A Guide To Mindful Relationships. Dr. Ward brings twenty five years of international experience in organizational change and local community renewal to his work as director of the Lotus Institute and as an advisor/dharma teacher. He holds a PhD in Religious Studies with an emphasis on Buddhism and the neuroscience of meditation. Larry is a knowledgeable, charismatic and inspirational teacher, offering insights with personal stories and resounding clarity that express his dharma name, “True Great Sound.”
Music by Daniela Lanaia, Curran Runz, Lady Moon and the Eclipse, and The New Runes
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Dr. Kyle Whyte originally aired in January of 2020. The United States has more miles of pipeline than any other country in the world.Pipeline construction is one of the many ways in which the U.S. continues terraforming the land in support of ongoing settler colonialism. On this episode of For The Wild, we are joined by Kyle Whyte to discuss this very issue in connection to the vast extractive energy network that surrounds the Great Lakes area. Kyle Whyte is Professor and Timnick Chair in the Humanities in the departments of Philosophy and Community Sustainability at Michigan State University.
Music by Cary Morin & Bonnie "Prince" Billy
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description,references, and action points
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Dr. Max Liboiron originally aired in January of 2020. Today, over 310 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year. The ubiquity of plastic cannot be ignored as it has become an inextricable part of our living systems, circulating and making home within our bodies, urban environments, marine life, and waterways. Expanding the dominant discourse on plastics, this episode features Dr. Max Liboiron, an Assistant Professor in Geography at Memorial University, where she directs the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR). Together, Ayana and Dr. Max Liboiron explore the notion of plastic as kin, oil and petrochemical subsidies, the body burden of plasticizers, the historical construction of disposability, and more.
Music by Y La Bamba and Ani DiFranco.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description,references, and action points
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Linda Black Elk originally aired in April of 2020. On this week’s episode, we speak to Linda Black Elk on traditional medicine, community wellness and systemic transformation amidst pandemic. Our conversation begins with hands-on measures we can take to boost our wellbeing and what honorable harvest looks like during times of panic. How can we deepen our actions so that they are no tjust a response to fear, but are rooted in the promise of collective wellbeing? In addition to these questions of right now, Ayana and Linda discuss what will be left in the wake of COVID-19, how will we tend to the wounds of disposability? What systems will endure? What must we dismantle and what will we grow?
Music by Matti Palonen & Chris Pureka.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Richie Reseda originally aired in August of 2019.
“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government, I can not be silent.”–Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Those sentiments shared by Dr. King fifty years ago about wars abroad continue to ring true both domestically and globally. Today, we focus on our government’s perpetuation of domestic violence via prisons and jails, and the inherent relationship between patriarchy and mass incarceration with music and freedom producer, Richie Reseda.We must recognize that patriarchy does not have to be the foundation of our society, punishment does not mean justice, and everyone’s growth is severely limited under domination and power. So how do we encourage one another to step away from patriarchal notions and identities and step into relations rooted in responsibility and love? How is our so-called justice system enacting trauma on individuals and families?How do we confront these violent systems through organizing and policy change?Freed from prison in July of 2018, Richie Reseda is a feminist ally, community organizer, recording artist, and founder of the social-impact record label, QuestionCulture. Success Stories,the anti-patriarchy organization he started while incarcerated was chronicled in the CNN documentary “The Feminist on Cell Block Y.” He changesCalifornia prison policy with Initiate Justice, an organization he co-founded in prison.This week’s conversation between Richie and Ayana continues to examine how harmful patriarchy is to us all, why we must let go of our binary criminal/legal understandings, the geography of prisons, and meaningful and revolutionary organizing in prisons. As we explore another facet of our society’s mass violence problem, we are reminded of the dire need to abolish the carceral state and dismantle patriarchy for once and for all.
Music by Paul Cannon & Lake Mary
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Rowen White originally aired in July of 2020. Across Turtle Island, seeds have long been passed down through the generations — accompanied by ceremony and prayer, reverent seed cultures, and sustainable food growing practices. Through eras of colonization and acculturation, however, we’ve seen the consolidation of seeds into a handful of corporations and the production of a soulless industrial food landscape. This system is failing us and, as centralized infrastructure strains and buckles, we turn to the embrace of our community and the nurturance of seeds at the local and village level. This episode is all about renewal and reanimation, as our guest Rowen White shares her thoughts on Indigenous food sovereignty, seed restoration as rematriation, and what it means to bring seed relatives home. Rowen White is a Seed Keeper and farmer from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne and the Educational Director and lead mentor of Sierra Seeds.
Music by Madelyn Ilana.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Tiokasin Ghosthorse originally aired in June of 2021. If we need the Earth, does the Earth need us? This week on the podcast we dive deep into the relationship amongst ourselves and the Earth with guest Tiokasin Ghosthorse. We begin our conversation by talking about the savior mentality that can arise when we act to address the many issues that threaten Earth and kin at this moment. Recognizing the trickiness of interrogating this mentality that is often intertwined with emotions of loss, love, and protection, Tiokasin offers that perhaps rather than being guided by solutions and salvation, we acknowledge where we are at in this consciousness and how we can challenge ourselves to give back to the Earth without intrusion. Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host, and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio'' for the last 28 years. In 2016 he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Music by Harrison Foster, Peia, and Lizabett Russo.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Giuliana Furci originally aired in June of 2021. So often fungi are pitched as being at the forefront of innovation, whether being used to create vegan leather, pharmaceuticals, or being incorporated into various biotechnology products, but this fixation on innovation can obscure our ancestral relationship to fungi and the wisdom they can share with us about decomposition. This week, we slow down to acknowledge the beauty and power of fungal decomposition with guest Giuliana Furci who shares a lesson in divine time, the transformation of energy, and the necessity of decomposition. Take a moment this week to learn about fungi’s profound interspecies companionship and the simple reality that the world cannot regenerate itself without fungi. Additionally, to learn even more about these topics, look into supporting Fungi Foundation by joining them for their Fungi Foundation Virtual Speaker Event and Fundraiser on June 26th via their profile and webpage. Giuliana Furci is foundress and CEO of the Fungi Foundation, the first international non-profit dedicated to fungi and founded in Chile. She is also the first female mycologist in Chile. For more information about her work visit www.ffungi.org.
Music by Roma Ransom, Rajna Swaminathan, and Julio Kintu.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with K’asheechtlaa (Louise Brady) originally aired in April of 2021. Many of us have access to more choices than we ever thought imaginable, in fact, it is quite easy to find ourselves amidst an abundance of products, eating foods cultivated across the world, or selecting from a myriad of variations of the same “thing”. But this “abundance” of choice masks ecological depletion, and as we gain access to that which is far from our homes, actual place-based abundance is often jeopardized. This week on the podcast we explore this in context to herring in Southeast Alaska with guest K’asheechtlaa (Louise Brady). Everything from chinook, seals, whales, eagles, halibut, and dolphins, all depend on herring directly or indirectly. In addition to nourishing so much of the Pacific marine ecosystem, these kin are embedded in the culture and spirit of Sheetʼká (Sitka). But as herring have been utilized in pet food, fertilizer, fish meal for aquariums and salmon farms, and marketed as a delicacy abroad - fisheries have been mismanaged by the state of Alaska and overfished to near extinction. K’asheechtlaa is a woman of the Tlingit nation in Sheetʼká Ḵwáan, an island off the coast of Southeast Alaska. She is Raven-Frog or Kiks.ádi Clan, Kiks.ádi women are known as the herring ladies, they have a story or original instruction that connects them spiritually, culturally, and historically to herring. K’asheechtlaa is the founder of the Herring Protectors, a grassroots movement of people that share concerns that the herring population in Sheetʼká Ḵwáan, and the culture tied to it, are under threat.
Music by Lake Mary, The Ascent of Everest, Alexandra Blakely, and Fountainsun.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Nuskmata (Jacinda Mack,) originally aired in February of 2020. From roller coaster rides at Disney World to museums dotting the Pacific Northwest, symbols of mining and the Gold Rush remain deeply enshrined in the collective imagination of the mythic West. Hidden beneath this cultural veneer, the material realities of today’s superscale mining are often out of sight, out of mind. In this week’s In The Field episode, we trace the historical contours and material legacy of the mining industry across so-called British Columbia, unearthing stories from a region that bears an estimated 1,100 abandoned mines, 150-year-old mining laws, and more mining exploration companies than anywhere else on Earth. Guided by the raw testimony of mother, water protector, and organizer Nuskmata (Jacinda Mack), this episode braids together the history of the Gold Rush and colonization in B.C., the state of salmon, the practice of free, prior, and informed consent, dirty mining for a “clean” energy revolution, and the urgent necessity of reform.
Music by Cary Morin, Compassion Gorilla, Lynx and the Servants of Song, The Mynabirds, The Melawmen Collective, and The Honey Tongues.
Please visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with ALOK, originally aired in August of 2021.
“I validate the idea that survival is the ultimate act of creation in a world that has reduced us to fascist arithmetic, of being a quantitative statistic, not a human soul. So we still found a way to care, love, and create - isn't that art? I teach people to decipher the art that they’re already doing, recognize the artistry and the everyday miracles of life around them, and create from that place.” This week we immerse ourselves in the aforementioned call to recognize the myriad of creations all around us from guest ALOK, who guides us in an ever-expansive dialogue around spiritual wellbeing, the importance of creative literacy, and the tremendous freedom that awaits us when we make gender unknowable. We begin our conversation by foregrounding the importance of moving out of the paradigm of understanding trans and queer as something that is exclusive to the body. Instead, ALOK shares how challenging the gender binary is not only in service to our collective wellbeing but is a reverential offering in acknowledging our true celestial expansiveness that has been dimmed under binarism, heteronormativity, and colonialism. ALOK is a gender non-conforming writer and performance artist. Their distinctive style and poetic challenge to the gender binary have been internationally renowned. As a mixed-media artist Alok uses poetry, prose, comedy, performance, fashion design, and portraiture to explore themes of gender, race, trauma, belonging, and the human condition. They are the author of Femme in Public (2017) and Beyond the Gender Binary (2020).
Music by Soda Lite, Rising Appalachia, and Lady Moon & The Eclipse.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, originally aired in January of 2020. Our hearts and minds are set to work by the urgent eco-social crises of this time. Caught in a cultural twitch of frenetic production and the sticky paradigms of modernity, we’ve penned vocabulary and designed technologies, manufactured frameworks and crunched numbers in an effort to diagnose and “treat” planetary collapse. We are invited by this week’s guest, Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, to pause and abandon solutionism, step back from the project of progress, and dance into a different set of questions: What does the Anthropocene teach us as a destabilizing agent that resists our taming? How can we show up in our movements of justice if “the ways we respond to crisis is part of the crisis”? What happens when we unfurl into a space of slowness and relinquish human mastery to a wider cosmic net of relations?
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.) considers his most sacred work to be learning how to be with his daughter and son, Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden—and their mother, his wife and "life-nectar,” Ijeoma. An author, speaker, renegade academic, and proud father, Bayo is Chief Curator and Director of The Emergence Network, a constellation of humans and nonhumans working together trans-locally to curate projects, rituals, conversations and events that nurture senses of the otherwise via practices that trouble the traditional boundaries of agency and possibility. Bayo is also a visiting professor at Middlebury College, Vermont, and has taught in universities around the world. He is a consultant with UNESCO, leading efforts for the Imagining Africa’s Future (IAF) project. Bayo has authored two books, We Will Tell Our Own Story! and These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home, and has penned forewords for many others.
Music by Daniel Higgs
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Dr. Kim TallBear, originally aired in February of 2020. Intimacy and sexuality is the soil that gives rise to creativity, pleasure and the regeneration of new life. As mainstream understandings of sex, marriage, and family continue to shift, Dr. Kim TallBear highlights how the colonial project of nation-building disrupted the vitality of Indigenous kinship by imposing heteronormative monogamous marriage and the nuclear family structure. How have these constraints bred hyper-sexualized, paradoxical and fetishized beliefs that degrade relationships, the wellbeing of communities and the land? How do the forces of settler state biopolitics and multiculturalism continue to shape population in the colonial mold? By unraveling the doctrines of scarcity and separation, we are challenged to shatter pervasive beliefs of boundaries, binaries, and taboos within our relations.
Music by M83, Frazey Ford and Frase Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Ruth Łchav’aya K’isen Miller, originally aired in September of 2021. “If this new green economy continues to perpetuate the same ethos that resource extraction has, we will not find any solutions and we will see our suffering perpetuated.” Heeding this call from Ruth Łchav’aya K’isen Miller, we explore the fruitful spaces between radical imagination, public policy, and on-the-ground activism as we think about what it means to take meaningful steps towards creating a non-extractive future. In this week’s episode, Ruth shares how tending to the future must center Indigenous values and lifeways. With this in mind, we look at the totality of what a “just transition” can offer us beyond limited definitions shaped by economics, policy, and job growth. Instead, Ruth shares the ways in which a just transition can be understood as a cyclical movement inspired by kinship, care, and reciprocity.
Ruth Łchav’aya K’isen Miller is a Dena'ina Athabaskan and Ashkenazi Russian Jewish woman, raised in Dgheyay Kaq (Anchorage), Alaska. She is a member of the Curyung Tribe from the Lake Clark region and also has roots in Bristol Bay. Ruth is the Climate Justice and Just Transition Director for Native Movement, a matriarchal grassroots Indigenous organization that fights for the rights of Indigenous peoples. She has worked many years towards climate justice and a regenerative economy for all on her lands and beyond, her work also includes international advocacy. She is a daughter, a granddaughter, an aunty, a language learner, a traditional beadworker, and a subsistence fisherwomxn.
Music by Madelyn Ilana, Høly River, and Mariee Sioux.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe), originally aired in September of 2021. In the fast-paced movement of today’s media, it’s easy to become entangled in narratives of extinction, loss, a lack of time, and a tremendous amount of misanthropy. However, when we pause to look within the ecosystems around us we can find examples of life pushing through the most difficult of circumstances. Our more than human kin continues in defiance, refusing to cease their own lineage under the current modern paradigm of exploitation and desecration. In this week’s episode, we look into a thriving life paradigm, which places a reverences for life at the center of all action, with guest Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe). In this expansive conversation, Woman Stands Shining coalesces topics of Indigenous sovereignty, land back, how gender and consent behave in different paradigms, and the vital importance of moving out of modernity’s obsession with intellectualism as the primary way of knowing, into a powerful call to choose a timeless paradigm that is life-affirming for us all.
Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe) is a Diné grandmother, activist, artist, and international speaker. Her primary work is proposing to the Five-Fingered-Ones, that paradigm is a choice, and pointing to Indigenous cultures as examples that we have evidence that human beings can participate in paradigms in which we can become beings capable of causing all life to thrive.
Music by The Range of Light Wilderness, Violet Bell, and Sea Stars.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Prentis Hemphill, originally aired in July of 2021. “There's no magical return. We're not all going to return to an unblemished time in history, and if we know that...what do we have to do? Who needs to have conversation with whom? Who needs to heal what relationship? Who needs to ask for what permission? Who needs to offer something back?” This week on the podcast, Prentis Hemphill offers us these questions in conversation about how we can be in relationship with each other at this very moment in time. In recognition of the tremendous intricacies of our experiences when it comes to our collective histories, forced severances, and the manipulation of trauma in our society, Prentis shares how embodiment is a resource that allows us to connect with the Earth, recognize grief as an entry point, and shape the impossible into possible. Prentis Hemphill is a movement facilitator, Somatics teacher, and practitioner, working at the convergence of healing, collective transformation, and political organizing. At present, Prentis is the founder and leader of The Embodiment Institute and The Black Embodiment Initiative as well as host of the Finding Our Way Podcast.
Music by Tan Cologne, This Flame I Carry, and The Breath.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
In this episode of For the Wild, Ayana and returning guest Dr. Vandana Shiva discuss the crumbling of the colonial paradigm and the promise of re-commoning the commons for our collective future. Situating us in the exigency of food and seed sovereignty for our present time, Dr. Shiva reminds us that seeds and living systems are not open access systems to be privatized, patented, or exploited. Rather, the commons are central to all of life. In this multifaceted episode, we discuss threats to the commons by Big Tech; the brilliance and sophistication of Indigenous seed cultures and breeding, the toxicity of GMO crops for our bodies and the planet, the benefits of agroecological farming, and the need for diversity in our ecosystems and justice movements. Tying the green-washed quest by tech barons to digitalize the world to legacies of colonialism and imperialism under a similar “civilizing” mission, Dr. Shiva warns that the ruling class operates from a place of fear of any being alive and free on their own terms. We end this conversation with a call to a paradigm shift away from capitalism, control and fear to one of partnership with the earth.
Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental thinker and activist, a leader in the International Forum on Globalisation and of the Slow Food Movement. Founder of Navdanya and of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and a tireless crusader for farmers’, peasants’, and women’s rights, she is author and editor of many influential books, including two from Synergetic Press, Reclaiming the Commons: Biodiversity, Indigenous Wisdom, and the Rights of Mother Earth (2020) and the forthcoming Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy: A Global Citizens’ Report on the Corporate Control of Technology, Health, and Agriculture, which is slated for release in February 2022.
Music by Peals, Peia, and Kaivalya. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Sii-am Hamilton, originally aired in November of 2020. In this powerful conversation with land defender Sii-am Hamilton, we are invited to discuss futuristic ways forward in recognition that Indigenous communities have been practicing creative resistance against colonialism and capitalism for hundreds of years. We begin by discussing what is currently transpiring on Wet’suwet’en territories and how colonial governments are using the current pandemic (and will use future crises) to roll back regulatory measures and push development full force. Sii-am offers a holistic reflection on frontline land defense and the extent to which violence is afflicted upon land defenders, and resource extraction participants, by transnational corporations, while also reorienting us to the reality that just, dignified, and brilliant futures already exist but are not given attention, curiosity, or love because they do not serve corporate profit. Sii-am Hamilton is a land defender and traditional knowledge holder born in occupied Hupacasath territory to mother Kwitsel Tatel and father Ron Hamilton. Their experience stems from time on the land, feast culture, and living traditional law and protocol. They are a qualified hand poke tattoo artist as well as a song holder. Sii-am has been raised in political organization, land title, and grassroots activism since childhood, and now specializes in publicity/media promotion of environmental and land sovereignty movements.
Music by Elisapie.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
What does a just climate future look like? In this bonus episode Ayana and guest adrienne maree brown discuss Imagine 2200, Fix’s climate-fiction contest, which recognizes stories that envision the next 180 years of equitable climate progress, imagining intersectional worlds of abundance, adaptation, reform, and hope. Turning towards fueling the imagination, this episode touches on stewarding a just future and the value of presence with ourselves, each other, and the movements we dedicate ourselves to. We are in a battle for our attention and for our imaginations. The winner will determine the future of the climate and of humanity. Facing this reality, and the reality of a changing climate is not easy, but despair around this can bring us closer to the earth and to each other when it is used as a learning tool. In the shift from panic to practice, visionary fiction is vital medicine, and adrienne guides us to stretch our minds to see a future beyond what the confines of white supremacy, colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism tell us is possible.
adrienne maree brown is the writer-in-residence at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, and author of Grievers (the first novella in a trilogy on the Black Dawn imprint), Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements and How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office. She is the co-host of the How to Survive the End of the World, Octavia’s Parables, and Emergent Strategy podcasts. adrienne is rooted in Detroit.
Music by Nia Simone and The Mysterious They. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Corinna Gould, originally aired in November of 2020. Prior to settler development and extraction, the landscapes and lifeways of Ohlone territory were richly abundant with acorns, grass seeds, wildflowers, elk, salmon, grizzly bears, and berries. In this week’s episode of For The Wild, guest Corrina Gould reminds us that Ohlone territory still holds tremendous abundance and that the land can sustain us in a way that would provide for our wellbeing should we choose to really re-examine what it is we need to survive. But more than a conversation on the wealth of the land, we explore responsibility and reciprocity on stolen homelands by asking what it means to be in right relationship? How can we foster integrity in conservation and land restoration work amidst a world that continues to peddle scarcity, greed, and extraction? How can folks contribute to the re-storying of the land, even if through small acts? Corrina Gould is the spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan/Ohlone. She is an activist that has worked on preserving and protecting the ancient burial sites of her ancestors in the Bay Area for decades. She is the Co-founder and a Lead Organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change and co-founder of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.
Music by Shayna Gladstone and Amo Amo.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Ella Noah Bancroft, originally aired in March of 2021. “We forget that so much is given freely, that this world is meant to be enjoyed.” We heed this powerful reminder by guest Ella Noah Bancroft. As our belief systems have become entwined with the dominant economic structure, we see the commodification of our wellness, intimacy, and connectivity - a phenomenon that is severely hindering our ability to connect authentically. In conversation, Ella traces the powerful connection between our ability to go against mainstream capitalist ways of being and our capacity for deep connection with ourselves and each other. With intimacy as an entrance point, our conversation explores what happens when we derive our pleasure from extraction, the kind of deep embodiment and connectivity that threatens capitalistic and colonial structures, and how we can journey back into spaces of trust through practices that don’t have to cost us a thing.
Ella Noah Bancroft is a Bundjalung woman based in the Northern New South Wales, Australia. Ella identifies as mixed heritage Indigenous, gay woman. She grew up living in both worlds, her Indigenous world and the mainstream Australian world. Both challenged her identity in different ways. She is an Australian born artist, storyteller, mentor and founder of “The Returning” and Yhi Collective.
Music by Harrison Foster, Lady Moon & The Eclipse, and Sucúlima.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Mike Phillips which originally aired in January of 2020. Not long ago, packs of gray wolves roamed freely across so-called North America from the grassy prairies of Florida to the snow-capped peaks of Colorado. Alongside a growing agricultural industry and settler expansion West, the U.S. government marshalled a perverse, ruthless campaign to systematically eradicate the gray wolf, a symbol of the “untamed” wild, driving this keystone species to the brink of extinction. Since the 1970s, the slow process of wolf recovery has begun, but the gray wolf remains endangered by human activity and ensnared in a dark mythic past. On this week’s episode, we speak with Mike Phillips, a conservationist and longtime ally of gray wolves, who gives voice to these great ecological engineers and their elemental place within the balance of life.
Mike Phillips has served as the Executive Director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund and advisor to the Turner Biodiversity Divisions since he co-founded both with Ted Turner in June 1997. Prior to that Mike had worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service since 1981. During his employment with the Department of Interior Mike served as the leader of historic efforts to restore red wolves to the southeastern US and gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park. He also conducted important research on the impacts of oil and gas development on grizzly bears in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, predation costs for gray wolves in Alaska, black bear movements in northeastern North Carolina, and dingo ecology in Australia. In 2006, Mike was elected to the Montana legislature where he served as the representative for House District 66 in Bozeman until 2012 when he was elected to the Montana Senate.
Music by Mac DemarcoVisit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting part two of our interview with brontë velez (they/them), originally aired in October of 2019. We dive into the capacity for pleasure amidst times of great uncertainty and historical oppression. What does “pleasure in the apocalypse” mean? As brontë defines it, pleasure is what makes us come alive, so how can we create a culture that is deeply attuned to our senses and directs our desire towards Earth and each other? By feeding our senses, how might we confront the isolation and industrialization of our bodies, while acknowledging the limitations of grief in that “suffering is not accountable to the Earth.”
brontë’s work and rest is guided by the call that “black wellness is the antithesis to state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson). As a black-latinx transdisciplinary artist, designer, trickster, educator and wakeworker, their eco-social art praxis lives at the intersections of black feminist placemaking, abolitionist theologies, environmental regeneration and death doulaship. they embody this commitment of attending to black health/imagination, commemorative justice (Free Egunfemi) and hospicing the shit that hurts black folks and the land through serving as creative director for Lead to Life design collective and ecological educator for ancestral arts skills and nature-connection school Weaving Earth. they are currently co-conjuring a mockumentary with esperanza spalding in collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony and stewarding land with their partner in unceded Kashia Pomo territory in northern California.
Mostly, brontë is up to the sweet tender rhythm of quotidian black queer-lifemaking, ever-committed to humor & liberation, ever-marked by grief at the distance made between us and all of life —"
Music by Jennifer Johns and members of the Thrive Choir and Jiordi Rosales on cello. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with brontë velez, originally aired in October of 2019. brontë velez opens this week’s episode inviting us to think about how submission to Earth is an invitation into a more life affirming world. What does a future look like in which white, human, and patriarchal supremacy surrenders its power in an act of pleasure? In Part One of this expansive conversation, Ayana and brontë delve into topics surrounding authentic expression, the distortion of feminine and masculine powers, beauty and aesthetics, queerness, dominatrix energy, and power as agency.
brontë velez (they/them) is guided in work and rest, by the call that “black wellness is the antithesis to state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson). as a black-latinx transdisciplinary artist, designer, trickster, educator and wakeworker, their eco-social art praxis lives at the intersections of black feminist placemaking, abolitionist theologies, environmental regeneration and death doulaship.
they embody this commitment of attending to black health/imagination, commemorative justice (Free Egunfemi) and hospicing the shit that hurts black folks and the land through serving as creative director for Lead to Life design collective and ecological educator for ancestral arts skills and nature-connection school Weaving Earth. they are currently co-conjuring a mockumentary with esperanza spalding in collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony and stewarding land with their partner in unceded Kashia Pomo territory in northern California.
mostly, brontë is up to the sweet tender rhythm of quotidian black queer-lifemaking, ever-committed to humor & liberation, ever-marked by grief at the distance made between us and all of life.
At the end of this episode, listeners hear an excerpt from The Well prophecy, written by brontë velez and recited by brontë velez, Ra Malika Imhotep co-founder of the Church of Black Feminist Thought and Jazmin Calderon Torres and Liz Kennedy from Lead to Life.
Music by Esperanza Spalding.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Dr. Kate Stafford, originally aired in September of 2020.The bowhead whale can live up to 200 years old, meaning that the bowhead whales of today know and remember a world that sounded, tasted, and felt very different than the one we live in. Perhaps their living memory has yet to normalize marine pollution, anthropogenic sounds, and the underwater effects of globalization and heavy industrialization. In this episode of For The Wild with Dr. Kate Stafford, we listen to the many songs the ocean body sings, asking; how does a warming climate alter the Arctic’s soundscape? Why are the waters of the Arctic becoming louder, and what does this mean for kin like the bowhead? Dr. Kate Stafford’s research focuses on using passive acoustic monitoring to examine migratory movements, geographic variation, and physical drivers of marine mammals, particularly large whales. She has worked all over the world from the tropics to the poles and is fortunate enough to have seen (and recorded) blue whales in every ocean in which they occur. Kate’s current research focuses on the changing acoustic environment of the Arctic and how changes, from sea ice declines to increasing industrial human use, may be influencing subarctic and Arctic marine mammals. Kate Stafford is a Senior Principal Oceanographer at the Applied Physics Lab and an affiliate Associate Professor in the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Music by Eliza Edens.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Chris Hedges, originally aired in June of 2019. All too often our conversations around the consolidation of wealth and power in America blindly fixate on the politics of the Right and Trump as the anti-hero archetype. We must deepen our analyses and rethink our movements beyond the two-party divide in order to truly understand and hold accountable the socio-political and economic forces that have brought us to such a crisis. This week, we speak with journalist and author Chris Hedges who guides us through the history and inner workings of neoliberalism, the rise of corporate capitalism, and our descent into fascism. Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers University, and an ordained Presbyterian minister. He has written 12 books and writes a weekly column for the website Truthdig and hosts a show, “On Contact,” on RT America. Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans.
Music by Charlie Parr.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Michael Meade, originally aired in June of 2019. The crises of cosmological, mythological and psychological disconnection from nature, from ourselves, and from each other may drive us to places of darkness and suffering; and yet there is great potential in that darkness to interact with creative energy. Retracing meaning through archetypal myth offers an opportunity to understand the great challenge of our time to heal the planet from its wounds, and to refresh our dominant worldview with one based on connection and imagination. This week, journey into Michael Meade’s expansive vision of awakening ancient meaning for the individual and collective consciousness.
Michael Meade, D.H.L., is a renowned storyteller, author, and scholar of
mythology, anthropology, and psychology. He combines hypnotic storytelling,
street-savvy perceptiveness, and spellbinding interpretations of ancient myths
with a deep knowledge of cross-cultural rituals. He is the author of The Genius
Myth, Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of The Soul, Why the World
Doesn’t End, The Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of the Soul and
editor, with James Hillman and Robert Bly, of Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart.
Meade is the founder of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a nonprofit network of
artists, activists, and community builders that encourages greater understanding
between diverse peoples.
Music by Izaak Opatz.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Donna Haraway, originally aired in August of 2019. Since her 1985 essay, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” scholar Donna Haraway has transformed how theorists, academics, and artists think about humans’ deep and entangled relationships with technology, beyond-human kin, and each other. Through an ongoing practice of thoughtful and curious investigation, Donna continues to unravel the myth of human exceptionalism, the hyper individualism of capitalist culture and Western traditions, and the rigid binaries we so often construct between the self and others. Attending to the intersection of biology, culture and politics, Donna Haraway is a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California Santa Cruz. She earned her PhD in Biology at Yale in 1972 and writes and teaches in science and technology studies, feminist theory, and multispecies studies. Haraway’s most recent works include Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene; a feature-length film by Fabrizio Terravova, titled Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival; and Making Kin Not Population, a publication co-edited with Adele Clarke that addresses questions of human numbers, feminist anti-racist reproductive and environmental justice, and multispecies flourishing.
Music by Jeremy Harris.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Vijay Prashad, originally aired in February of 2021. Emboldened by the rapid development of technology, a cultural ethos of rugged individualism, globalization, and the monopolization of our media, the era of efficiency in the so-called Global North has significantly altered our communal symbiosis. For many, acts of service that would have once been fulfilled by neighbors and community have now been replaced by apps and gig workers, ultimately commodifying most of our social relations in one form or another. This week on the podcast, we are joined by guest Vijay Prashad to explore how societies take care of themselves, what true public action looks like in crisis, and how movements across the world have resisted the privatization of life and the devaluation of care that we have become accustomed to. Vijay Prashad is the Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Chief Editor at LeftWord Books and Chief Correspondent for Globetrotter. His most recent book is Washington Bullets, just out from Monthly Review Press with a preface by Evo Morales Ayma.
Music by Nathan Keck, Lizabett Russo, Sidi Touré, and Jon Yonts.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Tricia Hersey of the Nap Ministry, originally aired in June of 2020. With a historical analysis of slavery and plantation labor, this week’s episode prompts us, at this critical time, to consider what is stolen from those among us who cannot rest under white supremacy and capitalism. In this incredibly rich offering, we speak with Tricia on the myths of grind culture, rest as resistance, and reclaiming our imaginative power through sleep. Capitalism and white supremacy have tricked us into believing that our self-worth is tied to our productivity. Tricia shares with us the revolutionary power of rest. Tricia Hersey is a Chicago native living in Atlanta with over 20 years of experience collaborating with communities as a performance artist, theater maker, spiritual director, and community organizer. She is the founder of The Nap Ministry, an organization that examines rest as a form of resistance by curating safe spaces for the community to rest via Collective Napping Experiences, immersive workshops and performance art installations. Her research interests include black liberation theology, womanism, somatics, and cultural trauma. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from Eastern Illinois University and a Master of Divinity from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.
Music by Seba Kaapstad, Real J Wallace, and Beautiful Chorus.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
In this week’s episode, we ground ourselves in our embodied reality with guest Chiara Francesca, who invites us to explore what it means to be aware of our bodies and the way that they feel in this world. With a deep commitment to future visioning, we unpack the significance of what it means to “heal” amidst a system that is so violently creating our perpetual states of illness. Moving beyond notions of healing as a singular, individual act, Chiara Francesca asks us to think about what it will take for care and community to thrive. In conversation, we explore the emotional experience behind acupuncture, how a disability justice framework shapes Chiara Francesca’s work, the connection between Earth and bodily experienced trauma, and how to create a conducive environment for embodiment. Chiara Francesca reminds us that “healing is a collective endeavor,” and if we truly want to co-create a healthy society, we must work to liberate one another from survival mode. Originally from Italy, and currently residing in Chicago, Chiara is a queer artist, writer, organizer, acupuncturist, immigrant, and former teen ma’ living with multiple disabilities. Their clinical focus is on mental health, trauma, CPTSD, and queer/trans health. She is committed to building collaborative spaces for community care and centering collective health in and out of movements for justice.
Music by Cy X, Te Martin, and Secret Cigarette.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
In the world of fashion and design, it’s becoming increasingly common to hear about businesses that are sustainable in their use of material; using biofabricated textiles, measuring their water usage, etc. Or we see companies who have a strong ethos towards sustainable production and paying employees a “livable” wage, but rarely do we ever see both. For example, a recent report put out by Stand.Earth lauded Nike, Levis, and Puma for “shifting their supply chain away from fossil fuels,” however we know that these fashion companies are also responsible for exploiting workers across the globe through cheap labor. In this week’s episode, we explore the limitations of transformation when it comes to an inherently exploitative system, specifically looking at the ways in which brands use the term sustainable in very finite dimensions, with guest Sha’Mira Covington. Sha’Mira Covington is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Interiors and the Institute of African American Studies at the University of Georgia. Her research explores fashion as a cultural, historical, social, and political phenomenon involved in and affected by histories of colonial domination, anti-colonial resistance, and processes of decolonization and globalization. Her dissertation, "The Revolution will be Embodied", uses archival sources to argue that despite the fashion industry's exploitation of Black activism, Black people have always used embodied practices such as dress, yoga, and dance to liberate themselves from hegemonic forces.
Music by Itasca, Ley Line, and Rajna Swaminathan.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
How might a bowhead whale tell the history of the Arctic? Grounding us in a history of the Bering Strait that listens deeply to ecology and the more-than-human, Bathsheba Demuth invites us to expand our future and past visions of human society in this episode. Adding nuance to our understanding of Arctic history, Bathsheba turns our attention towards the undercurrents of resistance – from whales avoiding commercial whaling ships to whalers and miners confronting the violence of the jobs into which they were forced. Bathsheba then challenges us to move beyond the logic of the slaughterhouse, wherein we are alienated from the ways our energy and goods are produced, and to instead build towards a radically imagined future of empathetic and connected relations. With this, she considers a future outside of apocalyptic visions, rooted in the understanding that the shape of the world today is neither permanent nor pre-destined. Her writing on these subjects has appeared in publications from The American Historical Review to The New Yorker.
Bathsheba Demuth is an Assistant Professor of History and Environment and Society at Brown University. An environmental historian, she writes and thinks with the lands and seas of the Russian and North American Arctic. Her interest in northern environments and cultures began when she was 18 and moved to the village of Old Crow in the Yukon. For over two years, she mushed huskies, hunted caribou, fished for salmon, and otherwise learned to survive in the taiga and tundra. Her prize-winning first book, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait (W.W. Norton) was named a Nature Top Ten Book of 2019 and Best Book of 2019 by NPR, Barnes and Noble, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal among others. From the archive to the dog sled, she is interested in how the histories of people, ideas, places, and other-than-human species intersect.
Music by Eliza Eden, Georgia Sackler, and Dana Anastasia.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
All too often that which exists beyond the realms of intellect and rationality are deemed unworthy, unreal, and even demonized by the overculture. However, there is tremendous power held by magical, intuitive practices, especially in this moment when so many of us are yearning to spin ourselves out of the reductionist, intellect-driven mindset that we find ourselves mired in. In this episode, we journey into the unseen with guest Marcella Kroll. In this expansive conversation we explore a variety of topics ranging from how we can offer tools for healing with integrity under a colonial-capitalist system, the intersections of algorithms, divination, and social media, and the legacy of ancestral healing. Marcella Kroll is a Neurodivergent Multi-Dimensional Artist, Performer, and Spiritualist. She is the creator of 3 divination decks, illustrator and author of the grimoire PRIESTESS, and host of the podcast Saved by the Spell. Through her one on one sessions, she offers her clients space and perspective to empower themselves on their own unique path. While offering classes and workshops that honor Ancestral Healing for those living in the Liminal spaces, empowered magical practices, and reclaiming your birthright as a Sovereign Being. She also is a program presenter for the Los Angeles Public Library offering divination workshops to Teens and Tweens.
Music by Santiparro, Violet Bell, and Annie Sumi.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
How might a mushroom challenge global control? In this episode, Dr. Patricia Kaishian encourages us to think of mycology as a revolutionary and political practice. Diving into queer mycology, we see the ways that fungi challenge binaries of gender, family structure, and even traditional biological classification. Queer theory teaches us that difference is necessary and fluidity is vital. Queer mycology shows us this applies to the more-than-human. Fungi do not make easy subjects of capitalism. In the tradition of queer theory, how might we learn from fungi rather than being threatened by their binary and definition-defying presence? Dr. Kaishian, then, guides us to challenge science to maintain its integrity in the face of capitalistic incentives, and through this guidance brings us to a better understanding of the possibilities for ethical science that addresses the vital concerns of a changing climate. In this vein, Dr. Kaishian shares her experience in the Armenian diaspora and the need for explicitly political science and mycology in the wake of settler colonialism and genocide through her work with the International Congress of Armenian Mycologists. Dr. Patricia Kaishian is a Mycologist and postdoctoral researcher at Purdue University, where she serves as a curator of the Arthur Fungarium and Kriebel Herbarium. Dr. Kaishian is a fungal taxonomist and received her PhD in Mycology from SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry in Syracuse, NY, in 2020.
Music by The Musicteller, Madelyn Ilana, Kendra Swanson. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Most of us are familiar with the environmental impacts of our physical technology, like the e-waste generated from cell phones or the minerals required to run our laptops, but have you ever wondered about the connections between digital media and resource extraction? This week we are joined by guest Antonio López to explore how ICT (Information and Communications Technology), and digital media and information, have not only transformed Earth but are also contributing to our collective carbon footprint. Dr. Antonio López is a leading international expert bridging ecojustice with media literacy. He is a founding theorist and architect of ecomedia literacy. He received professional training at the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco, earned his BA in Peace and Conflict Studies at UC Berkeley and MA in Media Studies at the New School for Social Research. He earned a Ph.D. in Sustainability Education from Prescott College. He has written numerous academic articles, essays and four books: Mediacology: A Multicultural Approach to Media Literacy in the 21st Century, The Media Ecosystem: What Ecology Can Teach Us About Responsible Media Practice, Greening Media Education: Bridging Media Literacy with Green Cultural Citizenship, and Ecomedia Literacy: Integrating Ecology into Media Education. He is currently Chair and Associate Professor of Communications and Media Studies at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy.
Music by Justin Crawmer, Sam Sycamore, and Marty O'Reilly and the Old Soul Orchestra.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
How many times have you questioned whether or not your life was in alignment with your purpose for being here? With the ever common phenomenon of burnout, fatigue, and drain, it’s becoming increasingly common for us to have these never-ending thoughts. This week on the podcast, we take a moment for some deep heart salve with Niria Alicia who guides us to think about ancestral instruction, precious purpose, rituals for liberation, and what it means to be human in this time. This warm and rich conversation looks at spiritual crisis in tandem with climate crisis, the allure of self-sabotage, and the problem with the many “solutions” we are offered to the problems our world faces in this epoch. Niria Alicia is a Xicana Indigena community organizer, human rights advocate, educator and storyteller dedicated to protecting the sacredness of Mother Earth and the dignity of historically oppressed peoples and the more-than-human world. Born 500 years after Columbus’ invasion in a migrant farmworker community, her struggle for love and liberation exists at the intersections of migrant justice, climate justice and indigenous rights. In 2020 she was given the highest honor the UN awards young people by being named the Young Champion of the Earth for North America. Niria’s proudest accomplishments and honors have been learning how to make tortillas in the traditional way for her abuelita, growing her first milpa from her family’s heirloom corn seeds and inheriting her great-great grandmother’s metate, a culturally significant ancestral tool made from lava rock that has the hand imprints of the strong women she is proud to descend from.
Music by Santiago Cordoba, Palo-Mah, and The Range of Light Wilderness.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Chronic inflammatory diseases are on the rise, especially in so-called industrialized countries that have been structured by the hands of colonialism. Could this collective inflammation we are experiencing be a sign from our bodies that we are indeed mired in systemically unhealthy living conditions? What we might have once understood as an individual ailment, must now be understood as a side effect of daily exposures of air pollution, economic precarity, contaminated water, police brutality, mounting debt, and an overall increasingly difficult social structure to stay afloat in. In this week’s episode, Dr. Rupa Marya and Raj Patel discuss the biological impacts of oppressive social structures. We are left with the resounding reminder that inflammation is an indicator that we must change our collective ways in order to heal, and in today’s world that requires us to dismantle oppressive systems and expand our understanding of health beyond inadequate colonial definitions.
Dr. Rupa Marya is a physician, an activist, a 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. She is a cofounder of the Do No Harm Coalition, a collective of health workers committed to addressing disease through structural change. Raj Patel is a research professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, a professor in the University’s Department of Nutrition, and a research associate at Rhodes University, South Africa. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved and The Value of Nothing. He serves on the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems and has advised governments worldwide on the causes of and solutions to crises of sustainability.
Music by Roma Ransom and Lindsey Mills.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Kerry Knudsen, originally aired in April of 2019. Lichens make up around eight percent of our planet’s biomass, yet rarely do we pay much attention to these symbiotic, part algae, part fungi organisms. In this episode, For The Wild speaks to one of the world’s leading lichenologists, Kerry Kent Knudsen. Ayana’s conversation with Kerry spans the dreamiest of worlds, from the surreal and psychedelic presence of lichens to the magic of creating life post-capitalism. In addition to Kerry’s field-based understanding of lichen, Kerry also speaks to the times we are living in, “just like the butterfly that beats its wings and causes a rainstorm around the other side of the world, we have to embrace the chaos of our lives.” In embracing this chaos, Kerry reminds us that we may very well find creation, bring our magic to fruition, and embody complete unity with reality wherever we may be. Kerry Kent Knudsen is a mycological taxonomist and lichenologist at the University of Life Sciences in Prague. Kerry founded a lichen herbarium at the University of California at Riverside and has published 215 papers and articles on lichens. He is a specialist in the lichen biodiversity of southern California and in the order of Acarosporales, which occur around the world. With his wife Jana Kocourkova, who is also a lichenologist, they have begun a four-year project working on lichen biodiversity in the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico.
Music by The Savage Young Taterbug.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
As the ocean warms and grows more hostile, the icy waters of the Taku river have served as refuge for salmon and an abundance of more-than-human kin. However, threats from mining and resource extraction are posed to forever change the habitat of the watershed. The 1957 abandonment of the Tulsequah Chief Mine in British Columbia left a disastrous environmental impact. This mine still requires billions of dollars worth of clean up action and constant monitoring to ensure the protection of this river system. The Tulsequah Chief serves as just one example of threats to the vital river systems of so-called Canada and The United States. The Taku, the Unuk, and the Stikine are all transboundary rivers beginning in British Columbia, Canada, and flowing through to Alaska. They are unique both in their beauty and abundance, and in the inter-governmental action required to regulate them. The Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 dictates relations across international borders, but the treaty alone will not protect these rivers from acid mine drainage and continued extraction. Chris Zimmer invites us to imagine what clean, healthy rivers can bring us, and to propel love for these rivers towards ethical action. Chris Zimmer is the Alaska Campaign Director of Rivers Without Borders. Based in Juneau, Chris has been with Rivers Without Borders since 2001. Chris enjoys fishing and hunting in the watersheds he helps to protect.
Music by Jon Yonts, GoldenOak, and Larkhall.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
The abundance of the Klamath River has been severely restricted since the late 1700s by way of mining, logging, and damming. Once home to the third-largest salmon run in the lower 48, now Northern California is risking the collapse of its entire salmon population. After two decades of activism, the Klamath River dams will finally be removed by 2023, restoring salmon access to more than 400 miles of habitat. However, this is merely one example of the ways in which land has been chronically mismanaged across the so-called United States. This week we speak to Yurok fisherman and activist, Samuel Gensaw III, on the ways in which Northern California has served as a continuous extraction site for colonial development. This expansive conversation begins by looking at resource extraction, but moves into a larger dialogue on our collective responsibility to world renewal, bringing back balance to our relationships, how to instill new values without appropriating cultural traditions, and the Ancestral Guard’s Victorious Gardens program featured in the film Gather. Samuel Gensaw III is the founding director of the Award-winning Ancestral Guard program. Currently, he is the youngest person to serve as the vice-chairman of the Yurok tribe’s natural resources committee. He and fellow Ancestral Guard members are featured in the documentary, Gather, which focuses on the growing movement among Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political, and cultural identities through food sovereignty.
Music by Lake Mary, All The Queen’s Ravens, Jess Williamson.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Dallas Goldtooth, originally aired in December of 2018. Dallas Goldtooth joins Ayana in a conversation around toxic masculinity, accountability, and dismantling patriarchy. So often, conversations around gender wounds quickly deteriorate into oversimplifications of, and accusations towards, one gender or another – failing to realize how we are all hurting under patriarchy. Toxic masculinity, settler colonialism, and white supremacy are impelling us to a point of no return. If you are coming to this conversation as an environmental advocate, understand that in order to shift our relationship from that of domination over “nature” to one of reciprocity and understanding of the ecosystem we are a part of, we must examine our values with one another. “Dallas Goldtooth is the Keep it in the Ground Campaign Organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network. He is also the co-founder of the Indigenous comedy group The 1491s. Dallas is Dakota and Diné, a loving husband, dedicated father, comedian, public speaker, recovering exotic dancer, plastic shaman extraordinaire, and body double for that guy who plays Thor in them Thor Movies.”
Music by Lyla June Johnston.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
When one thinks about iron, copper, and gold mining, Sweden is not the first place that comes to mind, but in the past few years the country has granted roughly 500 mining exploration permits as it positions itself to become one of the largest mining centers for all of Europe. The price of mining in Sweden has largely been paid by the Sámi, whose lifeways are permanently changed once the government and multinational corporations seek to extract so-called natural resources from their traditional territory of Sápmi. In this week’s episode, we look at extractive mining in Sápmi and how Sweden’s colonial government exploits their very limited definition of Sámi indigeneity to further land grabs and resource extraction with guest Josefina Skerk. Josefina Skerk is a Sámi politician with a background in law. She is the General Manager of Sijti Jarnge, a Sámi Language and Culture Centre in Norway. Skerk has been a member of the Sámi Parliament in Sweden since 2013, and has held office as its former Vice President. Indigenous rights, especially connecting to land and language rights, are key issues that she is passionate about.
Music by Andy Tallent, Dana Anastasia, and West of Roan.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
“What might happen if we saw a migrant child at the border as our own daughter? Or George Floyd gasping for breath as our own brother? Or Brianna as sister? Or the Asian American women slaughtered in Atlanta as our own aunties? What might happen? What would we risk? What movements would we build? What would we demand? How would we harness our rage? How would we reimagine a world in which all of us are safe? What might happen if we made love the ethic that guided all of our actions?” This week we ground down in visioning our shared survival with guest Valarie Kaur, who reminds us that for millennia prophetic voices have been trying to remind us that we belong to each other, here on Earth, and if we were to recognize this simple truth, what would the world look like? Valarie shares that in recognizing this reality of inherent belonging, we might have to “love beyond what evolution requires.” A revolutionary love for each other, our opponents, and ourselves. Valarie Kaur is a seasoned civil rights activist and celebrated prophetic voice. Valarie now leads the Revolutionary Love Project to reclaim love as a force for justice in America. As a lawyer, filmmaker, and innovator, she has won policy change on multiple fronts – hate crimes, racial profiling, immigration detention, solitary confinement, Internet freedom, and more. She founded Groundswell Movement, Faithful Internet, and the Yale Visual Law Project. A daughter of Sikh farmers in California's heartland, Valarie earned degrees at Stanford University, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School. Valarie's new book is See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love.
Music by AMAARA and Madeleine Sophia.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
“If this new green economy continues to perpetuate the same ethos that resource extraction has, we will not find any solutions and we will see our suffering perpetuated.” Heeding this call from Ruth Łchav’aya K’isen Miller, we explore the fruitful spaces between radical imagination, public policy, and on-the-ground activism as we think about what it means to take meaningful steps towards creating a non-extractive future. In this week’s episode, Ruth shares how tending to the future must center Indigenous values and lifeways. With this in mind, we look at the totality of what a “just transition” can offer us beyond limited definitions shaped by economics, policy, and job growth. Instead, Ruth shares the ways in which a just transition can be understood as a cyclical movement inspired by kinship, care, and reciprocity.
Ruth Łchav’aya K’isen Miller is a Dena'ina Athabaskan and Ashkenazi Russian Jewish woman, raised in Dgheyay Kaq (Anchorage), Alaska. She is a member of the Curyung Tribe from the Lake Clark region and also has roots in Bristol Bay. Ruth is the Climate Justice and Just Transition Director for Native Movement, a matriarchal grassroots Indigenous organization that fights for the rights of Indigenous peoples. She has worked many years towards climate justice and a regenerative economy for all on her lands and beyond, her work also includes international advocacy. She is a daughter, a granddaughter, an aunty, a language learner, a traditional beadworker, and a subsistence fisherwomxn.
Music by Madelyn Ilana, Holy River, and Mariee Sioux.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
In the fast-paced movement of today’s media, it’s easy to become entangled in narratives of extinction, loss, a lack of time, and a tremendous amount of misanthropy. However, when we pause to look within the ecosystems around us we can find examples of life pushing through the most difficult of circumstances. Our more than human kin continues in defiance, refusing to cease their own lineage under the current modern paradigm of exploitation and desecration. In this week’s episode, we look into a thriving life paradigm, which places a reverences for life at the center of all action, with guest Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe). In this expansive conversation, Woman Stands Shining coalesces topics of Indigenous sovereignty, land back, how gender and consent behave in different paradigms, and the vital importance of moving out of modernity’s obsession with intellectualism as the primary way of knowing, into a powerful call to choose a timeless paradigm that is life-affirming for us all.
Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe) is a Diné grandmother, activist, artist, and international speaker. Her primary work is proposing to the Five-Fingered-Ones, that paradigm is a choice, and pointing to Indigenous cultures as examples that we have evidence that human beings can participate in paradigms in which we can become beings capable of causing all life to thrive.
Music by The Range of Light Wilderness, Violet Bell, and Sea Stars.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
When we hear about the Green New Deal, it is almost always in context to policy and business within the United States. The urgent push for an energy transition away from fossil fuels often obscures the reality of extractive frontiers and the supply chains that green energy necessitates. This week, we slow down and explore the structures behind “our” energy systems, what a Green New Deal means for “resource-rich” countries in the Global South, and what a globally accountable Green New Deal could look like with guest Thea Riofrancos. As we explore what a renewable energy transition looks like from the so-called peripheries of extraction, Thea guides us to think about the relationship between solidarity and consumption, collectivity, and the vital importance of pushing for policy, systems, and organizations that empower public services, forms of sharing, and economies of care. Thea Riofrancos is an assistant professor of political science at Providence College, an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and a Radcliffe Institute Fellow. Her research focuses on resource extraction, renewable energy, climate change, green technology, social movements, and the left in Latin America. These themes are explored in her book, Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador and her co-authored book, A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal.
Music by 40 Million Feet, Mitski, and Alexa Wildish.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
In order to limit global temperature from exceeding a 1.5°C increase, we need to cut global emissions by 45% in the next 10 years. However, recent reports indicate that if our current global pledges were enacted, we’d only reduce our emissions by 1%. We are living through what some might define as an ongoing climate emergency, and this will only continue for future generations. Instead of fixating on how to “stop” climate change-related disasters or putting our trust in ineffective government bodies or greedy purveyors of “green” technology to “save” us, this week, we think about how we can have community resilience, ingenuity, and wellbeing amidst unpredictable circumstances with guest Lil Milagro Henriquez-Cornejo of Mycelium Youth Network. For Mycelium Youth Network, the capacity for community resilience is inextricable from reconnecting with ancestral knowledge and reestablishing our relationships with one another and Earth. Lil Milagro Henriquez-Cornejo is the founder and Executive Director of Mycelium Youth Network, an organization dedicated to preparing and empowering young people of color for climate change. Lil Milagro is a veteran of social justice organizing with over 18+ years of experience working on a myriad of issues, including access to higher education for low-income people and communities of color, food sovereignty, environmental racism, union democracy, and labor organizing, among others. In 2017, she founded Mycelium Youth Network.
Music by Harry Foster, Lea Thomas, and Ian George.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Queen Quet, originally aired in November of 2018. The Anthropocene tells the story of compounding injustice towards people and planet. It tells the story of growth for growth’s sake, living beyond boundaries sacredly assigned to us. In this episode, we are honored to be in dialogue with Queen Quet, Chieftess and Head-of-State for the Gullah/Geechee Nation, who is striving for justice on the front lines of the most pressing Anthropocentric intersections: climate change, resource extraction, corrupt and negligent government bodies, encroaching development, and exploitative tourism. Queen Quet, Marquetta L. Good-wine is a published author, computer scientist, lecturer, mathematician, historian, columnist, preservationist, environmental justice advocate, film consultant, and “The Art-ivist.” Queen Quet was selected, elected, and enstooled by her people to be the first Queen Mother, “head pun de bodee,” and official spokesperson for the Gullah/Geechee Nation. She is the founder of the premiere advocacy organization for the continuation of Gullah/Geechee culture, the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition.
Music by The Gullah Singers - Live recordings from Gullah/Geechee TV Nayshun Nyews with Queen Quet and The Gullah/Geechee Nation International Music & Movement Festival.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
The ubiquity of water is demonstrated in almost everything we come into contact with. It’s responsible for everyday objects like blue jeans, bread, and coffee, it rushes through pipes below our feet, is necessary for industrial violence like fracking, mapped through watersheds, exists as a healing modality, and is also a great source of pleasure - yet most of us take water for granted as a mundane necessity, rarely stopping to look at how tightly water is woven into politics, science, and the economy. This week on the podcast we look at the power and ubiquity of water in a world where it is becoming scarce with guest Andrea Ballestero. Andrea explores the tensions that exist between a human right and a commodity, water futures, pricing mechanisms, the fallacy of rationing and block pricing, and water scarcity. Andrea Ballestero is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rice University and she is also the founder and director of the Ethnography Studio. Her background includes a law degree, training in Natural Resource Policy, and a Ph.D. in anthropology. Her recent book, A Future History of Water, examines the daily work of implementing the human right to water in Costa Rica and in Northeast Brazil. This book is open access and available for download for free on her website. Dr. Ballestero is currently researching cultural imaginaries of the underground in Costa Rica, particularly aquifers. Her research and all of her publications can be found at https://andreaballestero.com/.
Music by The Pit-Yak Aiodoi, Palo-Mah (Suculima), and Jahnavi Veronica.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Environmental and ecological sustainability movements have often negated their complicity in white supremacy, heteronormativity, patriarchy, and capitalism, citing that their pursuits and causes are objectively positive because they are on behalf of the so-called “natural world.” This week on the podcast, we dig deeper into this topic with Guy Ritani and Toad Andrew Dell of PermaQueer. We discuss greenwashing, queering permaculture, what culturally relevant permaculture looks like, the ethics of frugality, and the importance of recognizing our responsibility in the web of things. PermaQueer is an ecological education project that focuses on accessibility to LGBTQIA and BIPOC folx. Toad and Guy who run PermaQueer, teach Permaculture through a queer lens with attention to the decolonization of its practices with more inclusion and access to marginal demographics. To them, permaculture provides a method of accessing and managing resources that care for communities needs with relatively small financial inputs.
Music by Eliza Edens and India Blue and Joshu.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
“I validate the idea that survival is the ultimate act of creation in a world that has reduced us to fascist arithmetic, of being a quantitative statistic, not a human soul. So we still found a way to care, love, and create - isn't that art? I teach people to decipher the art that they’re already doing, recognize the artistry and the everyday miracles of life around them, and create from that place.” This week we immerse ourselves in the aforementioned call to recognize the myriad of creations all around us from guest ALOK, who guides us in an ever-expansive dialogue around spiritual wellbeing, the importance of creative literacy, and the tremendous freedom that awaits us when we make gender unknowable. We begin our conversation by foregrounding the importance of moving out of the paradigm of understanding trans and queer as something that is exclusive to the body. Instead, ALOK shares how challenging the gender binary is not only in service to our collective wellbeing but is a reverential offering in acknowledging our true celestial expansiveness that has been dimmed under binarism, heteronormativity, and colonialism. ALOK is a gender non-conforming writer and performance artist. Their distinctive style and poetic challenge to the gender binary have been internationally renowned. As a mixed-media artist Alok uses poetry, prose, comedy, performance, fashion design, and portraiture to explore themes of gender, race, trauma, belonging, and the human condition. They are the author of Femme in Public (2017) and Beyond the Gender Binary (2020).
Music by Soda Lite, Rising Appalachia, and Lady Moon & The Eclipse.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
“There's no magical return. We're not all going to return to an unblemished time in history, and if we know that...what do we have to do? Who needs to have conversation with whom? Who needs to heal what relationship? Who needs to ask for what permission? Who needs to offer something back?” This week on the podcast, Prentis Hemphill offers us these questions in conversation about how we can be in relationship with each other at this very moment in time. In recognition of the tremendous intricacies of our experiences when it comes to our collective histories, forced severances, and the manipulation of trauma in our society, Prentis shares how embodiment is a resource that allows us to connect with the Earth, recognize grief as an entry point, and shape the impossible into possible. Prentis Hemphill is a movement facilitator, Somatics teacher, and practitioner, working at the convergence of healing, collective transformation, and political organizing. At present, Prentis is the founder and leader of The Embodiment Institute and The Black Embodiment Initiative as well as host of the Finding Our Way Podcast.
Music by Tan Cologne, This Flame I Carry, and The Breath.
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This week on the podcast we begin our conversation with Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua by discussing Guåhan’s incredibly layered history, as well as the CHamoru history that predates any colonial narrative by thousands of years. With an understanding of how Guåhan (Guam) ended up as a “territory” of the United States, Michael shares the current efforts to decolonize Guåhan and instill strong self-governance. Within this conversation, we turn our attention towards the importance of self-governance and sovereignty amidst climate change, considering that so many U.S. territories are often left to navigate the aftermath of climate emergencies with zero support from the same government that seeks to endlessly exploit their resources. Michael Lujan Bevacqua, Ph.D. taught Guam History and Chamoru language at the University of Guam for 10 years and helped found its Chamorro Studies Program, the only one of its kind in the world. With his brother Jack, they run a creative collective called The Guam Bus which publishes Chamoru language books, comics, and learning materials. He is the co-chair for the community group Independent Guåhan, which is dedicated to educating the island of Guam on the possibilities should it decolonize and become a sovereign, independent country. He is a member of the Kabesa and Bittot clans on Guam.
Music by Fabian Almazan Trio, Dumpster Full of Dragons, and I Goodfriend.
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We begin this week with reverence for sharks as kin that have inhabited Earth’s waters for 450 million years, an existence that even predates trees. These apex predators embody a deep resilience and commitment to their place in this world, however, like many of the ocean’s inhabitants, sharks cannot handle commercial exploitation at the scale of which global capitalism demands. A demand which is vastly different from subsistence fishing. In conversation with guest Stefanie Brendl, we learn how sharks regulate the ocean’s ecosystem, the ramification of dwindling shark populations, and the many reasons that the market for shark, ray, and skate meat has more than doubled since the early 1990s; ranging from the depletion of other fish stocks to the burgeoning pet food, cosmetic, and wellness industries. Additionally, we explore the United State’s complicity as the 7th largest shark-fishing country in the world and the significance of understanding our own Fisheries Act in context to multilateral treaties like the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna. Stefanie Brendl is an advocate for sharks, and a creative and social entrepreneur that leads campaigns and projects in all corners of this planet. As founder and executive director of Shark Allies and team member of various NGO coalitions, she has dedicated her last two decades to bringing greater protection to sharks.
Music by Bird by Snow, Handmade Moments, and Left Vessel.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Pádraig Ó Tuama, originally aired in September of 2019. The Isle of Éire (Ireland) is rich with stories held by the land, both ancient and modern, laden with both fierce culture and colonial violence. Pádraig Ó Tuama perceives these complex layers of history with acute insights into the lingering impacts of imperialism and sectarianism that have divided Ireland. By acknowledging deeply rooted cultural pain, Pádraig calls for Irish, English, and the rest of us to heal by reckoning with the past and embracing the creative potential held within our differences. Enter a poetic journey where the land awaits us beyond the divide of borders, history, and suffering. Ayana and Pádraig explore the language of uncommon belonging; how we must learn from our shame, the life cycle of violence, and how to confront the inheritance of privilege. Poet and theologian, Pádraig Ó Tuama’s work centers around themes of language, power, conflict, and religion. Pádraig presents Poetry Unbound with On Being Studios and in late 2019 was named Theologian in Residence for On Being, innovating in bringing art and theology into public and civic life. From 2014-2019 he was the leader of the Corrymeela Community, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation community.
Music by Peia.
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British Columbia’s government has claimed that over 20% of “their” forests still contain old-growth, but a recent independent study found only 2.7% could truly be classified as such. Despite the reality that such little of this ancient ecosystem remains, B.C. government and corporations continue to log across unceded forests. For this reason, in August of 2020, when it was revealed that Teal-Jones Group would begin road construction to log within the Fairy Creek Watershed, forest defenders quickly mobilized to halt logging operations throughout unceded Pacheedaht and Ditidaht territories. This week on For The Wild podcast we bring you an on the ground interview between Maia Wikler and xʷ is xʷ čaa (Kati George-Jim) that goes beyond old-growth logging and big tree activism to explore Indigenous sovereignty, the responsibility of bearing witness, the importance of distinguishing between short term actions and a long term movement-building, and the connections between land desecration and linguistic colonization.
xʷ is xʷ čaa is Tsuk and W̱SÁNEĆ, “of the land, not the band nation”. The niece of Pacheedaht elder, Bill Jones, Kati has been leading the movement with Rainforest Flying Squad blockading attempts by Teal-Jones to log some of the last remaining intact ancient temperate rainforests on southern Vancouver Island within Pacheedaht territory. Maia Wikler is PhD student, climate justice organizer, and writer. Her research focuses on memory as a tool of resistance and resilience in the face of corporate abuse, specifically related to deforestation and the climate crisis.
Music by Lake Mary, Forest Veil, The Range of Light Wilderness, and Ali Dineen.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
So often fungi are pitched as being at the forefront of innovation, whether being used to create vegan leather, pharmaceuticals, or being incorporated into various biotechnology products, but this fixation on innovation can obscure our ancestral relationship to fungi and the wisdom they can share with us about decomposition. This week, we slow down to acknowledge the beauty and power of fungal decomposition with guest Giuliana Furci who shares a lesson in divine time, the transformation of energy, and the necessity of decomposition. Take a moment this week to learn about fungi’s profound interspecies companionship and the simple reality that the world cannot regenerate itself without fungi. Additionally, to learn even more about these topics, look into supporting Fungi Foundation by joining them for their Fungi Foundation Virtual Speaker Event and Fundraiser on June 26th via their profile and webpage. Giuliana Furci is foundress and CEO of the Fungi Foundation, the first international non-profit dedicated to fungi and founded in Chile. She is also the first female mycologist in Chile. For more information about her work visit www.ffungi.org.
Music by Roma Ransom, Rajna Swaminathan, and Julio Kintu.
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This year approximately 42 million people will experience food insecurity in the United States, a perverse number when put in context to the surplus of food many of us have access to. In this week’s episode, we look at the work of Virginia Free Farm with guest Amyrose Foll. By providing free produce, plants, seeds, chicken, and ducks Virginia Free Farm is addressing the quality of food offered to their community, while also working to strengthen their local foodshed by getting more folks involved in gardening and small-scale farming. Amyrose continues to create a powerful example of how we can make meaningful interventions within the existing food system while also working on building an alternative model where everyone's health and wellbeing is prioritized. Amyrose is an enrolled tribal member of the Abenaki, a veteran of the U.S. Army, and alumni of both Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Science, and S.C. Johnson Graduate School Of Management. A passion for agriculture and deep concerns about community food security led her to become a stakeholder in the Virginia Dept. of Agriculture Equitable Food Oriented Distribution Taskforce and founder of Virginia Free Farms.
Music by Ian George and Edie.
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If we need the Earth, does the Earth need us? This week on the podcast we dive deep into the relationship amongst ourselves and the Earth with guest Tiokasin Ghosthorse. We begin our conversation by talking about the savior mentality that can arise when we act to address the many issues that threaten Earth and kin at this moment. Recognizing the trickiness of interrogating this mentality that is often intertwined with emotions of loss, love, and protection, Tiokasin offers that perhaps rather than being guided by solutions and salvation, we acknowledge where we are at in this consciousness and how we can challenge ourselves to give back to the Earth without intrusion. Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host, and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio'' for the last 28 years. In 2016 he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Music by Harrison Foster, Peia, and Lizabett Russo.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Through the support of ever-growing subsidies, trade deals, and taxes global corporations have ballooned, creating a highly violent, exploitative, and absurd global trade system. So absurd, that often we fixate on the hypocrisy of how it became possible that food packaged and processed on the other side of the world is somehow “cheaper” than that which is grown by our neighbors. In this week’s episode, we learn about what continues to strengthen and uphold the wastefulness of our global trade system and how global corporations decimate diversity in terms of species, livelihoods, and identities with guest Helena Norberg-Hodge. Helena Norberg-Hodge is an innovator of the new economy movement. She is author of the inspirational classic Ancient Futures, and Local is Our Future. Helena is the founder and director of Local Futures and The International Alliance for Localisation, and a founding member of the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, the International Forum on Globalization and the Global Ecovillage Network.
Music by Dana Anastasia and Chloe Levaillant.
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Struggling to change actual conditions, many have settled for changing the perceptions of the world around us. On this week’s episode, guest Tyson Yunkaporta begins by sharing the connections between perception, the branding of our identities, and the many forms of capital that become available and valuable in a perception-obsessed society. As we welcome the call to change our conditions and participate in the great “thousand-year clean-up”, we explore hybridized insight, the ramifications of clinging to dichotomous identities, and how genuine diversity is tangible preparedness and emotional resilience in motion. With this in mind, it becomes our task to figure out how we can sustain genuine diversity in our lives so we may work alongside folks with different capacities, worldviews, solutions, and thought processes in devotion to dismantling a system that necessitates abuse. Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who belongs to the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne.
Music by 40 Million Feet, Marty O’Reilly & the Old Soul Orchestra, and Violet Bell.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
On this week’s episode, we observe the impacts of common narratives of escape and place and how those narratives underscore exploitative tourism. Bani Amor guides us through an exploration of how travel can be viewed as an extension of the colonial project and how travel media is largely a product of the patriarchal gaze. We’re invited to critically examine how places and experiences are marketed and sold particularly for white consumption, and how we can resist, while thinking deeply about the disparate dynamics between the “visitor” and “the visited.” Bani discusses the fetishization of land and lifeways and how exploitative tourism facilitates ongoing cycles of domination creating unstable economies, and rendering local communities vulnerable to abuse. Urging us to ask questions that aren’t really encouraged in the travel space, Bani asks us to ask ourselves: how can we have a connection to place that isn’t based on escapism and dominion?
Music by Juan Torregoza, Peals, and Fabian Almazan Trio.
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This week’s encore episode, originally broadcast in October of 2017, invites insight into renewed relational understanding of home, sacred rage, and protecting the breathing spaces of public lands. Terry Tempest Williams guides us to explore acts of the imagination as we shift into consciousness and expand our sense of family to both human and wild. As so many of us grapple with the omnipresent question of “what do we do?”, Terry provides us with salve through stories of the beauty and power of our gifts, and the living histories of the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. Terry Tempest Williams has been called "a citizen writer," a writer who speaks and speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, she has consistently shown us how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. Terry Tempest Williams is the author of the environmental literature classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field; Desert Quartet; Leap; Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert; and The Open Space of Democracy. Her most recent book is The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks
Music by Buffalo Rose, Kendra Swanson, and Aviva le Fey.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Will we “undo” or “solve” climate change? Could we still create a livable world if the answer to the previous question is no? Could we create an even more just world than the one we’ve been living in so far? This week we step away from thinking about climate change at the planetary scale and reflect on how we can respond at the community level with guest Gopal Dayaneni. Gopal reminds us to think about the climate crisis as a message in which we are being asked to respond by tending to our all of relationships, not just reducing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. In this exploration of crisis, solutions, distribution of suffering, and relations - we learn about the power of changing our relationship to a problem. Gopal has been involved in fighting for social, economic, environmental, and racial justice through organizing & campaigning, teaching, writing, speaking, and direct action since the late 1980s. Gopal is a co-founder of Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project. Currently, Gopal supports movement building through his work with organizations including The Climate Justice Alliance, ETCgroup, and the Center for Story-based Strategy. Gopal works at the intersection of ecology, economy, and empire. He lives in an intentional community of 9 adults and a squabble of kids.
Music by Skeppet, Shingai, and Yesol.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Mainstream media has gradually begun to recognize the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People (MMIWG2S) epidemic across North America, but only after constant attention and pressure from Indigenous communities, advocates, and organization - still, much needs to be addressed as there continues to be serious misrepresentation. In this week’s episode, we speak to advocate and athlete, Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Daniel about the tremendous ripple effects of missing relatives, where the media continues to get it wrong, and the crippling economic tolls incurred by families as they are punished during periods of urgency and loss. As a marathon runner, we also speak with Jordan about the act of running and how it can meaningfully move energy in solidarity with the MMIWG2S movement. Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Daniel is a citizen of Kul Wicasa Oyate (Lower Brule Sioux Tribe) as well as a passionate and devoted advocate nationally known for her grassroots organization for anti-pipelines/climate justice efforts, change the name/not your mascot, MMIWG2S and MMIP, and native youth initiatives. Jordan is the founder and organizer of Rising Hearts, an Indigenous-led grassroots group.
Music by Lake Mary, Santiago Cordoba, Emily Ritz, and Arthur Moon.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Many of us have access to more choices than we ever thought imaginable, in fact, it is quite easy to find ourselves amidst an abundance of products, eating foods cultivated across the world, or selecting from a myriad of variations of the same “thing”. But this “abundance” of choice masks ecological depletion, and as we gain access to that which is far from our homes, actual place-based abundance is often jeopardized. This week on the podcast we explore this in context to herring in Southeast Alaska with guest K’asheechtlaa (Louise Brady). Everything from chinook, seals, whales, eagles, halibut, and dolphins, all depend on herring directly or indirectly. In addition to nourishing so much of the Pacific marine ecosystem, these kin are embedded in the culture and spirit of Sheetʼká (Sitka). But as herring have been utilized in pet food, fertilizer, fish meal for aquariums and salmon farms, and marketed as a delicacy abroad - fisheries have been mismanaged by the state of Alaska and overfished to near extinction. K’asheechtlaa is a woman of the Tlingit nation in Sheetʼká Ḵwáan, an island off the coast of Southeast Alaska. She is Raven-Frog or Kiks.ádi Clan, Kiks.ádi women are known as the herring ladies, they have a story or original instruction that connects them spiritually, culturally, and historically to herring. K’asheechtlaa is the founder of the Herring Protectors, a grassroots movement of people that share concerns that the herring population in Sheetʼká Ḵwáan, and the culture tied to it, are under threat.
Music by Lake Mary, The Ascent of Everest, Alexandra Blakely, and Fountainsun.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
When asked about implementing 5G in 2019, Brussels’ Environment Minister, Celine Fremault was quoted saying “the people of Brussels are not guinea pigs whose health I can sell at a profit. We cannot leave anything to doubt.” Comparatively here in the United States, we are bombarded with advertisements that boast about the speed, accessibility, and necessity of 5G. Of course, unlike other countries, the United States has also embraced the digitization of our life beyond recognition. There are more cell phones in the United States than there are people, so it comes as no surprise that 5G would be an easier sell to our public. Alongside guest Devra L. Davis, we take a deeper look at why the telecom industry is manufacturing demand for 5G, as well as the overwhelming amount of research on global 5G wireless networks and how they threaten various species and ecosystems. Dr. Davis is an internationally acclaimed award-winning scientist and author of more than 220 scientific publications and 3 popular books. She was the U.S. Senate confirmed Presidential appointee to the National Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board and served as an advisor to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the World Health Organization. She is currently the President of the Environmental Health Trust.
Music by Jeremy Harris, Shay Roselip, and Tan Cologne.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Humans have often turned to the night sky for both practical matters, like direction and orientation, as well as philosophical matters, like making sense of our place in the world and communicating with the ethereal. Despite this ancestral connection, many of us either know very little about the space above us and the galaxies around us, or we don’t even have the privilege of being able to develop this connection. Did you know 85% of matter in the universe is considered intangible “dark” matter? Have you ever wondered why it’s even called dark matter? Did you know some nation-states are still considering what it would take to mine the moon? Or that we are radically altering what the night sky looks like through the increasing presence of satellites? In this week’s episode, we explore these curiosities with Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an assistant professor of physics and core faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. Dr. Prescod-Weinstein’s book The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred will be published in the US and Canada in March 2021.
Music by Harrison Foster, Amaara, and Jahnavi Veronica.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Intuitively, we know that we cannot remain limber, give freely, or work through the muck when our emotional, physical, and spiritual reserves are depleted - yet late-stage capitalism continues to force many of us to continue running on empty. Instead of allowing each other to burn out, what if we devoted ourselves to relearning where resilience inherently lives in our bodies? This week’s guest Nkem Ndefo explores resilience in conjunction with co-liberation and how our bodies are deep wells that are here to sustain us, as long as we listen to them. This work is not just for our wellbeing but is an important step in allowing us to engage in flexible visioning, grow our capacity for discomfort, and adequately prepare for transformation. Nkem is the founder and president of Lumos Transforms and creator of The Resilience Toolkit, a model that promotes embodied self-awareness and self-regulation in an ecologically sensitive framework and social justice context. Nkem is particularly interested in working alongside people most impacted by violence and marginalization.
Music by Harrison Foster, Marian McLaughlin, Ariana Saraha, and Emily Ritz.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
In 2018 former Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy, what we didn’t know was that beginning in 2017 the Trump administration ran a secret pilot program that began rapidly separating children from their families in El Paso, Texas. After running this pilot program, Customs and Border Protection unequivocally told the administration that the program was a failure because they were unable to track parents and children after separation. In the face of these conclusions, the administration went forward with their policy which ultimately separated over 2,500 children, many of whom will most likely never be reunited with their parents. In this week’s episode, we speak with artist, immigration lawyer, and activist Carolina Rubio MacWright on the ongoing travesty of family separations, the inherent trauma of U.S. detention centers, and how we can begin revamping our laws, values, policies, and systems when it comes to migration.
Carolina Rubio MacWright is an artist, immigration lawyer, and activist fighting for immigrant and humanitarian rights. She believes ART is the most powerful way of bringing humans together and dissolving walls and cages that separate us. She has thus mixed her law and art into a non-profit called Touching Land that uses hands-on experiential arts to empower, build bridges and decolonize food.
Music by Madelyn Ilana and Samuela Akert.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
We are often reminded of the tremendous amount of loss that transpires every day on this Earth; loss of language, biodiversity, and ancestral knowledge. In response, it’s understandable that many of us may be hyper-fixated on preserving whatever we can and fighting to stave off the mass changes that have been set in motion. But what if we challenged ourselves instead to recognize the autonomy of living knowledge, land as its own entity, and the inevitability of constant change? In this week’s episode, guest Enrique Salmón uses the lens of kincentric ecology to challenge our propensity for memory banking, our difficulty grappling with a changing Earth, and our inadvertent oversimplifications of complex living relationships. Enrique Salmón is a Rarámuri. He is head of the American Indian Studies Program at Cal State University–East Bay. He holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Arizona State University and has published many articles on Indigenous ethnobotany, agriculture, nutrition, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge. He is the author of Eating the Landscape: American Indian Stories of Food, Identity and Resilience and Iwígara.
Music by Justin Crawmer, Katie Gray, and Sara Serpa.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
“We forget that so much is given freely, that this world is meant to be enjoyed.”
This week, we head this powerful reminder by guest Ella Noah Bancroft. As our belief systems have become entwined with the dominant economic structure, we see the commodification of our wellness, intimacy, and connectivity - a phenomenon that is severely hindering our ability to connect authentically. In conversation, Ella traces the powerful connection between our ability to go against mainstream capitalist ways of being and our capacity for deep connection with ourselves and each other. With intimacy as an entrance point, our conversation explores what happens when we derive our pleasure from extraction, the kind of deep embodiment and connectivity that threatens capitalistic and colonial structures, and how we can journey back into spaces of trust through practices that don’t have to cost us a thing. Ella Noah Bancroft is a Bundjalung woman based in the Northern New South Wales, Australia. Ella identifies as mixed heritage Indigenous, gay woman. She grew up living in both worlds, her Indigenous world and the mainstream Australian world. Both challenged her identity in different ways. She is an Australian born artist, storyteller, mentor and founder of “The Returning” and Yhi Collective.
Music by Harrison Foster, Lady Moon & The Eclipse, and Sucúlima.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
How can queerness guide us as we move through this liminal time period? How can queer ecology radically change our way of knowing? This week’s episode, initially aired in December of 2018, acknowledges that in order to expand ourselves to our fullest capacity, we must bend beyond the cultural and gender binaries that dominant society projects amongst us, to begin this process we need not look further than what has always been. Guided by culturally informed queer ancestral futurist dreams, Pinar and So Sinopoulos-Lloyd of Queer Nature explore how queering our awareness can dismantle the supremacist, ecocidal, and genocidal story we have found ourselves in. Queer Nature is an education and social sculpture project based on Arapaho, Ute, and Cheyenne territories that actively dreams into decolonially-informed queer ‘ancestral futurism’ through mentorship in place-based skills with awareness of post-industrial/globalized/ecocidal contexts. Co-envisioned by Pinar and So Sinopoulos-Lloyd, Queer Nature designs and facilitates nature-based workshops and multi-day immersions intended to be financially, emotionally, and physically accessible to LGBTQ2+ people and QTBIPOCs.
Music by Y La Bamba and Elisapie.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Our attention has operated as currency for the past couple of decades, but with the invasiveness of social media and technology, our ability to exit and enter the attention economy has been severely hindered. As we feel pressure to post and comment on everything for an unknown audience, do we inherently limit our capacity for complexity and vulnerability? And what are the extended ramifications of becoming illiterate in complexity? How does this ripple out into all of our relationships? In lieu of the demanding world buzzing inside our devices, guest Jenny Odell shares the brilliance of doing “nothing”, tending to the ecological self, and growing deeper forms of attention through a commitment to bioregionalism. Jenny Odell is a writer, artist, and enthusiastic birdwatcher based in Oakland, California. She is the author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Odell teaches digital art at Stanford University.
Music by Harrison Foster, Bosques Fragmentados, Samara Jade, and Kritzkom.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
As so-called powerful “industrial civilizations” continue to decline into dysfunction, unable to care for the vast majority, the call to localize, reinvest in household economies, and strengthen our capacity for self-reliance is becoming emphatic. Amongst failing institutions and the remnants of exploitative wealth, this week’s guest, David Holmgren, encourages us to lean into crisis as a temporary portal that allows us to focus on the potential of all that lies around us. In conversation David explores creative reuse, salvage economies, ethical relationships, permaculture, and the intricacies of mass movements that are trying to override a system that is deeply committed to a machination of consumerism and debt. David Holmgren is the co-originator of the permaculture concept following publication of 'Permaculture One', co-authored with Bill Mollison in 1978. His most recent book, 'RetroSuburbia: The Downshifter’s Guide to a Resilient Future' shows how people can downshift and retrofit their homes, gardens, communities and above all, themselves to be more self-organised, sustainable and resilient into an uncertain future.
Music by Roma Ransom and Jody Segar.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Emboldened by the rapid development of technology, a cultural ethos of rugged individualism, globalization, and the monopolization of our media, the era of efficiency in the so-called Global North has significantly altered our communal symbiosis. For many, acts of service that would have once been fulfilled by neighbors and community have now been replaced by apps and gig workers, ultimately commodifying most of our social relations in one form or another. This week on the podcast, we are joined by guest Vijay Prashad to explore how societies take care of themselves, what true public action looks like in crisis, and how movements across the world have resisted the privatization of life and the devaluation of care that we have become accustomed to. Vijay Prashad is the Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Chief Editor at LeftWord Books and Chief Correspondent for Globetrotter. His most recent book is Washington Bullets, just out from Monthly Review Press with a preface by Evo Morales Ayma.
Music by Nathan Keck, Lizabett Russo, Sidi Touré, and Jonathan Yonts.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
In the United States, land ownership is dishonorable no matter how you frame it. For example, 60% of land in the U.S. is owned privately and 30% is owned by the federal government, comparatively tribal nations own about 2.5% of their land. Meanwhile, the Gates family recently became the largest owners of American farmland, owning a total of 260,000 acres of land across 19 states, with 242,000 acres being characterized as “farmland.” In today’s episode, we are joined by guest Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy to explore what land ownership means across the United States, how to begin seeding the concept of land return in mainstream consciousness, and the grave injustices we perpetuate when we continue to draw upon Traditional Ecological Knowledge for climate mitigation and adaptation without working towards land rematration simultaneously. Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy is an Associate Professor and Department Chair of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University. Her research focuses on California Indians, Indigenous feminisms, social & environmental justice, and decolonization. Dr. Risling Baldy is Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk and an enrolled member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe in Northern California. In 2007, she co-founded the Native Women's Collective, a nonprofit organization that supports the continued revitalization of Native American arts and culture.
Music by Aisha Badru, Holy River, and Theresa Andersson.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Currently, less than 15% of terrestrial land exists in some form of protected area, the percentage of marine protected areas is significantly lower. It’s undeniable that protecting some of the last vestiges of wild places from industrial decimation is a critical and worthy cause. However, large-scale land conservation projects have also historically displaced many populations and distressed communities that have relied upon pasture and forest for their livelihoods because of previous colonial impositions. In this episode, we explore the complex world of large-scale land conservation and wildlife restoration through the work of Tompkins Conservation with guest Tom Butler. A writer and conservation activist, Tom Butler is author, volume editor, or co-editor of more than a dozen books including Wildlands Philanthropy, Plundering Appalachia, and Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot, and ENERGY: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth.
Music by Jeffrey Silverstein and Galen Hefferman.
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Cumberland Island is one of Georgia’s most biologically diverse barrier islands, with its maritime forests, coastal beaches, and salt marshes providing a habitat for many endangered kin, in addition to being a resting point along the transatlantic migratory flyway. This wild place has been fervently loved and protected over the past couple of decades by biologist, naturalist, environmental activist, and full-time resident of the island, Carol Ruckdeschel. This week on the program we speak to Carol about the importance of places like Cumberland Island, some of the most pressing threats Cumberland currently faces, and the dangerous precedent that will be set if we continue to allow private-interest to chip away and fragment the very little bit of wilderness that is currently protected.
Music by Eliza Edens, Kesia Nagata, Lauren Alegre, and I Goodfriend.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
After the 15th century, only five countries in the world had not been colonized by European empires in some form or another. Today we see how the policies, strategies, and technologies intended to “address” climate change will ultimately echo colonial pursuits under the guise of sustainable development and carbon offsets. This week, we explore climate colonialism, reparations, carbon removal, and a real “just transition” with guest Olufemi O. Taiwo. Our conversation doesn’t provide easy answers or solutions but rather reminds us that while climate colonialism is unfurling before us, there is a myriad of tangible ways countries and movements across the so-called global North could begin making reparations. Olufemi O. Taiwo is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He studies and teaches social and political philosophy, with an emphasis on the Black radical tradition and anti-colonial thought. Music by 40 Million Feet, Ulali, and Rajna Swaminathan.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Called "the queen of canopy research," Nalini Nadkarni explores the rich, vital world found in the tops of trees. Dr. Nadkarni has spent two decades climbing the trees of Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea, the Amazon and the Pacific Northwest, exploring the world of animals and plants that live in the canopy and never come down; and how this upper layer of the forest interacts with the world on the ground. In this episode of For The Wild, initially aired in December of 2017, we journey into the canopies with Nalini to learn about the spectacular biota of the canopy.
Music by Emma Tricca, Bert Jansch, and Michael Ching.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
This week on the podcast we explore what land redistribution could look like and how land can be emancipated from the commodity structure with guest Severine von Tscharner Fleming. How do we navigate the settler desire to own land? How can our understanding of the commons invite us into collective commitment to caring for the land and staving of speculative land privatization? In response to these questions, Severine shares the messiness and opportunity of living amongst the prosperity of extraction in the spaces we inhabit while dedicating ourselves to a land-based livelihood that awakens the call to live inside of accountability to people and place. Severine is a farmer, activist, and organizer based in Downeast Maine. She runs Smithereen Farm, a MOFGA certified organic wild blueberry, seaweed, and orchard operation which hosts summer camps, camping, and educational workshops. She is a founder and board member of Agrarian Trust and current director of the Greenhorns, a 13 year old grassroots organization whose mission is to recruit, promote, and support the incoming generation of farmers in America.
Music by Handmade Moments.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Globally, our forests support almost two-thirds of Earth’s terrestrial species, they are cooperative and resilient systems where connections and relationships are inseparable. However, this interdependence also creates serious vulnerabilities when forests are subjected to land and habitat degradation, industrialized forestry practices, short-sighted restoration projects, and a changing climate. In this episode, we talk about disturbances to forest ecosystems, the role of mycorrhizal networks, and the unbelievable importance of peatlands with guest Camille Defrenne. Camille spent four years during her Ph.D. studying Douglas-fir trees alongside Dr. Suzanne Simard. Camille found Douglas-fir trees rely as much on their roots and fungi as they do on their needles to adapt to the climate. Since then, Camille crossed the border and invaded the peatlands of Minnesota, a type of wetlands which are the world’s largest natural terrestrial carbon store. Supported by Dr. Colleen Iversen, she is now a postdoctoral research associate spying on roots and their fungal friends in one of the world’s largest peatland warming experiments.
Music by Harrison Foster, If By Whiskey, and Ali Dineen.
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This past year has forced many of us to transfer our practices into the digital realm, and while this has been done for the safety of our communities, billionaires and tech giants have no desire to see us sever ourselves from the perceived convenience technology provides us. So we must ask ourselves, to what extent does our quality of life become reduced when we relinquish our sovereignty for the sake of convenience? How does our reliance on technology diminish our collective skillset? Our relationship with Earth? Our ways of thinking? In this week’s episode, Dr. Vandana Shiva joins us to discuss how we are being set up to become accessories to the digital world and how we can reclaim our intellectual freedom and sovereignty from the hands of digital dictatorship. Vandana provides us with compelling examples of Monsanto’s targeted erasure of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and simultaneous acquisition of the world’s largest data corporations, and the correlation between philanthrocapitalism and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Dr. Vandana Shiva is a leader in the International Forum on Globalisation and of the Slow Food Movement, the current Director of Navdanya and of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology. Her latest book is Oneness vs the 1%: Shattering Illusions, Seeding Future.
Music by John Newton, Lady Moon and The Eclipse, and Dzidzor.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
Migration has always existed, but in terms of human migration and climate change, we are poised to experience one of the greatest occurrences of global migration humanity has ever known. The number of migrants is now growing faster than our world’s population, and with this growth, we’ve seen the tremendous human rights violations and acts of depravity enforced by agents of the State across all global borderlands. This has caused many to call for serious inquiry and reform when it comes to national border guard agencies, but doing so fails to recognize that the border itself is inherently violent. In this episode of For The Wild, we talk with guest Harsha Walia on why it is imperative to rid the concept of legal/illegal personhood in movements for the climate and environment. Harsha Walia a South Asian activist, writer, and popular educator rooted in migrant justice and Indigenous solidarity. She is the award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism and is currently the Executive Director of British Columbia’s Civil Liberties Association.
Music by John Newton, Troll Dolly, and Harrison Basch.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
In the mid-2000s, estimates in the United States suggested that we were losing up to 40% of honeybee colonies. The phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder was widely covered in the media as the next emerging threat, but then it all but disappeared. Beyond these headlines, we never heard much follow up as to how bee populations were faring. This week we return to the bees with entomologist Dr. Samuel Ramsey. Highlighting the intertwining issues of poor nutrition, pesticides, and parasites, Dr. Ramsey also shares how climate change impacts the nutritional quality of pollen and how human design and development has strengthened and spread parasitic mites to the disadvantage of bees globally. Samuel Ramsey earned his doctorate from Dr. Dennis vanEngelsdorp’s lab at the University of Maryland; Dr. Ramsey maintains a focus on how insect research can benefit the public through the development of IPM strategies and STEM-based outreach initiatives.
Music featured in this episode is “Beanstalk” by Jeff Parker, “Natural Harmony” by The Mysterious They, and “Saka” by Gabriella di Capua.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
In this powerful conversation with land defender Sii-am Hamilton, we are invited to discuss futuristic ways forward in recognition that Indigenous communities have been practicing creative resistance against colonialism and capitalism for hundreds of years. We begin by discussing what is currently transpiring on Wet’suwet’en territories and how colonial governments are using the current pandemic (and will use future crises) to roll back regulatory measures and push development full force. Sii-am offers a holistic reflection on frontline land defense and the extent to which violence is afflicted upon land defenders, and resource extraction participants, by transnational corporations, while also reorienting us to the reality that just, dignified, and brilliant futures already exist but are not given attention, curiosity, or love because they do not serve corporate profit. Sii-am Hamilton is a land defender and traditional knowledge holder born in occupied Hupacasath territory to mother Kwitsel Tatel and father Ron Hamilton. Their experience stems from time on the land, feast culture, and living traditional law and protocol. They are a qualified hand poke tattoo artist as well as a song holder. Sii-am has been raised in political organization, land title, and grassroots activism since childhood, and now specializes in publicity/media promotion of environmental and land sovereignty movements. Music by Elisapie. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
Prior to settler development and extraction, the landscapes and lifeways of Ohlone territory were richly abundant with acorns, grass seeds, wildflowers, elk, salmon, grizzly bears, and berries. In this week’s episode of For The Wild, guest Corrina Gould reminds us that Ohlone territory still holds tremendous abundance and that the land can sustain us in a way that would provide for our wellbeing should we choose to really re-examine what it is we need to survive. But more than a conversation on the wealth of the land, we explore responsibility and reciprocity on stolen homelands by asking what it means to be in right relationship ? How can we foster integrity in conservation and land restoration work amidst a world that continues to peddle scarcity, greed, and extraction? How can folks contribute to the re-storying of the land, even if through small acts?
Corrina Gould is the spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan/Ohlone. She is an activist that has worked on preserving and protecting the ancient burial sites of her ancestors in the Bay Area for decades. She is the Co-founder and a Lead Organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change and co-founder of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.
♫ Music by Shayna Gladstone and Amo Amo
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In this quintessential For The Wild episode, initially released in January of 2015, Ayana speaks to eco-philosopher, author, teacher, and scholar, Joanna Macy. As we find ourselves alive in this time of great turning, where feelings of grief, despair, and gloom are omnipresent - we seek counsel from Joanna on finding emotional courage, building allyship, and practicing gratitude for all which moves us. Joanna begins by reminding us that “the whole late capitalism project would have us distrust our feelings and privatize them”, instead of succumbing to denial, complacency, or isolation we can emerge from it, and move through it, to participate in radical transformation and collaborative action. Joanna Macy Ph.D., author and teacher, is a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking, and Deep Ecology. A respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with learnings from six decades of activism. Music by Roberta Flack, Pharoah Sanders, and Roy Harper. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
In past US general elections, about 60% of the eligible population voted, and while this may be the year that changes, it’s been shown that democracy is suffering globally - with total declines not just in participatory voting, but in political rights and civil liberties. This leaves us wondering, do we truly yearn for democracy? Are elections our only avenue for democratic participation? This week we are joined by the indomitable Astra Taylor who reminds us that “elections matter, but they are not synonymous with democracy”. As we find ourselves in the thick of an overloaded election year; we’ve all been thinking about what voting does and doesn’t accomplish, or whether or not it inadvertently upholds the system driving our demise. Is voting simply harm reduction at best? How can we engage in democratic processes beyond the ballot box?
Astra Taylor is a filmmaker, writer, and political organizer. She is the director of three acclaimed philosophical documentaries: What Is Democracy?, Examined Life, and Zizek!, all of which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Taylor is the author of the American Book Award winner The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, her latest book -- Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone -- is just out in paperback and audiobook. Named a “New Civil Rights Leader” by the LA Times, she co-founded the Debt Collective, a groundbreaking membership organization that has won over a billion dollars of debt relief for poor and working people.
Music by Tan Cologne and Leyla McCalla.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for full the episode description, references, and action points.
It’s been almost a year since the 2019 wildfires that hurled across Australia began. We vividly recall harrowing images of burnt orange skies, vast swaths of scorched forest, and our beloved kin searching for shelter amidst one of the most intense wildfires. It’s estimated that nearly 30 million acres caught fire, over 20% of Australia’s forests were burnt, and around one billion animals perished. In this episode, we revisit this event with Vanessa Cavanagh, Deb Swan, and Rachael Cavanagh while also digging deeper to explore the historical land mismanagement that intensified these bushfires and the power and importance of cultural burning.
Vanessa Cavanagh is an Aboriginal woman with Bundjalung and Wonnarua ancestry. Vanessa is a Ph.D. candidate and Associate Lecturer at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Deborah Kim Swan is a Ngarrindjeri mimini, with kinship affiliation to Darkinjung and Awaba Country. Deborah currently works for Transport New South Wales as a Culture & Heritage Officer. Rachael Cavanagh is a Minjungbal woman from the Bundjalung/Yugambeh Nations of South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales. Rachael currently works as an Aboriginal Partnerships Liaison for Forestry Corporation of New South Wales and is the Principle Cultural Heritage Advisor for Currie Country Foundation.
♫ Music by Santiago Cordoba and Kaivalya Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
In this episode of For The Wild, we are offered a palpable reminder that we cannot become accustomed to life in the Anthropocene - to do so is to fall peril to the traps of apocalyptic thinking. Instead, this week’s guest, Dr. Natasha Myers cultivates a body of thought and practice that prioritizes and fosters the intertwined relationship between plants and people, aptly referred to as the Planthroposcene. Natasha leads us to a world where magic happens through our active collaboration with plant kin. How can these connective practices provide diverse ways of knowing through a boundary-breaking experience? How might this embodiment cosmically and intuitively push us towards deeper connection and radical imagination? Natasha Myers is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at York University, director of the Plant Studies Collaboratory, convener of the Politics of Evidence Working Group, co-founder of Toronto’s Technoscience Salon, and accomplice to Toronto’s Indigenous Land Stewardship Circle. Music by Sunshine Shadow and Eliza Edens. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points
This year, the government of Japan announced plans to dump contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the ocean. Till this day, cleanup of the 2011 Fukushima disaster continues and it is estimated that by 2022 the Fukushima site will be at capacity for storing contaminated water. As outrageous as this news is, even more so is how little coverage it received, or outcry it warranted. This week’s episode is dedicated to changing that. We talk to Dr. Helen Caldicott, who draws our attention to the realities of nuclear power reactors, proliferation and weapons, as well as the ways in which nuclearism has already wrought an unimaginable amount of havoc and trauma on our environment, culture and bodies.
♫ Music by Rupa and the April Fishes and Cat Clyde
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
After bearing witness to the collision of two Standard Oil of California tankers in the San Francisco Bay, Dr. John Francis stopped using motorized vehicles, a commitment that lasted 22 years. Soon after he made this promise, he decided to take a vow of silence, which lasted for 17 years. In this episode of For The Wild, Dr. Francis shares how his journey came to be and the profound impact that silence and slowing down can have on us. In a world polluted by noise, how can we experiment with silence? What other forms of communication and Earthly rhythms arise when we do so? Dr. John Francis is a National Geographic Explorer, environmental educator, and a former United Nations Environment Program goodwill ambassador. Music by Rajna Swaminathan, Cooper-Moore, and Carter Lou McElroy. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
The waters surrounding Thailand are among the most barren, overfished regions on the planet. With plundered marine stocks, vessels have begun to stay at sea longer and travel further from Thai shores, often fishing illegally in other territories. Facing a labor shortage, operators have turned to human trafficking networks and forced, bonded, and slave labour to crew their ships. Once at sea, fishermen can often go months, or even years, without setting foot on land. On this week’s episode, Shannon Service joins us to discuss her film Ghost Fleet, which documents the cycle of abuse within the Thai fishing trade and the larger systemic issues that drive such exploitation. An investigative reporter and producer, Shannon has done work for the BBC, PBS, National Public Radio, The Guardian of London, Slate and Newsweek among others. Music by 40 Million Feet. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
Up until this year, the global fashion industry was responsible for producing 150 billion items of clothing each year - items composed of carcinogenic and mutagenic dyes, items responsible for 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions, and items that require the outsourcing of atrocious working conditions and environmental degradation beyond our purview. However, fast fashion does not have to be our predestined future. This week’s guest, Rebecca Burgess, shares how regional and regenerative slow fashion is possible. In lieu of the behemoth that is fast fashion, how might regional textile communities strengthen our agricultural systems? How can our clothing become a mirror and homage to the places we love, the kin that can cloth us and the flora that colors our world? Music by Gun Outfit & Crispy Watkins & The Crack Willows. Visit our website ate forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
This week we’ll be hearing from Stephen Jenkinson whose wisdom on the cycle of life and elderhood offers so much that makes the ancient in us sit up and listen. This episode was first aired in January of 2018. We are living through a time when there are more people, more creatures, more plants, more cultures, dying than ever before. Where we are forced to recognize that growth untethered to consequence is like cancer. The debts of generations past have accrued to us, but not the wisdom. Our inheritance of obligation, of reciprocity, has been broken and we are left with what is dying, but without any understanding of how to be with it. We are deeply addicted to the thing that got us here: a stratagem for relief. And what is it really that brought us to hunger, at almost any cost, for such relief? One of Stephen’s answers is the loss of elderhood. Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW, is a teacher, author, storyteller, spiritual activist, farmer and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School, a teaching house and learning house for the skills of deep living and making human culture. Music by Jess Williamson. Visit our website forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
The bowhead whale can live up to 200 years old, meaning that the bowhead whales of today know and remember a world that sounded, tasted, and felt very different than the one we live in. Perhaps their living memory has yet to normalize marine pollution, anthropogenic sounds, and the underwater effects of globalization and heavy industrialization. In this episode of For The Wild with Dr. Kate Stafford, we listen to the many songs the ocean body sings, asking; how does a warming climate alter the Arctic’s soundscape? Why are the waters of the Arctic becoming louder, and what does this mean for kin like the bowhead? Dr. Kate Stafford’s research focuses on using passive acoustic monitoring to examine migratory movements, geographic variation, and physical drivers of marine mammals, particularly large whales. Kate’s current research focuses on the changing acoustic environment of the Arctic and how changes, from sea ice declines to increasing industrial human use, may be influencing subarctic and Arctic marine mammals.
Music by Eliza Edens.
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Foraged and wild foods tell many “quiet and hidden” stories; they can tell us about the web of relations in which we find them, the history of ancestors who tended to them, and the state of our own cravings and desires. In this week’s episode of For The Wild, we are joined by Gina Rae La Cerva, who begins by prompting us to think about the ways in which wild foods are a common heritage that connects us to time and place. Gina reminds us that eating is an act of survival, love, and connectivity. But wild and foraged foods of today are also changing dramatically as they’ve become fetishized and commodified. The nuance and complexity of “wild foods” leave us to wonder, how does the wilderness become a luxury? What does a homogenized diet do to us? And how can we rekindle a wild relationship with food amidst the Anthropocene? Gina Rae La Cerva is an award-winning writer, geographer, and environmental anthropologist originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico. She holds degrees from Yale University, The University of Cambridge, and Vassar College. An avid adventurer, La Cerva has researched tsunamis in Indonesia, crossed the Pacific Ocean on a sailboat, and traced the wild meat trade from the forests of the Congo Basin to the streets of Paris. Her first book is Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food. Music by Eliza Edens and Jessica Moore. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week, the U.S. Department of the Interior formally opened up Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, an unprecedented decision that threatens Gwich’in lifeways and sacred lands, while exacerbating both climate and extinction crises. In recognition of this, we are choosing to re-air our critically relevant conversation with Faith Gemmill and Princess Lucaj, originally aired in September of 2016. The fight to protect these life giving ground has been going on for decades and will continue to do so as the first leases to drill for oil and gas could be sold by the end of this year. As the decision to open up 1.57 million acres of the refuge’s coastal plain was only formalized this week, protectors of place are rallying to stop this move, and so we are asking you to remain vigilant for calls to action over the coming months.
Faith Gemmill is a Pit River/ Wintu and Neets’aii Gwich’in Athabascan earth defender from Arctic Village, Alaska. She is a part of REDOIL (Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands) and has worked on behalf of the Gwich’in Nation for over a decade as a representative, public spokesperson and Gwich’in Steering Committee staff to address the potential human health and cultural impacts of proposed oil development in the birthplace and nursery of the Porcupine Caribou Herd in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Princess Lucaj (Neets’aii Gwich’in) is a writer, actor, and activist based in Alaska. Princess Daazhraii Johnson/Princess Lucaj is Neets’aii Gwich’in and her family is from Arctic Village, Alaska. Johnson is the former Executive Director for the Gwich’in Steering Committee and is a founding member of the Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition. She also has experience working on climate adaptation for tribes through her on-going work with the Cold Climate Housing Research Center. Johnson received a B.A. in International Relations from The George Washington University and a Masters in Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage with a focus on Environmental and Science Education. She has been a member of the SAG-AFTRA Native American Committee since 2007 and also serves on the Board of Dancing with the Spirit, a program that promotes spiritual wellness through music. In 2015 Johnson was appointed by President Obama to serve on the Board of Trustees for the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is based in Alaska and is currently creative producing an animated series for the WGBH that will premiere on PBS in 2019. Music by Willie Dunn, Teahawk (ft. Redhawk Woman), Beau, and Kate Wolf. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
In 2014 Anayvette Martinez sought to radicalize girl scouting to create a brighter, more brilliant world. Inspired by her daughter, and with the help of co-founder, Marilyn Hollinquest, Anayvette curated a curriculum devoted to justice, empowerment, and fierce sisterhood for girl identified youth of color. On this episode of For The Wild, Anayvette shares the inspiration and impact of the Radical Monarchs, who exemplify the difference between service and justice, the importance of bringing youth into social justice movements at an early age and what we can learn about sustainability, self-care, and avoiding burn out culture by creating with young ones in mind. Anayvette Martinez, co-founder and CEO of Programs & Communications of the Radical Monarchs, is a San Francisco native and child of Central American immigrants. Over the past 15 years, she has developed and managed education, social justice, and gender support programs focused on the empowerment and safety for youth, families and their adult allies. Music by The Mynabirds & Andy Jenkins. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
Kenya’s diverse ecosystems include vast mangroves, estuaries, seagrass beds, coral reefs, and sandy beaches. Yet so often, we only ever think of Kenya as a picturesque representation of what “Africa” looks like in the Western imagination; open savannas, great migrations of territorial creatures, piercing golden sunsets...In this week’s episode, we are joined by Jahawi Bertolli who takes us underwater to learn about the endless worlds that exist beyond Kenya’s shoreline. These coastal ecosystems not only contribute to great biological diversity, but they are the birthing place of tremendous seafaring culture, coastal folklore, and social communities. As such, they too are navigating changing seascapes brought on by warming waters, overexploitation, and pollution. Jahawi shares with us how this part of the ocean is faring, the importance of community-based conservation, traditional ecological knowledge in East Africa, and how storytelling can be a conduit for rekindling intergenerational custodianship.
Jahawi Bertolli is a National Geographic Explorer, filmmaker, photographer, and music producer from Kenya specializing in wildlife and the underwater world. His current focus is on telling African wildlife stories from the perspectives of the local communities, highlighting African storytelling. Music by Jahawi Bertolli. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Across Turtle Island, seeds have long been passed down through the generations — accompanied by ceremony and prayer, reverent seed cultures, and sustainable food growing practices. Through eras of colonization and acculturation, however, we’ve seen the consolidation of seeds into a handful of corporations and the production of a soulless industrial food landscape. This system is failing us and, as centralized infrastructure strains and buckles, we turn to the embrace of our community and the nurturance of seeds at the local and village level. This episode is all about renewal and reanimation, as our guest Rowen White shares her thoughts on Indigenous food sovereignty, seed restoration as rematriation, and what it means to bring seed relatives home. Rowen White is a Seed Keeper and farmer from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne and the Educational Director and lead mentor of Sierra Seeds. Music by Madelyn Ilana. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
“Keep your nose on the joy trail, share what you can share when you can share it, don’t be afraid to take a bath and take a nap and don’t burn out!” In this heartening encore episode of For The Wild, initially recorded in November of 2015, we speak to all-around inspiration, legendary artist, educator and political activist, Buffy Sainte-Marie on cultivating creativity and global awareness. Music by Buffy Sainte-Marie. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
We are angry, angry when we are treated without dignity, when we witness or experience injustice, angry about politics, angry when we are unable to communicate, angry over wounds we haven’t been able to heal - anger is something we are all familiar with, yet amidst this familiarity, our relationship with anger is strained. This week on For The Wild, we are joined by Lama Rod Owens to explore anger’s purpose in liberation. Rather than denying our anger, or policing and demonizing the anger of another, how can we allow it to alert us to imbalance and injustice? How do we make space for anger as an illuminating and guiding force? And as we empower our feelings of rage, how do we recognize that anger is paradoxically both a privilege and a necessity under white supremacy? As we make space for our own rage, we are called to the work of denouncing the oppressor’s strategy of invalidating emotional expression, we are called to recognize and witness each other’s anger. Lama Rod Owens is an author, activist, and authorized Lama (Buddhist Teacher) in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism and is considered one of the leaders of his generation of Buddhist teachers. Music by Rupa and the April Fishes, Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Nathan Salsburg, and Bird By Snow. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
We are experiencing a precarious moment in time. On the one hand, it is emblematic of late-stage capitalism and on the other, it is providing us with piercing clarity, luring us into consciousness. This week’s guest, Anjali Nath Upadhyay, M.A.², reminds us that because this moment is so precarious, false starts are no longer an option and recognition is not enough. Instead, we must engage in deep unlearning. Instead of remaining reliant on an exploitative and traumatizing system, we are called to feel into our creative powers, honor our responsibilities and cultivate our deepest curiosities in the name of collective liberation. ♫ Music by Zena Carlota and Amaara
Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
Predatory lending and parasitic governance are propelling our society into a condition of extreme instability. In the wake of the initial economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, we are already seeing local governments authorize austerity measures, like increased policing and incarceration to fill revenue gaps. Coupled with the dramatically heightened police presence in our communities at this moment, we find ourselves standing at the precipice of an even more militarized, surveilled, and technocratic world. To resist the conjuring of this hostile future, we need to engage in some serious social visioning. This week, we are joined by Jackie Wang to discuss the function of the carceral state amidst late-stage capitalism and the pervasiveness of the debt economy. Jackie calls us to disrupt what we’ve normalized, break state-sanctioned cycles of harm, and reallocate our collective resources in the name of taking care of our communities. Jackie Wang is a black studies scholar, poet, multimedia artist, and Assistant Professor of Culture and Media at the New School’s Eugene Lang College. She received her PhD in African and African American Studies at Harvard University and was recently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is the author of Carceral Capitalism. Music by Jackie Wang. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Deeply Rooted is an offering devoted to inviting relief, balance and abundance into our lives during uncertain times. We've brought together some amazing folks who we feel are wise stewards of Earth, spirit, community and bodily wisdom who will share a variety of grounding practices and coping tools to lend support during this unprecedented time where it can be easy to feel overwhelmed.
This week, Leah Penniman guides us through an adaptation of a Haitian prayer from her maternal lineage that honors the forces of nature and our ancestors. Leah’s gracious offering invites us to open ourselves to the elements of the Earth that shape our lives. Together we practice reverence and gratitude for the gifts that surround us and give us our strength, health and nourishment.
After months of quarantine anxiety and separation from each other and from Earth, let Leah’s uplifting words reconnect you with the ever-present and unstoppable flow of life in which we dance. In celebration of the summer solstice, Leah’s prayer is one to raise your arms wide, to touch your bare feet to the Earth, to give thanks, and to rejoice in this life!
Follow our Deeply Rooted releases to find solace and awaken inspiration through guided meditations, poetry and prose readings, questions for deep inquiry, story-telling, musical performances and more. May these offerings nourish your inner sanctuary and foster resilience, empowerment and liberation.
In the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen tremendous movement to defund the police and move into communities and economies of care across the country. This is long, long, overdue, yet we notice some real resistance from those who are just beginning to get involved with this work when it comes to imagining a world without the police. However, at this point, can any of us look to the world and feel confident that the police care about us? This week we’re re-releasing our episode with Mariame Kaba on Moving Past Punishment. Mariame joins us for an expansive conversation on Transformative Justice, community accountability, criminalization of survivors, and freedom on the horizon. We invite you to take a listen to this episode this week as a resource to feel empowered to further conversations on abolition, the movement to defund the police, and the violent and oppressive history of policing against our Black, Indigenous, and brown relatives, as well as to hopefully find the organizations in your community that have been doing this work since the beginning. Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator and curator who is active in movements for racial, gender, and transformative justice. She is the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots organization with a vision to end youth incarceration. She has co-founded multiple organizations and projects over the years including We Charge Genocide, the Chicago Freedom School, the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women, Love and Protect and most recently Survived and Punished. Music by Wyclef Jean, Jason Marsalis and Irvin Mayfield. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
Over the years, our For The Wild community has been blessed many times by the scholarship and poetry of brontë velez. Through their word, we have been summoned to surrender, to imagine future worlds, and to embody the revolution. If you have had the pleasure of listening to brontë, For The Wild is asking you to give generously to them and Lead to Life, to support their divine, healing, and liberatory work. Through their work, brontë reminds us that “Black wellness is the antithesis to state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson) and during these times of great transformation and tension, we must prioritize Black wellness and communal care. Financial resources given to Lead to Life will fund their rapid response work; a summer healing series led by Black healers for the Black community, care packages for mothers whose children have been murdered by the police, ongoing trauma stewardship programs focused on nature connection and expressive art therapy for families who are survivors of police and state violence, and more. We are asking our listeners who have believed in brontë’s musings as a guiding light, to support Lead to Life’s work as an investment towards the world we so desperately need, as well as an act of reciprocity for those who have richly given to our imaginations and hearts. As inspiration for giving, we present brontë’s prophecy “The Well”, written by brontë velez. Initially aired on For The Wild Podcast Episode 139, “on the Pleasurable Surrender of White Supremacy [Part One]”, this prophecy was written by brontë velez and originally recited by brontë velez, jazmín calderón torres, and Liz Kennedy of Lead to Life and Ra Malika Imhotep, co-founder and co-convener of The Church of Black Feminist Thought, with musical accompaniment by Jiordi Rosales at Lead to Life’s public alchemy ceremony in 2019. Give in gratitude directly to brontë through their Venmo at bronte-velez or directly to Lead to Life by becoming a monthly member of their alchemist guild or through a one time donation and ensure that Lead to Life meets their $25,000 goal by Juneteenth “in support of Black life, Black joy, and Black healing.” Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full description and biographies.
With a historical analysis of slavery and plantation labor, this week’s episode prompts us, at this critical time, to consider what is stolen from those among us who cannot rest under white supremacy and capitalism. While this conversation took place in April of 2020, as we release this episode amidst the powerful uprising in the aftermath of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade, we want to make clear that for those of us who are white - this is not time to rest. Tricia Hersey is the founder of The Nap Ministry, an organization that examines rest as a form of resistance by curating safe spaces for the community to rest via Collective Napping Experiences, immersive workshops, and performance art installations. In this incredibly rich offering, we speak with Tricia on the myths of grind culture, rest as resistance, and reclaiming our imaginative power through sleep. Capitalism and white supremacy have tricked us into believing that our self-worth is tied to our productivity. Tricia shares with us the revolutionary power of rest. Music by Seba Kaapstad, Real J Wallace and Beautiful Chorus. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description references, and action points.
This week we are delighted to re-share our first episode with brontë velez on Embodying the Revolution, originally aired in 2018. brontë, a dear friend of For The Wild, poetically guides us through an expansive exploration of critical ecology, radical imagination, and decomposition as rebellion. brontë encourages us to examine our relationship to place and space, the unmaking of literacy, the decomposition of violence and the prioritization of Black wellness.
Many of us are feeling pulled in this time, towards grief, towards urgency...towards feelings of helplessness. This week we invite you to shatter these repetitions and take a moment of intentional slowness to ask:
How can I decompose violence in this life?
Are urgency and intentionality compatible?
What are the vessels that will carry us through these troubled times?
On this week’s episode of For The Wild, we are joined by Craig Santos Perez to discuss parenting and caring in the Anthropocene, the connection between tourism and militarism, Guåhan’s layered history and his most recent book of eco-poetry Habitat Threshold, which intimately explores ancestry, ecological collapse and the ongoing legacy of capitalism, imperialism and colonization. Craig Santos Perez is an Indigenous Chamorro poet, scholar, activist, and educator from the Pacific Islander of Guam. He is the author of five books of poetry and the co-editor of five literary anthologies. Music by Eliza Edens, Izé Goodfriend, Mary Beth Carolan. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
This week we’re reissuing this magical conversation with Starhawk, one of the most respected voices in modern Earth-based spirituality, that originally aired in 2017. A veteran of progressive movements, from anti-war to anti-nukes, Starhawk is deeply committed to applying the techniques and creative power of spirituality to political activism. She is the author or coauthor of twelve books, including The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, long considered the essential text for the Neo-Pagan movement, Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, a call to re-conceive our political and economic systems at the very deepest levels, and the now-classic ecotopian novel The Fifth Sacred Thing.
Starhawk’s call to bring together tools of spiritual empowerment with activism, asks us to critically examine systems of control and domination and our responses to them – including areas where we may be giving our power away unknowingly to so-called authority figures and/or systems and where sources of spiritual power may have been forcibly removed. During this global moment where governments are under pressure to uphold their end of the implicit social contract, it may behoove us to examine areas where fear may continue to dominate our thinking, and how we can reclaim our personal power during times of uncertainty by reclaiming a relationship to ritual, intuition, healing and nurturing power within.
Mountains rising and oceans swelling, Earth’s 4.5-billion-year story has been punctuated by the cyclical turning of processes, a dynamic, balancing act of breakdown and repair. This week on For The Wild, we dive into the folds of deep time with professor, author, and geologist Marcia Bjornerud, exploring the wealth of knowledge etched into the landscapes around us. How might we understand the unprecedented scale and pace of transformation we’re seeing today in the context of the geologic record? And what does our planetary story reveal about the adaptive capacity of life? Moving between theory and grounded practice, Ayana and Marcia discuss the notion of “timefulness” and healing our relationship with time, the marvel of mountain-building, the necessity of multigenerational spaces, mass extinction events of the geologic past, change as constant, and the brilliant complexity of Earth’s systems. Music by Rupa and The April Fishes and Te Martin. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
This week we are sharing our episode with The Wildfire Project on Transforming Toxic Movement Culture, originally aired in 2019. If we want to hold on to the visions of the future we are beginning to get a glimpse of now or create a world where we thrive, we are going to have to get involved with our communities and come together. However, this is often easier said than done when we’ve been preconditioned in a hyper-individualistic, self-serving society. We need voices that can guide us through these times of conflict and unease as we forge connection to create our vision.We must be willing to work through our preconditioning, conflict, disappointment and imperfections. As we listen to what Joshua Kahn, BJ Star, and Michael Storm share with us, we wonder:
How can anger serve us in times of transformation?
What is the value in challenging ourselves to be a part of what is not perfect?
How can exercising our power be a just necessity?
♫ Music by The Peace Poets and The Wildfire Project
On this episode of For The Wild, we speak to Lauren Regan to discuss grassroots activism, corporate corruption, and our right to dissent. Paying special attention to the longstanding connections between private companies, the oil and gas industry and an ever growing increase in corporate-friendly punitive legislation, we ask Lauren about what the current increase of grey intelligence means for environmental activism? What agenda might be furthered when private security companies who once oversaw pipeline construction begin intervening in disaster recovery? Lauren Regan, Executive Director, oversees the Civil Liberties Defense Center as its founder and senior staff attorney. Music by Jonathan Yonts, County Line Bandits, and Dimples. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
In today’s Homebound encore, which originally aired in January, 2016, Andrew Harvey gives us a map of mystical teachings to help us navigate the dark night of the soul and to emerge empowered. According to Harvey, the economic, political, spiritual world crisis that we currently find ourselves in, is a call to action. It is an opportunity for us to understand the realities around us and to rally together to do something different.
Harvey believes that we have before us the possibility of using crisis to empower ourselves, and each other. Embracing an uncertain future, he urges us to support leaders who are inspired, courageous and effective to rise up, to renew the energy of people who are burnt out and apathetic in institutions, and for us as individuals to rediscover an inner compass that renews and inspires creativity. He believes that when the deepest and most grounded spiritual vision is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing political, economic, and social institutions, that what Harvey calls a “holy force” – the power of wisdom and love in action – is born. This force is what underscores his concept of Sacred Activism. Andrew invites us to remember that we have seen throughout history, that in the very heart of chaos, an extraordinary lineage of ordinary people, who have fused deep spiritual knowledge, experience, and practice, with wise, incessant action for justice and peace, rise up. Emerging against all odds, to accomplish the unimaginable and that we can too. Especially if we’re willing to ask ourselves:
Where are we feeling small and helpless right now?
How can we creatively renew our spirits to ward off fear and/or apathy?
What is one thing we could do today to let our spirits lead us into positive action?
Music by Bad Snacks and Kate Wolf
On this weeks episode, we explore the importance of place and placemaking with guest Teju Adisa-Farrar. Teju begins this conversation by sharing how the exploration of human geographies encourages us to think about and reclaim our understanding of the environment, community and power. How have spaces been historically weaponized against us? How can we remake our shared places so that they are in alignment with our values? Teju is a Jamaican-American writer, poet and geographer. Her work centers on climate and environmental justice, adaptive responses, ecological resilience and cultural equity. Music by Jason Marsalis, Kermit Ruffins and Irvin Mayfield, Rebirth Brass Band. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
Deeply Rooted is a new offering devoted to inviting relief, balance and abundance into our lives during these uncertain times. We've brought together some amazing folks who we feel are wise stewards of Earth, spirit, community and bodily wisdom who will share a variety of grounding practices and coping tools to lend support during this unprecedented time where it can be easy to feel overwhelmed.
This week, Lyla June gifts us with a poem that rides with the rushing current of Creation and beckons us to wade into the ever-moving stream of life. Allow Lyla’s poem to wash over you, to uplift your capacity to find strength, forgiveness and connection in times of adversity. May Lyla’s testament to the ancient power of water and geologic time invite deep healing and love into your life.
Follow more of our Deeply Rooted releases to find solace and awaken inspiration through guided meditations, poetry and prose readings, questions for deep inquiry, story-telling, musical performances and more. May these offerings nourish your inner sanctuary and foster resilience, empowerment and liberation.
Theme music by Pura Fe & Lyla June
The poem “And God Is The Water” was written and performed by Lyla June.
Today we are re-listening to our conversation with Jacqui Patterson on Eco-Justice in the Age of the Anthropocene, originally aired in 2017. We’re bringing this episode back from the archives because over the past couple of weeks, we have seen far too many narratives of disposability when it comes to the communities who are already impacted the most when it comes to environmental, social, and economic injustice (rural, disabled, BIPOC, undocumented, incarcerated, LGBTQIA2S+, etc.). Jacqui reminds us that we must strategically address the needs of our communities; when we work to uplift those at the bottom - we all rise. In light of this conversation with Jacqui we are asking ourselves: Why is it that so many of us are so willing to sacrifice others? Where did we first learn disposability? How can people of all positionalities take back power in times of emergency? Music by Eliza Edens
In the last 150 years, we have turned fossil fuels into a disposable resource that now threatens our very existence on the planet. This week, we’re joined by journalist Antonia Juhasz to investigate how we got here and the new landscape of big oil in the U.S., now the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world. With a global market in free fall, a rising climate activism movement, and the uncertainty of elections on the horizon, this episode tackles a set of essential, timely questions: How has the fracking boom radically transformed communities, ecologies, and life in states across the country? Why are oil prices crashing and how does this reflect an industry in debt, teetering on the brink of collapse? Music by Marty O'Reilly and The Old Soul Orchestra. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
Deeply Rooted is a new offering devoted to inviting relief, balance and abundance into our lives during these uncertain times. We've brought together some amazing folks who we feel are wise stewards of Earth, spirit, community and bodily wisdom who will share a variety of grounding practices and coping tools to lend support during this unprecedented time where it can be easy to feel overwhelmed.
This week, Kailea Frederick invites us to open space in our busy everyday lives to harmonize our body and breath with the deep rhythms of Earth. Kailea offers a poetry reading woven with simple movements to reawaken our inseparable connection to all of Creation. This offering honors the hard-working mothers and caregivers who provide care so generously, and who are so deserving of moments to cultivate wellness.
Follow our Deeply Rooted releases, coming your way on Mondays, to find solace and awaken inspiration through guided meditations, poetry and prose readings, questions for deep inquiry, story-telling, musical performances and more. May these offerings nourish your inner sanctuary and foster resilience, empowerment and liberation.
Music by Pura Fe and Lea Thomas. The poem “Remember” was written by Joy Harjoy. Kailea Frederick created & read “A Meditation for Remembering Back into Ourselves.”
This week, we share our episode with Alnoor Ladha, originally aired in 2017. Alnoor’s work focuses on the intersection of political organizing, systems thinking, storytelling, technology and the decentralization of power. He is a founding member and the Executive Director of The Rules (/TR), a global network of activists, organizers, designers, coders, researchers, writers and others dedicated to changing the rules that create inequality, climate change and poverty around the world.
Prior to /TR, he was a Partner and the Head of Strategy at Purpose, an incubator for new types of social movements. Alnoor is a writer and speaker on new forms of activism, the structural causes of inequality, the link between climate change and capitalism, and the rise of the Global South as a powerful organizing force in the transition to a post-capitalist world. In addition to the Greenpeace USA board, he also sits on the Stakeholder Board for the P2P Foundation, a key organization in the commons movement. Alnoor holds an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics.
On this week’s episode, we speak to Linda Black Elk on traditional medicine, community wellness and systemic transformation amidst pandemic. Our conversation begins with hands-on measures we can take to boost our wellbeing and what honorable harvest looks like during times of panic. How can we deepen our actions so that they are not just a response to fear, but are rooted in the promise of collective wellbeing? In addition to these questions of right now, Ayana and Linda discuss what will be left in the wake of COVID-19, how will we tend to the wounds of disposability? What systems will endure? What must we dismantle and what will we grow? Music by Matti Palonen & Chris Pureka. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Deeply Rooted is a new offering devoted to inviting relief, balance and abundance into our lives during these uncertain times. We've brought together some amazing folks who we feel are wise stewards of Earth, spirit, community and bodily wisdom who will share a variety of grounding practices and coping tools to lend support during this unprecedented time where it can be easy to feel overwhelmed.
This week, Milla Prince will transport us on an embodied journey away from anxiety, and back into deeper knowledge of our ancient and integral place within the Web of Life. Milla invites us to root ourselves through the very soil, minerals, water and air of our own bodies. Listen in as we shed what is old and give ourselves to the stream of life pulsing through the body of nature.
Follow our Deeply Rooted releases, coming your way on Mondays, to find solace and awaken inspiration through guided meditations, poetry and prose readings, questions for deep inquiry, story-telling, musical performances and more. May these offerings nourish your inner sanctuary and foster resilience, empowerment and liberation.
Music by Pura Fe and The Baltic MoonShine Band Photo by @koakalish
Visit our website at forthewild.world to learn more.
For The Wild presents Homebound as an offering of curated episodes from the archives intended to share perspective and guidance in the midst of a time of tremendous uncertainty and possibility. In light of the personal and global impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak, our team has been drawing on wisdom from the archives to anchor us and help us to navigate this new reality. We understand that while society appears ripe for transformation, we are also being inundated with information that may feel paralyzing and that also perpetuates a culture of fear. As a response, we offer this series that explores physical, emotional and spiritual preparedness, self-reliance and community sovereignty. We invite you to join us on Fridays to hear seeds of wisdom from the weavers of transformation and mobilizers of personal and cultural shift featured in Homebound. We hope that this may serve as a North Star as we all traverse through our grief and fear that accompany this perplexing time fraught with shattering of systemic injustices alongside opportunities to co-create the world anew. As our second offering, we’re re-releasing our conversation with Dr. Rupa Marya on “Decentralizing the Power of Healing.” As you listen, please take moments of gratitude for the incredible healthcare workers and frontline responders, like Dr. Marya, who are showing up every single day. Initially aired in January of 2020, this episode reminds us that the blatant neglect for people’s wellbeing amidst this global pandemic is not coincidence or negligence, it is the result of a global system that has historically centered profit over people. Rupa reminds us that “the health of the people should be our guiding light and principle” so we ask ourselves the following: How can we begin investing in our own economies of care? Why is healthcare for all and the abolition of medical debt and the for-profit medical system absolutely imperative? And most importantly, how can we derive our medicine in relation to one another, as we acknowledge that the wellness of self is inextricably connected to the wellness of others? Music by Rupa & the April Fishes
Today we are joined by Estrella Santiago Pérez to discuss Borinquén grassroots action and community sovereignty amidst natural disasters and climate change. Common understanding of Puerto Rico exists in a dichotomy, either defined by lush resort colonies or the aftermath of tropical storms. The reality is, of course, much more dynamic and the vulnerabilities faced by communities amidst climate change and natural disasters, are political and colonial created conditions. Estrella speaks to this reality through her work to rehabilitate the Caño Martín Peña, a 3.5 mile long tidal channel that is a part of the San Juan Bay Estuary. Music by Los Hombres Calientes. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.
Deeply Rooted is a new offering devoted to inviting relief, balance and abundance into our lives during these uncertain times. We've brought together some amazing folks who we feel are wise stewards of Earth, spirit, community and bodily wisdom who will share a variety of grounding practices and coping tools to lend support during this unprecedented time where it can be easy to feel overwhelmed.
This week, brontë velez transports us through revolutionary prayer. We hope brontë’s incantation ignites your creativity and fills up your inner well with joy, strength and peace.
Follow our Deeply Rooted releases, coming your way on Mondays, to find solace and awaken inspiration through guided meditations, poetry and prose readings, questions for deep inquiry, story-telling, musical performances and more. May these offerings nourish your inner sanctuary and foster resilience, empowerment and liberation.
Music by Stoic Beats & Pura Fé. The Lead to Life mantras were written by brontë velez and Kyle Lemle from Lead to Life. Visit our website at forthewild.world to learn more.
For The Wild presents Homebound as an offering of curated episodes from the archives intended to share perspective and guidance in the midst of a time of tremendous uncertainty and possibility.
In light of the personal and global impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak, our team has been drawing on wisdom from the archives to anchor us and help us to navigate this new reality. We understand that while society appears ripe for transformation, we are also being inundated with information that may feel paralyzing and that also perpetuates a culture of fear. As a response, we offer this series that explores physical, emotional and spiritual preparedness, self-reliance and community sovereignty.
We invite you to join us on Fridays to hear seeds of wisdom from the weavers of transformation and mobilizers of personal and cultural shift featured in Homebound. We hope that this may serve as a North Star as we all traverse through our grief and fear that accompany this perplexing time fraught with shattering of systemic injustices alongside opportunities to co-create the world anew.
As our first offering, we’re rereleasing this potent discussion with Reverend M. Kalani Souza, a gifted storyteller, singer, songwriter, musician, performer, poet, philosopher, priest, political satirist, and peacemaker. This episode originally aired in November of 2018 but we feel that these words on preparedness are more relevant now than ever.
Music by Cover Story Doo Wop
The Taku, Stikine, and Unuk Rivers are three of the largest salmon producing rivers that originate in so-called British Columbia and flow into Southeast Alaska. These transboundary rivers breath vital nourishment, cultural vibrancy, and economic sustenance into this region, yet there are no enforceable policies to protect wild salmon, clean water, or the many jobs and lifeways they support from mining projects upstream. In this special, in-person interview with Jill Weitz, campaign director at Salmon Beyond Borders, we take a closer look at the corporate mining sector and transboundary watersheds, following wild salmon in their path across borders to find common ground in the issues that unite us all. Music by Eliza Edens, Bird By Snow, Treya Lam. Visit our website at forthewild.word for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Last fall, For The Wild was invited to participate in a workshop on art and technology in the Anthropocene hosted at the Guggenheim Museum. Facilitated by Kenric McDowell, alongside support from Troy Conrad Therrien, Curator of Architecture and Digital Initiative at the Guggenheim, we explored the role art and technology will play in our future depending upon its design. On this week’s episode we rejoin Kenric in conversation to follow up on some of the most fruitful topics from this workshop, like the cultures in which machine learning and technological advancement are cultivated in, the implications of anthropocentrism in design and how our understanding of relationship impacts technology and design. Music by South London HiFi, Bad Snacks, and Qenric. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Amidst a global swell of change, we are taking the cue to slow down where we can this week and lean back into the healing arms of our community, seek loving accountability rather than fragmentation, and ground ourselves in the great wisdom of this Earth. In this timely work, we find particular resonance and resource in our “plantcestors” (plant ancestors) — the leafy and thorned ones that have co-evolved alongside us humans, digesting the patterns of the stars and sky, mingling with pollinators and soil-dwellers, and giving life to material creation itself. Unfurling from our tender conversation with this week’s guest, ancestral re-membrance practitioner, medicine maker, storyteller, and archivist Layla K. Feghali, we turn to our beloved flora to aid in our collective restoration, the revival of our ancestral ways, the reclamation of earthly kind, and the great global project of healing. Music by Zikrayat. Visit our website at forthewild.word for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our episode with Kurt Russo on the People Under the Sea, originally aired in October of 2018. Kurt and Ayana’s conversation explores the powerful memory held by Southern Resident orcas, the threats they face from vessel noise, chemical pollutants, and declining Chinook salmon population, the health of the Salish Sea, and the Lummi Nation’s sacred duty to return Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut (formerly known as Tokitae/Lolita), from where she is being held captive at Miami Seaquarium, to her natal waters in the Salish Sea. Music by Monplaisir and Amoeba. Photo courtesy of © George Karbus Photography. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
In environmental spaces, we often speak about disconnection from the natural world, but within this framing, rarely do we voice the parallel violation of severance that has been enacted upon the self. If the shapes of clouds, the ground beneath our feet, and the song of birds sculpt the very elemental nature of our beings, then the trauma of separation starves the deep roots and blossoming expression of our emergent selves. This week on For The Wild, we turn to the acclaimed author, ecological activist, artist, historian, and folk herbalist Jesse Wolf Hardin to call us into the rich, dynamic ways of our earthly existence towards a reclamation of our embodied wisdom, resilience, and knowledge. How can sites of connection with the animated worlds of living ecology—plants, water creatures, grasslands, mycelial webs, tide pools & urban gardens—serve as healing terrain for both these inner and outer landscapes? Music by Wildlife Freeway. Please visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
From roller coaster rides at Disney World to museums dotting the Pacific Northwest, symbols of mining and the Gold Rush remain deeply enshrined in the collective imagination of the mythic West. Hidden beneath this cultural veneer, the material realities of today’s superscale mining are often out of sight, out of mind. In this week’s In The Field episode, we trace the historical contours and material legacy of the mining industry across so-called British Columbia, unearthing stories from a region that bears an estimated 1,100 abandoned mines, 150-year-old mining laws, and more mining exploration companies than anywhere else on Earth. Guided by the raw testimony of mother, water protector, and organizer Nuskmata (Jacinda Mack), this episode braids together the history of the Gold Rush and colonization in B.C., the state of salmon, the practice of free, prior, and informed consent, dirty mining for a “clean” energy revolution, and the urgent necessity of reform. Music by Cary Morin, Compassion Gorilla, Lynx and the Servants of Song, The Mynabirds, The Melawmen Collective and The Honey Tongues. Please visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, initially released in February of 2019. In light of the second invasion by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on February 6, 2020, we are releasing this episode with the hope that it provides some background for those who are just learning about TC Energy’s (formerly TransCanada) $6.6 billion proposed pipeline through Wet’suwet’en territory. Music by Wildlife Freeway. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
This week on For The Wild, we journey along the “Redwood Coast” with naturalist Christian Schwarz to revisit a favorite topic, mushrooms. Beginning with fungal diversity, our conversation with Christian grows to discuss the global mushroom market, migration patterns, and invasive versus native fungi. Not only do Christian and Ayana discuss the incredible diversity of fungi, but also the reality that the Earth is poised to experience a significant loss in fungal diversity due to climate change. Sitting with these realities, we are reminded that mushrooms have much to say when we are quiet enough to listen. Christian Schwarz is a naturalist currently living in Santa Cruz, the land of milk (caps) and honey (mushrooms). Music by Grant Earl LaValley and Dimples. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points
Intimacy and sexuality is the soil that gives rise to creativity, pleasure and regeneration of new life. As mainstream understandings of sex, marriage, and family shift, Dr. Kim TallBear highlights how the colonial project of nation-building disrupted the vitality of Indigenous kinship by imposing heteronormative monogamous marriage and the nuclear family structure. How have these constraints bred hyper-sexualized, paradoxical and fetishized beliefs that degrade relationships, wellbeing of communities and the land? Bringing enlivening perceptions that echo from the personal to collective, Kim TallBear is Associate Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience & Environment. By unraveling the doctrines of scarcity and separation, we are challenged to shatter pervasive beliefs of boundaries, binaries, and scarcity within our relations. Music by M83, Frazey Ford & FRASE. Visit forthewild.world for our full episode description, references, and action points.
Today, over 310 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year. The ubiquity of plastic cannot be ignored as it has become an inextricable part of our living systems, circulating and making home within our bodies, urban environments, marine life, and waterways. Expanding the dominant discourse on plastics, this episode features Dr. Max Liboiron, an Assistant Professor in Geography at Memorial University, where she directs the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR). Together, Ayana and Dr. Max Liboiron explore the notion of plastic as kin, oil and petrochemical subsidies, the body burden of plasticizers, the historical construction of disposability, and more. Music by Y La Bamba and Ani DiFranco. Visit our Website for full episode description, references, and action points.
Our hearts and minds are set to work by the urgent eco-social crises of this time. We are invited by this week’s guest, Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, to pause and abandon solutionism, step back from the project of progress, and ask: What does the Anthropocene teach us as a destabilizing agent that resists our taming? How can we show up in our movements of justice if “the ways we respond to crisis is part of the crisis”? What happens when we unfurl into a space of slowness and relinquish human mastery into a wider cosmic net of relations? Author, speaker, renegade academic, and proud father, Bayo is Director and Chief Curator for The Emergence Network and has authored two books: ‘We Will Tell Our Own Story’ and ‘These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters To My Daughter on Humanity’s Search For Home.’ Music by Daniel Higgs.
Follow this link for our full episode description, references, and action points.
The United States has more miles of pipeline than any other country in the world. Pipeline construction is one of the many ways in which the U.S. continues terraforming the land in support of ongoing settler colonialism. On this episode of For The Wild, we are joined by Kyle Whyte to discuss this very issue in connection to the vast extractive energy network that surrounds the Great Lakes area. Kyle Whyte is Professor and Timnick Chair in the Humanities in the departments of Philosophy and Community Sustainability at Michigan State University.
♫ Music by Cary Morin & Bonnie "Prince" Billy
Follow this link for our full episode description, references, and action points.
How can we understand our own ailments as a map of society’s illness? A by-product of an inhuman, unbridled industrialized society where the pressures of productivity and the harm inflicted by violent institutions are causing a collective decline in health. On today’s episode, we explore these topics with Dr. Rupa Marya. Rupa Marya, MD is Associate Professor of Medicine at UC San Francisco and Faculty Director of the Do No Harm Coalition, a collective of over 450 health workers committed to addressing structural issues that make health impossible for communities. Dr. Marya has been working to make visible the health issues at the nexus of racism and state violence through: her medical work; The Justice Study (national research investigating the health effects of police violence on Black, Brown and Indigenous communities); helping set up a free community clinic for the practice of decolonized medicine under Lakota leadership at Standing Rock (the Mni Wiconi Health Clinic and Farm); and international outreach with her band, Rupa and the April Fishes. She is currently working on a book with author Raj Patel looking at the health impacts of colonization and capitalism.
♫ Music by Rupa and the April Fishes
Not long ago, packs of gray wolves roamed freely across so-called North America from the grassy prairies of Florida to the snow-capped peaks of Colorado. Alongside a growing agricultural industry and settler expansion West, the U.S. government marshalled a perverse, ruthless campaign to systematically eradicate the gray wolf, driving this keystone species to the brink of extinction. On this week’s episode, we speak with Mike Phillips, a conservationist and longtime ally of gray wolves who has served as the Executive Director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund and advisor to the Turner Biodiversity Divisions since he co-founded both with Ted Turner in 1997. During his employment with the Department of Interior Mike served as the leader of historic efforts to restore red wolves to the southeastern US and gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park. In 2006, Mike was elected to the Montana legislature where he served as the representative for House District 66 in Bozeman until 2012 when he was elected to the Montana Senate. Ayana and Mike’s discuss the history of cattle ranching and grazing rights, trophic cascades, the violent lineages of conservation, and ecological restoration as an antidote to species loss.
♫ Music by Mac Demarco
If we want a just & humane world, we must create one in which apparatuses of oppression are no longer considered reasonable. This week on For The Wild, we are joined by Mariame Kaba for an expansive conversation on Transformative Justice, community accountability, criminalization of survivors, & freedom on the horizon. Mariame addresses punishment as an issue of directionality while reminding us why it is vital to have the prison abolition movement in conversation with the movement for climate & environmental justice. When we engage with these issues & shape our actions out of a commitment to removing violence at its core, we are working to transform our world beyond recognition into something teeming with possibility, beauty, & life.
Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator & curator who is active in movements for racial, gender, & transformative justice. She is the founder & director of Project NIA, a grassroots organization with a vision to end youth incarceration. She has co-founded multiple organizations & projects over the years including We Charge Genocide, the Chicago Freedom School, the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls & Young Women, Love & Protect & most recently Survived & Punished.
As a Researcher in Residence at the Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW), Mariame Kaba works with Andrea J. Ritchie, fellow Researcher in Residence, on a new Social Justice Institute (SJI) initiative, Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action.
Mariame is on the advisory boards of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, Critical Resistance & the Chicago Community Bond Fund. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including The Nation Magazine, The Guardian, The Washington Post, In These Times, Teen Vogue, The New Inquiry & more. She runs Prison Culture blog. Mariame’s work has been recognized with several honors & awards.
For anyone who is dedicated to liberation, regardless of area of focus, conversations on criminalization, policing, & the prison industrial system need to be in orbit. As Mariame reminds us, if our focus is to end harm, there is no excuse to uphold inherently harmful institutions.
Music by Wyclef Jean, Jason Marsalis & Irvin Mayfield.
Mariame Kaba’s Reading Recommendations:
Until We Reckon by Danielle Sered Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Davis Missing Daddy by Mariame Kaba
Episode References:
Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America by Brett Story Community Safety Looks Like… A Green New Deal for Decarceration by Brett Story & Seth J. Prins INCITE! Are the Cops in Our Heads and Hearts? By Paula X. Rojas “The Sexual Politics of the New Abolitionism” by Elizabeth Bernstein (coining of Carceral Feminism) A New of Life Re-Entry Program The Survived & Punished Commissary Fund
Action Points:
Donate to Mariame’s Survived and Punished Commissary Fund for the Holidays Donate to Survived and Punished’s Survivor Solidarity Fund Learn more by visiting Transform Harm & Survived and Punished Our episode with Mariame highlights the importance of community accountability & understanding what truly provides safety & security in society. We encourage you to think about where you reside, invest in your community, & get to know your neighbors as a small and meaningful act of resistance against the carceral state.
On this week’s episode, For The Wild delves into the many threads of Dr. Suzanne Pierre’s work as a soil scientist and purveyor of Critical Ecology. Dr. Pierre reminds us that the current exclusionary and hierarchal scientific field within the academy must be repurposed into something meaningful, just, and responsible. Critical Ecology asks us to explore how access to the stars, land, soil, and water act as a social filter to the world of knowledge production. What are the ramifications of this “exclusion by design” when it comes to climate research, national policy, and justice? Dr. Pierre beautifully balances between the soil as scientific matter and soil as an intimate part of our Earthly experience, while offering a critique that is deeply rooted in love and reverence for community & Earth.
Dr. Suzanne Pierre (she/her) is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley. She is trained as a global change ecologist and biogeochemist and researches the ways that climate change is altering the elemental exchanges between plants, soils and microorganisms in different habitats. She started writing about marginalized people’s relationships to nature and science in 2013 when she began pursuing a Ph.D. in ecology at Cornell. She’s now interested in the ways that human interactions with nature, mediated by science, labor, and freedom, have influenced local and global exchanges of the elements, energy, and social/economic power. Suzanne organizes these ideas under the umbrella of Critical Ecology– a conceptual thoroughfare she is building across the earth and climate sciences, histories of science, and sociology of the environment. You can read some of Dr. Pierre’s work on this on Instagram @critical_ecology. This conversation begins by honoring soil, something that Dr. Pierre describes as “silent, but teeming with life.” By trade, Dr. Pierre focuses on carbon and nutrient cycling in terrestrial environments and soil at the molecular level. This week’s conversation oscillates between the importance of nitrogen, building the knowledge commons, the many new entry points that climate change necessitates, and the ways in which we can root ourselves in frameworks inspired by Earth. ♫ Music by Aisha Badru, Handmade Moments, & John Newton
- EPISODE REFERENCES +
- Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by William Bryant Logan
- Black Speculation, Black Freedom by Petal Samuel https://www.publicbooks.org/black-speculation-black-freedom/
- Belowground Activity by Dr. Suzanne Pierre https://loamlove.com/engage/belowgroundactivity?rq=suzanne%20pierre
- Environmental Experiences Have Racial Roots by Dr. Suzanne Pierre https://freerads.org/2017/06/15/environmental-experiences-have-racial-roots
Following last week’s In The Field episode featuring Wanda Kashudoha Culp, we turn to Wanda’s longtime friend and partner in justice, Kasyyahgei, as she continues to weave the threads of story and spirit in the Tongass National Forest. Kasyyahgei is a respected Tlingit knowledge keeper, a mother and grandmother, a spruce root basket weaver, and a fierce protector of her community and village of Hoonah. In the 1980s, Kasyyahgei brought a lawsuit against the National Forest Service for logging in Hoonah and, since then, has continued to stand with unwavering integrity and courageously speak truth to power.
Through Kasyyahgei’s spellbinding stories, we are transported to the salmon-filled waters and rich forested landscapes of her home in Hoonah. Meaning “protection from the North wind,” the lands and waters of Hoonah have provided her people with sustenance for generations in an ever-turning cycle of reciprocity ruled by “the Law of the Land.” As in many communities throughout the Tongass, this delicate balance of life greatly shifted when the trees started to come down and trucks criss-crossed through the forest hauling old growth giants on their backs. Leaving a trail of splintered trees in its path, the insatiable, industrial machine of extraction has only shapeshifted in its monstrous form, as cruise ships and tourists in the thousands descend upon Hoonah’s docks every year.
Kasyyahgei’s striking account of Hoonah and the imperial history of Alaska are urgently needed to understand the political and economic battles encircling the Tongass today. Lean into Kasyyahgei’s haunting testimony of heart that bridges stories from her childhood, the incredible mycelial worlds humming beneath the forest floor, and the land of talking trees. Bear witness to the life and death that this vast place cradles within its arms and surrender to this well of wonder whose bottom is beyond the reach of the human mind. Then, reawaken and offer yourself to the future of this great mother forest and the generation of Indigenous leaders rising to defend it.
♫ Music by Cary Morin, Theresa Andersson, Pura Fe, Kermit Ruffins, Lea Thomas
♦ ACTION POINTS ♦ * The most immediate action step you can take to defend the Tongass is to submit a thoughtful, effective public comment to the Forest Service. The deadline is December 17th, 2019 at midnight Alaska time. Please submit your comment below TODAY:
+ u can make a public comment directly to the Forest Service through the channels below. In your letter, please be sure to urge Secretary Perdue and Chief Christensen to “select the ‘no-action’ alternative on the Alaska-specific Roadless Rule” and describe why the Tongass and/or roadless areas are important to you. Again, the deadline is December 17th, 2019 at midnight Alaska time.
- Web: www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=54511
- Email: akroadlessrule@fs.fed.us
- Mail: USDA Forest Service, Attn: Alaska Roadless Rule, P.O. Box 21628, Juneau, Alaska, 99802
- Fax: 907-586-7852
- In-person delivery to Forest Service: 709 W. 9th Street, Room 535B, Juneau, Alaska 99801
- Please share this episode and send out the above links to your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, businesses—anyone who cares about the future of our public lands. You can also download and share Southeast Alaska Conservation Council’s Roadless Rule Toolkit: https://www.seacc.org/roadless\_rule\_toolkit.
+ We request that you support Indigenous stewards of the Tongass by making a direct donation to Kasyyahgei for many years of activist work, public service, and ongoing community organizing in Hoonah and beyond. Make a donation through our PayPal link below & add a note that clearly identifies Kasyyahgei as the recipient of your donation (such as, “For Kasyyahgei”). All funds raised will go directly to Kasyyahgei. https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=K2ZYWEvDQUKMGKEGN6YkfUnJXYsavhv-hEZWAS0qVENdK2cMw46jh24kaycqlAoxN49aFm&country.x=US&locale.x=US
+ To stay up to date and informed about issues in the Tongass, please check out the following organizations and follow them on social media:
Southeast Alaska Conservation Council
Sitka Conservation Society
Last Stands
Women’s Earth & Climate Action Network
Audubon Alaska
Lynn Canal Conservation
Earthjustice
+ - For more resources, readings, and videos on the Tongass and issues raised in this episode, visit our updated webpage: Tongass Campaign / When Old Growth Ends
- Beyond these points, we also recognize the need to courageously expand the existing envelope of action. We need a panoply of resistance from established tactics like public comments, advocacy and demonstrations, blockades and encampments, to even more creative gestures of resistance and daring acts of land defense. We ask that you meditate on this call to action, honor what comes alive in your spirit, and hold the complexity of all that it takes to show up in this time of often-conflicting demands asked of your body, heart, and time. What can you offer? What can you give—of your resource, your love, your gifts, your spirit—to this moment of unraveling & becoming
With arms outstretched in gratitude for those fighting on the ground to protect life and land, we humbly offer this first episode of In The Field, For The Wild’s new place-based storytelling series and fierce prayer for a wild and free future. Join us this week as we travel to the Tongass Rainforest, the largest remaining intact temperate rainforest on earth and the traditional territory of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples. The primordial heart of this place still beats to the rhythm of life, a kaleidoscopic turning of towering old growth trees, braided rivers, jumping salmon, eagle, bear, and glacier.
In the wake of the Trump administration’s renewed attack on the Tongass—a plan that would end Roadless Rule protections on 9.2 million acres of land—we are honored to amplify the call of those who are courageously rising to protect this great northern forest. This episode features the powerful Wanda Kashudoha Culp, an Indigenous Tlingit activist and advocate, born and raised in Juneau and Hoonah, Alaska. A professional paper-pusher and artist by trade, Wanda is also a hunter, fisherwoman, and gatherer of wild foods. She is the mother of three children, and is recognized as a storyteller, cultural interpreter, playwright, and co-producer of the film Walking in Two Worlds. A long-time forest defender, Wanda currently serves as the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network Coordinator for the Tongass National Forest.
Make space this week to tune into this deep, visceral listening experience, as we step into the moss-cloaked forest and meditate on the scars and stories held by this sacred ground. Guided by Wanda’s indomitable warrioress spirit, we wind through the history of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the Tlingit balance of Raven and Eagle, Indigenous food sovereignty, extractive tourism, and more. Wanda’s testimony moves us beyond the story of old-growth logging as it has been told, unearthing the ugly truth of colonial extraction in Alaska and the powerful resistance seeded in its wake. May her impassioned words ignite an honest reckoning of all that has been lost, all that we are losing, and all that we have left to stand for.
♫ Music by Cary Morin, Lea Thomas, Rising Appalacia, Hana Shin, Carter Lou McElroy, and the Tlingit citizens of Hoonah, Alaska.
- ACTION POINTS +
- The most immediate action step you can take to defend the Tongass is to submit a thoughtful, effective public comment to the Forest Service. The deadline is December 17th, 2019 at midnight Alaska time. Please submit your comment below TODAY:
SUBMIT YOUR COMMENT → You can also make a public comment directly to the Forest Service through the channels below. In your letter, please be sure to urge Secretary Perdue and Chief Christensen to “select the ‘no-action’ alternative on the Alaska-specific Roadless Rule” and describe why the Tongass and/or roadless areas are important to you. Again, the deadline is December 17th, 2019 at midnight Alaska time.
- Web: www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=54511
- Email: akroadlessrule@fs.fed.us
- Mail: USDA Forest Service, Attn: Alaska Roadless Rule, P.O. Box 21628, Juneau, Alaska, 99802
- Fax: 907-586-7852
-
In-person delivery to Forest Service: 709 W. 9th Street, Room 535B, Juneau, Alaska 99801
-
Please share this episode and send out the above links to your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, businesses—anyone who cares about the future of our public lands. You can also download and share Southeast Alaska Conservation Council’s Roadless Rule Toolkit: https://www.seacc.org/roadless_rule_toolkit.
-
Support Indigenous stewards of the Tongass working on the ground by making a direct donation to Wanda Culp for her 30+ years of activist work and ongoing community organizing in Hoonah, Washington D.C. and beyond. Make a donation through our PayPal link below -or use the button- & add a note that clearly identifies Wanda Culp as the recipient of your donation (such as, “For Wanda Culp”). All funds raised will go directly to Wanda Culp. https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=4CQdJPu7R7AczvWIx39CG5do7JmMngwO8p9-_H0VZwuvEItvsHNjFDOGqAkByrFFBoMdim&country.x=US&locale.x=US
-
DONATE TO WANDA CULP
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Consider making a donation to Hoonah Alaska Native Sisterhood Camp 12, a local organization that supported Wanda and the Women’s Delegation from the Tongass in Washington, D.C. You can send your donation by mail to PO Box 556, Hoonah, Alaska 99829.
-
To stay up to date and informed about issues in the Tongass, please check out the following organizations and follow them on social media:
- Southeast Alaska Conservation Council
- Sitka Conservation Society
- Last Stands
- Women’s Earth & Climate Action Network
- Audubon Alaska
- Lynn Canal Conservation
- Earthjustice
- For more resources, readings, and videos on the Tongass and issues raised in this episode, visit our updated webpage: Tongass Campaign / When Old Growth Ends
- Beyond these points, we also recognize the need to courageously expand the existing envelope of action. We need a panoply of resistance from established tactics like public comments, advocacy and demonstrations, blockades and encampments, to even more creative gestures of resistance and daring acts of land defense. We ask that you meditate on this call to action, honor what comes alive in your spirit, and hold the complexity of all that it takes to show up in this time of often-conflicting demands asked of your body, heart, and time. What can you offer? What can you give—of your resource, your love, your gifts, your spirit—to this moment of unraveling & becoming?
-
REFERENCES/RECOMMENDATIONS +
- Watch the film Wanda Culp produced, Walking In Two Worlds, https://www.walkingintwoworlds.org/about-the-film/ or listen to the adapted radio version here: https://www.radioproject.org/2015/11/walking-in-two-worlds-2/
Lyla June returns to For The Wild bearing poems that imbue the rigid language of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) with embodied story and prayer. Lyla reminds us that when we yearn to truly speak the language of life, love and healing, we must turn to poetry. Lyla and co-creator Joy De Vito’s collection Lifting Hearts Off the Ground: Declaring Indigenous Rights in Poetry grounds the 46 articles of the UNDRIP in the lived experiences, languages and traditions of Indingeous peoples, as well as the perspectives and responsibilities of settlers on Turtle Island. Lyla shares how the UNDRIP “begins to Speak of the sacred. To achieve its goal, the numbed world must come into the format of the sweat lodge.” In this rejuvenating interview, Lyla and Ayana embrace the natural laws that flow from land, language and culture.
Lyla June was raised in Taos, New Mexico and is a descendent of Diné (Navajo) and Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) lineages. Her personal mission in life is to grow closer to Creator by learning how to love deeper. In 2012, she graduated with honors from Stanford University with a degree in Environmental Anthropology. She is a musician, public speaker and internationally recognized performance poet. Lyla June ultimately attributes any achievements to Creator who gave her the tools and resources she uses to serve humanity. She currently lives in Diné Tah, the Navajo ancestral homeland which spans what is now called New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona. She spends her free time learning her engendered mother tongue, planting corn, beans and squash and spending time with elders who retain traditional spiritual and ecological knowledge.
In honor of Truthsgiving, join us as we meditate upon the true spirit of giving. Lyla and Ayana unravel the great potential held within the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and well as some of its false assumptions, and propose Indigenous-led frameworks for sovereignty. We trace the lineages of pain first brought ashore by colonizers, and awaken to the emboldened Indigenous resistance to present-day attempts at erasure. At the core of this conversation, we listen in to the innate wisdom of the Earth and remember how we are meant to be gifts to the land.
♫ Music by Lyla June
- ACTION POINTS + 100% of the proceeds from the beautiful poetry collection Lifting Hearts Off the Ground: Declaring Indigenous Rights in Poetry go directly towards uplifting initiatives in Indigenous communities.
You can find and purchase a copy here: https://www.commonword.ca/ResourceView/2/19399
You can also sign up and make a donation to attend Lyla’s webinar “Medicine Theory” happening on December 14th, 2019. Instructors will be teaching about being in solidarity with Indigenous communities, as well as practices in Indigenous hydrology and climate resilience. All proceeds will go towards the protection of natural springs and water resources at Indigenous sacred sites.
You can sign up here: https://lylajune.wixsite.com/medicinetheory
- REFERENCES & RECOMMENDATIONS + You can always find some of Lyla’s spoken word poetry and music here: https://soundcloud.com/lylajune
Learn more about Lyla June’s work, poetry, and essays by visiting her website: http://www.sodizin.net/sodizin
You can explore more of Lyla’s multi-disciplined work by reading some of her recent articles:
“Lyla June on the Forest as Farm”
“Yes world, there were horses in Native culture before the settlers came”
Read the complete United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)
Journey with us this week to Jackson Wild Summit, an annual convergence of filmmakers, conservationists, scientists and innovators exploring critical conservation and environmental issues. Within this rich overlap, we seek to ask meaningful questions that crack open the dominant paradigm of conservation. As media makers, how can we responsibly tell stories of people and place in service of greater reconnection and mobilization? Where are we failing to show up with integrity and address issues of access and power? And, perhaps most importantly, what is possible when space is held for brilliant, diverse voices to chart the path forward?
Tune into this episode to hear Ayana’s conversations with seven storytellers who are shifting the landscape of conservation from behind their cameras, bold media strategies, and work in the field. These honest and refreshing interviews touch on the topics of balancing global and local narratives, centering communities in the management of their own natural heritage, and breaking the creative boundaries of multi-platform storytelling. We hope these voices—from the salty mangrove forests of the Kenyan coast to the endangered vaquita still swimming through the Gulf of California—spark an ongoing dialogue about how to meaningfully be of service to life, land, and water.
Voices featured in this interview include: Tiffany McNeil of Yellow Balloon Productions, Creative Director & Innovations Lead for CBS; Dr. Ayana Flewellen of The Society of Black Archaeologists and Diving With a Purpose; Meaghan Brosnan of WildAid’s Marin Protection; Rodrigo Farias of Parley for the Oceans; Kaitlin Yarnall of National Geographic; and Faith Musembi, an award winning visual storyteller and filmmaker of Salt Water Survivors.
♫ Music by South London HiFi, Bad Snacks, Chris Haugen, Josh Lippi & The Overtimers + GUEST BIOS + (in order of appearance)
Tiffany McNeil is an award winning Cinematographer/Director/Digital and New Media Strategist and currently works as a Creative Director/Innovations Lead for CBS News/Digital. Tiffany is committed to expanding narrative, both in the stories we tell as filmmakers, the ways we tell them, and how we distribute them.
Dr. Ayana Flewellen is a Black Feminist, an archaeologist, a storyteller, and a artist. She is the co-founder of the Society of Black Archaeologists and sits on the Board of Diving With A Purpose.
Meaghan Brosnan oversees all aspects of WildAid’s Marine Protection work, and is currently focused on expanding their program to strengthen the enforcement hundreds of marine protected areas globally.
Rodrigo Farías grew up exploring and documenting much of the beautiful Chilean coastline and the surf scene in the last decade, filming, traveling and working with environmental surfer Ramon Navarro. His mission is to communicate the sea culture that surrounds this sport, which has led him to be the Director at Parley for the Oceans in Chile, and raise awareness about the beauty and fragility of our oceans.
As senior vice president and chief storytelling officer at the National Geographic Society, Kaitlin Yarnall is responsible for expanding the organization’s impact through all forms of storytelling, including photography, journalism, film, and public experiences.
Faith Musembi is an award winning visual storyteller, with a deep and abiding love for motion pictures, writing and nature. After obtaining a Master of Arts in the Visual Media Arts from Emerson College, she returned to her native Kenya, where she has crafted films including Underwater Treasures and Salt Water Survivors for the award winning Giving Nature A Voice series.
About Our Podcast… At For The Wild, we discuss the critical ideas of our time and parlay them into action for the defense and regeneration of natural communities. Key topics include the rediscovery of wild nature, ecological renewal and resistance, and healing from the trauma of individualistic society. We will travel deep into ancient forests, align with the struggles and ways of Earth-based people, and rekindle the mysteries of intuition. We will join today’s brightest visionaries in this momentous work of reimagining a world where humanity can find its way back into the web of life.
In Part Two of our conversation with Pavini Moray, we continue to trace the river of eros, sensation, and spirit that flows through our ancestral lineages and portals of the everyday. Turning inwards, we ask what must be animated within the self to show up for the places and beings we love? Beyond this, what intuitive sensibilities and knowledges yearn to be reawakened in order to receive? At the heart of this episode’s inquiry into relationship and reciprocity lie emergent lessons for resilience, healing, and strength in this time of earthly crisis and collapse.
Dr. Pavini Moray (pronoun: Pe) is a somatic sex therapist and ancestral lineage healing practitioner in private practice in San Francisco. Pavini works with individuals and couples who wish to resolve the past, inhabit their bodies and their pleasure and speak their desires. Pavini is also the founder of Wellcelium, an online sexuality and intimacy school committed to personal and planetary liberation. Pavini hosts a podcast called “Bespoken Bones: Ancestors at the crossroads of sex, magick, and science.” The podcast is released every new and full moon and addresses topics of transgenerational trauma, erotic wellness, and ancestral support. As a queer trans witch, Pavini walks the glitter path of dancing bones, ridiculous delight and old magick.Listen in to Part Two of this intimate conversation as Ayana and Pavini share their reflections on the forest as a teacher of wild love, the field of eros within and beyond the realm of sex, the cyclical nature of death as communion, and strategies for connecting with ancestors of blood and heart. We hope these timely and timeless words activate listeners to journey into the depths of our capacity to care for one another and our beyond-human kin.
♫ Music by Itasca
- TAKE ACTION & LEARN MORE +
- To learn more about Pavini’s work and personal practice visit: https://www.pavinimoray.com, https://www.transcestralhealing.com, https://www.emancipating-sexuality.com, and https://www.wellcelium.org.
- You can listen to Pavini’s podcast, “Bespoken Bones,” across all platforms like the Podcast App and Spotify or explore the full archive at http://bespokenbones.com.
- To dig deeper into the topics of ancestral healing and lineage repair, Pavini recommends the following reading list: Ancestral Medicine by Dr. Daniel Foor, Jung and the Ancestors by Sandra Easter, By the Light of My Father’s Smile by Alice Walker.
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Pavini offers the idea of creating an ancestor altar and making offerings to your well and bright ancestors.
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REFERENCES +
- Pavini references Annie Sprinkle & Elizabeth Stephens for their paradigm around eco-sexuality & bell hooks’ Belonging: A Culture of Place.
- Ayana quotes bell hooks’ The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power & a post written by Pinar from Queer Nature https://www.instagram.com/queernature.
Dr. Pavini Moray (pronoun: Pe) is a somatic sex therapist and ancestral lineage healing practitioner in private practice in San Francisco. Pavini works with individuals and couples who wish to resolve the past, inhabit their bodies and their pleasure, and speak their desires. Pavini is also the founder of Wellcelium, an online sexuality and intimacy school committed to personal and planetary liberation. Pavini hosts a podcast called “Bespoken Bones: Ancestors at the crossroads of sex, magick, and science.” The podcast is released every new and full moon and addresses topics of transgenerational trauma, erotic wellness, and ancestral support. As a queer trans witch, Pavini walks the glitter path of dancing bones, ridiculous delight and old magick.
Join us for Part One of Ayana and Pavini’s conversation as they delve into deep dialogue on the necessity of relational repair, trans and queer belonging, navigating states of trauma, and breaking settler mentalities within healing spaces. Pavini’s alchemy of ancestral connection, radiant embodiment, and eros is equally playful and nourishing to the soul, leaving behind trails of light for us to follow back to the sacred vessels of our bodies, somatic senses, and intuitive knowing.
Music by Itasca
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Take Action & Learn More +
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To learn more about Pavini’s work and personal practice visit: https://www.pavinimoray.com/, https://www.transcestralhealing.com/, https://www.emancipating-sexuality.com/, and https://www.wellcelium.org/.
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You can listen to Pavini’s podcast, “Bespoken Bones,” across all platforms like the Podcast App and Spotify or explore the full archive at http://bespokenbones.com/.
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To dig deeper into the topics of ancestral healing and lineage repair, Pavini recommends the following reading list: Ancestral Medicine by Dr. Daniel Foor, Jung and the Ancestors by Sandra Easter, By the Light of My Father’s Smile by Alice Walker.
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Pavini offers the idea of creating an ancestor altar and making offerings to your well and bright ancestors.
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References +
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Last October, the IPCC reported that we must cut global emissions in half by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Faced with the enormous task of decarbonizing our economies and radically transforming nearly all systems of life, we must dream into new and ancient futures. At the heart of this calling for transition lies evermore urgent questions of justice: How will power and resources be distributed? Whose voices will be represented and needs prioritized? Join us with Jade Begay and Julian Brave NoiseCat for a live recording at Bioneers 2019, as they share their thoughts on decolonizing a just transition and recentering Indigenous leadership within the movement.
Jade Begay is a filmmaker, communications strategist, impact producer, and climate justice activist. Jade’s work explores Indigenous futurism, inclusion, and representation in the media landscape. Jade has partnered with organizations like Resource Media, United Nations Universal Access Project, 350.org, Indigenous Environmental Network, Sierra Club, Bioneers, Indigenous Climate Action, the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, Allied Media Projects, and Tribal Nations from the Arctic to the Amazon to create content, develop strategies, and storytelling campaigns to mobilize and create more engagement around these urgent, complex, and sensitive issues of our time. Jade is also the Creative Director at NDN Collective, an Indigenous led organization that builds indigenous power through decolonizing the world of philanthropy and creates direct funding opportunities for Indigenous and Native communities.
Julian Brave NoiseCat is Director of Green New Deal Strategy at Data for Progress, a think tank, and Narrative Change Director with The Natural History Museum. He is a correspondent for Real America with Jorge Ramos and contributing editor for Canadian Geographic. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Nation, The Paris Review and many other publications.Together, we are re-energized by the call for accountability within the environmental movement and invite you to reflect on your own habitual patterns of engagement and consumption. May this episode move you to not only listen, advocate, and stand alongside Indigenous and frontline communities, but also directly resource those at the forefront of climate chaos fighting for a just and livable world.
♫ Music by Sea Stars, Katie Gray, and The Ancient Wild
- LEARN MORE & TAKE ACTION +
- Visit NDN’s website https://ndncollective.org and read their Position Paper on mobilizing an Indigenous Green New Deal: https://ndncollective.org/get-involved/resources/
- Explore Julian’s many essays, articles, and interviews listed on his website https://www.julianbravenoisecat.com. Be sure to read his piece, “An Insiders Guide to the Climate Debate,” published by Data for Progress: https://www.dataforprogress.org/memos/insiders-guide-climate-debate.
- Support groups that help register Native voters, including the Rural Utah Project https://www.ruralutahproject.org and Native Vote http://www.nativevote.org. For more information and resources, download and share Native Vote’s comprehensive toolkit: http://www.nativevote.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Native-Vote-Toolkit-2018.pdf
- We also ask that you put pressure on candidates in 2020 to speak about their Native American platforms. Call, write, and tag candidates on social media to support Native people in making these demands and getting clear answers from candidates on how they will advocate and protect Indigenous rights.
- Read more about Julian’s organizing work with Alcatraz Canoe Journey 2019: https://www.canoejourney2019.com https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/22/us/occupation-alcatraz.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
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To learn more about climate colonialism, resource extraction, and renewable energy, we recommend the following reading list:
- “A Red Deal” by Nick Estes: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/red-deal-green-new-deal-ecosocialism-decolonization-indigenous-resistance-environment
- “The Green New Deal and the Danger of Climate Colonialism” by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò: https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/green-new-deal-climate-colonialism-energy-land.html
- “The Limits of Clean Energy” by Jason Hickel: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/06/the-path-to-clean-energy-will-be-very-dirty-climate-change-renewables/
- “End the “Green” Delusions: Industrial-scale Renewable Energy is Fossil Fuel+” by Alexander Dunlap: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3797-end-the-green-delusions-industrial-scale-renewable-energy-is-fossil-fuel
- “A new chance for climate justice?” by Nathan Thanki: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/new-chance-climate-justice/?fbclid=IwAR3yyrq_uXpV-VJxKj3yQ-UoxrNHWiLwIYLrebVlFNUy2bO4FoHN2WQrWu0
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References from Julian & Jade +
- There There by Tommy Orange
- Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest by Zeynep Tufekci
- ‘Data for Progress’ Policy Report on the Green New Deal: https://www.dataforprogress.org/green-new-deal-report
- Thunder Valley CDC: https://www.thundervalley.org/
- Black Mesa Water Coalition: http://www.blackmesawatercoalition.org/
Sefra Alexandra is “on the hunt to preserve the biodiversity of our earth,” and with over 90% of vegetable varieties already extinct, safeguarding remaining seeds is serious work. Preserving global seed diversity is both deeply important to maintaining our seed stewarding lineages and offering a means of community and self-facilitated resilience amidst a changing climate. We are honored to have Sefra join For The Wild on this episode as we explore seed as ancient embryo and listen to the call for our re-participation in agrarian ritual and proper stewarding of local landscapes. Sefra Alexandra, The Seed Huntress, is on a perennial ethnobotanical expedition to conserve the biodiversity of our farms and forests by safeguarding the world’s seeds. As a Genebank Impacts Fellow for the Crop Trust, she has gathered stories of the importance of utilization and sharing of plant genetic resource to adapt to changing climatic conditions. She has established community seed banks on island nations after natural disasters to fortify a regenerative model of resiliency, which supports food security & nutritional diversity through seed sovereignty. In her home state of Connecticut, she is reviving a once prolific allium heirloom to promote stewardship of the historic agrarian landscape. She holds her Masters in Agroecological Education from Cornell University, is a wilderness skills instructor, member of the Explorers Club & is designing a treehouse near a hot spring as a budding oologist.
Sefra and Ayana begin their conversation by looking at the current loss of seed diversity, what does it mean that we are letting foods that we have eaten for thousands of years rapidly disappear? The conversation carries into the culture of seed saving, the importance of diversity in the global food supply, the grave impacts of seed relief on local agro-economic systems, undermining seed oligarchies, and the ways in which being in relationship with seeds offer us a deeper connection to all dimensions of life. We invite you into this conversation where we are reminded of the value of listening to and learning from the beauty, patience, and ingenuity of seeds. ♫ Music by Lotte Walda
ACTION POINTS + REFERENCES To begin relearning the ancestral art of seed saving, visit The Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance’s Seed School https://www.rockymountainseeds.org/attend/seed-school To join in the great global exchange of heirloom seed varieties, visit Seed Saver Exchange https://www.seedsavers.org To learn more about global genebanks, crop wild relatives, & how you can support this work, visit The Crop Trust https://www.croptrust.org To find a seed library near you, visit http://seedlibraries.weebly.com/sister-libraries.html To learn the basics of seed saving, visit Native Seeds SEARCH https://www.nativeseeds.org/pages/seed-saving-instruction To Adopt-A-Crop, specifically drought-adapted plants, visit Native Seeds SEARCH https://support.nativeseeds.org/campaign/adopt-a-crop/c235109
The Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska is the largest temperate rainforest left in the world and it is under attack. Wrapping around 11,000 miles of coastline, this land is the unceded territory of the Haida, Tlingit and Tsimshian peoples and home to precious wild salmon, towering ancient old-growth trees, and endangered wildlife species like the Alexander Archipelago wolf. Stretching 17 million acres, the Tongass holds some of the most pristine and productive estuaries still alive on planet Earth that Trump’s Forest Service would like to hand back over to a dying logging industry. Last year, the state of Alaska announced their decision to seek exemption from Roadless Rule, a 2001 landmark conservation measure, which would remove protections for over half of the Tongass and unleash devastating resource extraction upon the land. We will not stand by and watch the beating heart of this forest be cut out and assaulted by a management system that quantifies its productivity in board feet. What happens here and now will forever mark the landscape and impact the future generations of all beings who depend on these sacred forests and waters.Described by many as a sacrifice zone and subsidized timber colony of the US, Prince of Wales Island is one of the most heavily logged areas of the Tongass; there are over 2,500 miles of logging roads on an island that’s only 135 miles long. Our guest this week, Elsa Sebastian, knows this region well, having grown up in the fishing village of Point Baker on northern Prince of Wales Island. For most of her 20’s, Elsa captained a commercial salmon troller, fishing the wild coastline of Southeast Alaska. These days, Elsa deckhands on a drift gillnetter in Bristol Bay, and spends her winters working in conservation, most recently as Executive Director of Lynn Canal Conservation. Elsa loves wildlife and spent several years working with Alaska Whale Foundation to establish a remote field station on Baranof Island, now serving as chair of the Alaska Whale Foundation Board of Directors. Elsa founded the Last Stands project in 2017 to learn more about what remains of the worlds largest coastal temperate rainforest, the Tongass. Since founding the project she’s bushwhacked and beachwalked through hundreds of miles of forest and coastline, and sailed to threatened last stands of old-growth on her home island of Prince of Wales. Elsa is a 100 ton licensed captain and adventures from a 38-ft ketch sailboat, the Murrelet.
We invite you to listen deeply to Elsa’s words and fall in love with the Tongass, as she shares stories from her time in the field, alongside communities where boom and bust industry have torn people apart, and out on the water salmon fishing. Joyful and heartbreaking, Elsa’s reflections as a second-generation activist fill us with the necessity to contend with our dark, complex histories around land and rethread them into our movements. Elsa brings us the urgent truth of this time: “It really comes down to now. Will we make the decision to actually gracefully transition the Tongass away from clear cut logging? Will we take care of the people who work at that mill and provide them other jobs? Or will we just let this go as every other boom and bust community will go if it’s allowed...take the last of what stands.”
♫ Music by Erin Durant
ACTION POINTS One of the largest threats at this time is Trump’s plan to rescind the Roadless Rule in the Tongass and open 9.2 million acres of protected land back up to logging and resource extraction. The Forest Service has announced that on Friday, October 18th, they will finally publish the draft environmental impact statement for the Roadless Rule exemption being proposed. The release will open a 60-day period for public review and comment, and, as citizens, we all have the right and responsibility to weigh in on this important decision that will determine the future of the Tongass, one of the most precious living libraries left on this earth.You can send in your public comment TODAY through Southeast Alaska Conservation Council or SEACC’s online portal. Their plan is to flood the US Forest Service office on Saturday, October 19th (when the comment period opens) with all of the comments that they have collected so far. Thereafter, every comment made through their website will go directly to the USFS. The deadline is December 17th, 2019 at midnight Alaska time. https://www.seacc.org/usfs_comment?utm_campaign=roadless_deis_opening&utm_medium=email&utm_source=seaccStarting on Saturday, October 19th, you can also send in your written comments directly to USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue and the Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen. In your letter, make sure you urge them to select Alternative One, the “no-action” alternative, on the Alaska-specific Roadless Rule. The deadline is December 17th, 2019 at midnight Alaska time.Web www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=54511Email akroadlessrule@fs.fed.usMail USDA Forest Service,Attn: Alaska Roadless Rule, P.O. Box 21628, Juneau, Alaska, 99802Fax 907-586-7852In-person delivery to Forest Service709 W. 9th Street, Room 535B, Juneau, Alaska 99801Roadless Rule initially passed in 2001 with more than 1.6 million public comments. Public participation is imperative now more than ever to uphold this important conservation measure and protect the Tongass for generations to come.Please send out the above links to your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, businesses—anyone who cares about the future of our public lands! You can also download and share SEACC’s Roadless Rule Toolkit: https://www.seacc.org/roadless_rule_toolkit.Make a donation to Last Stand’s fundraising campaign and support the team in bringing their stories of the Tongass to life through their beautiful art and film projects:https://www.gofundme.com/f/tongasslaststands?member=2191830To stay up to date and informed about issues in the Tongass, check out the following organizations, sign up for their mailing lists, and follow them on social media:Last Stands: https://www.laststands.org/take-actionSoutheast Alaska Conservation Council: https://www.seacc.org/Audubon Alaska: https://ak.audubon.org/conservation/tongass-national-forestSitka Conservation Society: http://www.sitkawild.org/newsletter_sign_upWomen’s Earth & Climate Action Network (WECAN): https://www.wecaninternational.org/take-action-tongassEarthjustice: https://earthjustice.org/action/alerts LEARN MORE To learn more about protecting the National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA, check out resources from WE ACT and sign up for their newsletter to stay informed about the next opportunity to speak up for public lands: https://www.weact.org/campaigns/nepa/
This week, in Part Two of our episode with brontë velez, we dive into the capacity for pleasure amidst times of great uncertainty and historical oppression. What does “pleasure in the apocalypse” mean? How might this conversation take on different meanings depending on whether we are talking about climate change as an abstraction versus the current lived experience of planetary uncertainty? As brontë defines it, pleasure is what makes us come alive, so how can we create a culture that is deeply attuned to our senses and directs our desire towards Earth and each other? By feeding our senses, how might we confront the isolation and industrialization of our bodies, while acknowledging the limitations of grief in that “suffering is not accountable to the Earth.”
brontë velez (they/them) is guided by the call that “black wellness is the antithesis of state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson). a black-latinx transdisciplinary artist and designer, they are currently moved and paused by the questions, “how can we allow as much room for god to flow through and between us as possible? what affirms the god of and between us? what is in the way? how can we decompose what interrupts our proximity to divinity? what ways can black feminist placemaking rooted in commemorative justice promote the memory of god, which is to say, love and freedom between us?”
they relate to god as the moments of divine spacetime that remind us we are not separate, the moments that re-belong us to the earth. they encounter these questions in public theology, black prophetic tradition & environmental justice through their eco-social art praxis, serving as creative director for Lead to Life design collaborative, media director for Oakland-rooted farm and nursery Planting Justice, and quotidian black queer life ever-committed to humor & liberation, ever-marked by grief at the distance made between us and all of life.
Part Two of brontë and Ayana’s ripe conversation explores topics including appropriating propaganda and memetics, reorienting ourselves away from the spectacle of terror, tending to erotic energy and sensual spaces, and the nuances around beauty and aesthetics in dominant culture. In closing, we are asked to assess our capacity and privilege and then grow ourselves to create pleasurable pathways, ensure accessibility to embodiment, and foster environments where people are in their senses.
♫ Music by Jennifer Johns and members of the Thrive Choir and Jiordi Rosales on cello, recorded at the 2019 Lead to Life Oakland ceremony, a ceremony that melted weapons into the constellations above Oscar Grant the evening he was murdered. The event closed the annual Reclaim King’s Radical Legacy March, hosted by the Anti Police-Terror Project.
Additional ♫ Music by Jeremy Harris
brontë velez opens this week’s episode inviting us to think about how supremacy’s submission to Earth is an invitation into a more life-affirming world. What does a future look like in which white, human, and patriarchal supremacy surrender their power in an act of pleasure? How does this release manifest and what spaces must we create in order to allow it? How can our own personal play aid us in these times? This week on For The Wild, we explore how playing with submission and domination can be a means towards both liberation and pleasurable redemption with brontë velez.
brontë velez (they/them) is guided by the call that “black wellness is the antithesis of state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson). a black-latinx transdisciplinary artist and designer, they are currently moved and paused by the questions, “how can we allow as much room for god to flow through and between us as possible? what affirms the god of and between us? what is in the way? how can we decompose what interrupts our proximity to divinity? what ways can black feminist placemaking rooted in commemorative justice promote the memory of god, which is to say, love and freedom between us?”they relate to god as the moments of divine spacetime that remind us we are not separate, the moments that re-belong us to the earth. they encounter these questions in public theology, black prophetic tradition & environmental justice through their eco-social art praxis, serving as creative director for Lead to Life design collaborative, media director for Oakland-rooted farm and nursery Planting Justice, and quotidian black queer life ever-committed to humor & liberation, ever-marked by grief at the distance made between us and all of life.
In Part One of this expansive conversation, Ayana and brontë delve into topics surrounding authentic expression, the distortion of feminine and masculine powers, beauty and aesthetics, queerness, dominatrix energy, and power as agency. We hope this episode provokes you to enter this world of pleasure, desire, devotion, surrender, relinquishment, and fluidity.At the end of this episode, listeners hear an excerpt from The Well prophecy, written by brontë velez and recited by brontë velez, Ra Malika Imhotep co-founder of the Church of Black Feminist Thought and Jazmin Calderon Torres and Liz Kennedy from Lead to Life. ♫ Music by Esperanza Spalding
Places with the richest biodiversity are also home to the greatest diversity of languages left in the world. As these remaining sanctuaries come under threat from climate disaster and resource expansion, we risk losing Indigenous languages that are alive and attuned to their homelands, and contain unparalleled ecological knowledge essential to healing the earth. Meanwhile, for those of us who learned to speak a dominant language like English, our tongues carry the legacy of colonialism, the stripping of the land, and we are constrained within a monocultural worldview of culture and land. How are we to express our grief at witnessing the loss unfolding amidst the Anthropocene, when we lack the words to begin with? Our guests this week are Heidi Quante and Alicia Escott from The Bureau of Linguistical Reality, a public participatory artwork that inspires individuals to create new words to understand and articulate the sensations of living within our rapidly changing world. Heidi and Alicia open the doors to freeing trapped sensations and emotions that have gone unnamed and unfelt under the weight of climate disaster.
Heidi Quanta was raised speaking three languages simultaneously and as a result, has long been fascinated with how words influence peoples’ thoughts, actions and ultimately culture. Creating new words is something she loves doing and has been doing since she first learned to communicate with other humans. (Adult reprisals of “That’s not a word” didn’t stop her when she was 5 years old, nor does it today). Quante was inspired to create this artwork with Alicia Escott because she was at a loss for words to describe the very real emotions, and feelings she found herself experiencing as our world rapidly changes due to social, political and environmental factors. Quante’s passion as an artist and founder of the non-profit Creative Catalysts is finding innovative approaches to inspiring cultures to address the pressing social and environmental challenges of our time. This passion is a continuation of 17 years of designing and running a wide array of environmental and human rights initiatives. Quante received a Bachelor of Science & Bachelor of the Arts in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California Berkeley.Alicia Escott’s artistic thinking focuses on grappling with what it is to live a human life amid a moment that is profoundly rare in the geologic and ecologic history of the planet. She is interested in how we each are negotiating our immediate day-to-day realities and responsibilities amid an awareness of the overarching specter of climate change, mass extinction and other Anthropocenic events. She approaches these issues with an interstitial practice that encompasses writing, drawing, painting, photography, video, sculpture and social practice. Escott holds an MFA from California College of Art, where she received the Richard K. Price Scholarship in painting and a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago.In this refreshing interview, Heidi, Alicia and Ayana break through the limits imposed by dominant languages, and invite radical freedom of expression to enrich our unique identities, experiences, our relationships with each other and with the earth. Listen in as we meditate on the necessity to revitalize Indigenous languages, reawaken the joys of wordplay, celebrate the creativity of youth, and to empower ourselves by rewilding our vocabulary. We are reminded of the need to speak the truth in every circumstance, and to imagine the world we wish to create.
Original Research: Madison Magalski
♫ Music by Arthur Moon
♦ REFERENCES/RECOMMENDATIONS ♦
- Glenn Albrecht - thinker who coined the term “solastalgia”; author of Earth Emotions: New Words For a New World
- Robert Macfarlane - cataloguing land-based wisdom of Celtic languages; author of Underland, A Deep Time Journey; and the children’s book The Lost Words.
- Robin Wall Kimmerer: Braiding Sweetgrass and Gathering Moss
♦ LEARN MORE ♦
- Find inspiration from The Bureau Of Linguistical Reality’s collection of neologisms, or submit your own word here! https://bureauoflinguisticalreality.com/portfolio/
- Language Making Nature is a handbook of word-making tools and insights for writers, artists and thinkers: http://www.languagemakingnature.com
- To delve deeper into the crisis of losing of Indigenous languages, listen to our episode Lyla June on the Endangered Diversity of Language and Life
- Explore FirstVoi, a suite of web-based tools and services designed to support Indigenous people engaged in language archiving, language teaching and culture revitalization.
- The Endangered Languages Project harnesses technology to enable language revitalization. Explore information and resources on endangered languages. You can also participate by helping to put languages online by submitting information or samples in the form of text, audio or video files.
- Immerse yourself in the multi-media http://www.dearclimate.net/about that lead viewers and listeners towards a better informed, more realistic, and more affectionate relationship to the more-than-human world, including geo-physical forces, and others species.
- Read the complete or summary version of the Banking On Climate Change report by visiting www.ran.org/bankingonclimatechange2019
This week, For The Wild is joined by Raj Patel, co-author of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, which traces the historical origins of capitalism and the making of “cheapness.” Jason W. Moore and Raj write, “Cheap is a strategy, a practice, a violence that mobilizes all kinds of work—human and animal, botanical and geological—with as little compensation as possible.” The cheapness that marks our everyday experiences and transactions in a capitalist world isn’t natural or inevitable; rather, cheapness arises as a particular historical and sociocultural ideology, one that has been used to sustain the capitalist machine and its violences. Unearthing the true cost of cheapness, Raj dives into questions of justice and reparations for the land, labor, and lives made “disposable” under capitalism.
Raj Patel is an award-winning writer, activist and academic. He is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and a Senior Research Associate at the Unit for the Humanities at the university currently known as Rhodes University (UHURU), South Africa. He has degrees from the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cornell University, has worked for the World Bank and WTO, and protested against them around the world. Raj co-taught the 2014 Edible Education class at UC Berkeley with Michael Pollan. In 2016 he was recognized with a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award. He has testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US House Financial Services Committee and was an Advisor to Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.Together, Raj and Ayana discuss cheapness in relation to the prison industrial complex, the invisibility of domestic labor and care work, the fallacies of fair trade, and the enclosure of the commons. How does modern-day cheapness deny collective fulfillment in our work and create a void of connection in our communities? What forms of recognition, reparations, and redistribution are urgently needed for justice and reinvestment in the sacred? As the commodification and devaluation of life plunges us deeper into ecological crisis, may we awaken to the truth that cheapness can’t last forever. ♫Music by Lea Thomas
– RAJ’s REFERENCES & RECOMMENDATIONS – A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things by Jason W. Moore and Raj Patel Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Sylvia Federici Movements: La Via Campesina/International Peasant’s Movement, Black Lives Matter, Native Lives Matter, Leap, and Idle No More (http://www.idlenomore.ca/)
– MORE BOOKS BY RAJ – Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine
Across so-called North America, pine forests are rapidly changing as southern pine beetles expand into areas they would have otherwise never known. Our guest this week, Corey Lesk not only explains the phenomena of migrating southern pine beetles and their drastic impact on pine forest communities but also directly links this change as a by-product of our rampant consumerism and capitalist system. The southern pine beetle is often noted as one of the most destructive forest insects, as they parasitically kill off their tree hosts by suspending nutrient flow. How are pine deeply enmeshed in their forest communities and what might it mean if we lost them en masse due to southern pine beetle expansion? How is the southern pine beetle also an objective example of resilience and opportunity under changing climate regimes?
Corey Lesk is a PhD student in Earth and Environmental Science at Columbia University in New York. He works on the implications of extreme weather and climate change on ecosystems and global food production. Recently, he has published research on southern pine beetle expansion into the north due to warming winters. Corey spends summers paddling in the boreal forests of Eeyou Istchee and Mashteuitsh Nistassinan territories in so-called northern Quebec as means to “work on a more immediate and personal relationship” with the ecosystems he would otherwise reduce into mere scientific equation.In this episode, Ayana and Corey discuss the implications of southern pine beetle expansion, how forest structures will shift, the threat to native biodiversity, the importance of cold winters, and how, ultimately, forestry measures are not the solution to a transformation that is propelled by our own short-sightedness in choosing consumerism as the dominant expression of this culture.
♫ Music by Little Wings
About Our Podcast… At For The Wild, we discuss the critical ideas of our time and parlay them into action for the defense and regeneration of natural communities. Key topics include the rediscovery of wild nature, ecological renewal and resistance, and healing from the trauma of individualistic society. We will travel deep into ancient forests, align with the struggles and ways of Earth-based people, and rekindle the mysteries of intuition. We will join today’s brightest visionaries in this momentous work of reimagining a world where humanity can find its way back into the web of life.
The Isle of Éire (Ireland) is rich with stories held by the land, both ancient and modern, laden with fierce culture and colonial violence. Poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama perceives these complex layers of history with acute insights into the lingering impacts of imperialism and sectarianism that have divided Ireland. By acknowledging deeply rooted cultural pain, Pádraig calls for Irish, English, and the rest of us to heal by reckoning with the past and embracing the creative potential held within our differences. Pádraig’s work has been embodied by serving as a leader at Corrymeela, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organization, where disagreement is a meeting ground for togetherness.
In this interview, Pádraig exposes the wounds of colonization, famine, the partition of Ireland, and The Troubles, while illustrating today’s challenges to Irish sovereignty that have resurfaced with Brexit. To Pádraig, land and language form the bedrock of culture, both equally vulnerable to colonization that severs the fabric of communities; language also offers the promise of healing from conflict if we are to revive our connections to the land and to each other. Pádraig Ó Tuama’s work centres around themes of language, religion, conflict and art. Working fluently on the page and with groups of people, Pádraig is a skilled speaker, teacher and group worker. His work has won acclaim in circles of poetry, politics, religion, psychotherapy and conflict analysis.
Enter a poetic journey where the land awaits us beyond the divide of borders, history, and suffering. Ayana and Pádraig explore the language of uncommon belonging; how we must learn from our shame and the danger of forgetting history, the life cycle of violence, the nature of colonial power, the poetic origins of violence embedded in policy, and how to confront the inheritance of privilege. Pádraig reminds us of the real power of story to shape our lives and calls for the revival of the bodily, earthen origins of Irish language.
Music by Peia.
♦ REFERENCES ♦
Pádraig Ó Tuama, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World Pádraig Ó Tuama, The Place Between, chapter in Between Here and There, Tim Carson [ed.] Joseph Liechty, Cecelia Clegg, Moving Beyond Sectarianism: Religion, Conflict and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland Frederick Douglas James Baldwin Joseph Brodzky john a. Powell
♦ POETRY RECOMMENDATIONS FROM PÁDRAIG ♦
MaJoy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings Richard Blanco, How to Love a Country Marie Howe, Magdalene Faisal Mohyuddin, The Displaced Children of Displaced Children Danez Smith, Don’t Call Us Dead
♦ LEARN MORE ♦
Explore Pádraig Ó Tuama’s poetry, prose, and work on his website: http://www.padraigotuama.com
Listen to recordings of Pádraig reading from his poetry collections here: http://www.padraigotuama.com/poetry-audio and on Bandcamp: https://padraigotuama.bandcamp.com
Learn more about Corrymeela’s community and consider supporting their peace and reconciliation work with a donation: https://www.corrymeela.org/donate
The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government, I can not be silent.
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Those sentiments shared by Dr. King fifty years ago about wars abroad continue to ring true both domestically and globally. Today, we focus on our government’s perpetuation of domestic violence via prisons and jails, and the inherent relationship between patriarchy and mass incarceration with music and freedom producer, Richie Reseda. We must recognize that patriarchy does not have to be the foundation of our society, punishment does not mean justice, and everyone’s growth is severely limited under domination and power. So how do we encourage one another to step away from patriarchal notions and identities and step into relations rooted in responsibility and love? How is our so-called justice system enacting trauma on individuals and families? How do we confront these violent systems through organizing and policy change?
Freed from prison in July of 2018, Richie Reseda is a feminist ally, community organizer, recording artist, and founder of the social-impact record label, Question Culture. Success Stories, the anti-patriarchy organization he started while incarcerated was chronicled in the CNN documentary “The Feminist on Cell Block Y.” He changes California prison policy with Initiate Justice, an organization he co-founded in prison.
This week’s conversation between Richie and Ayana continues to examine how harmful patriarchy is to us all, why we must let go of our limited understanding of crime, the geography of prisons, and meaningful and revolutionary organizing in prisons. As we explore another facet of our society’s mass violence problem, we are reminded of the dire need to abolish the carceral state and dismantle patriarchy for once and for all.
♫ Music by Paul Cannon & Lake Mary
♦ ACTION POINTS ♦ * For updates on the Restoring Voting Rights for People on Parole: ACA 6 & AB 646 visit and ways to support, visit https://www.initiatejustice.org/parole-voting-rights-aca6/ * For updates on Eliminating Copayments for Medical & Dental Services: AB 45 and ways to support, visit https://www.initiatejustice.org/eliminate-medical-copays-ab45/ * For updates on Parole Re-Integration Credits: AB 277 and ways to support, visit https://www.initiatejustice.org/parole-re-integration-credits-ab277/ * For updates on Expanding Credit Earning for People Eligible for Youth & Elderly Parole: AB 965 and ways to support, visit https://www.initiatejustice.org/youth-and-elder-parole-prop-57/ * If you have a loved one currently incarcerated, you can sign them up to receive Initiate Justice’s quarterly newsletter https://www.initiatejustice.org/get-involved/ * Donate to Richie’s Program, Success Stories, to help grow their feminist and transformational work https://www.gofundme.com/f/success-stories-program * Donate to Initiate Justice to support their inside-outside organizing strategy as they work towards ending mass incarceration and implementing reforms https://www.initiatejustice.org/donate/ * Follow Richie’s work with Initiate Justice by following them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter https://www.facebook.com/initiatejustice/ https://www.instagram.com/initiatejustice/ https://twitter.com/initiatejustice?lang=en * If you live in California, you can call your Assembly member to help #FreeTheVote: 916-702-8820. Tell them to vote YES on #ACA6 to #FreeTheVote
Climate disaster is unfolding before our eyes every day, and yet banks have poured $1.9 trillion into maintaining and expanding the fossil fuel industry since the Paris Agreement was adopted. These investments prop up a dying trade while destroying our slim chance to stabilize global temperatures at a rise of 1.5°C. Around the world, banks are complicit in funding climate change and violating the rights of Indigenous peoples, humans, and Nature through their direct ties to the most extreme fossil fuel activities, including the tar sands, Arctic drilling, and fracking in the Permian Basin.A global movement of climate activists and First Nations people are demanding accountability and uniting to end greed, with divestment rising as a dynamic tool that disrupts the flow of financing between banks and the relentless fossil fuel machine. Indigenous women have been leading divestment delegations that empower them to meet directly with the financers behind violent extractive projects, building upon the foundational work of Eriel Deranger, Heather Milton Lightning, Melina Laboucan-Massimo and others, who united to pressure the backers behind BP & Shell's oil projects in the tar sands, Arctic and Nigeria. In this sharp-sighted interview, Tara Houska, Ruth Breech, and Ayana reveal the dirty union between the banking and fossil fuel industries, and explore practical and powerful strategies that impact their bottom line. Our guests this week are Ruth Breech and Tara Houska. Ruth is a Senior Campaigner with Rainforest Action Network’s Climate and Energy team. She is working to meet the scale of the global climate crisis through corporate accountability campaigns focused on Chase Bank’s financing of climate change, supporting front line communities impacted by fossil fuel projects and racial justice within the environmental movement. Tara Houska (Couchiching First Nation Anishinaabe) is a tribal attorney, the former National Campaigns Director of Honor the Earth, and a former advisor on Native American affairs to Bernie Sanders. She advocates on behalf of tribal nations at the local and federal levels on a wide range of issues impacting indigenous peoples. She spent six months on the frontlines in North Dakota fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline, and is heavily engaged in the movement to defund fossil fuels and a years-long struggle against Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline. She is a co-founder of Not Your Mascots, a non-profit committed to educating the public about the harms of stereotyping and promoting positive representation of Native Americans in the public sphere.Join us as Tara, Ruth, and Ayana navigate the worlds of man camps and resistance movements, track money trails, meet face to face with European banking leaders, and enter the boardrooms of America’s wealthiest shareholder meetings. Through strategy and story, we will learn how to target the heart of petro-capitalism with our dollars, and reflect on how the end-goals of divestment must lead to a just transition from fossil fuels.
♫ Music by Jordan Moser & Lake Mary
♦ REFERENCES ♦ * Read the complete or summary version of the Banking On Climate Change report by visiting www.ran.org/bankingonclimatechange2019
♦ TIPS FROM RUTH BREECH, RAN ♦ * If you are able to, cut ties with your bank or institutions that are funding fossil fuels, and share your message with others. You can find information about your bank’s investments using the Banking on Climate Change Report Card and by visiting www.fossilbanks.org/#banks
- Write letters and phone your banking manager and regional director to tell them to divest from toxic projects.
♦ ACTION POINTS ♦ * Mazaska Talks is an Indigenous umbrella organization that serves as a networking hub for divestment strategy, and focuses on targeting Enbridge Line 3, Trans Mountain, Keystone XL and Energy East pipelines. Visit their website for in-depth guides how to divest yourself, your community, institutions, and use their resources to spread the word! Visit https://mazaskatalks.org/
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Explore alternatives to corporate banks such as credit unions, local banks, credit cards, and investments: https://www.defunddapl.org/copy-of-alternatives
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Participate in #ShutDownChase or other actions happening in your local cities. Or start up your own divestment campaign in your own community.
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You can support the “Divest, Invest, Protect” campaign to help Indigenous Women’s Delegations defend human and Indigenous rights, and the rights of nature through education, advocacy and action by making a financial donation online at https://www.wecaninternational.org/donate
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Indigenous Climate Action empowers communities and inspires Indigenous peoples to take climate action through gatherings, amplifying voices, creating resources, and supporting Indigenous sovereignty. Consider making a donation to support their work at https://www.indigenousclimateaction.com/donate
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Learn more about the links between banks and fossil fuel projects by visiting Rainforest Action Network’s website, where you can add your voice to the pledge to Stop Chase and similar campaigns. You can also give to the RAN’s Climate Action Fund which provides grants to local groups tackling the root causes of climate change. Visit: https://www.ran.org/issue/climate/
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Take action to Stop Line 3 by donating to Honor the Earth, or directly to the frontlines: https://www.stopline3.org/take-action
- You can also pledge to tell leaders to stop global giveaways for oil, gas and coal companies by visiting http://stopfundingfossils.org/#action
TW/CW: sexual assault, colonial violence, and human trafficking
*This episode references the terminology Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls or MMIWG in accordance with cited statistics and studies. However, settler colonialism, extractive industry, and violence also disproportionately impacts Two Spirit people and ripples out into Indigenous communities at large. Therefore, the terminology of MMIWG has been expanded to include all relatives under MMIWG2S, Missing & Murdered Indigenous People, and Missing & Murdered Indigenous, Women, Girls & LGBTQS.
This week’s episode seeks to shed light on the ongoing, urgent crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls or MMIWG that remains largely invisible in public life and mainstream media. In 2016, The National Crime Information Center reported that there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls, though the US Department of Justice’s federal missing persons database, NamUs, only logged 116 cases. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that murder is the third-leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native women.
These disturbing rates of violence are even higher in areas around pipeline construction and resource extraction projects, which bring an influx of thousands of male workers onto or nearby reservations. The encampment of temporary housing facilities, known as “man camps,” correspond with a surge of violent crime and aggravated assault over which tribal law enforcement does not have jurisdiction to prosecute. Veiled by institutional racism and the lack of data collection, this epidemic and its systematic erasure is part of the ongoing genocide against Indigenous communities and the desecration of their land and sacred sites.
We’re joined this week by two incredibly powerful Indigenous organizers and activists: Rachel Heaton is a member of the Muckleshoot Tribe of Auburn, Washington, a fierce activist, and mother. She traveled to Standing Rock several times to stand alongside water and land protectors and helped form a coalition that successfully persuaded the City of Seattle to divest their 3 billion dollars from Wells Fargo, one of the leading funders of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Rachel co-founded Mazaska Talks, an Indigenous-led organization that offers tools to help others divest their personal finances, cities, and organizations from Wall Street banks funding the desecration of Mother Earth. Recognized nationally for her work on Native issues, Roxanne White is Yakama and Nez Perce and serves as the Indigenous Outreach Coordinator for Innovations Human Trafficking Collaborative in Olympia, Washington. Inspired by the tragic loss of her auntie, she works to amplify the voices of MMIWG across North America, providing advocacy and support for families with missing and murdered relatives. As a survivor of human trafficking, domestic violence, childhood abduction, and sexual abuse, Roxanne draws on her personal experience to empower and support other trauma survivors.
In this episode, Rachel and Roxanne share their experiences from the frontlines of resistance and call out the toxic culture of patriarchy and settler colonialism that underpins how we navigate issues of land, money, and resource extraction. Together, they discuss the complexity of jurisdictional issues on reservations, the need for free, prior, and informed consent, and potential paths towards justice, healing, and reconciliation. Those impacted by missing or murdered relatives, friends, and community members should not have to rely on hashtags to make their voices heard and seek justice. Let Rachel and Roxanne’s words move you to action; we must demand better from our elected leaders, our banks, the media, one another, and ourselves.
♫ Music by Cary Morin, Justin Crawmer
Since her 1985 essay, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” scholar Donna Haraway has transformed how theorists, academics, and artists think about humans’ deep and entangled relationships with technology, beyond-human kin, and each another. We know that our planetary community is intimately linked, though, as Donna writes, “[Certain dualisms] have all been systemic to the logics and practices of domination of women, people of colour, nature, workers, animals — in short, domination of all constituted as others, whose task is to mirror the self.“ Through an ongoing practice of thoughtful and curious investigation, Donna continues to unravels the myth of human exceptionalism, the hyper individualism of capitalist culture and Western traditions, and the rigid binaries we so often construct between the self and others.
Attending to the intersection of biology, culture and politics, Donna Haraway is a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California Santa Cruz. She earned her PhD in Biology at Yale in 1972 and writes and teaches in science and technology studies, feminist theory, and multispecies studies. At UCSC, she is an active participant in the Science and Justice Research Center and Center for Creative Ecologies and has served as a thesis adviser for over 60 doctoral students. Haraway’s most recent works include Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene; a feature-length film by Fabrizio Terravova, titled Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival; and Making Kin Not Population, a publication co-edited with Adele Clarke that addresses questions of human numbers, feminist anti-racist reproductive and environmental justice, and multispecies flourishing.
Ayana and Donna’s fascinating conversation this week winds through topics like the reclamation of truth and “situated knowledges,” the importance of mourning with others, the etymology of “Anthropocene,” the place of forgiveness in movement building, and the urgency of making non-natal kin. Donna invites us to wander in the colorful worlds of science fiction, play with story, and dig through the compost pile, offering up powerful tools and practices needed for humans and nonhumans alike to “live and die well together” on this earth. With spirit and bold defiance, Donna leaves us with a resounding message:
Show up and stay with the trouble! ♫ Music by Jeremy Harris
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Pua Case, initially aired in December of 2017. In the past two and a half weeks we have seen the powerful swelling of protectors across the globe in reverence for Mauna a Wākea. On July 15, 2019 construction for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) was scheduled to begin. In response, eight protectors chained themselves to a cattle guard in the early morning to prevent equipment vehicles from accessing the Mauna. No arrests were made until July 17, 2019, when DLNR officers arrested 38 people, most of whom were elders. Following the arrests, the Governor of Hawaii declared a state of emergency, allowing for the deployment of the National Guard. Since then, the National Guard has been called off and interisland police troops have been sent home, but Governor Ige and TMT International Observatory have both stated that they have no intent to halt the construction.
What is taking place on Mauna a Wākea is about so much more than the construction of the TMT. It is in response to the 50 years of serious mismanagement of Mauna a Wākea by its occupiers. It is in response to the proposed two 5,000 gallon tanks of chemical and human waste that would be stored below ground, above waters aquifers and on ancestral burial grounds, should the TMT be built. It is about the ways in which colonial science condones the use of police force in the name of research and the grave impacts that research protocol and infrastructure have on communities. And most importantly, it is in response to decades of colonial rule where Kanaka ‘Ōiwi have been silenced while settler-colonists and U.S. interests have exploited people, culture, and resources for private profit.
We do not need to “understand the advent of the universe” through an 18-foot story tall telescope. In fact, when it comes to the TMT, our personal opinions do not matter. We simply must recognize Indigenous sovereignty in action. This week we rebroadcast Pua Case’s interview in honor of the heart of a mountain and the rising of a Nation.
♫ Music by Hawane Rios & Mike Wall
♦ ACTION POINTS ♦ * Contact both Governor Ige and Mayor Kim. As of last week, Governor Ige announced that he has asked Hawaii County Mayor Kim to take over both county and state efforts to reach an agreement, it is imperative that we constantly remind Governor Ige and Mayor Kim of the violence that TMT will perpetuate. Governor Ige Phone: ☎ (808) 586-0034 Fax: (808) 586-0006 Mayor Kim Hilo: Hawai‘i County Building 25 Aupuni St., Hilo, Hawai‘i 96720 Tel: (808) 961-8211 * Submit an official comment on Mauna Kea via the Governor’s website at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd0IM0Dm_e0ywkAy_aEhVLVQ2tJaOA-NBGRiOoKfbUQ8SXc0Q/viewform * Sign the petition demanding “The Immediate Halt to the Construction of the TMT telescope on Mauna Kea” https://www.change.org/p/gordon-and-betty-moore-foundation-the-immediate-halt-to-the-construction-of-the-tmt-on-mauna-keafbclid=IwAR2g1nLYN3uARYwKVvinNhLGzV1I2PubYbmeOm4tX2fo1LNwTfhn32ZeDho * Email and call those who sit on the Board of Governors for the TMT. The Board of Governors has officially stated that they do not have any intent of backing out. For a list of contact information as well as instructions, and a template to follow, visit https://www.facebook.com/huionamoku/posts/275868543280067 * Donate to the Hawai’i Community Bail Fund – a revolving fund that is currently allocating funds to kia’i (protectors). https://hawaiicommunitybailfund.org/ * Donate to HULI to support frontline action like non-violence direct action training, frontline signage, and camp logistics. https://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/hulinvda?fbclid=IwAR0IS4UxOpfPIA0cVA1c4merBJUDOjHVRjss079UsOC7tvSWoXhSrBMyTYg * If you have airlines miles with Hawaiian Airlines, you can donate them directly to educators and protectors who are trying to go to Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu https://www.hawaiianairlines.com/my-account/login?ReturnUrl=%2fmy-account%2fhawaiianmiles%2fdonate-miles%2fku-kiai-mauna * Donate to KAHEA’s “Aloha ‘Āina Support Fund,” which goes to both legal and frontline support. http://www.kahea.org/aloha-aina-fund * Donate to Mark Kaniela Ing’s campaign, which is looking to fund the longterm stay of kia’i on the Mauna. https://www.gofundme.com/send-kiai-to-mauna-kea * Donate to Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, an organization legally challenging Governor Ige’s emergency order https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/NHLC * Purchase from the Mauna Medic Healer Hui’s gift registry, https://www.target.com/gift-registry/giftgiverregistryId=4a2262f507f749ad91f74624767463f0&type=GENERIC&occasionType=OTHER&fbclid=IwAR1FmmVGrj1rm_t2PU6Es4olK1g_XlqEcWY0TZEUiBzK8IWYAQGT6Cglmts * Give gratitude to the initial 38 protectors arrested: Walter Ritte, Loretta Ritte, Abel Lui, Liko-O-Kalani Martin, Deborah Lee, Maxine Kahauelio, Kelii Ioane, Raynette Robinson, Marie Alohalani Brown, Kaliko Lehua Kanaele, James Naniole, James Albertini, Richard L. Deleon, Renee Price, Pualani Kanahele, Daniel Li, Patricia Green, William K. Freitas, Tomas Belsky, Ana Kahoopii, Daycia-Dee Chun, Flora Hookano, Desmond Haumea, Linda Leilani Lindsey-Kaapuni, Edleen Peleiholani, Gene Burke, Luana Neff, Carmen Lindsey, Deena Oana-Hurwitz, Wilson Wong, Damian Trask, Mililani Trask, Mahea Kalima, Donna Leong, Haloley Reese, Sharol Awai, John Turalde and Alika Desha. * Send prayers from where you are, here are twelve prayers for Mauna Kea,
https://hewahipaakai.wordpress.com/2019/07/15/twelve-prayers-for-mauna-kea-one-for-every-hour-between-sunrise-and-sunset/?fbclid=IwAR20YVX4zZY0N1APOW0BVANS6vXGYE4H1bbvOYLgnW6nT5FAPoYiNo5ReKo * “Thirty ways to stand for Mauna Kea when you cannot physically stand on Mauna Kea (one way for every meter of the TMT)” https://hewahipaakai.wordpress.com/2019/07/13/thirty-ways-to-stand-for-mauna-kea-when-you-cannot-physically-stand-on-mauna-kea-one-way-for-every-meter-of-the-tmt/?fbclid=IwAR0rQWpigJqjhTqMbDSsQujkksF4SIGAXi1dFEq91DQwIpcNjqbIBtFTnkU * Explore the Decolonizing Science Reading List https://medium.com/@chanda/decolonising-science-reading-list-339fb773d51f#.om5w2ivfq * To stay up to date on current events via Facebook, you can follow https://www.facebook.com/actionsformaunakea/ https://www.facebook.com/MaunaMedicHealersHui/ https://www.facebook.com/puuhuluhulu/ https://www.facebook.com/hawaii.unity.liberation/ https://www.facebook.com/Kanaeokana/ https://www.facebook.com/huionamoku/ https://www.facebook.com/kaheaalliance/
With over a quarter of Guam being solely occupied by U.S. military bases, a legacy of nuclear bomb droppings throughout the Marshall Islands, and the military’s lease of Kwajalein Atoll, much of the Pacific remains silently condemned to serve as a sacrifice zone in the name of U.S. empire. The implication of ongoing military presence in the Pacific Islands has profound consequences for all facets of life. However, rarely do we hear about the struggles faced by these communities. On this episode, we are joined by Cinta Kaipat to learn how the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth, are impacted by said militarization. In the Northern Marianas, communities are resisting a future in which aerial bombardments become the norm, where amphibious-assault trainings sever communities from key fishing grounds and decimate aquatic ecosystems, and shelling, artillery, and mortars destroy sacred land.
Cinta M. Kaipat, of Refaluwash-Chamorro descent, is an advocate for Indigenous Refaluwash (Carolinian) rights; preservation of Indigenous cultural practices and beliefs; and promotion of responsible environmental stewardship in the Marianas. Cinta is an attorney, a former Assistant Attorney General; a former Congresswoman; and a former Hearing Officer, as well as a former Deputy Secretary for the Department of Labor. She founded Beautify CNMI!, co-founded PaganWatch, and co-founded the Alternative Zero Coalition, which was newly formed in 2015 to advocate for and protect the Mariana Islands, especially Pagan and Tinian, from irreparable destruction at the hands of the U.S. military and its allies.
Should the military barge through with its plans, Tinian and Pågan could expect to be battered with almost 100,000 grenades, rockets, mortars, and artillery rounds. The fight to save Pagån is critical, should the military occupy the island it would ban the public from living on the island – “coincidentally” during a time in which Indigenous Chamorro and Refaluwash communities have been trying to return to Pågan via agricultural settlements. We share Cinta’s story in the hopes that you take time to both listen to and take action with this community that is facing down the world’s largest military,
♫ Music by Pura Fé & traditional recordings from The Mariana Islands
This May, For The Wild was honored to attend and participate in Lightning in a Bottle. Spaces like LIB hold contagious and revealing energy, they highlight our creative dimensions and exemplify the abundance to be found in remaining present in our body and mind. LIB seeks to celebrate life, create community, practice respect, actively participate, honor the land, and exercise thoughtful citizenship. This year, For The Wild wanted to attend the Compass at LIB to explore how communal experiences can shift narratives and create new paradigms of being in relationship with one another. We were elated to reconnect and support our incredible community of friends, accomplices, collaborators, and previous For The Wild guests.
In this week’s episode, Ayana begins by interviewing Eve Bradford and Isis Indriya, co-directors of the Compass, the educational heart of Lightning in a Bottle. This conversation explores the nature of festival culture, village living, and our inherent desire for community. You will also hear some of our favorite presentations, performances, and panels that covered topics near and dear to For The Wild’s heart, including creativity as the antidote, collective liberation, sovereignty, and ancestral wisdom.
Voices included in this interview are Dr. Vandana Shiva, Desirae Harp & Niria Alicia, Eve Bradford & Isis Indriya, Alixa Garcia & Naima Penniman of Climbing PoeTree, Dee Dominguez, Ayana Young, and Paul Stamets.
♫ Music by The Thrive Choir
Last summer, the world watched as mother Orca, Tahlequah, carried her dead calf on a “tour of grief” for more than 1,000 miles over a 17-day period. The Lummi Nation of the Salish Sea believes that Tahlequah’s display of her dead offspring was an intentional act —not only an act of grieving, but intended to stir an empathetic reaction from those who live above the water. This moment continues to be a profound reminder that we share our place and experience with other beings that bear memory, whose capacity for love and loss mirror our own. It also highlights the uncertainty of the Southern Resident Orca's livelihood, and that of our entire planetary community, if we continue to act with reckless abandon.
In this week’s encore episode, we step back into conversation with Kurt Russo who has worked on environmental issues, land preservation, and treaty rights with The Lummi Nation of the Salish Sea for 40 years. He is also the Executive Director of The Foundation for Indigenous Medicine and the former Director of The Native American Land Conservancy. He holds a BS and MS in Forestry and a Ph.D. in History. Kurt shares with us the Lummi word “Elchnexwtex,” which refers to a time when all life forms were one — when the “black fish,” Orcas, and the “young ones,” Humans, were one. The black fish, "qwe 'lhol mechen,” are known as the people under the sea.
Amidst ongoing colonial violence and resource extraction like the recent approval of the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project, The Lummi Nation continues to follow their sacred duty to protect and defend the sanctity of the lands, waters, and communities of the Salish Sea. This episode is a call to the human heart. The impassioned Kurt Russo, speaking on behalf of the qwe 'lhol mechen, is one that will imprint itself on your memory as a cold hard look into the mirror of humanity.
♫ Music by Monplaisir , Amoeba
♦ ACTION POINTS ♦ + Write to Miami Seaquarium (4400 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, FL 33149) or call at 305-361-5705 and urge Andrew Hertz, President and General Manager of the Seaquarium, to release and repatriate Tokitae to her native waters.
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Call Governor Jay Inslee at 360-902-4111 and the US Army Corps of Engineers at 202-761-0000 to insist they take action to breach the Lower Snake River Dams, which inhibit millions of salmon from spawning and re-populating the Salish Sea every year.
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On a personal note, consider not buying, ordering, or eating Chinook salmon, the main food source of Southern Resident orcas.
♦ REFERENCES ♦ + To support Kurt Russo’s work and the Lummi Nation’s Salish Sea campaign, visit the Sacred Sea at https://sacredsea.org/.
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For additional information, read Lummi Nation Chairman Jay Julius’s op-ed: https://www.bellinghamherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article210826344.html.
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Watch the trailer for a feature-length documentary film that is currently in production about the story of Tokitae: https://vimeo.com/266726774
In this transformative encore interview, Lyla June retraces the origins of oppression of European women, men and earth-based cultures through to recent histories of genocide, inter-generational trauma, and the enduring forces that seek to destroy Indigenous women and the earth. Industrial activities that impact the lands and humans at local levels reverberate at an energetic level that has bred today’s crises of environmental and spiritual disease. In resistance, Lyla and Ayana honor the power of women as constant life-givers who “lead with their hearts”, and the potential to heal the deep fractures in our society through renewing acts of forgiveness and love that affirm our togetherness as a global family.
Lyla June was raised in Taos, New Mexico and is a descendent of Diné (Navajo) and Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) lineages. Her personal mission in life is to grow closer to Creator by learning how to love deeper. In 2012, she graduated with honors from Stanford University with a degree in Environmental Anthropology. She is a musician, public speaker and internationally recognized performance poet. Lyla June ultimately attributes any achievements to Creator who gave her the tools and resources she uses to serve humanity. She currently lives in Diné Tah, the Navajo ancestral homeland which spans what is now called New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona. She spends her free time learning her engendered mother tongue, planting corn, beans and squash and spending time with elders who retain traditional spiritual and ecological knowledge.
Lyla and Ayana discuss themes such as our cultural delusion of disconnection, the perpetuation of abuse through capitalist and colonialist legacies, and the necessity to heal both the oppressed and the oppressor. Lyla’s poetry and song activates our capacity to live our unique expressions of truth, beauty, and connection. Moving from personal experiences of forgiveness, Lyla offers a vision for restoring humanity by uplifting the sacredness of women, and grounding global movements in prayer.
♫ Music by Lyla June & Ed Lee Natay
This past April’s Extinction Rebellion mass movement, acknowledging our climate and ecological emergency reality, successfully encouraged the UK parliament to declare a climate and environment emergency. However, efforts are still required before the government enacts relevant policies. Extinction Rebellion’s mission urges radical changes from the political sphere for citizens to adapt to our climate crisis, drive governments to halt biodiversity loss, reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net 0 by 2025, and influence a citizen’s assembly on our climate and ecological emergency. This nonviolent civil disobedience and economic disruption aims to risk the least amount of resource drain for mass impact and dilemma action from those in power. Liam Geary Baulch, Jasmine Salter, and Linda Doyle are three of Extinction Rebellion’s core members who speak to us about the values, inner workings, and way forward of this soon to be international rebellion.
An artist, activist and one of the key players in launching Extinction Rebellion, Liam Geary Baulch has been creating national actions with the movement since 2018 along with Stop Killing Londoners, one of Rising Up's earlier campaigns on air pollution. We also speak with former architecture student, Jasmine Salter who left school to become involved in climate activism. She is one of the Regenerative Culture co-ordinators who focuses on action well-being and has helped build support networks throughout Extinction Rebellion’s actions. Finally, Linda Doyle joins us. A social psychology master’s graduate, Linda is one of the coordinators of Extinction Rebellion's UK national citizens' assembly team.
In this episode, Ayana speaks to these three key members about creating the high-priority changes required in this time of crisis through nonviolent civil disobedience and economic disruption as the core movement, while using citizen’s assembly to provide a balanced view on our current issues among the people, and stakeholders. They delve into the importance of non-violent movements for climate momentum, navigating public awareness while risking the lowest criminal charge while discussing how regenerative culture and people’s assemblies create inclusive and democratic groups which work against ecofascism and towards a more democracy-focused political agenda.
Music by Compassion Gorilla, Iskwé, alchemaná
The crises of cosmological, mythological and psychological disconnection from nature and from each other may drive us to places of darkness and suffering; and yet there is great potential in that darkness to interact with creative energy. Retracing meaning through archetypal myth offers an opportunity to understand the great challenge of our time to heal the planet from its wounds, and to refresh our dominant worldview with one based on connection. This week, journey into Michael Meade’s expansive vision of awakening ancient meaning for the individual and collective consciousness.
Michael Meade, D.H.L., is a renowned storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology, and psychology. He combines hypnotic storytelling, street-savvy perceptiveness, and spellbinding interpretations of ancient myths with a deep knowledge of cross-cultural rituals. He is the author of The Genius Myth, Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of The Soul, Why the World Doesn’t End, The Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of the Soul and editor, with James Hillman and Robert Bly, of Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart. Meade is the founder of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a nonprofit network of artists, activists, and community builders that encourages greater understanding between diverse peoples.
Music by Izaak Opatz
In our ever interconnected world, it feels near impossible to extricate ourselves from the harmful systems and oppressive structures that we seek to dismantle. The sheer scale and far-reaching consequences of our global economies, food systems, and industries raise challenging questions around individual impact and personal responsibility. How can we find agency and power by taking meaningful action steps in our own lives, while also grounding our work and movements in structural transformation and systemic healing? On this episode, adventurer, activist, and humanitarian Rob Greenfield invites us to sit in the complexity of this question, as we discuss the beauty and difficulty of living a conscious, sustainable life in 2019.
Rob has dedicated his life to creating a more sustainable and just world, embarking on extreme adventures and activism campaigns to bring attention to important global issues and inspire change. He is the creator of The Food Waste Fiasco, a campaign that strives to end food waste and hunger and has cycled across the USA three times on a bamboo bicycle to bring attention to sustainability issues. Rob’s current project, Food Freedom (http://robgreenfield.tv/foodfreedomintro), is to grow and forage 100% of the food that he eats for an entire year. Rob travels the USA and the world speaking and hosting action days getting people involved and activated in making the world a happier, healthier place for all. He is the host of Free Ride on Discovery Channel, the author of Dude Making a Difference, and has spoken at over 130 events in 13 countries. Rob donates 100% of his media income to grassroots nonprofits and has committed to living simply and responsibly for life.
Take a moment to drop in this week and meditate on your own practices as you listen to Rob and Ayana’s insightful reflections on growing food and foraging, reimagining wealth and de-monetizing your life, how to hold and move through hypocrisy, and the importance of addressing intersectionality and structural oppression in this work. Amidst the hopelessness and paralysis we may feel in these times, Rob asks us to imagine how the offering of our one unique and precious life might cascade into a greater shift of consciousness. This week, we stand in the power of this truth: we have agency to embody the change we wish to see in the world and live in right relationship with those around us and the planet.
Music by The Range of Light Wilderness
All too often our conversations around the consolidation of wealth and power in America blindly fixate on the politics of the Right and Trump as the anti-hero archetype. We must deepen our analyses and rethink our movements beyond the two-party divide in order to truly understand and hold accountable the sociopolitical and economic forces that have brought us to such crisis. This week, we are honored to be speak with journalist and author Chris Hedges who guides us through the history and inner workings of neoliberalism, the rise of corporate capitalism, and our descent into fascism.
Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers University, and an ordained Presbyterian minister. He has written 12 books, including the New York Times best-seller “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), which he co-authored with the cartoonist Joe Sacco. His book “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and has sold over 400,000 copies. He writes a weekly column for the website Truthdig and hosts a show, “On Contact,” on RT America. Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries during his work for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.
Among other topics, Ayana and Chris discuss wealth inequality, deindustrialization and the rise of the gig economy, the birth of fascism and Christian fundamentalism, and the fusion of corporate and government power under the reigning umbrella of the security state. Candidly reflecting on his own experiences, Chris implores us to rise up in our power and defend our agency through civil disobedience and mass resistance; from within the political ferment and our resounding rejection of these toxic systems, may we articulate the people’s vision of freedom and set a new path forward.
Music by Charlie Parr
A burgeoning national food movement asks us to think critically about where our food comes from, and yet rarely do we consider where our food actually ends up. Shocking statistics on food waste reveal a broken food system that creates exorbitant waste at every step of the supply chain from our agricultural fields and grocery store dumpsters to our dinner plates: the Guardian, for example, has reported that roughly 50 percent of all produce in the United States is thrown away — 60 million tons (or $160 billion) worth of produce annually, an amount constituting “one third of all foodstuffs.” Mainstream waste management systems are failing us, and our top soil, waters, farmers, ecosystems, and communities are paying the price. Join us this week as we take a dive into the compost pile with Founder and Executive Director of L.A. Compost, Michael Martinez, and explore the transformative power, unexpected collaborations, and rich abundance to be found in the decomposition of food.
A certified Master Gardener and former elementary school teacher, Michael has over 8 years of experience building gardens and compost systems throughout the County of Los Angeles as well as other parts of the country. Michael has grown L.A. Compost from a group of volunteers collecting organics with bikes (30,000 pounds of food scraps in the first few months!) to a decentralized network of community compost hubs that span across the most populated county in the country. Mimicking the soil structure and the underground interconnected web of life, L.A. Compost seeks to bring city residents, municipalities, state assemblies, nonprofits, food recovery agencies, and existing community organizations together in true partnership to reconnect both with our food as well as our fellow neighbors.
In this conversation, Michael and Ayana discuss our widespread culture of disposability, the ecological services and benefits of healthy soil, the beauty of decay and decomposition, the necessity of circular economies, the importance of individual responsibility and community action, and the lessons that compost teaches us about humanity, value, and reverence for what we cannot see. Retelling the story of food from seed to table and back to the earth, Michael ultimately leaves our For the Wild community with a simple and profound message: we need each other. Compost on!
Music by Mountainhood & Carter Lou and One For The Road
To wrap our minds and bodies around creation stories, whether rooted in culture, faith, Earth, or cosmos can be both comforting and overwhelming. Both religious and scientific traditions have long wandered within the realms of this radical reverence for creation. As this week’s guest, Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker, puts it, “Religious traditions help us to rest in the mystery, scientific traditions are pushing towards discovery…but the origin in awe is very compatible.” As we become mired in the minutiae of our individual existence, we must remember ourselves to be anthropocosmic beings. In doing so, we might find great benefit in once again weaving the threads of connectivity between our cosmological and ecological histories. This week’s episode with Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker explores these truths and many more.
Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker is co-director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale where she teaches in an MA program between the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the Divinity School. With John Grim, she organized 10 conferences on World Religions and Ecology at Harvard. Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker is co-author, with Brian Thomas Swimme, of Journey of the Universe and the executive producer of the film with John Grim. She regularly lectures on the significance of this story for the environmental and social challenges of our times. She has published _Ecology and Religion, Worldly Wonder_, and edited Thomas Berry’s books including _Great Work, Evening Thoughts, Sacred Universe,_ and Selected Writings. Tucker and Grim recently published _Thomas Berry: A Biography_ (Columbia University Press, 2019).
Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker’s work explores the intersections between religion, ecology, and academia, and how these intersections are a part of creating structures of change and accountability for our collective planetary community. The conversation between Ayana and Mary Evelyn explores how spiritual traditions can respond to environmental crisis, why it is so valuable to understand the emergence of the early universe as we navigate the Anthropocene, and how we can nourish stories of birth, inheritance, and long lineage between body and universe.
Music by Lauren Cole & Evelyn Frances
To learn more about Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker’s work with the Emerging Earth Community, visit http://emergingearthcommunity.org/
To learn more about the Journey of the Universe Project, visit https://www.journeyoftheuniverse.org/
Now more than ever, we are reminded of the vital importance of creating practices that strengthen and recognize our shared humanity. However, in order to do so, we must examine the systems, ideologies, and actions that have emboldened us to deny humanity in the first place…At the beginning of this week’s episode, john a. powell defines any practice which denies someone’s humanity as an act of “othering.” Both at home and abroad it seems we are witnessing a surge of "othering," whether it is reflected in election cycles, the rise of ethnonationalism, or the pervasiveness of violent acts. We must wonder, how and why do societies rely on the process of othering? And more importantly, how do we move into engagement, organizing, and “bridging?”
john a. powell is Director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society and Professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously the Executive Director at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University and the Institute for Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota. Prior to that john was the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. He is a co-founder of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the boards of several national and international organizations. john led the development of an “opportunity-based” model that connects affordable housing to education, health, health care, and employment and is well-known for his work developing the frameworks of “targeted universalism” and “othering and belonging” to effect equity-based interventions. john has taught at numerous law schools including Harvard and Columbia University. His latest book is Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.
This week’s conversation between john and Ayana explores the frameworks of “othering and belonging” and "targeted universalism," as well as ideologies of supremacy, global dislocation, rethinking citizenship, and lastly, how we can co-create shared visions and practices of humanity that bring us back into belonging.
Music by Ani Difranco
In honor and anticipation of Lightning in a Bottle 2019, For The Wild is encoring one of our favorite episodes from the archive, “Vandana Shiva on the Emancipation of Seed, Water, and Women.” This week, Ayana will join Dr. Vandana Shiva and Paul Stamets as panelists at Lightning in a Bottle. Additionally, For The Wild will screen When Old Growth Ends and Ayana will present on “Wild Revolution” at LIB.
“What is called agriculture today is not agriculture, it is not the culture of the soil, it is not a culture of the land, it is the culture of oil and fossil fuels…” Dr. Vandana Shiva begins this episode by reminding us of the constructs our world is growing within. Many of us remain trapped in the “monoculture of the mind” while contributing to our destruction. We must broaden our understanding and acknowledge that we can create biodiversity while feeding the world and we can work towards addressing climate change while fostering biodiversity, these pursuits are not mutually exclusive.
Dr. Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental thinker and activist. A leader in the International Forum on Globalization. Dr. Shiva won the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award) in 1993. Director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy, she is the author of many books, including _Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply_ and _Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge._ Before becoming an activist, she was one of India’s leading Physicists.
This conversation extends far beyond the realms of biodiversity and agriculture. Dr. Shiva explores how systems of domination have been artificially constructed, the pervasiveness of GMOs, the root of violent agriculture, the importance of seed saving, cultures of violence, economies of care, and the role of women in changing paradigms.
Music by Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Tracy Chapman, and Hemant Chauhan.
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To learn more about seed saving, visit https://www.seedsavers.org/how-to-save-seeds +
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For more information about Lightning in a Bottle 2019, visit https://lightninginabottle.org/ +
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To learn about Ayana’s presentation “Wild Revolution” at Lightning in a Bottle, visit https://lightninginabottle.org/lineup/#/lineup_groupings/learning-culture +
On this week’s episode, Ayana interviews world-renowned photographer James Balog on his newest film, The Human Element, which explores how elements like earth, water, fire, and air are changing due to human impact and interaction. As we recognize dominant culture’s relationship with the planet, we must remind ourselves that over fifty percent of the planet’s land surface has been transformed, approximately nine out of ten people on Earth breathe “high polluted” air, and over forty percent of Americans live in potentially uninhabitable coastal areas. The Human Element seeks to explore this relationship, the power of human activity, and how communities are regionally adjusting and reacting once they discover they are already at the frontlines of climate change. With decades of experience as a “nature photographer,” James candidly speaks of the simultaneous beauty and horror of documenting the Anthropocene, on the complicity of industries like the arts and entertainment in contributing to fossil fuel emissions, and the importance of language and imagery in mobilizing climate momentum. Ayana and James’ conversation reminds us that amongst the staggering statics of planetary change we cannot fall victim to despair, we must acknowledge this as the honesty of our time and learn to move through it.
For 40 years, photographer James Balog has broken new conceptual and artistic ground on one of the most important issues of our era: human modification of nature. An avid mountaineer with a graduate degree in geography and geomorphology, James is equally at home on a Himalayan peak or a whitewater river, the African savannah or polar icecaps. To reveal the impact of climate change, James founded the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) in 2007. It is the most wide-ranging, ground-based, photographic study of glaciers ever conducted. The project was featured in the internationally acclaimed documentary Chasing Ice and in the 2009 PBS/NOVA special Extreme Ice. James is the author of eight books. His images have been collected in dozens of public and private art collections—and extensively published in the world’s magazines, particularly National Geographic. His new film, The Human Element, is an innovative and visually stunning look at how humanity interacts with earth, air, fire, and water.
To learn more about The Human Element and where you can rent or buy the film, visit https://thehumanelementmovie.com
Music by Drugdealer.
https://www.mexicansummer.com/artist/drugdealer/
https://drugdealerband.bandcamp.com/
Lichens make up around eight percent of our planet’s biomass, yet rarely do we pay much attention to these symbiotic, part algae, part fungi organism. On this episode, For The Wild speaks to one of the world’s leading lichenologists, Kerry Kent Knudsen. Ayana’s conversation with Kerry spans the dreamiest of worlds, from the surreal and psychedelic presence of lichens to the magic of creating life post-capitalism. In addition to Kerry’s field-based understanding of lichen, Kerry also speaks to the times we are living in, “just like the butterfly that beats its wings and causes a rainstorm around the other side of the world, we have to embrace the chaos of our lives.” In embracing this chaos, Kerry reminds us that we may very well find creation, bring our magic to fruition, and embody complete unity with reality wherever we may be.
Kerry Kent Knudsen is a mycological taxonomist and lichenologist at the University of Life Sciences in Prague. Kerry founded a lichen herbarium at the University of California at Riverside (UCR) and has published 215 papers and articles on lichens. He is a specialist in the lichen biodiversity of southern California and in the order of Acarosporales, which occur around the world. With his wife Jana Kocourkova, who is also a lichenologist, they have begun a four-year project working on lichen biodiversity in the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico.
If you have ever wondered what constitutes a good lichen habitat, what our understanding of lichens reveal about the value systems we prescribe to, or how to navigate beyond the chaos of today, then this episode is for you. We are reminded that while lichen may have a smaller presence or hold little “value” in utilitarian terms, they still possess ethereal qualities. Other topics Kerry and Ayana cover include the fragility of lichens in changing climates, the invaluable work of citizen scientists, the limitations of science as a “rational” data-driven field, and how the Anthropocene is shaping our understanding of biodiversity and extinction.
Music by The Savage Young Taterbug
adrienne maree brown begins this week’s episode by asking, “If we were not ashamed of our pleasure, what would become possible? If we started to understand that pleasure is something that everyone should have access to, what would become possible?” This week on For The Wild, we are exploring how to embody pleasure in its many forms with adrienne maree brown. Drawing upon Audre Lorde’s seminal publication, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, adrienne maree brown’s latest book, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, reiterates how once we truly know the pleasure of being alive, suffering becomes unimaginable. Above all, pleasure resides in our body, but many of us seem to forget this through lifetimes of social conditioning, performative identities, and the multitude of ways in which capitalism and patriarchy have filtered love and desire through the lens of ownership. Yet, whether we are cognizant of this or not, our pleasure and our liberation remain inextricably bound together.
adrienne maree brown is the author of Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good and co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements. adrienne facilitates social justice and Black liberation through the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, the Detroit Narrative Agency and is part of Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity. She and her sister, Autumn Brown, co-host the How to Survive the End of the World podcast.
This captivating conversation explores how the denial of pleasure contributes to our own oppression, how radical honesty and kindness can transform our relationships, moving through the limitations placed on radical imagination and desire, the importance of pleasure beyond sex, and how our pain and sorrow is a measurement of our pleasure and joy. We hope this conversation inspires you in your own experimentation when it comes to acceptance, desire, and liberated relationships as we collectively pursue sustainable long-term pleasure.
You can purchase Pleasure Activism here, https://www.akpress.org/pleasure-activism.html
Music by
The Boom Booms http://theboombooms.com
JB The First Lady https://www.jbthefirstlady.ca/
Small Town Artillery https://smalltownartillery.com/
Entomologists estimate that there are millions of insect species that remain “unknown” to the scientific world. While official categorization or recognition doesn’t matter much in the way of determining existence or ratifying inherent value, the fact that so little is known about insects highlights the seriousness of potential insect decline, especially given that out of the million or so known species on Earth, insects make up approximately 80 percent of that number. The “insect apocalypse” that is currently unfolding is simultaneously slow and rapid, depending on the time scale one abides. While this decline is recorded at about one to two percent per year, it adds up to a total loss of ten percent biomass over a decade. Should this decline continue or hasten, an ecological collapse will surely ensue. While some argue that not enough is known about this ongoing phenomenon, we do know that insects are declining almost twice as fast as vertebrates, and to not act until we are one hundred percent sure, is both reckless and ignorant. In this week’s episode, Dr. David Wagner reminds us of the fascinating world of insects, the tremendous roles they play, and the possible peril should the insect apocalypse come to fruition.
Dr. David Wagner is an entomologist and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. His research interests are in the biology and evolution of moths and insect conservation. He has published several books on caterpillars – his 2005 guide with Princeton University Press, Caterpillars of Eastern North America: A Guide to Identification and Natural History is in its ninth printing.
In this episode, Ayana and Dr. Wagner discuss insects as biological controls, insect decline in relation to political and economic destabilization, how cultural understandings of insects influence the field of entomology, and the main drivers behind insect decline. It is certainly true that while some people can’t live with insects, we know we can’t live without them…
Music by Santiparro
https://soundcloud.com/santiparro
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Action Points +
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Habitat conservation can happen in your own backyard. You can create habitats for insects by avoiding neat, tidy, and manicured spaces. Instead, considering growing out the grass, leaving areas with natural ground cover, or making deadwood piles. Additionally, plant native species that naturally have easily accessible pollen and nectar, instead of double-flowered plants. Learn what plants are loved by insects, for example, cow parsley attracts many flying insects, milkweed attracts butterflies, and jasmine and honeysuckle are food for moths. Consider planting flowers, trees, and shrubs with overlapping bloom times to support pollinators during the Spring through Fall. For a comprehensive list of plants that are attractive to native pollinators, categorized by your region, you can visit https://www.wildflower.org/collections/
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If you don’t have a garden or yard of your own, you can still create mini-habitats with window flower boxes, potted plants, rooftop gardens, and vertical gardens.
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Reports on insect loss continuously cite our agricultural food system as a main contributing factor in insect decline. The scale at which pesticides and fertilizers are used on monocultures is not conducive to sustaining ecological diversity and wellbeing. Recent publications have suggested that global and comprehensive reduction in pesticide use could prevent the extinction “of over forty percent of the world’s insect population.” If you have the means to make choices regarding your diet, directly consider your eating habits and where your food is coming from. Is your dollar supporting agricultural giants who push the use of pesticides? Another way to resist pesticide use is to understand how your community is using pesticides. Consider speaking with your local officials about eliminating their use. For a list of cities in the United States that have passed different municipal ordinances or city resolutions regarding the banning of Glyphosate, for example, you can visit https://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/toxic-tort-law/monsanto-roundup-lawsuit/where-is-glyphosate-banned/
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As always, think about your insect kin when you consume. Support local farmers who are growing food that is free from synthetic pesticides, avoid processed foods that contain GMO ingredients, and considering purchasing organic cotton when possible as conventional cotton cultivation is responsible for an enormous consumption of pesticides. Always ask yourself if the item you are buying is worth the costs paid by our more than human kin.
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Remember that your individual actions have tremendous impacts on insect communities, for example, the lights we leave on outside at night attract insects that would otherwise not show up, positioning them as easy prey. Additionally, light pollution at an urban scale interferes with nocturnal insects orientation. Honor the night!
The topic of wildlife crime is inherently complex, and more often than not, dominant narratives fail to draw out the ever-present nuances regarding poaching and illegal trafficking. Regardless, we cannot ignore the fact that wildlife crime is the world’s fourth largest criminal enterprise. Over a century ago, the world’s tiger population exceeded one hundred thousand. Today, there are less than four thousand, meaning that we have lost ninety-seven percent of the world’s tiger population in just one century. Yet again we are reminded of the atrocities unfolding under a supremacist, capitalist, global market that supports the rapid and senseless killing of living beings for the mere commodification of their “parts.”
This week on the program Andrea Crosta joins Ayana in a conversation around wildlife crime. Andrea is all too familiar with dominant narratives that misplace fixation, assume guilt incorrectly, or aid in sweeping generalization that disregard cultural sensitivity and further western imposition associated with wildlife crime. Ayana and Andrea discuss a myriad of topics ranging from the importance of an intelligence-led approach to combating wildlife crime, how wildlife crime impacts local and global economies, the geography of trafficking, the socio-political realities that necessitate poaching and trafficking, and the grave danger posed by an increased militarization of conservation.
Andrea Crosta has over 30 years of experience in conservation projects around the world and in a parallel professional career, has been working for over 18 years as an international consultant to companies and governmental agencies on high-end security technologies and services, homeland security, anti-piracy, and risk management. Andrea now applies this unique knowledge to conservation and wildlife protection as the Executive Director and co-founder of Elephant Action League, an intelligence-led non-profit organization focused on fighting wildlife crime. Andrea is also the creator and project manager of WildLeaks, the first whistleblower initiative dedicated to wildlife crime. Andrea is among the main protagonists of the documentaries ‘The Ivory Game’ and ‘Sea of Shadows,’ which recently won the Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival 2019.
Music by Y La Bamba
http://www.ylabamba.com/
This week on the podcast we present an Encore episode Part 1 & 2 of a staff favorite from the For The Wild archives.
Diana Beresford-Kroeger is a one-woman force of regeneration of the biosphere! A botanist, medical biochemist and self-defined "renegade scientist," she brings together ethnobotany, horticulture, spirituality and alternative medicine to reveal a path toward better stewardship of the natural world. Orphaned in Ireland in her youth, Diana was educated by elders who instructed her in the Brehon knowledge of plants and nature. Told she was the last child of ancient Ireland and told to one day bring this knowledge to a troubled future, Diana has done exactly that. Her Bioplan is an ambitious plan encouraging ordinary people to develop a new relationship with nature, to join together to replant the global forest. Her books include: The Sweetness of a Simple Life, The Global Forest, Arboretum Borealis, Arboretum America, and A Garden for Life. Diana Beresford-Kroeger was inducted as a Wings WorldQuest fellow in 2010 and named one of Utne reader’s World Visionaries for 2011. A delightful meander into the deep knowledge of the forest! How do trees communicate with one another and act for the common good? Why are oceans utterly dependent on healthy forests? How would a regenerative society meet its resource needs? What do children know that their parents have forgotten?
Learn more about Diana's amazing upcoming film The Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees at http://dianasjourney.com
Most of us know that our current economy does not play in our favor...When we choose to monetize all facets of society we disintegrate community and starve ourselves of our basic emotional and spiritual needs through the commodification of our values. So why do we keep fueling an economic system of domination, deception, and separation when very few of us would be brazen enough to proclaim that we are supported by it?
In this week’s conversation, Charles Eisenstein and Ian MacKenzie join Ayana to discuss what features are inherently built into this money system, how economics does not have to be a merciless system, the importance of universal basic income, what it looks like to step into gift giving, and how we can hold healthy boundaries in the process.
Charles Eisenstein is a teacher, speaker, and writer focusing on themes of civilization, consciousness, money, and human cultural evolution. Charles’ books cover much ground: Climate: A New Story makes a case for a wholesale reimagining of the framing, tactics, and goals we employ in our journey to heal from ecological destruction. The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible, offers a highly distilled exposition of our society’s transition in its deep stories. Sacred Economics explores the transition as it applies to the world of money, economy, and gift and The Ascent of Humanity traces multiple crises — ecological, medical, educational, political, and more — to a common origin.
Ian Mackenzie is a filmmaker and writer, who has spent over a decade exploring and amplifying the seeds of emergent culture. His films include Occupy Love (co-produced with director Velcrow Ripper), and more recently Amplify Her, which follows the rise of women in the electronic music scene). His focus covers a range of diverse topics & subjects, though all fall under his mission of exploring the intersection of eros, emergence, and village.
So many of us are aching for gift giving in our personal lives but remain challenged by the mindset of existential scarcity. Let this conversation be a vessel to guide you in the age of transition, in an age where we must simultaneously starve a system that is not serving us while creating our own nourishment and sustainability on the periphery of crisis. Charles and Ian encourage us to step more into the “gift” to radically transform our selves, community, and the systems we build.
Music by Skeppet
https://skeppet.bandcamp.com/music
http://www.notnotfun.com/posts/skeppet-phase-3-lp/
Sacred Economics Film
Our planet is covered in over five million square miles of ice, yet most of us have not encountered the intimacy and majesty of a glacier in person. We have not listened to their songs nor witnessed their shades of white and blue in clarity and opacity. In fact, most of us could only tell a single story around glacial beings – that they are disappearing. Our episode with Dr. M Jackson gives us a moment to pause and wonder, what other stories and experiences exist below this dominant story? What lives do glaciers live beyond their relationship to climate change?
Dr. M Jackson is a geographer and glaciologist, National Geographic Society Explorer, TED Fellow, three-time U.S. Fulbright Scholar, and author of the recently released book, The Secret Lives of Glaciers. M earned a doctorate from the University of Oregon in geography and glaciology, where she examined how climate change transformed people and glacier communities in Iceland. M serves as an Arctic Expert for the National Geographic Society, holds a Masters of Science degree from the University of Montana, and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zambia. She’s worked for over a decade in the Arctic chronicling climate change and communities, guiding backcountry trips and exploring glacial systems. Her 2015 memoir While Glaciers Slept: Being Human in a Time of Climate Change weaves together the parallel stories of what happens when the climates of a family and a planet change. M writes about glaciers and people worldwide and lives outside of Eugene, Oregon.
In this conversation with Ayana and Dr. Jackson, we learn how glacial retreat is impacting communities, the connection between extractive tourism, extractive science, and glaciers, why it matters that the majority of glaciology has been produced by white men, and the ways in which polar and mountain explorations have furthered colonial, capitalist, and imperialist projects. Much of this episode’s conversation is deeply grounded in the topic of Dr. M’s latest book, The Secret Lives of Glaciers, which explores the heartfelt connections between people, place, and ice.
Music by Fountainsun
https://fountainsun.com/
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Action Points +
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Support M Jackson’s ongoing research and pick up a copy of her recently released book, The Secret Lives of Glaciers, to learn more about the complex story of glaciers.
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Take a moment to connect, observe, and sit with the environment around you — whether your neighborhood garden, local watershed, or forested landscapes. Ask yourself what relationships with the natural world you may want to tend.
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Make an effort to spark conversations with your friends, family members, co-workers, and the wider community about our shifting environment and planetary crisis.
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Reflect on your own individual stakes, experiences, and passions in this time of socio-ecological transformation. For what or whom do you feel called to be an advocate? How might you step into more active positions and allyship roles to uplift these often silenced voices?
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Deepen your commitment to seek out alternative histories, narratives, and visions of environmental science and climate change that fall outside of the traditional Western paradigm.
In this time of revelation and disintegration, we are being required to come together in order to navigate the present and create the future. However, more often than not, coming together is not enough – we must be willing to work through our preconditioning, conflict, and imperfections to holistically recognize an authentic vision and set of values. In order for our social movements to be the strongest they can be and successfully guide us through turbulent times, we must tend the needs of both the individual and the group. This week, Joshua Kahn, BJ Star, and Michael Strom from The Wildfire Project join Ayana in a conversation on toxic movement culture, thinking about power structurally, generative conflict, self-limitations, and collective liberation as social movements adapt to ever changing terrain.
“The Wildfire Project strengthens movements for ecological, racial, and economic justice by supporting organizations to transform, and spread a thriving culture: resilient in the face of changing terrain; grounded in history, vision, and strategy; connected to a “north star” bigger than themselves; building across identity; and prepared to grow and win. We do this through deep facilitation using democratic, experiential methods: fusing political education and skills training with personal and group transformation in a curriculum tailored to specific needs of grassroots activism. Wildfire develops leadership of frontline groups, and maintains long-term support with the communities with which it works.”
Whether or not you are directly engaged in movement building or are an organizer, this is an episode you will not want to miss. Joshua, BJ, and Michael weave strategy on handling disappointment and harm, stepping into our power, and the politics of collapse and rebirth. We hope you will set aside some time this week for yourself to tune in and be reminded of the multitudes of ways in which we can fruitfully embody this life and the many complexities and contradictions that color our ways of knowing and engagement.
Music by The Peace Poets and The Wildfire Project
- To learn more about how members of activist organizations can apply to become a Wildfire Partner, visit https://www.wildfireproject.org/ +
This week’s episode is a special live recording from our time at The Wild & Scenic Film Festival in January of 2019. We were delighted to join Ada Recinos of EcoViva in a conversation around the connections between ecosystem restoration, political and climate resilience, and food sovereignty in times of extreme instability.
The United States intrusion in Central and South America has caused decades of generational trauma while ballooning the power and overreach of corporations and outside interests. In addition to centuries of exploitation dating back to Spanish colonization, Central America is now being forced to navigate some of the most severe impacts of climate change and global warming. 2018 was one of the worst years for drought in the “Dry Corridor” of Central America, with certain communities experiencing up to one hundred percent crop failure. Amidst these changes, it has become clear that communities must begin strategizing in order to sustain resiliency. In this conversation, Ada shares how many land-based communities in El Salvador are finding solutions to revitalizing and sustaining food supplies by restoring mangrove forests, diversifying small-scale agricultural practices, and resisting transnational companies like Monsanto and their GMO seeds – which threaten both food sovereignty and community.
Ada Recinos was born and raised in Los Angeles to parents who emigrated from El Salvador. She moved to Richmond after graduating from UCSC with a degree in Global Information and Social Enterprise Studies. Ada served as a Richmond City Councilor from 2017 to 2019, after serving nearly two years as a Human Rights and Human Relations Commissioner. She is currently the Communications and Outreach Manager for EcoViva, a non-profit that supports community-led initiatives and social justice movements for a sustainable future in Central America. Ada’s work has centered on organizing immigrants, renters, and women to advocate for their rights & progressive legislation.
This powerful conversation spans many topics, from the deep wounds of violence and war to the pertinence of moving beyond sensational rhetoric around caravans and the border wall. Ada reminds us that food sovereignty is at the foundation of liberation and thriving communities. We need to invest in climate resilience, we need leaders who acknowledge that climate change is not only real but is happening now, and we need to confront the ugly mentality of anti-immigrant sentiment that continues to spread pervasively in all sectors of society around the globe. No longer can we allow our understanding of who is granted survival to be dictated by superficial understandings of criminality versus legality or who is born on what side of an ultimately meaningless border.
Music by Dirty Birds & Myrra Rós Þrastardóttir https://www.facebook.com/myrrarosmusic/ https://www.thedirtybirdband.com/
- Action Points +
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Learn more and support EcoViva’s community-led initiatives by visiting https://ecoviva.org/
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Seeking asylum is a human right and it is up to all of us to ensure that our government upholds this right amidst distractions of a manufactured “national emergency.” Call your Senators and Representatives and remind them of the deaths of Jakelin Maquin, Felipe Gomez Alonzo, Roxsana Hernandez, Mariee Juarez, and Claudia Gonzalez. Remind them that the Department of Health and Human Services has released documents showing that thousands of migrant youth have suffered sexual abuse while in U.S. custody under the jurisdiction of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. You can call 1-844-872-0234 to be immediately connected with your representative by entering your zip code. Remind them of the continuous atrocities that are happening at the border and in for-profit detention centers across the country.
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Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase financially benefit off of the criminalization and incarceration of immigrants at for-profit detention centers – you can express your outrage by visiting the following link, https://www.familiesbelongtogether.org/break-up-with-private-prisons/
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While water scarcity in El Salvador might feel far from home, remember that more often than not communities across Central and South America are fighting for their water rights because of Big Business’ water usage. The municipality of Nejapa, in San Salvador, El Salvador is home to La Constancia, an industrial company and supplier that use’s the town’s aquifer to fill up cartons of Coca-Cola. When you purchase products owned by Nestlé and Coca-Cola you are funding corporations that are in the water business and are often unlawfully extracting water from aquifers and purchasing up water sources around the world. Take a stand against water privatization by boycotting Nestlé and Coca-Cola and their ownership of companies like Perrier, Honest Tea, Smart Water, S. Pellegrino, and Odwalla.
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Did you know that on December 20, 2018 the USDA announced the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard? While the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture claims that this Standard increases transparency, what it actually does is drop all usage of the word GMO on labeling and substitutes with the term bioengineer. In addition, many GMO foods and GMO derived products would have access to legal loopholes preventing them from being labeled. Reaffirm your commitment to avoid buying, selling, growing, or investing in Monsanto and other GMO companies.
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Ada emphasizes the importance of having policy makers in office who recognize climate change and its impact on migration. Keep this in mind as we approach the 2020 elections. If you can vote, vote. https://ecoviva.org/
Community-Led Initiatives for a Sustainable Future https://www.familiesbelongtogether.org/break-up-with-private-prisons/
Break Up with Private Prisons! - Families Belong Together
In January 2019, For The Wild was honored to attend the annual Sundance Film Festival, facilitating our social justice and environmental film, press junket liaising with filmmakers and other amazing influential folks who work with visual storytelling to share about the critical issues of our time. We were elated to speak with these creative visionaries covering so many of the topics that are near and dear to For The Wild’s heart, including: endangered species, immigrants’ rights, youth activism, ethical storytelling, decolonization, the prison industrial complex, environmental activism, and cultural protection, to name a few.
For The Wild recognizes the importance of independent media. Media has the power to obstruct or to grow our imaginations. What we consume through media, can either remind us of what is important, exercise our emotions, and inspire us or it can foster a culture of divisiveness and mistrust, feeding our insecurities and fears.
Independent media, cultural work, and the arts are vital resources in navigating this world and creating the next, and we approached our time at Sundance with healthy curiosity. We wanted to know if it's possible for films to challenge corporate ideology in high profile spaces. We wondered which topics are receiving a lot of airplay, and which are being left out? We examined who readily gets to share their stories. And we inquired, how are artists challenging us, and how do we, as an audience, need to challenge them?
We are committed to supporting independent media and to shining a light on the power of storytelling. Sundance provided a platform for so many incredible films that are bearing witness to this critical time. For The Wild is thankful for these stories and we offer this episode as an opportunity to take a peek into this world, to learn through these powerful narratives, and hopefully to inspire you to watch these films when they come to a theater near you.
Films covered in this interview include; Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, The Infiltrators, Sea of Shadows, Advocate, Words from a Bear, Merata: How Mum Decolonized the Screen, and Tigerland. Additionally, Ayana shared time with Shari Frilot, Chief Curator of New Frontier at Sundance.
Music by
RF Shannon https://rfshannonmusic.bandcamp.com Fountainsun https://fountainsun.com
This week, Eriel Tchekwie Deranger joins us in a conversation around the recent developments regarding TransCanada’s LNG Pipeline proposal on Wet’suwet’en Territory. It is our hope that this episode provides some historical context to the actions of corporations and colonizers regarding the 4.7 billion dollar pipeline project. Beyond the headlines, we think it is important to have a broad understanding of what Unist’ot’en Camp represents, the ongoing history of surveillance faced by frontline protectors, how policy is used as a tool of assimilation, and the illegality of the actions taken by Canada’s federal and provincial governments. Unist’ot’en People’s reoccupation of their traditional territories cannot solely be understood in relation to infrastructure development – it must also be understood as a means to decolonize and return to the land, to connect with culture and identity, and revitalize forms of governance that seek to truly govern and lead, not to oppress and exploit.
Eriel Tchekwie Deranger is a Denesuline Indigenous activist, member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, and the Executive Director and co-founder of Indigenous Climate Action. Eriel has spent over 6 years building-up the highly successful international Indigenous Tar Sands campaign and has become widely known as one of the world’s most effective organizers and coalition builders to defend Indigenous people’s rights locally, nationally and globally.
This episode reminds us that corporate interests and colonial interests have always been deeply intertwined. Eriel articulates how narratives that surround the developments at Unist’ot’en Camp show how colonization has deeply warped our perspective on who get labeled the heroes and villains. While the state continues to prioritize the protection and expansion of infrastructure over people, we must encourage each other to see with clear vision where the true threat lies. Pipelines and policy are threatening biodiversity, both cultural and biological, across our planet. What is happening now on Wet’suwet’en/Gidumt’en territory is not an isolated incident, but rather a magnified example of what is unfolding amongst all Indigenous communities that are exercising their sovereignty, protecting the land, and taking a stand against exacerbating climate crisis and resource extraction.
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ACTION POINTS + Unist’ot’en Camp is calling for solidarity action to stop any further development of pipelines on Wet’suwet’en territory. Here is a list of actions we can take to let Canadian government officials know that what is transpiring is not only immoral but illegal as well.
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If you live in so-called Canada, Unist’ot’en Camp is calling for supporters to occupy the offices of Canada’s Members of the Legislative Assembly and Members of Parliament. If you live outside of the country, you can send an email to the provincial government of B.C. and the federal government expressing your outrage. For more information on whom to direct your email to and what to include, visit https://actions.sumofus.org/a/no-pipelines-through-unis-to-ten-lands
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Call a key government Minister to demand that they rescind the previously approved permits, for guidelines on what to say and to learn who you will be speaking to, visit https://act.leadnow.ca/call-federal-support-wetsuweten/
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Donate. By donating directly your contributions ensure that supporters on the land have medical and food supplies. You can make a one-time donation, a monthly donation, or donate directly to the Unist’ot’en Camp Legal fund by visiting http://unistoten.camp/support-us/donate/
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Host a fundraiser to help support the long-term expenses of sustaining Unist’ot’en Camp. For detailed guidelines on how to organize a fundraiser to benefit Unist’ot’en Camp, visit http://unistoten.camp/fundraiserprotocols/
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Further educate yourself by reading Unist’ot’en Camp’s guidelines and resources on allyship and solidarity as well as their zine “Heal the people, Heal the land” by visiting http://unistoten.camp/no-pipelines/resources/allyship/ and http://unistoten.camp/come-to-camp/healing/
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To find actions and events in solidarity near you, visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/SupportWetsuweten/
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If you are interested in learning more about Unist’ot’en’s “Call to Action” or physically volunteering at the camp, you can visit the following resources:
http://unistoten.camp/come-to-camp/call-to-action/ https://unistoten.camp/come-to-camp/preparing-for-your-visit/ https://unistoten.camp/come-to-camp/camp-registration/
What are the limitations of the body you occupy? At what point do you begin to break down physically, emotionally, and psychologically? The Amazon Rainforest, like any other living body, can only handle so much…
Dr. Carlos Nobre has dedicated many years in the pursuit of understanding the Amazon Rainforest’s tipping point in relation to the negative synergies of climate change, deforestation, drought, and rampant fire abuse. We cannot feign ignorance about the crossroads our planetary community is just finally willing to recognize. We know that an increase of just a few degrees Celsius, or mass deforestation above forty percent in Amazonia, will lead to this aforementioned tipping point. We also know that in the last sixty years, the region has already warmed by one degree Celsius and deforestation has reached twenty percent in the Amazon. What does it mean that we could very well be responsible for the savannization of an entire rainforest, the radical dismembering of the Amazon’s body?
Dr. Carlos Nobre is currently Science Director of the Research Project “National Institute of Science and Technology for Climate Change”, chair of the Brazilian Panel on Climate Change, and the creator of Brazil’s National Center for Monitoring and Alerts of Natural Disasters. Dr. Nobre chaired the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia, an international research initiative designed to create the new knowledge needed to understand the climatic, ecological, biogeochemical, and hydrological functioning of Amazonia, the impact of land use and climate changes on these functions, and the interactions between Amazonia and the Earth system. He has also been a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and was a member of the UN Secretary-General Scientific Advisory Board for Global Sustainability. As a climate and earth systems scientist, his work focuses on the Amazon and its impacts on the Earth system, climate modeling, and global environmental change.
During a time in which environmental crisis has become synonymous with climate change, Dr. Nobre clarifies the complexities surrounding the driving factors of deforestation and savannization. Additionally, Ayana and Dr. Nobre discuss the margins of safety that must be implemented, the simultaneous rise of nationalism and the ramifications of climate change, and the possibility of a third way outside the realms of the preservation/consumption binary when it comes to Amazonia.
Music by Les Halles https://halles.bandcamp.com Booking– andrew@phantom-limb.co.uk
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge provides calving grounds to Porcupine Caribou and beluga whales, a place of interlude for hundreds of thousands of migrating birds, denning grounds for polar bears, and sanctuary for over fifteen thousand migrating bowhead whales during the spring and fall. However popular, and political, depictions of the Arctic rarely draw upon the diversity of its vast tundra, wetland, mountain, and forest regions. Instead we are imprinted with a false depiction of these latitudes as one mere stretch of vast, barren, and icy terrain. When we forget the Arctic lives as a birthing ground and a place rich in culture, we allow the hands of petro-capitalism to tighten their grasp around this immense and incredibly biodiverse ecosystem…
In the past thirty years, there have been fifty attempts to open the Refuge to drilling. What does it say about our civilization that we are so devoted to fossil fuels that we are willing to drill in sacred birthing grounds and risk losing an integrator of our planets atmosphere and oceanic climate systems? This week on the podcast, we explore the “Near North” with Subhankar Banerjee and reflect on our ethical and moral imperative to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Subhankar Banerjee is an Indian born, American photographer, writer, activist, and environmental humanities scholar. He has been a leading voice on issues of Arctic conservation, Indigenous human rights, resource wars, and climate change. He has done work in the American Southwest that addresses desert ecology and forest deaths from climate change, and recently started a project to address climate change impact and politics of ecology in the coastal temperate rainforests in the Pacific Northwest. His research focuses on the intersection of art, eco-cultural activism and environmental humanities. Subhankar’s photographs, writing, and lectures have reached millions of people around the world.
Join us in conversation as Subhankar calls us to find our connection with the Near North while clarifying many misconceptions about the current status of the Refuge and the history of extraction in Alaska. We must do these sacred grounds justice in our actions and minds.
+TAKE ACTION+ Use the understanding you gathered from this episode to submit a written comment to The BLM Alaska State Office as they prepare to release an EIS to develop a gas and oil leasing program in the Refuge’s Coastal Plain. This EIS is in accordance with the passing of the Trump Administration’s Dec. 22, 2017 Tax Law. We ask you to join us in the decade long struggle to defeat drilling in the Refuge and speak out against continued extraction in Alaska. The Comment Period closes on February 11, 2019.
You can mail your comments to: Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program EIS 222 West 7th Avenue, Stop #13 Anchorage, Alaska 99513 -7504
Or submit electronically here: https://www.blm.gov/programs/planning-and-nepa/plans-in-development/alaska/coastal-plain-eis
Music by Sun Araw http://www.sunaraw.com/main.html
A price will be paid for carbon emissions regardless of whether or not one believes in the climate crisis. In fact, many are already paying this price in the form of ailing health, polluted communities, and exacerbated natural disasters. However, private industry has gotten off scot-free and turned a blind eye as the Earth and our communities suffer under unsustainable consumption. Shouldn’t the fossil fuel industry, one of the wealthiest industries to ever exist, be held financially accountable for the global pollution, displacement, and loss they have fueled?
We are honored to be able to speak with Camila Thorndike and take an opportunity to contemplate what our lives would look like if we were to use less and be free of this polluting addiction, not only through taxing but through a true paradigm shift. In Camila’s own words: “The cultural change and the political-economic change we need cannot be separate, they are one and the same.”
Camila Thorndike, a lifelong climate campaigner, was born and raised in rural southern Oregon and today lives in Washington, DC. Most recently she worked with Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) to lead a campaign uniting 100 organizations and businesses to pass fair and effective local climate policy. After graduating from Whitman College, Camila worked for the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, led outreach for an Arizonan urban planning campaign, and spearheaded engagement for Firerock, a musical theater project on fossil fuels. In 2009 she worked with DC youth on energy efficiency in low-income households with the Mayor’s Green Summer Jobs Program. She later co-founded Our Climate, a grassroots national nonprofit that empowers the next generation of climate leaders to pass strong, fair carbon pricing laws. Camila is a Fellow of the Center for Diversity and the Environment, Sitka Fellow, Udall Scholar, Mic50 awardee, member of the Young Climate Leaders Network, a Grist 50 "Fixer," and recipient of the 2018 DC Environmental Network award.
Join Ayana this week in conversation with Camila Thorndike as we learn how the tax code can address societal ills, the difference between cap and trade and carbon tax, how policy arrangements reflect our values, and how we can create a price on carbon that is inclusive, progressive, and benefit communities that are often exploited by the so-called green market.
Music by SK Kakraba http://www.sunaraw.com/YONYE.html
For years, many observers of our global forests have been witnessing significant tree mortality, and Earth’s largest living organisms, like giant redwoods, sequoias, and baobabs, are not immune to this phenomenon. If temperatures rise as projected by four degrees Celsius by the end of this century, we may witness the death of these ancient trees whose lifespans far exceed our own. Giant redwoods can live beyond 2,000 years in age, giant sequoias and baobabs reach up to 3,000 years, and large canopy trees found throughout Amazonia range from 400 to 1,400 years old. What possible futures await these ancient ones? What contributions do these massive trees make that we are blind to? And what exactly is the driving force behind the disappearance of old trees?
This week, Ayana speaks with Dr. William Laurance on the driving forces behind the disappearance of ancient trees and the critical ecological roles that they play in distinguishing & sustaining a variety of forest types.
Dr. William Laurance is a Research Professor and Australian Laureate at James Cook University. An environmental scientist, he has written eight books and over 600 scientific and popular articles. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and former President of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. His professional honors include the Heineken Environment Prize, BBVA Frontiers in Conservation Biology Award, Society for Conservation Biology’s Distinguished Service Award, and Royal Zoological Society of London’s Outstanding Conservation Achievement Prize. He is director of JCU’s Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, and founded and directs ALERT—the Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers & Thinkers—a science-advocacy group that reaches 1-2 million readers weekly. He is a four-time winner of Australia’s Best Science Writing Award.
Join Ayana and Dr. Laurance in conversation about the future of old growth forests, the many impacts of climate destabilization and drought, the dangers of positive feedback, and how infrastructure development is both driving and worsening climate chaos.
Music by Grant Earl LaValley https://grantearllavalley.bandcamp.com/
This week on the podcast we begin to traverse into the history of reproductive justice and how colonization, sexism, class, and racism impact all areas of birthing and medical practices. Ayana’s conversation with Roots of Labor Birth Collective extends beyond most reproductive justice discourse. It will stretch you to think about justice, autonomy, and decolonization. Roots of Labor reminds us that we must confront the legacies of violence we have suffered under, both as perpetrators and survivors.
Before globalization and colonization, before the health economy, people were able to take care of their own. This statement isn’t intended to romanticize or philosophize, but to remind us that current regimes seek to disempower us – to create a dependence that necessitates their existence. As Western infrastructures fail, networks of folks deeply committed to liberation, like Roots of Labor Collective, are creating different possibilities.
Roots of Labor Birth Collective (RLBC) is committed to providing support and care for birthing members of our community. RLBC consists of birth doulas of color. We strive to reflect the communities we serve, while uplifting and caring for ourselves under these guiding principles: decolonizing birth, honoring birth, empowering ourselves and each other, and sustaining doula work.
Elena Aurora is the Co-Founder and Education Director of Roots of Labor Birth Collective. It is her honor to organize with the radical and inspirational doulas of the Bay Area, California. She is mixed race, Peruvian and European descent, and has an environmental project called Woke n Wasteless that queers the conversation between the disposability of stuff, and the disposability of people of color.
Juju Angeles is an active doula of RLBC. Currently occupying Ohlone Territory (West Oakland, CA) & serving the Bay Area, Juju is a mother, homeschools, works with plants, and supports people through their pregnancy, labor, birth, and postpartum journey. Founder of Babymamahood, an online platform to dismantle, reimagine, and reclaim solo parenting for women and people of color in the hood.
Join us in conversation as For the Wild dedicates this week to exploring ancestral legacies around birthing, how we can invest in reproductive rights outside of the current hetero-patriarchal capitalist white supremacist system, the womb space as a place of creation, and birthing support as a human right.
- Action Points from Roots of Labor Birth Collective +
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Credit and listen to Black women, and other people of color who are defining Reproductive Justice. If your reproductive organization or circles do not have multiple people (or women) of color in leadership positions, then do not support them. One at the top does not count.
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Redirect your resources to organizations that are doing POC centered birth work, and who are led by people of color. You can do this by sponsoring people of color to take the RLBC doula training, or sponsoring a full training so we can offer them for free.
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Hire a doula for your birth, or your friends birth.
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Stop buying baby items and doing large registries, consider hosting baby stuff swaps and events to reduce waste in our waste stream.
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Support homebirth midwives, hire one for your birth or concurrent care. Sponsor a friend to hire one.
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Use cloth diaper services to divert waste from the landfill. Those dirty diapers will outlive your children.
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Divest in big oil who are the main causes of climate change and are poisoning our people, and putting POC communities at the front lines of destruction and climate-related disasters. These environmental injustices increase the Black, Brown, and Indigenous infant and maternal mortality rates.
Music by Jason Marsalis, Irvin Mayfield, & Climbing PoeTree
How can a queer framework guide us as we move through this liminal time period? How can queer ecology radically change our way of knowing? This week’s episode acknowledges that in order to expand ourselves to our fullest capacity, we must bend beyond the cultural and gender binaries that dominant society projects amongst us, to begin this process we need not look further than what has always been.
Guided by culturally informed queer ancestral realities & futurist dreams, Pinar and So Sinopoulos-Lloyd of Queer Nature explore how queering our awareness can dismantle the supremacist, ecocidal, and genocidal existence we find ourselves in today.
Queer Nature is an education and social sculpture project based on Arapaho, Ute, and Cheyenne territories that actively dreams into decolonially-informed queer ‘ancestral futurism’ through mentorship in place-based skills with awareness of post-industrial/globalized/ecocidal contexts. Place-based skills include naturalist studies, handcrafts, “survival skills,” and recognition of colonial and indigenous histories of land, and are framed in a container that emphasizes deep listening and relationship building with living and non-living earth systems. Co-envisioned by Pinar and So Sinopoulos-Lloyd, Queer Nature designs and facilitates nature-based workshops and multi-day immersions intended to be financially, emotionally, and physically accessible to LGBTQI2+ people and QTBIPOCs. Queer Nature carries the story and hope that these spaces create resilient narratives of belonging for folx who have often been made to feel by systems of oppression that they biologically, socially, or culturally don’t belong. Queer Nature has collaborated with Wilderness Awareness School, the University of Colorado Boulder, Naropa University, Women’s Wilderness, and ReWild Portland.
Join Ayana in conversation with So and Pinar as they explore how tracking and trailing answer the call of our ancestral bodies and the land, what deep intimacy with the more than human world looks like, how place-based skills are tools of liberation, and how to heal community, we cannot solely be in reciprocal relationships, we must be in accountable ones as well.
Music by Y La Bamba & Elisapie.
http://www.ylabamba.com/
https://www.elisapie.com
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Action Points from Queer Nature +
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Check out the website https://native-land.ca (it is also an app), it lets you know what First Nations territories you are on!
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See if you can find Indigenous dictionaries or language projects that can help inform you of the first names of rivers, mountains, and non-human beings in your bioregion. In our area, we consult the online dictionary at the Arapaho Language Project, which is part of CU Boulder.
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You can support Queer Nature’s Patreon through https://www.patreon.com/queernature
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You can donate directly to Queer Nature through the website: www.queernature.org (though we are an LLC and not a non-profit, so donations are not tax deductible).
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Tax-deductible donations that support a local grant-funded series of workshops that we run collaboratively can be made here: https://www.womenswilderness.org/donations/
(For Women's Wilderness donations, please include a note that it's for Queer Nature programs!)
- Donate to Right Relationship Boulder - They have been working with the Northern and Southern Arapaho tribes who were displaced from the Boulder Valley by colonization to give land and land use rights back to the Arapaho people:
https://www.boulderfriendsmeeting.org/ipc-right-relationship-2/#"
Four years and one hundred episodes later…Today we celebrate listening, storytelling, loyalty, each other, and the love song that is For The Wild.
We’ve been combing through the archives and crafting this very special episode for the community that has rallied around us these past few years. Today’s episode highlights some of the many conversations we keep present in heart and mind.
Join us this week as we revisit dialogue between Ayana and Peter Wohlleben, Stephen Jenkinson, Chief Caleen Sisk, Ron Finley, Lyla June, Kurt Russo, Jacinda Mack, Terry Tempest Williams, Reverend M. Kalani Souza, brontë velez, Stephen Harrod Buhner, Angelo Baca, Diana Beresford-Kroeger, Dune Lankard, Andrew Harvey, Derrick Jensen, Eriel Deranger, George Monbiot, Paul Watson, Nalini Nadkarni, Janine Benyus, Rue Mapp, Winona LaDuke, Nnimmo Bassey, Jacqui Patterson, Faith Gemmill, and Princess Lucaj. Plus, Ayana shares her own reflections and the personal history that birthed this production into life.
Consider this a Thank You to the community that has supported this work in a myriad of ways, to our guests for sharing and inspiring us, and to the group of tenacious beings that have tended to For The Wild along this journey. Upon reflecting on how we got here, we have been reminded of how important it is to work in collective structures, to find your family and hold them close. Our guests constantly remind us that this work is not possible to be done alone, that each and every one of us has something to contribute. Despite the odds, For The Wild has resisted what this world is trying to strip away from us: creativity, loyalty, joy, and commitment.
I can’t help but think that perhaps many of us arrived here, and stayed here, for the same reasons, that we were feeling alone and wondered if anyone else could hear what we were hearing? Each week this show reminds us that we are not alone, that there are others across this planet that deeply care about the things we care about, who hold immeasurable bodies of knowledge, and who are singing out in resilient song.
We can’t say, and we don’t pretend to know, just what this podcast has done for our listeners – but we promise to keep going, to continue to put alternative narratives and ways of knowing into the minds of whoever may tune in. We are so excited to keep learning and growing organically in conversation, by way of experience, and in close observation.
Ayana put it best, this podcast is an ode to sticking it out – we are devoted to bringing the message and uplifting our co-conspirators in this movement. Consider this an affirmation of deep commitment and life itself.
Music by Lyla June
Theme Music: Like a River by Kate Wolf
As we enter into the twelfth month of the year and reflect on the tumultuous period that was 2018, For The Wild is dedicating December’s podcast episodes to healing community. This week, guest Dallas Goldtooth joins Ayana in a conversation around toxic masculinity, accountability, and dismantling patriarchy as a decolonial approach. So often, conversations around gender wounds quickly deteriorate into oversimplifications of, and accusations towards, one gender or another – failing to realize how we are all hurting under patriarchy. We must honor masculinity and femininity in harmony and give space to recognize our relatives who do not fit within, or feel represented by, today’s gender binary system.
Toxic masculinity, settler colonialism, and white supremacy are impelling us to a point of no return. If you are coming to this conversation as an environmental advocate, understand that in order to shift our relationship from that of domination over “nature” to one of reciprocity and understanding of the ecosystem we are apart of, we must examine our values with one another. What are we trying to build? What parts of ourselves must we heal to get there? How can we hold Men accountable in transformative ways? How can we envision, or for some, remember, healthy and sacred masculinity?
“Dallas Goldtooth is the Keep it in the Ground Campaign Organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network. He is also the co-founder of the Indigenous comedy group The 1491s. Dallas is Dakota and Dine, a loving husband, dedicated father, comedian, public speaker, recovering exotic dancer, plastic shaman extraordinaire, and body double for that guy who plays Thor in them Thor Movies.”
Music by Lyla June
https://www.facebook.com/lylajune/
http://www.sodizin.net/
https://soundcloud.com/lylajune
ACTION POINTS:
Donate to and support groups like Wica Agli and Mending the Sacred Hoop:
https://mshoop.org
https://www.wicaagli.org/about-us/
What could our reality look like if we had not grown up in a society so deeply committed to an anthropocentric understanding of cosmos and planet? What would it mean to no longer identify as “the spider in the center, but as a single strand in the spider’s web?” These questions engage our imagination to think beyond what we know and envision a future that is both deeply connected and full of gratitude. Yet mere awareness of this possibility or awareness of the possibility of biological collapse has proven to be insufficient. We know the changes we face, we read the news, we have all the data and statistics to confirm a changing climate or the perils of resource extraction and loss of biodiversity. Yes, we are aware, yet we remain disempowered and continue to engage in the habits causing detriment to what extends beyond our very skin. This week’s guest, John Seed, reminds us that to move forward we cannot simply know, we must honor and engage with our deepest emotions in order to radically change the reality we are living in.
John Seed is the founder and director of the Rainforest Information Centre in Australia, which has engaged in the protection of rainforests worldwide. Since 1979, he has been involved in direct actions, which have resulted in the protection of the Australian rainforests. He has since created numerous projects protecting rainforests throughout South America, Asia, and the Pacific. In addition, he is an accomplished songwriter, filmmaker, and author, writing and lecturing extensively on deep ecology and conducting re-Earthing workshops for the past 25 years. John co-authored “Thinking Like a Mountain – Towards a Council of All Beings” with Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess. His most recent project with the Rainforest Information Centre focuses on the protection of Ecuador’s rainforests in the Los Cedros Biological Reserve.
Join us as Ayana and John explore topics of ecological identity, embodied wisdom, moving beyond the individual, the tenets of Deep Ecology, and the Rainforest Information Centre’s recent work in Ecuador with the Los Cedros Biological Reserve.
Now is the time to confront the illusions of separation we have held on to for so long. For those of us who are longing to deeply connect with Earth, we need only to begin by connecting with ourselves.
Music by Y La Bamba
http://www.ylabamba.com/
In lieu of a traditional Action Point for this week, we take this moment to reflect on Thich Nhat Hanh’s guidance:
“If we want to continue to enjoy our rivers – to swim in them, walk beside them, even drink their water – we have to adopt the non-dual perspective. We have to meditate on being the river so that we can experience, within ourselves, the fears and hopes of the river. If we cannot feel the rivers, the mountains, the air, the animals, and other people from within their own perspective, the rivers will die and we will lose our chance for peace.” – from Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
In the past several days we have bore witness to three separate fires; the Camp, Woolsey, and Hill, rage across both northern and southern California. As the death toll has currently risen to fifty, hundreds remain missing, and over a quarter of a million Californians have been forced to evacuate – it is hard to think of any other words to describe this event other than disaster or tragedy. We begin this week by offering our hearts to all the people who are impacted by these fires.
Narratives of wildfire in this country have long been muddled with myth and misinformation. On November 11th, the President of the United States perpetuated this by tweeting: "There is no reason for these massive, deadly, and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor…"
The truth of the matter is that there are plenty of reasons for these fires. For one, the landscape of California is prone to fire and decades of fire suppression, has only made it more so. As for the fires in Southern California, those have very little to do with forest management, as they are urban interface fires, not wildland fires. Today there are nearly 1.8 million homes in high fire risk area across the Western United States, and in the past two decades Americans have started 84% of wildfires in the United States. So we must also hold one another accountable in our carelessness and persistence.
This week Dr. Chad Hanson, a forest and fire ecologist, with the John Muir Project, joins us. Dr. Hanson is a member of the Sierra Club's National Board of Directors and he holds a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of California at Davis, with a research focus on fire ecology in conifer forest ecosystems. He is the co-editor and co-author of the 2015 book, "The Ecological Importance of Mixed-Severity Fires: Nature's Phoenix." Studies published by Dr. Hanson cover topics such as: habitat selection of rare wildlife species associated with habitat created by high-severity fire; post-fire conifer responses and adaptations; fire history; and current fire patterns.
Join us during this difficult week to learn about what happens in a post fire habitat, why fire is an ecological treasure, not a disaster, how significantly climate change will impact wildfires, and why both politicians and the United States Forest Service have a vested interest in spreading misinformation when it comes to forest management.
Music by Itasca
http://www.itascalosangeles.com/
https://itasca.bandcamp.com/
ACTION POINTS for The Myths & Misinformation of Wildland Fires
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Call your state's U.S. Senators and Congressional Representatives at the Capital Switchboard (202-224-3121) and ask them to (1) Keep the Appropriation Bill and the Farm Bill clean – keep all logging provisions off these two bills and appose any logging riders on these bills. Specifically ask them to keep the "Forest Resilience Bill" or H.R.2936 off of the Farm Bill reauthorization. (2) Ask them to support an end to any logging on National Forests and commit publicly to saying they are in support of ending logging on National Forests.
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If you live in or near a wildfire zone, learn about defensible space. (1) Keep your chimney cleaned and screened. (2) Keep your storage shed located away from your home. (3) Avoid outdoor burning. Recycle, mulch, and compost when possible. (4) Make sure your driveway is accessible and your address is visible. (5) Scatter trees within 30 feet of your housing structure. (6) Have 100 feet of garden hose attached. (7) Keep woodpile, fuel tanks, and other burnable materials 30 feet away from your housing structure. (8) Thin and prune coniferous trees. (9) Keep grass green and mowed if it is within 30 feet, keep vegetation mowed within 100 feet of your housing structure. Learn more at http://www.readyforwildfire.org/Prepare-For-Wildfire/
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The John Muir Project encourages more birders, "Did you know that most logging happens during nesting season? We need birders who will fight to document bird nests and occupancy in burned forests before these areas are devastated by logging. We want to use the weapon of information about the diversity and abundance of avian species in these areas to educate the public and the Forest Service on the true biodiversity costs associated with post-fire (a.k.a. salvage) logging. Please sign up today and start helping to preserve species by making their presence known." Learn more at http://johnmuirproject.org/get-involved/
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Join the John Muir Projects mailing list to stay up to date on the fight to preserve our National Forests at http://johnmuirproject.org
The Hawaiian Islands, like so many of our planetary coastal communities, are at the forefront of rising waters, diminishing trade winds, and climate chaos. As we face the continuation and intensification of natural processes, it is easy, and quite frankly lazy, to fall into pits of despair and pessimism, both of which are an insult to the imagination. We must remind ourselves and each other that change is both possible and necessary at this precise moment in time. We can choose to prepare and respond in ways that will sustain our communities and strengthen our families. Our survival demands our action and engagement and make no mistake, our actions, no matter how small, either add to the collective harm or collective healing.
Do we choose to be predators or participants in life?
This week we interview Reverend M. Kalani Souza, a gifted storyteller, singer, songwriter, musician, performer, poet, philosopher, priest, political satirist, and peacemaker.
Kalani currently works as Community Outreach Specialist for the University of Hawaii’s National Disaster Preparedness Training Center and is the founding director of the Olohana Foundation, a non-profit 501(c) 3 focused on community capacity and global response to climate adaptation. He is a certified FEMA Instructor and serves on the Indigenous Knowledge HUI of the Pacific Risk Management Ohana, PRiMO, which works to mitigate and respond to natural disasters. He also serves as a cultural competency consultant for NOAA Pacific Services Center and works with the Indigenous Peoples Climate Change Working Group and Rising Voices Indigenous Peoples and Practice in Climate Science and Adaptation alongside the National Climate Atmospheric Research Center.
Join us in conversation as Ayana and Kalani discuss an “all hands on deck approach” to addressing human behavior and developing personal preparedness.
Music by Cover Story Doo Wop
The Anthropocene tells the story of compounding injustice, towards people and planet. It tells the story of growth for growth’s sake, living beyond boundaries sacredly assigned to us by our Mother. This week we are honored to be in dialogue with Queen Quet, Chieftess and Head-of-State for the Gullah/Geechee Nation, who is striving for justice on the front lines of the most pressing Anthropocentric intersections: climate change, resource extraction, corrupt and negligent government bodies, land theft, encroaching development and exploitative tourism.
Taking on Indigenous sovereignty, land rights, and climate change resiliency plans, Queen Quet is a warrior of justice for not only her peoples, but all of humanity.
The Gullah/Geechee are descendants of the first enslaved Central and West Africans who remained isolated along the inland, coastal area, and Sea Islands between present-day Jacksonville, North Carolina and Jacksonville, Florida. After the Civil War, these peoples were the first group of African descendants to own land in mass in the United States, allowing them to preserve their African cultural traditions and Indigenous practices. By obtaining land and being able to pass it down to their descendants, the Gullah/Geechee were able to continue their centuries-long relationship with the land. In 2000, they were internationally recognized as a nation.
Hilton Head, a revered golfing and vacation paradise for the wealthy receives almost 2 million incoming tourists annually to visit the over 25 golf courses or "plantations." Each posted up on stolen land of the Gullah/Geechee heritage and funeral sites. The rampant development of this land is just one of the many attacks on these people and their land.
Queen Quet and the Gullah/Geechee nation are an exemplary vision of resilience in an age of deterioration, holding on to spirit and hope amidst. Facing the onslaught of colonial terrorism towards both Black and Indigenous lives, Queen Quet's vision is lighting the way forward in troubled times.
Queen Quet, Marquetta L. Goodwine is a published author, computer scientist, lecturer, mathematician, historian, columnist, preservationist, environmental justice advocate, film consultant, and “The Art-ivist.” Queen Quet was selected, elected, and enstooled by her people to be the first Queen Mother, “head pun de bodee,” and official spokesperson for the Gullah/Geechee Nation. As a result, she is respectfully referred to as “Queen Quet, Chieftess and Head-of-State for the Gullah/Geechee Nation.” She is the founder of the premier advocacy organization for the continuation of Gullah/Geechee culture, the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition. Queen Quet has won countless awards for being a woman of distinction, for her scholarship, writings, artistic presentation, activism, cultural continuation and environmental preservation. She was the first Gullah/Geechee person to speak on behalf of her people before the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland and at the United Nations COP 22 Climate Change Conference in Marrakesh, Morocco.
Music by The Gullah Singers, Live recordings from GullahGeechee TV Nayshun Nyews with Queen Quet & The GullahGeechee Nation International Music Movement Festival.
How often do we zoom out to take collective responsibility for our impact as a human species on the voiceless nonhumans? What is constantly being sacrificed in exchange for our leisure, our luxury, our consumption? The inherent abuses of capitalism and the supremacist mindset do not value life.
A stark reality that a corporation has rights in the court, while animals have the same rights as a car or a couch. This is the core of our insentience and our inanimacy which merit our Taker culture.
This week we interview Kevin Schneider, an attorney and the Executive Director of the Nonhuman Rights Project. Founded in 1996 by attorney Steven M. Wise, the Nonhuman Rights Project works to secure legally recognized fundamental rights for nonhuman animals through litigation, advocacy, and education.
Their mission is to change the legal status of at least some nonhuman animals from mere “things,” which lack the capacity to possess any legal right, to “persons,” who possess such fundamental rights as bodily integrity and bodily liberty and those other legal rights to which evolving standards of morality, scientific discovery, and human experience entitle them.
Since 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project has filed lawsuits on behalf of non-human animals in captivity – including four chimpanzees and three elephants, so far – seeking a writ of habeas corpus. The organization is fighting for the autonomy of our more than human kin as we face the need for multi species liberation.
Music by Izaak Opatz & Sun Araw
Palm oil has become the second-most important oil after petroleum, and 85% of all produced and exported palm oil comes from Indonesia and Malaysia, making them the largest producers of palm oil worldwide. According to The Nature Conservancy, forest loss, largely for palm oil concessions, in Indonesia has contributed to the death of nearly 3,000 orangutans a year over the past three decades. At our current rate of destruction, It is predicted that orangutans will face complete extinction by 2050.
“The situation with orangutans is dire. As the forests are annihilated, orangutans are left homeless, they are refugees in their own land. The canopies where they find food and where they live is demolished and they are forced on to the ground. They are not knuckle walkers, or used to the ground and that is where they are forced to live. So they become victims, they are sitting ducks. Anyone can shoot them, and that is what happens. They are killed for their children in the pet trade, they are killed as agricultural pests from palm oil plantations.”--Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas
This week we are joined by Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas, a globally renowned anthropologist, conservationist, and orangutan researcher. She has been researching and working with wild and wild-born ex-captive orangutans for nearly half a century. With the exception of Dr. Jane Goodall, she has conducted the longest continuous study of any wild population of animals in the history of science. Since first arriving in Borneo in 1971, she has implemented numerous orangutan research and conservation. In 1986, Dr. Galdikas established the Orangutan Foundation International, based in Los Angeles. OFI funds operations in Indonesia and has sister organizations in Australia and Canada. Dr. Galdikas is the recipient of the prestigious Kalpataru Award, the highest honor given by the Republic of Indonesia for outstanding environmental leadership, she is the only person of non-Indonesian birth and one of the first women to be recognized by the Indonesian government with this award. She has published four books, including her biography Reflections of Eden.
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ACTION POINTS:
The number one thing ordinary citizens can do to mitigate this threat to orangutan's continued existence is cease consumption of palm oil products and raise awareness on this insidious, destructive oil.
The most common products that contain palm oil range from processed foods like cookies, ice cream, bread, cereal, nut butters, frozen meals, chocolate, granola bars, candy, chips, dried fruit, pastries, crackers, and pet food, to personal care items like lipstick, laundry detergent, toothpaste, mascara, foundation, nail polish, vitamins, lip balms, soap, shampoo, and conditioner.
There are over 200 names for palm oil and ingredients derived from palm oil. In 2014 the European Union made palm oil labeling compulsory, but in the United States, it is legal, and common, for companies to use the term “vegetable oil” when they really mean palm oil. A good rule of thumb is to avoid any products that have ingredients with the word “palm” in it, i.e. palmitoyl, palmate, palm kernel etc. Another trick you can use is by looking at a product’s saturated fat content, if it makes up more than 40% of its total fat content, it will almost always contain palm oil.
Common alternative names for palm oil include: Vegetable Oil, Vegetable Fat, Vegetable Glycerin, Palm Kernel, Palm Kernel Oil, Palm Fruit Oil, Palmate, Palmitate, Palmolein, Glyceryl, Stearate, Stearic Acid, Elaeis Guineensis, Palmitic Acid, Palm Stearine, Palmitoyl Oxostearamide, Palmitoyl Tetrapeptide-3, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Sodium Kernelate, Sodium Palm Kernelate, Sodium Lauryl Lactylate/Sulphate, Hyrated Palm Glycerides, Etyl Palmitate, Octyl Palmitate, and Palmityl Alcohol.
For a full list of alternative names visit: https://www.palmoilinvestigations.org/names-for-palm-oil.html
You can bet that most prepackaged snacks or mass-produced personal care products from corporate giants like Nestle, Unilever, Kraft, etc. contain palm oil. One of the best steps you can take is to replace store bought with homemade. If you choose to continue to buy products that might have palm oil in them, research the brands you frequent individually and try to choose products that contain clearly labeled oils, like “100% sunflower oil.”
Less than 7% of the total production of palm oil is certified as sustainable. Additionally, the vast majority of organizations dedicated to protecting orangutans and the rainforest, state that there is really no such thing as “sustainable” palm oil. In fact, a Borneo Futures report for the Orangutan Land Trust and Wilmar International found that orangutan populations decline at similar rates between RSPO-certified and non-certified plantations. So the strongest action you can take is to avoid palm oil altogether. As Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas mentions in our episode, if you use palm oil-based products, you have orangutan blood on your hands.
Of course, you can always participate in both political and consumer outreach. Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas’s organization, Orangutan Foundation International, encourages us to write to officials in both the Cabinet of Indonesia and the Cabinet of Malaysia and express our global concern for orangutans, rainforests, and forest-dwelling communities. If you discover that a company you purchase products from is using palm oil, or not being transparent about their ingredients, we encourage you to take a few minutes to call, email, or tweet them and let them know that you are considering their use, or non-disclosure, or palm oil in your purchasing decisions.
Music: unknown traditional Sape’
To continue our theme month of More Than Human Kin, we focus in on a rodent kin who since time immemorial has maintained a role as one keystone species within our beloved Turtle Island: The Beaver.
In 1620, pre-colonization, there were an estimated 400 million beavers roaming and shaping Turtle Island. Most of us have forgotten, or maybe never knew, that we live on a land stewarded and engineered by the tireless workings of beaver. Before the fur trade, or as Ben Goldfarb coins “fur-pocalypse,” much of the American midwest was a soggy, wetland maintained by the work of beavers stewarding hundreds of millions of ponds and wildlife habitat. Beaver's build environments which serve as baseline habitat for almost every living more than human kin, from large to small, moose to salmon. Natural beaver habitat is essential to fostering a thriving network of wildlife.
Often we don’t think of genocidal mass beaver trapping as a true environmental catastrophe on par with deforestation or mining, but perhaps we have forgotten the intelligence and value of the original co-stewards of this land. What is the relationship between the destruction of beaver population and ecological collapse? How was the decimation of beaver directly linked with colonization & exploitation of the Indigenous people's on Turtle Island? Learn how the slaughtering of beaver became the gateway to settler colonization and extraction culture.
We are honored to be joined by beaver believer, Ben Goldfarb this week on For The Wild. Ben Goldfarb is an independent environmental journalist based in Spokane, Washington, whose writing has appeared in publications such as Mother Jones, Science, The Guardian, and High Country News. He is the author of "Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter."
Music by Fountainsun
For more information, head over to: https://www.beaverinstitute.org
It feels only right that we begin our “more-than-human” themed month of October in honor of the mother Orca, Tahlequah, who carried her dead calf on a “tour of grief” for more than a 1,000 miles over a 17-day period. It is a profound reminder that we share our place and experience with other beings that bear memory, whose capacity for love and loss mirror our own. It also highlights the uncertainty of the Southern Resident Orca's livelihood, and quite frankly the livelihood of our planetary community, if we continue to act with reckless abandon. There has not been a successful Orca birth in the Salish Sea since 2015.
This week we interview Kurt Russo who has worked on environmental issues, land preservation, and treaty rights with The Lummi Nation of the Salish Sea for 40 years. He is also the Executive Director of The Foundation for Indigenous Medicine and the former Director of The Native American Land Conservancy. He holds a BS and MS in Forestry and a Ph.D. in History.
The Lummi word “Elchnexwtex” refers to a time when all life forms were one and related, that was a time when the “black fish,” Orca’s and the "young ones,” the Humans, were one. The black fish, "qwe lhol mechen", are known as the people under the sea.
Dr. Russo and The Lummi people believe that Tahlequah carried her baby on the tour of grief because she knows we are watching. The display of her dead offspring in this way was an intentional act -- not only an act of grieving, but intented to stir an empathetic reaction from those who live above the water.
“The world we live in is in a deep crisis and the people who live above the water need to know they don’t own this place. We were gifted it. Until that is understood we will see more dead calves.”
This episode is a call to the human heart. The impassioned Kurt Russo, speaking on behalf of the qwe lhol mechen, is one that will imprint itself on your memory as a cold hard look into the mirror of humanity.
Our fear of death and our obsession with legacy has informed much of the dominant culture’s relationship to development, endless growth and ultimately, environmental collapse. The reality of our existence is each of us will die. We have 9 billion bodies on this planet, more living people than ever before, and where do our bodies go when we take our last breath? Our death industry has reached peak toxicity making the business a true economic and ecological monster.
As reported by Forbes, in 1960 the average cost of a funeral was $706 and only 3.56% of bodies were cremated. Today, the average funeral costs between $8,000- $10,000, and about 42% of people are cremated. The US funeral industry accounts for about $20 billion in annual economic activity, with around 130,000 employees that make a living on the 1.5 million people that go to rest each year.
300 years ago, the funerial industrial complex did not exist. We dealt with death in a completely different way. Our sterilization and separation of our death is very representative of the way in which we live our modern lives.
Our conversation today is with Elizabeth Fournier, who has worked seven generations in the funeral industry, focusing on green burial and rethinking the way we bury our dead.
What is the relationship between the Civil War and our funeral industrial complex?
What is the impact of putting our dead, and now toxic, bodies in to the earth?
What are the environmental concerns of cremation?
How can our deaths contribute positively to the regeneration of our earth?
Elizabeth Fournier, affectionately called “The Green Reaper,” is the author of The Green Burial Guidebook: Everything You Need to Plan an Affordable, Environmentally Friendly Burial. She is owner and operator of Cornerstone Funeral Services, outside of Portland, Oregon. She serves on the Advisory Board for the Green Burial Council, which sets the standard for green burial in North America. She lives on a farm with her husband, daughter and many goats. Find out more about her work at www.thegreenreaper.org.
Music by Anne Laplantine & Kevin Macleod
This is a beautiful conversation about collective memory, power and strategy regarding the climate change movement. Heather Milton-Lightening has seventeen years of organizing experience from local issues to international campaigns. Heather was a founding member of Native Youth Movement and has supported the national Native youth network that supported Native youth organizing across the US and Canada with the Indigenous Environmental Network From funding board participation on the Funding Exchange Saguaro Fund and Honor the Earth; to helping build the Indigenous People's Power Project through the Ruckus Society that trains on non-violent direct action tools. Heather currently is the Co-Director for the Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign out of the Polaris Institute in Ottawa, ON.
Among other topics, Ayana and Heather discuss truth and reconciliation, true ally-ship, the commonality of Trump and Trudeau and reflections from Standing Rock.
As Canada receives such glowing reviews globally for their relationship to climate agreements, in truth, Canada is run predominantly as a resource extraction economy on 98.2% stolen land. It seems time and time again, oil and gas development are “left out” of plans for Canadian regulations on climate change while Canada continues to receive accolades for liberalism. Canada ongoing police violence and land extraction reek havoc on Indigenous communities covering the entire country.
In fact, often known as the Highway of Tears, a 450-mile stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway through northern British Columbia is emblematic of a phenomenon that has plagued Canada for decades: violence against Indigenous women.
None of us are off the hook in this time. Each community is facing a particular circumstance of injustice for Indigenous communities and land destruction rooted in extractive tendencies. Ally-ship is not one size fits all, it does not come in one form; each community faces a particular situation that asks of each of alleged allies to attune to the way in which we best participate that rewrites the paradigm of service.
Music by Lobo Loco
“We thought it was oil, but it was blood”
This week’s conversation is with Nnimmo Bassey, an inspirationally committed Nigerian activist, who is fighting the global petrol military complex to reveal the full ecological and human horrors of oil production.
Nnimmo Bassey is director of the ecological think-tank, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and member steering committee of Oilwatch International. He was chair of Friends of the Earth International and Executive Director of Nigeria’s Environmental Rights Action. He was a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.”
Our imaginary borders have tainted our relationship to fossil fuel complacence; global warming does not exist inside of borders, species extinction doesn’t follow state lines and blood is on all of our hands. As Nnimmo writes, “we thought it was oil, but it was blood.”
Oil production and plastic consumption are the siamese twins of our cannibalism. Plastic is the tangible and physical manifestation of our ceaseless relationship we have with fossil fuels and it is destructive beyond our imagination. We need to be confronting our addiction to plastic and fossil fuels both with legislation and in our individual daily lives. Not one or the other, but simultaneously.
The global complacency about the oil war in Niger Delta is the embodied intersection of global racism and ecological destruction as we continue to employ Africa as the resource colony and sacrifice zone of the world. He asks us to stand in solidarity together to break the shackles of these oppressive forces as the forces of climate chaos continue to erupt.
Music by Nneka.
Thanks for tuning in to our archived episodes! We loved sharing our staff favorites this past month that make our souls sing and enliven our relationship to this work. We listened in again to the wisdom of Robin Wall Kimmerer, Janine Benyus, Ron Finley, Stephen Harrod Buhner and Leah Penniman. This month we are excited to welcome back brand new weekly episodes, the first of which is Steven Martyn on Letting Land Lead.
"We have interrupted an orchestra that is already in session. What we can do is stand at the edge of it and hope that nature will accept us.” This week we are welcoming a dialogue with artist, farmer, wildcrafter, builder, and teacher of plant and plant identification, Steven Martyn.
Steven and Ayana explore the ideas of co-creative integrated polyculture, living reciprocally with the land, autonomous evolution of nature, invasive species, and the origins of our food and medicine plants.
Steven has more than thirty years experience living co-creatively with the Earth, practicing traditional living skills of growing food, building and healing. In 1996, he started the Algonquin Tea Company, North America’s premiere bioregional tea company. In 2014, his partner, Megan, and he started the Sacred Gardener Earth Wisdom School. Steven released his first book, “The Story of the Madawaska Forest Garden” in 2016, and his second “Sacred Gardening” was released in June 2017.
This week’s music is by The Range of Light Wilderness and Lea Thomas.
Francesca here, Research Collaborator at For The Wild and this week’s encore episode is “Leah Penniman on Land Based Liberation."
This conversation between Ayana and Leah is beyond inspiring, it confronts us with the harsh realities of injustice by two voices that simultaneously speak of healing, possibility, and reconciliation. We must acknowledge the current state of our food system; as of 2016 nearly 42 million people in this country are living in food insecure households, 85% of farmworkers are Latinx or Hispanic workers, yet less than 3% of farms are owned by Latinxs or Hispanics, industrial agriculture is responsible for 24% of climate change, 1/3 of farmworkers live below the poverty line, and while the average wage for a white farmer is around $12/hr, farmers of color average about $9 an hour.
Reflecting upon these statistics it becomes so clear that land and food sovereignty are essential to liberation. Many of For The Wild’s podcast episodes allude to the work of our imagination and the process of envisioning a world of reciprocity and balance outside of the corrosive and supremacist capitalist machine. What Leah Penman and the folks at Soul Fire Farm do is exactly that, they have created a vision for a different future; one in which food gives life and communities are able to sustainably support their farmers. By re-evaluating our relationship with land and agency, we can fix the problems of our food system and heal our communities in the process. I hope this episode inspires you to take action and support your own community, wherever you may be.
“All of us humans need the same thing. I ask the question around the world, what is the single most important thing to your life? People say, “love, god, kids, my wife, my cats,” but .000% say oxygen.
What I am trying to do is to teach people how think differently about what we value. That’s what needs to be cultivated, the garden between our ears.”-- Ron Finley
Molly here, Media Director of For The Wild. My episode encore is a recent one that premiered this May with “Ron Finley on Cultivating the Garden of the Mind”. When I first hear this episode I listened to it a few days in a row. I was blown away by the universality of Ron’s wisdom, there is no one out of the reach of his contact. He is speaking to all human people and asking them to cultivate the space between our ears-- our mind. He is asking us to inquire about our socialization, our indoctrination into a capitalistic system of values that perpetuate unwellness.
Ron Finley is an artist, farmer and visionary who “envisions a world where gardening is gangsta, where cool kids know their nutrition and where communities embrace the act of growing, knowing and sharing the best of the earth’s fresh-grown food.”
What I love about Ron is he isn’t trying to be someone else’s gardener, he doesn’t want to manage a bunch of farms around the city of Los Angeles; he wants everyone to critically assess the values we have inherited under the great hand of Capitalism. Who and what do we have to step over to have our needs met? What kind of action can we take in our daily lives towards a healthier philosophy of being rooted in the values of nature? He wants this to be something every single person, community and society takes active participation towards building. What does it look like to move beyond the “build it and they will come mentality” towards a more inclusive “let’s build it together” paradigm of collectives and cooperation?
This week’s encore episode opens up a plethora of curiosities around humanities' relationship to art, creation and mind altering substances.
This week's show is an evergreen classic chosen by Research Director, Madison Magalski.
Stephen Harrod Buhner is the earth speaking on behalf of themselves. He so beautifully and scientifically challenges us to give ourselves fully and humbly in our relationships with our more than human elders and kin, he asks us to walk our talk when it comes to unlearning human supremacy and civilized consumptive conditioning through relationship to plants.
Humans have always made things more beautiful than they perhaps had to have been for functionality. We dialogue with Stephen about what is the particular role of art in these times and how humans have used intoxicants to create that which comes forth from spirit and moves through us.
Art allows us to shift.
Art acts as a depatterning figure. Art shifts the perceptual frame of the people experiencing it. Art upsets.
“Art is an amazing thing. For example a poem, when someone is able to capture something that cannot be captured in words and put it in words. It causes one to have an experiential perception of the world that is not in the words, but rather gather momentum and then land in another frame of reference. This is a crucial element of Art.”
As always, listen in weekly on forthewild.world/listen and subscribe & review our podcast on iTunes.
This week we are excited to feature an encore episode chosen by our dear Podcast Editor and Producer Andrew Storrs. Andrew calls the lands of Joshua Tree, California home and is drawn to environmental activism & education at this critical moment in our planet's history. He is an avid bird & plant enthusiast and deeply inspired by the work of Janine Benyus and the concepts of Biomimicry.
In an age of natural exploitation and capitalism, the redundancy of a term like “biomimicry” might be lost on the Western minded psyche. The irony lies in that as a species functioning from the Westward expansion of the settler colonial mindset, we have veered so far off the path of right relation that we have to define a technology of mimicry to invite the right relations.
The answers we seek, the key to a life sustaining world, are literally all around us. The severance from seven generations thinking has left us drowning in a falsehood of limitlessness, and here we stand at a crossroads of the potentiality for life as we know it on Earth coming to a hard stop. Biomimicry offers us insight into what it might look like to be in alignment with the flow of life. Wondering what success looks like beyond our children, beyond our children’s children, but to the entire web of inextricably linked beings-- seven generations beyond this very moment. What does this earth look like in year 2218?
Biomimicry asks us to look at nature’s blueprint for a game plan. High speed trains from technology of the kingfisher birds, wind turbines from the humpback whale, harvesting fog air as inspired by the stenocara beetle, shock absorption from the woodpecker, planet cooling ventilation from termites-- these are fully functioning technologies that have existed in the vision of nature’s sheer brilliance.. Rather than drilling, pummelling, mining, exploding, exploiting, we could just simply look and see how it has been done since the very beginning. Sustainability should be the bare minimum when we have all the necessary technology to be thriving.
Listen again this Thursday to this episode chalked full of inspiration!
This week on the podcast we present an Encore episode of a staff favorite from the For The Wild archives.
Dr. Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, writer, Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, NY, and the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Her research interests include the role of traditional ecological knowledge in ecological restoration and building resilience for climate change. Dr. Kimmerer has authored numerous literary essays and scientific papers on restoration and plant ecology, as well as the award-winning books “Gathering Moss,” and “Braiding Sweetgrass,” which interweave indigenous knowledge and scientific perspectives.
The capitalist mentalist sees an opportunity to exploit in every disaster. Everything is a chance to jump a buck. What can we learn from this mentality? How do we, earnest lovers of life, see an opportunity for recovery, resilience, lasting change in every disaster? From disaster into conservation opportunity, and conservation into economic opportunity. Dune has made a living demonstration of resource conservation over exploitation as better economics ~ to continue to catch fish means preserving what gives fish life. We cannot continue stealing from the future, and the bad economics of doing so are swiftly coming home to roost in climate change, environmental degradation, and the collapse of resources.
Rather than despairing, Dune Lankard has worked creatively to leverage assaults to land into structural changes for his people. The ecological disasters that are the certain consequences of capitalism can be catalysts to change mentalities and economic systems. Since the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, Dune has worked legally to spare enormous amounts of land from further extraction. He has insisted on implementing voices of conservation within the business and law of native resource management. Dune’s determination to take on lawsuits, with visionary alternatives to the status quo, has made the wildest possibilities of conservation happen in Alaska. He has turned cultural corners from the forced corporatization of native people’s relationship to their water, tree, and fish kin.
There is a tremendous opportunity for earth protection at hand: the majority of land that has fossil fuels has native people standing on it. Native people are speaking up for their way of being on earth. When the herring rebounds, the ecosystem that hinges on their well-being will too. Our orientation towards life must move herring-ward, forest-ward, river-ward.
Music by Tonstarttsbandht
“The freedom of butterflies invite an entirely different reaction. They help us see that all living things move, we have always been moving since the beginning of time. Migrants are in line with what human beings have been doing for years, the punishment of this is a result of dominant culture” -Favianna Rodriguez
This week we are thrilled to have Favianna Rodriguez on the show. Favianna Rodriguez is a transdisciplinary artist, cultural strategist, and activist based in Oakland, California. Her work and collaborative initiatives address migration, economic inequality, gender justice, and ecology. Favianna leads art interventions around the U.S. at the intersection of art, social justice and cultural equity. In 2016, she received the Robert Rauschenberg Artist as Activist Fellowship for her work around mass incarceration. In 2017, she was awarded an Atlantic Fellowship for Racial Equity for work around racial justice and climate change.
Favianna invites us to explore the wisdom of nature and Earth relations as a lense through which to envision an alternative to the current immigration crisis. As climate change advances, the consequence of human migration will only become more pressing, Favianna invites us to explore the freedom in recognizing this beyond the extractive economical box.
The United States has created an ecological disruption to the entire planet, and we have a grave responsibility to move beyond extraction. As the destruction of our Earth continues to feed political instability, we will continue to see the impending migration of human beings. The effects of our collective greed are coming to a head at this time. What are we going to do in this time? What is the role of art now? Favianna stands in the heat of this fire and guides us to explore the intersection between culture, economy, climate change and pleasure activism.
Music by Rebeca Lane (rebecalane.com) "Obsidiana," "Tzk'at," (2018) & "Reina del Caos" (2016)
Find her albums on Bandcamp in full resolution, or on iTunes/Spotify/Soundcloud
This week we are rejoined by Zayaan Khan to discuss what is happening in South Africa. What people are experiencing around water scarcity in South Africa is a threshold being reached; a point of no return at which culture can change rapidly. Suddenly people become accustomed to the unthinkable—not showering! no laundry!—and they begin to ask, how could we have ever been so wasteful, so indulgent? Meanwhile, those who worship capitalism as more sacred than human life go on doing so, until irreversible thresholds are crossed and cultural change is unavoidable even for those who have had the means to insulate themselves from the realities of the majority. This week we discuss what’s on the other side of the threshold.
Music by Eola
Zayaan Khan is a force to be reckoned with, as a seed librarian, researcher, artist and Indigenous food revivalist. Zayaan is from Cape Town, and has been interested in making space for Indigenous methods of knowing and preparing food, foraging and finding fresh ingredients and promoting food literacy and security. Her approach is two pronged; challenging repressive food systems while also finding joy and inspiration through the trauma of our history as a way to reconcile and heal. Khan holds a NDip landscape technology, a BTech horticulture and is working towards a Master’s in environmental humanities at the University of Cape Town.
Through our discussion with Zayaan, we trace the ways that the white colonization of South Africa not only destroyed the complexities of the human-to-land relationship, but also continues to ignore the intricacies and connectivity of the landscape, leading to today’s dire drought. Further, we learn how South Africa is still living within the echo chamber of a shockingly repressive colonial system.
Music by Gregg Kowalsky
Stephen Jenkinson uses the English language to disrupt clinging and confusion, and to make the ancient in us sit up, wide-eared and listen deeply. Part of his magic is in illuminating where we have come from by masterfully tracing language down dark burrows to ancient roots. Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW, is a teacher, author, storyteller, spiritual activist, farmer and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School, a teaching house and learning house for the skills of deep living and making human culture.
Music by Jess Williamson
Today we are re-releasing a staff favorite, Episode 68 on Emergent Strategy with adrienne maree brown.
At the heart of Emergent Strategy is moving towards life and learning from the wisdom of nature to drive our social movements. Emergent Strategy asks of us to think about spirituality and transformative justice central to the resilient future we are imagining together. This asks of us to really show up, for ourselves and one another, leaning into conflict across horizontal hostility and vicious critique. Adrienne Maree Brown is the author behind Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. Based in Detroit, she facilitates social justice and black liberation through the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute and is on the teaching body of Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD) and generative somatics. She and her sister co-host How to Survive the End of the World podcast, and she writes the Pleasure Dome column for Bitch Magazine.
Music by June West & Ariana Sahara
The book: https://www.akpress.org/emergentstrategy.html
The blog: http://adriennemareebrown.net/
On August 4, 2014 the Mount Polley Mine Disaster occured. The indigenous community of Xat’sull, located near Williams Lake, British Columbia, the waterways, salmon, bears and ecosystems will be reaping the devastation of this event for generations to come. The Imperial Metal owned copper and gold mine dam breached a four square kilometer pond full of toxic copper and gold mining waste, spilling an estimated 25 billion litres of contaminated materials into Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake, a source of drinking water and major spawning grounds for sockeye salmon. According to Mount Polley mine records filed with Environment Canada in 2013, there were 326 tons of nickel, over 400 tons of arsenic, 177 tons of lead and 18,400 tons of copper and its compounds placed in the tailings pond.”
The consequences of this dam failure are catastrophic and heartbreaking, especially considering the Imperial Metal company has not been required to pay any fines to make reparations for this disaster that will severely impact this region for millenia to come.
Jacinda Mack, leader of First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining is a mother, water protector and Indigenous woman striving to promote environmentally sound mining exploration and development processes that respect First Nations rights and grant them full participation.
What is responsible mining? Is there such a thing? How do we restructure our dominant culture’s view of what is considered valuable?
Jacinda is someone who is wholeheartedly leading the way to ignite the fire in people’s hearts around this critical topic of responsible mining, rooted in seven generations thinking. Hailing from the Secwepemc and Nuxalk indigenous peoples, raised on the land in her indigenous community. Jacinda has worked with First Nations communities on the central coast and northern interior of B.C. as community organizer, researcher, natural resources manager and self government coordinator on First Nations territory-related issues.
Jacinda holds a Master of Arts degree from York University’s Communication & Culture Program, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Victoria.
This week on For The Wild podcast we are joined by Tom Goldtooth, an indigenous rights leader in the climate and environmental justice movement. He has served as executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) since 1996. Tom is one of the founders of the Durban Group for Climate Justice, co-founder of Climate Justice NOW!, a co-founder of the U.S. based Environmental Justice Climate Change initiative, a co-founder of the first Bioneers Conference Indigenous Forum, and a member of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change that operates as the indigenous caucus within the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change. He advocates for building healthy and sustainable indigenous communities based on traditional knowledge foundations, and works within tribal governments to develop indigenous-based environmental protection infrastructures. He serves on numerous boards, and works with indigenous people worldwide. Tom also co-produced "Drumbeat for Mother Earth," an award-winning documentary which explored the story of toxic and synthetic chemicals contaminating the food web and violating indigenous rights. Tom is of Diné and Dakota ancestry.
Tom calls on indigenous peoples to have a critical analysis of where we are going, where we will be in fifty years, when the youth of today will be elders. How can our emotional, psychological, and our spiritual strategies impact a healing process that can ensure a just transition? “Transition is inevitable, but justice is not."
The Indigenous Environmental Network works to grow alliances, impact policy, educate and empower, organize campaigns, carry out direct action, build economically sustainable communities, and build the capacity of indigenous communities and tribal governments to develop mechanisms to protect our sacred mother earth and the health of all living things.
The Indigenous Environmental Network will be hosting the 17th annual Protecting Mother Earth Conference this month from June 28th to July 1st, hosted by the Nisqually Tribe on their ancestral lands near Olympia, Washington. This conference is indigenous-initiated, designed, and led for the purpose of uplifting the critical voices of those on the frontline battles against environmental injustice and climate change. Topics will include water, energy, mining, food sovereignty, and the rights of mother earth.
Music by Ellayo.
This week, we speak with Ron Finley, an artist, designer and a South LA "gangsta" gardener who made the change he wanted to see in his own neighborhood. Together, we learn about how people power and community agitation can facilitate change. As more communities organize to shape their own lives, hope spreads like a seed on the wind. Policies can structure change, and good ideas can be borrowed from one neighborhood to another. Ron started out with one guerrilla garden then founded the Ron Finley Project, which plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA yards free of charge and has installed public gardens in curb strips, homeless shelters, abandoned lots, and traffic medians. The all-volunteer organization has installed over 30 gardens.
Music by Paul Defiglia, Jack Buschman & Ben Chace
This week’s episode centers around the devastating impacts of salmon farming on the Pacific coast of British Columbia. This week’s guest, Alexandra Morton, is an expert in salmon farming and the viruses perpetuated by this destructive aquaculture practice-- she has written 26 papers on the topic alone and is a leader in the movement to halt salmon farming off the coast of British Columbia.
This week's featured music by: Eola and Ben Chace
This week we’re joined by Ian McAllister, co-founder and Executive Director of Pacific Wild, a non-profit located in the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest. McAllister is committed to defending wildlife and their habitat on Canada’s Pacific Coast.
The wolves of the Great Bear Rainforest give us an entry point into understanding human relationships with the wolves of the past and throughout history as time honored messengers, providers and protectors. This conversation with Ian is a call to rekindle and reclaim our relationship as humble companions. Where roads have not been built, nor forests plowed and paved over, the wolves are able to experience a freedom from the slaughter brought to them by the first colonial settlers to Turtle Island, who also brought with them an insidious path of destruction that has precipitated the destruction of all our wild kin and the genocide of Indigenous Peoples. Wolves are calling on us to stand up to protect that which remains, that which serves as the reminder of time eternal.
Ulrich is a German ecologist and conservationist who has been living in Vienna, Austria for 29 years. He worked for the World Wildlife Fund Austria for more than 17 years until 2007, being primarily concerned with river conservation and restoration. He has been campaigning internationally against the construction of hydropower plants, such as dams along the Danube and the Ilisu Dam project on the Tirgris River in Turkey. Between 2010 and 2012 he produced the film Climate Crimes, a documentary about the abuse of climate protection and the consequences of so-called green energies. In 2012, he founded the Vienna-based conservation organization River Watch – a society for the protection of rivers. In addition, he is freelancing for the Manfred-Hermsen-Stiftung, an environmental protection foundation based in Bremen, Germany. In November 2014, he was awarded the Great Binding Prize for Nature Conservation and in June 2015 he received the Wolfgang Staab Prize for Nature Conservation.
Malik Kenyatta Yakini is co-founder and Executive Director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN). DBCFSN operates a seven-acre urban farm and is spearheading the opening of a co-op grocery store in Detroit’s North End. Yakini views the “good food revolution” as part of the larger movement for freedom, justice and equality. Malik is the founder of D-Town Farms, the largest farm in Detroit growing the most diversified vegetables and runs the The Detroit Food Justice Task Force, a consortium of People of Color led organizations and allies that share a commitment to creating a food security plan for Detroit that is: sustainable; that provides healthy, affordable foods for all of the city’s people; that is based on best-practices and programs that work; and that is just and equitable in the distribution of food and jobs.
We are joined by Polish forest protector, Jurek Lubiński. Jurek and his community, Obóz dla Puszczy (Camp of the Forest) are successfully fighting for the rights of this ancient forest’s protection. This forest hosts an enormous amount of biodiversity due to a critical part of the forest ecosystem: dead trees. Over 40 percent of the logging was taking place within the Białowieża UNESCO World Heritage site, in which many animals, lichens, mosses, and fungi are dependent on dead and rotting wood for survival.
On April 19th, ‘Democracy Now’ reported that "Europe’s highest court ordered an immediate halt to large-scale logging in this pristine forest. The ruling by the European Union Court of Justice found Poland violated EU laws by allowing as many as 100,000 ancient trees to be logged in the Bialowieza Forest. Following the ruling, Greenpeace and other forest protectors have demanded Poland’s government drop charges against 300 activists arrested during protests against the illegal logging." The forest protectors are still fighting for the remainder of the forest to become National Park land, and will not leave the forest until it is recognized as such by the Polish government.
Jurek is one of the activists camped out with Camp of the Forest-a non-hierarchic, grassroots, no-logo camp based on equality. Theirs is a movement for everyone: “It’s not a movement of some radical fighters. It’s not a movement of young men or young women or any specific social, economical, age group, or gender group. It’s open for anyone, from any country around the world, who wants to come and help protect this forest.”
Thank you to the forest protectors near and far reminding us the power of putting our bodies in the line of that which we love, that which we stand on and for- our Earth. Let’s let these stories be our collective legacy.
♫ Music includes "Kapela Ze Wsi Warszawa" by Warsaw Village Band , "Ach mój Borze" by Same Suki, and "Marie Lavoe" by David and Rosealean.
This week’s interview is with Jeremy Lent, an author whose writings investigate the patterns of thought that have led our civilization to its current crisis of sustainability. His book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning, published last year, explores the way humans have made meaning from the cosmos from hunter-gatherer times to the present day. He is founder of the nonprofit Liology Institute dedicated to fostering an integrated worldview that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on the earth.
Most of humanity’s ailments can be traced back to a mind virus known to some Indigenous cultures as Wetiko. Wetiko is an Algonquin word for a cannibalistic spirit that is driven by greed, excess, and selfish consumption (in Ojibwa it is windigo, wintiko in Powhatan). With Jeremy, we will unpack the history of Wetiko spirit and its relationship to capitalism- the culmination of humanity’s hyper individualistic self destruction. Rooted in history and patterning, Jeremy explores the ancient and primeval patriarchal drive towards violence and destruction, offering us an alternative way forward based on community, collaboration and collective divestment from Wetiko through reembodying intuition and feeling sense.
This week we are honored to host activist, farmer and educator Leah Penniman on For The Wild. Leah lives in steadfast dedication to her mission of weaving the vast and vital threads of honoring heritage, building relationship to land and ending racism and injustice in the food system.
Soul Fire Farm in Upstate New York is a hotbed for regeneration, grassroots activism and education based in agroecology and Afro-Ecology, a form of art, movement, practice, and process of social and ecological transformation that involves the re-evaluation of our sacred relationships with land, water, air, seeds and food.
In 2009, Soul Fire’s soil was initially ranked on the worst level by the USDA Agricultural Soil Classification, with only 6 inches of topsoil. From 2009 to 2017, their topsoil increased by 300% (6 to 18 inches) through regenerative and ancestral farming practices now sequestering up to 4,000 pounds of carbon.
Leah and the folks of Soul Fire Farm leave no stone unturned in the integration between social and environmental justice. Leah serves as a true leader of our generation, asking us to show up to these times with full heart rooted tangible action, healing the earth and one another.
Life on Earth began some 3.8 billion years ago. Today we’ll discuss systems and structures that have withstood the test of time. This week’s podcast guest, Janine Benyus, is a pioneer in the school of thought known as Biomimicry. Janine invites us to explore nature’s genius systems for creating and proliferating life. Nature as the engineer of life itself, has learned through deep time, how to create soil, clean air and water, cycle nutrients, remarkably continuing to create conditions which are conducive to producing more life. Biomimicry offers the perspective that nature can be our ideal model and our greatest mentor. Janine Benyus is the Co-founder of Biomimicry Institute. She is a biologist, innovation consultant, and author of six books.
The advent of modern technology within deeply misguided institutions and cultures has accelerated the near-demise of the biosphere. Our guest today argues that coupled with a deep awareness of ecological realities, visionary technology can benefit nature and society, and perhaps even help avert a worst-case climate disaster. Dr. Shearer is co-founder and CEO of Full Circle Biochar. Prior to launching Full Circle Biochar, Dr. Shearer was Chief Scientist at California Environmental Associates and Principal Environmental Scientist at AeroVironment Inc., where he worked in the next-generation transportation, energy, carbon mitigation, and information technology space. In addition to his private sector activities, Dr. Shearer has directed groundbreaking work in both public policy and philanthropic investment for climate change mitigation. Dr. Shearer sits on several nonprofit and educational boards including SkyTruth and Black Rock Labs (formerly Black Rock Solar). He has a Ph.D. in Environmental Epidemiology and a M.S. in Environmental Microbiology from the University of California, and B.S. in Biology from the University of Oregon.
Rue Mapp is pioneering a movement of equity and justice in the outdoor recreation and environmental movement. Outdoor Afro has become the nation’s leading network that celebrates and inspires African American connections and leadership in nature, letting people know that they are welcome in the outdoors to build community and find healing. Outdoor Afro is as much about representation as it is about paradigm shifts. Rue and her team are alchemizing the painful lineages of separation and trauma, to tell a story rooted in Black joy and seeking refuge in nature.
“I think about the Redwoods who were all clearcut, and now those trees are all second and third growth—that is the story of regeneration. I think nature holds those stories of relief. Nature relieves the stress of racism that we all feel. The trees don’t know what color I am. The birds don’t know what gender is. The flowers don’t know how much money I have in my bank account. I think we can rely on nature to be the equalizer for us so we can shed that weight. The possibility is there for us.”-- Rue Mapp
This episode is in collaboration with the Geography of Hope Conference, where Rue will be keynote speaker March 17 + 18 in Point Reyes, California.
http://outdoorafro.com
Today we speak with adrienne maree brown. brown is the author behind Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements.
At the heart of what brown calls Emergent Strategy, is moving towards life and learning from the wisdom of nature to drive our social movements. Emergent Strategy asks us to think about spirituality and transformative justice as central to the resilient future we are imagining together, urging us to really show up, for ourselves and one another, leaning into conflict across horizontal hostility and vicious critique. Based in Detroit, adrienne facilitates social justice and black liberation through the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute. She also teaches somatics with Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD) and Generative Somatics.
The book: https://www.akpress.org/emergentstrategy.html
The blog: http://adriennemareebrown.net/
Drawing on groundbreaking new discoveries, Peter Wohlleben studies the social life of trees, how they rely on one another and build communities. A tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it and each tree performs a specific role in the health and well being of the forest-- our tree elders have so much to teach us about relationship building and community.
Peter Wohlleben is a German forest protector and author of the best selling book The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World. After working for over 20 years in Germany's forestry commission, he drastically shifted his career from a commercial forester to a humble steward of a woodland of familial beings. Peter claimed that prior to awakening to the interconnected intelligence of the forest, "he knew about as much about the hidden life of trees as a butcher knows about the emotional life of animals."
As far as human relations with forest goes, Peter has spent time studying homosapien interdependence on trees throughout time as one that impacts our psycho-spiritual wellbeing in our daily life, no matter how “disconnected” we may feel from nature: “Going in to an old growth forest is a feeling of coming home. A good stable forest provides good feelings, lower blood pressure and has mood stabilizing properties. But when we go into tree plantations our body reacts to the unnatural and unhealthy aspect of it. These studies show that we are still part of the forest. People may think we have lost connection with nature, but in fact, we cannot lose connection with nature because it is in your body and in your genes.”
This episode is in collaboration with Geography of Hope Conference, “Finding Resilience in Nature in Perilous Time” happening March 17-18 in Point Reyes, CA. On Sunday morning March 18, attendees will take part in land-based restoration and environmental efforts with Peter Wohlleben. https://gohconference.org
Featured Music by Eola
Miriam Horn has worked at the Environmental Defense Fund since 2004. She is the author of three books: Rebels in White Gloves, the New York Times bestselling Earth: the Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming, and Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman, Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland. Horn was also a producer of a film based on the book which had its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and aired globally on Discovery in August 2017. Before joining EDF, Ms. Horn spent two decades writing for U.S. News and World Report, The New York Times, Smithsonian and other publications. Her first job was with the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado, doing timber management, trail construction, mine reclamation and education. Ms. Horn holds a BA from Harvard University and completed two years of post-baccalaureate study in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.
Music by Bea Troxel, “Be Gone” and “Delta” and by Fletcher Tucker, “Buried on the Wind.” Both are available on bandcamp.com.
This week’s journey on For The Wild is with the mesmerizing visionary leader brontë velez who poetically guides us through an expansive exploration of critical ecology, radical imagination and decomposition as rebellion. brontë graciously encourages us to examine our relationship to place and space, the decolonization of literacy, the decomposition of violence and the prioritization of Black wellness.
brontë is guided by “the many rivers that have come together” to make and sustain them. as a black-latinx multimedia artist, life-long student, and designer, their praxis (theory + action) lives at the intersections of critical geography, black liberation ecologies and creative placemaking. they live by the call that "black wellness is the antithesis of state violence" (Mark Anthony Johnson). their work intends to compost the violences forged by environmental racism through radical imagination. this commitment iterates through several mediums and this year grows through Lead to Life. in their last year at Brandeis University, brontë worked as a copy editor on a retrospective of Mexican artist Pedro Reyes’ work. when they witnessed his projects Disarm and Palas por Pistolas - in which he transforms weapons into shovels and instruments - they were met with profound healing and a deep desire to share this medicine through continuing the rituals in the united states as a direct response to losing a dear friend to gun violence alongside the larger traumatic impact on black communities and environments from police brutality. they are committed to joy, wellness, decomposition as rebellion and walking in the prayer that “justice is what love looks like in public."
PODCAST STUDY GUIDE Explore this topic more deeply with EMBODYING THE REVOLUTION Study Guide + Resource Zine Embodying the Revolution is a study guide to accompany further inquiry into the expansive dialogue held with brontë velez in the episode of the same title with Ayana Young of For The Wild aired on February 15th, 2018. This zine hosts 16 pages of content including: compiled resources mentioned in the interview, critical thinking discussion questions, poetry and prose, a deeper-dive resource guide and a comprehensive glossary. This zine is a resource to use individually or collectively to begin a conversation about building a truly just and intersectional movement. STUDY GUIDE /65
Today we join Bill Mckibben to discuss news from the frontlines of climate chaos and resistance. The discussion centers around the potential fate of modern civilization and the imperative to survive and to restore biodiversity. Bill McKibben is an author and environmentalist. His 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book written for a general audience discussing climate change, and has been translated into 24 languages. He’s gone on to write a dozen more books and to receive the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel.’ McKibben is a founder of 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement, which has organized twenty thousand rallies around the world in nearly every country, spearheaded the resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, and launched the fast-growing fossil fuel divestment movement.
PODCAST STUDY GUIDE Explore this topic more deeply with DAMPENING THE BLOW OF A SPIRALING CLIMATE Study Guide
Dampening the Blow of a Spiraling Climate is a study guide inspired by For the Wild podcast episodes with esteemed climate activists Clayton Thomas-Müller (aired November 24, 2017) and Bill McKibben (aired February 8, 2018). The expansive content illuminates the current scientific consensus of how our Earth's complex climate shifts are emerging, explores divestment as a tool for dismantling the fossil fuel regime, and probes the question of what a just transition truly looks like. Ultimately, this study guide encourages individuals and communities to reflect on and adaptively align with how the climate is shifting in their bioregion.
STUDY GUIDE /58 and /64
Angelo Baca is a Navajo and Hopi filmmaker, and a PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology at NYU. A graduate of the Native Voices Program at the University of Washington, he has created numerous documentaries and collaborative works around such subjects as Indigenous food sovereignty, and Indigenous international repatriation. He’s also taught Native American literature and media courses at Brown University. He promotes local participatory research methodology and empowering traditional knowledge keepers.
As a documentary film-maker, Angelo has developed digital storytelling projects in close collaboration with Indigenous communities including his latest film, Shash Jaa': Bears Ears which he created in an effort to illuminate the Utah landscape’s significance to Indigenous peoples of the region.
He is the co-president of the Native American and Indigenous Students Group at NYU, assisting in facilitating an Indigenous Studies Program minor at the institution and he is on the selection committee for the Chief Diversity Officer at NYU.
Called "the queen of canopy research," Nalini Nadkarni explores the rich, vital world found in the tops of trees. Dr. Nadkarni has spent two decades climbing the trees of Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea, the Amazon and the Pacific Northwest, exploring the world of animals and plants that live in the canopy and never come down; and how this upper layer of the forest interacts with the world on the ground. A pioneering researcher in this area, Nadkarni created the Big Canopy Database to help researchers store and understand the rich trove of data she and others are uncovering.
Nadkarni taught biology at Evergreen State College in Washington for twenty years, followed by University of Utah, but her work outside the academy is equally fascinating -- using nontraditional vectors to teach the general public about trees and the ecosystem. She worked with prison inmates to grow moss for the horticulture trade, to relieve the collecting pressure on wild mosses and to inspire a new reverence for nature—named by TIME magazine as “One of the best inventions of 2014.”
She holds a PhD from University of Washington and a BS from Brown University/University of British Columbia. Her numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Aldo Leopold Fellowship, the Archie Carr Medal for Conservation. She's the author of over 100 scholarly articles and four books, including Between Earth and Sky: Our Intimate Connections to Trees (read an excerpt or purchase book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520261655)
Jacqueline Patterson is the Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program. Since 2007 Patterson has served as coordinator & co-founder of Women of Color United. Jacqui Patterson has worked as a researcher, program manager, coordinator, advocate and activist working on women‘s rights, violence against women, HIV&AIDS, racial justice, economic justice, and environmental and climate justice. Patterson served as a Senior Women’s Rights Policy Analyst for ActionAid where she integrated a women’s rights lens for the issues of food rights, macroeconomics, and climate change as well as the intersection of violence against women and HIV&AIDS. Previously, she served as Assistant Vice-President of HIV/AIDS Programs for IMA World Health providing management and technical assistance to medical facilities and programs in 23 countries in Africa and the Caribbean. Patterson served as the Outreach Project Associate for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Research Coordinator for Johns Hopkins University. She also served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Jamaica, West Indies.
Pualani Case, born and raised on the Island of Hawai’i surrounded by the high mountains of Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, Hualalai and Kohala, the fresh waters of Kohakohau and Waikoloa and the plains of Waimea. Pua’s life path and purpose has led her to become a Kumu Hula, a teacher of traditional dance and chant, and a teacher of the ways, culture and traditions of the kanaka maoli or native peoples of Hawai’i. With a degree in Hawaiian Language and culture, and a teaching degree in Social Studies, interwoven with the traditional teachings, philosophies and expectations from her kupuna or elders, Pua has integrated ‘Ike Hawai’i or Hawaiian knowledge and lessons into the public school system for over 30 years. Pua and her ‘ohana, her family are active as spiritual and cultural leaders in and beyond their community. They are an integral part of the protocol and ceremonies for Na Kalaiwa’a, Moku o Keawe Makali’i Voyaging Canoe, as well as for Hokule’a and other Pacific Island Voyages. Pua sits on various educational and cultural boards including the Waimea Hawaiian Civic Club, Waimea Community Education Hui, and MKEA, Mauna Kea Education and Awareness. Pua and her family are petitioners in the Contested Case hearing filed on behalf of Mauna Kea Mountain. As a representative of the Mauna Kea ‘Ohana Na Kia’I Mauna, Idle No More Hawai’i Warriors Rising and Idle No More Mauna, Kea she and her family have traveled throughout the continent, to Europe and various places across the Pacific to network, support and address the issues and challenges facing sacred places and life ways of the people of Hawaiʻi.
Today we speak with George Monbiot, who studied zoology at Oxford, and has spent his career as a journalist and environmentalist, working with others to defend the natural world. His celebrated Guardian columns are syndicated all over the world. George is the author of the bestselling books Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life; The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order; and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man's Land. His latest book is Out of the Wreckage: a New Politics for an Age of Crisis. Among the many prizes he has won is the UN Global 500 award for outstanding environmental achievement, presented to him by Nelson Mandela.
monbiot.com
This week, join Ayana in conversation with organizer, facilitator, public speaker and writer on Indigenous rights and environmental & economic justice, Clayton Thomas-Müller. As a member of the Treaty #6 based Mathias Colomb Cree Nation also known as Pukatawagan located in Northern Manitoba, Canada, Clayton is the 'Stop it at the Source' campaigner with 350.org. For the last fifteen years he has campaigned across Canada, Alaska and the lower 48 states organizing in hundreds of First Nations, Alaska Native and Native American communities in support of grassroots Indigenous Peoples to defend their traditional territories against the encroachment of the fossil fuel industry. This has included a special focus on the sprawling infrastructure of pipelines, refineries and extraction associated with the Canadian tar sands.
lifeinthecityofdirtywater.com
PODCAST STUDY GUIDE Explore this topic more deeply with DAMPENING THE BLOW OF A SPIRALING CLIMATE Study Guide
Dampening the Blow of a Spiraling Climate is a study guide inspired by For the Wild podcast episodes with esteemed climate activists Clayton Thomas-Müller (aired November 24, 2017) and Bill McKibben (aired February 8, 2018). The expansive content illuminates the current scientific consensus of how our Earth's complex climate shifts are emerging, explores divestment as a tool for dismantling the fossil fuel regime, and probes the question of what a just transition truly looks like. Ultimately, this study guide encourages individuals and communities to reflect on and adaptively align with how the climate is shifting in their bioregion.
STUDY GUIDE /58 and /64
This week we are honored to share our conversation with environmental activist, economist, writer and orator, Winona LaDuke. LaDuke is a living embodiment of earth activism and Indigenous sovereignty and a long-time inspiration to the For The Wild team. As the Founder and Executive Director of Honor the Earth, Winona is fighting against pipelines while simultaneously creating tangible solutions for oil independence. She is rooted in the White Earth Anishinaabe Nation located in Becker, Clearwater, and Mahnomen counties of north-central Minnesota and she’s the founding member of the Turtle Island Slow Food Association, the first Indigenous-led slow food association in the world.
“It's taken us a short time to change the nature of nature. In my lifetime, there has been more change than during all preceding human history put together.”
This episode we speak with Dr. Sylvia A. Earle, called "Her Deepness" by the New Yorker and the New York Times, "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress, and first "Hero for the Planet" by Time magazine. Dr. Earle is an oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer. She has experience as a field research scientist, government official, and director for corporate and nonprofit organizations. Earle has led more than a hundred expeditions and logged more than 7,000 hours underwater, including leading the first team of women aquanauts in 1970. She is the subject of the Emmy Award-winning film Mission Blue.
As the founder of Mission Blue, an organization uniting a global coalition to inspire an upwelling of public awareness, access and support for a worldwide network of marine protected areas, or Hope Spots. These habitats or ecosystems are home to rare, threatened or endangered species. Nominated and protected by civilians, all of these Hope Spots will create a global wave of community support for ocean conservation that leaders and policy makers can’t ignore.
mission-blue.org
Paul Watson is a marine wildlife conservationist and environmental activist from Toronto, Canada. Watson was one of the founding members and directors of Greenpeace. In 1977 he left Greenpeace and founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Today’s conversation revolves around the state of our oceans, threats to marine wildlife, Sea Shepherd’s resistance through what Paul calls “aggressive non-violence”, political dynamics and the tensions between subsistence hunters and conservationists.
We are at a crossroads. We can continue on the path we have been on, in this nation that privileges profit over people and land; or we can unite as citizens with a common cause--the health and wealth of the Earth that sustains us. If we cannot commit to this kind of fundamental shift, then democracy becomes another myth perpetuated by those in power.”- Terry Tempest Williams, The Hour of Land . This week on For The Wild is Terry Tempest Williams. Williams is a prolific writer who speaks out on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, she has consistently shown us how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. . A native of Utah, her naturalist writing has been richly influenced by the sprawling landscape of the West. Her most recent book is The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks where her writing is described to "follow wilderness trails into the realm of memory and family, exploring gender and community through the prism of landscape." . This conversation invites insight into renewed relational understanding of land, sacred rage, and protecting the breathing spaces of public lands. Terry Tempest Williams guides us to explore acts of the imagination into our shifts of consciousness and expanding our sense of family to both human and wild. For the identity of Americans, we are facing a welcome and necessary shift towards mindful reverence, active respect, and intentional renewal of our remaining open public spaces.
Kandi Mossett (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara – North Dakota) has emerged as a leading voice in the fight to bring visibility to the impacts that climate change and environmental injustice are having on Indigenous communities across North America.
After completing her Master’s Degree in Environmental Management, Ms. Mossett began her work with the Indigenous Environmental Network as the Tribal Campus Climate Challenge Coordinator, engaging with more than 30 tribal colleges to instatecommunity based environmental programs, discuss issues of socio-ecologic injustice, and connect indigenous youth with green jobs. She currently serves as the IEN’s Lead Organizer on the Extreme Energy & Just Transition Campaign, focusing at present on creating awareness about the environmentally & socially devastating effects of hydraulic fracturing on tribal lands.
Her local work is complemented by international advocacy work, including participation in several United Nation Forums and a testimony before the U.S. Congress on the climate issue and its links to issues of health, identity, and well being on tribal lands.
Quotes:
“Above all, fight to protect all life; be a voice for all those that can’t speak, and never give up hope.”
"We're not guaranteed change when we make our voices heard against injustice, but we are guaranteed to fail if we don’t at least try."
As greenhouse gas concentrations continue to climb to perilous extremes, scientists are observing dozens of new self-reinforcing feedback loops taking effect and a once-mighty biosphere begins to sputter. The pace of climate breakdown has greatly outpaced projections, and will continue to accelerate as these tipping points are reached—unless!—there were a secret power we could harness to pull CO2 out of the sky and safeguard it in the soils of a verdant food-bearing landscape. On the California coast, breakthrough research at the Marin Carbon Project has given a glimmer of hope to the disillusioned. We’re joined today by two people whose mission is to realize the potential of plants and soil communities to restore our future. John Wick is a rancher, carbon farmer, and sustainable land management advocate. He is the co-founder of the Marin Carbon Project, which seeks to enhance carbon sequestration in rangelands, agriculture and forest soils, and is the co-owner of Nicasio Native Grass Ranch in Marin County, California. On the ranch, John manages molecules, microorganisms and rain at the watershed scale. John’s personal mission is to remove enough CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis to get us below 300 ppm, or “climate drawdown.” Calla Rose Ostrander is a strategic advisor and activist who works with leaders in California and the western US to rebalance the planet’s carbon cycle. She worked for ten years in municipal climate policy for the cities of Aspen and San Francisco, leading climate action and resilience planning and internal sustainability reporting, and also worked for Earth Economics, the California Carbon Campaign and the Rocky Mountain Institute.
marincarbonproject.org/
conference.bioneers.org/
guymcpherson.com/climate-chaos/climate-change-summary-and-update/
Namesake of the Great Bear Rainforest: Kermode bear (Ursus americanus kermodei), also known as the Spirit bear. Photo by Richard Sandor.
Today we are joined by Jody Holmes, forest defender and primary architect of the historic Great Bear Rainforest Agreements which protected the largest expanses of old growth temperate rainforest in the world. The Rainforest Solutions Project is a unique and innovative coalition consisting of Greenpeace, Sierra Club BC and Stand (formerly ForestEthics). For almost 2 decades, they have had a singular mission of “pioneering collaboration between deeply divergent interests (government, First Nations, environmentalists and logging companies) in the Great Bear Rainforest to develop a world-leading legal and policy framework called Ecosystem-Based Management”. The decades-long struggle over British Columbia's enormous coastal rainforests culminated in one of the most extraordinary conservation, social justice, and indigenous rights victories in recent memory: a historic multi-generational agreement between the parties to conserve and sustainably manage the 15-million acre Great Bear Rainforest, one of the largest old growth temperate rainforests on the planet. Eighty-five percent of these forests are now legally off-limits to logging.
savethegreatbear.org
Theresa Two Bulls is an attorney, prosecutor and politician in the United States and the Oglala Sioux Tribe. She is a lead organizer of The Unity Concert, a gathering of members of the Pte Oyate (Buffalo Nation, also called the Great Sioux Nation), artists, performers and concerned global citizens committed to educating and raising support for the Black Hills Initiative. Its organizers and participants believe that the only way for the United States of America to be truly great is to honor its word, and honor the treaties including restoring the guardianship of the Black Hills to the Great Sioux Nation.
The Black Hills Unity Concert, FREE, September 8-9-10, 2017: http://www.theunityconcert.com
*All donations to For the Wild through September 10th will go to the Unity Concert
Alnoor’s work focuses on the intersection of political organizing, systems thinking, storytelling, technology and the decentralization of power. He is a founding member and the Executive Director of The Rules (/TR), a global network of activists, organizers, designers, coders, researchers, writers and others dedicated to changing the rules that create inequality, climate change and poverty around the world.
Ahead of their joint appearances at the forthcoming Global Eclipse Gathering in Oregon, Ayana speaks with Jasmine Fuego about mobilizing regeneration through harnessing the power of festival culture and social permaculture. Jasmine Fuego is an activist, artist and permaculturist redefining the transformational festival scene by bridging the gap between art and action. Fuego helped birth into being the Permaculture Action Network, providing hands on educational experiences layering relationship building with community, land, art and music. Facilitator of youth mindfulness, art as activism and social entrepreneurship, Jasmine is hands on at the forefront of engagement with creative social transformation.
Jasmine is currently living in the Bay Area teaching mindfulness to Youth in Richmond with the Mindful Life Project, organizing Permaculture Action Days nationwide and singing with the purpose driven community Thrive East Bay Choir
This episode is in partnership with Oregon Eclipse and Living Village Culture
Ayana is joined by Chief Caleen Sisk, spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe of Northern California, to explore how the forces of industrial society have attempted to tame and exploit living waters, and how these Indigenous stewards are facing the subsequent ecological predicament. Upon learning that the extinct Chinook salmon of her territories had survived a world away in New Zealand, Caleen has led an unprecedented effort with Maori and federal fish biologists to return Chinook to the McCloud River watershed in California.
Please visit gofundme.com/salmonwillrun to donate to this historic effort to bring back the long-lost Chinook salmon! Learn about the journey at run4salmon.org
Starhawk is one of the most respected voices in modern earth-based spirituality, and a cofounder of Reclaiming, an activist branch of modern Pagan religion. She is a veteran of progressive movements, from anti-war to anti-nukes, and is deeply committed to bringing the techniques and creative power of spirituality to political activism. She is the author or coauthor of twelve books, including The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, long considered the essential text for the Neo-Pagan movement, and the now-classic ecotopian novel The Fifth Sacred Thing, now in development for film and television. She is a founder of Earth Activist Trainings (EAT), teaching permaculture design grounded in spirit and with a focus on organizing and activism. Together with Charles Williams and others, she co-teaches EAT courses in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. She also champions ‘social permaculture’: the application of permaculture principles to social organizations, policy and strategy. She has taught in many Bay Area colleges and universities, and is presently adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Starhawk travels internationally, lecturing and teaching permaculture, earth-based spirituality and ritual, and the skills of activism. She lives between San Francisco and West Sonoma, where she is developing a model of carbon-sequestering ranching, incorporating holistic management rotational grazing with sheep and goats, restorative forestry, food forests and perennial systems.
In this episode we speak with activist Eriel Tchekwie Deranger about the largest industrial project in the world, the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, and strategize about the future of the fossil fuel resistance. We discuss institutional warfare waged by extractive industry on indigenous sovereignty, land rights, and the boreal forest—“the other Amazon”—Earth’s preeminent carbon sink. We cover the political manipulation that has secured new oil and gas pipeline construction in Canada despite exuberant public outcry, and how a movement must target the source and the motive of the extraction, not just the routes of transport.
As living communities on land and sea continue to unravel, Bren Smith of Green Wave is determined to pioneer and popularize a food system that carries marine restoration in its very architecture. Having spent his life on the seas from Newfoundland to Alaska, Bren has witnessed first hand the collapse of global fisheries. Over the last decade and a half, he has spearheaded and developed the methods of vertical 3D ocean farming. His visionary model has the potential to feed the world, while sequestering carbon and pollution, creating crucial habitat for aquatic and bird species, and ensuring a livelihood for farmers and fisher-folk everywhere. With the low-hanging fruit of wild fish nearly exhausted and with famine lurking on the world stage, ocean farming may represent a genuine way forward. Bren argues a sustainable food system must go beyond the innovations: we need to shift our priorities by reducing our consumption of wild fish and embracing the thousands of novel varieties of sea veggies. The New Yorker called Bren’s system “the culinary equivalent of the electric car” and it has recently been honored with the Buckminster Fuller Prize for Ecological Design and the European Sustainia Award, among others.
Lyla June retraces the origins of oppression of European women, men and earth-based cultures through to recent histories of genocide, inter-generational trauma, and the enduring forces that seek to destroy Indigenous women and the earth. Industrial activities that impact the lands and humans at local levels reverberate at an energetic level that has bred today’s crises of environmental and spiritual disease. Lyla argues that by facing this dark history and exposing the backward logic of a “sophisticated” death culture, a way forward emerges. In resistance, Lyla and Ayana honor the power of women as constant life-givers who “lead with their hearts”, and the potential to heal the deep fractures in our society through renewing acts of forgiveness and love that affirm our togetherness as a global family.
Geography of Hope Conference, Ancestors & the Land: Our Past, Present & Future: http://gohconference.org/
Lyla June was raised in Taos, New Mexico and is a descendent of Diné (Navajo) and Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) lineages. Her personal mission in life is to grow closer to Creator by learning how to love deeper. In 2012, she graduated with honors from Stanford University with a degree in Environmental Anthropology. She is a musician, public speaker and internationally recognized performance poet.
As we throw off the mental shackles of the dominant culture and seek sanity and meaning amid the fragments of heritage and conquest, we turn for guidance to a veteran of challenging transitions. Stephen Jenkinson is an activist, teacher, author, and farmer. His book Die Wise recently received the Nautilus Book Award. He has a masters degree in theology from Harvard University and a masters degree in social work from the University of Toronto. Formerly a program director at a major Canadian hospital and medical-school assistant professor, Jenkinson is now a sought-after workshop leader, speaker, and consultant to palliative care and hospice organizations. He is the founder of the Orphan Wisdom School in Canada and the subject of the documentary film Griefwalker.
Video: The Meaning of Death http://www.ianmack.com/videos/the-meaning-of-death-stephen-jenkinson/
The School of Orphan Wisdom http://orphanwisdom.com/
For those of you who have listened to Unlearn & Rewild over the last two years, welcome to the first episode of the show under a new name. We are happy to announce the launch of For the Wild, a broader organization to take on Earth renewal in a tangible sense.
As we join in this work, we give thanks for the numerous exceptional teachers who have come into our lives through the diverse networks of biocentrics and Earth defenders, including the Bioneers network. Today we are joined by the co-founder and president of Bioneers, Nina Simons, an award winning social entrepreneur and visionary thinker. For nearly three decades, Bioneers has been identifying, gathering and disseminating breakthrough innovations that reveal a positive and life-honoring future that’s within our grasp, today. The annual Bioneers summit takes place every October in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Nina takes on some far-reaching questions about organizing for systemic change amid convergent ecological crises. She passes along her own nuanced observations as well as lessons from the many visionary thinkers she has crossed paths with. Her deeply informed critiques shed light on some of the topics that challenge us all: sacrifice, denialism, gender and race tension, privilege, empowerment, indigenous leadership, and building successful movements that address the many layers of societal disfunction.
http://conference.bioneers.org/
Today we’re speaking Faith Gemmill, a Pit River/ Wintu and Neets’ aii Gwich’in Athabascan earth defender from Arctic Village, Alaska. She is a campaign organizer for REDOIL (Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands). Faith has worked on behalf of the Gwich’in Nation for over ten years as a representative, public spokesperson and Gwich’in Steering Committee staff to address the potential human health and cultural impacts of proposed oil development in the birthplace and nursery of the Porcupine Caribou Herd in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Faith continues as a public spokesperson, press and tribal liaison and human rights advocate. Faith is a current field representative of the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) and has represented the Gwich’in Nation at United Nations. Faith also serves on the advisory board of Honor the Earth and and National Wildlife Federation. Also joining us is Princess Lucaj. She is the former Executive Director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee and Alaska Director at the Indigenous Leadership Institute. She was a Production Manager with Native Voices at the Autry National Center, a member of the Board of Dancing with the Spirit, and she is an actor, director and activist.
Please sign the petition: http://www.wearethearctic.org/action/tell-president-and-congress-protect-arctic-refuge
Today, the conversation with Radical Mycology’s Peter McCoy probes onward, as we invoke the powers of fungi in Earth healing and the integration of human societies into our delicate and compromised biosphere. We begin with cutting-edge uses of fungi for personalized medicine, which promises sweeping advances in healthcare and natural healing. We surmise the potentials and the limitations of myco-remediation in confronting industrial agriculture, logging, oceanic plastics, and other major pollution. We’ll also discuss the imperative to preserve fungal diversity and the methods of creating local spore and culture banks. Despite being sidelined by academia and the social mainstream, understanding mycology and fungal ecology—and the universal patterns therein—is an essential tool for reigning in the ecological crisis.
Website: radicalmycology.com US Book Tour: radicalmycology.com/2016-tour/ The Book: chthaeus.com/product-p/b-rmp.htm 2016 Convergence: radicalmycologyconvergence.wordpress.com/
Today we welcome back Peter McCoy, who speaks on behalf of the fungi, the most overlooked and misrepresented organisms in the web of life. Peter leads us through the earliest evidence of the fungal “queendom” in the development of culture and human intelligence, and shows how understanding fungal biology and mycelial webs can steer our social experiments. Peter is an original founder of Radical Mycology, a grassroots organization and movement that teaches the skills needed to work with mushrooms and other fungi for personal, societal, and ecological resilience. Peter is the lead cultivation expert for the Amazon Mycorenewal Project and Open Source Ecology and the primary author behind Radical Mycology, a nearly 700-page book on accessible mycology and mushroom cultivation. Apart from his work with fungi, he is also a community organizer, street medic, zinester, artist, musician, lecturer, and teacher.
Today we will look deep into the challenges faced by frontline Indigenous activists in one of America’s most vibrant, and imperiled, regions, the Mississippi Delta. Monique Michelle Verdin is the creator of the film My Louisiana Love. Her intimate documentation of the Deltas’ indigenous Houma nation exposes the complex interconnectedness of environment, economics, culture, climate and change. Cherri Foytlin is the author of "Spill It! The Truth About the Deep Water Horizon Oil Rig Explosion," and she has been a constant voice speaking out for the health and ecosystems of Gulf Coast communities.
Dr. Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, writer, Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, NY, and the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Her research interests include the role of traditional ecological knowledge in ecological restoration and building resilience for climate change. Dr. Kimmerer has authored numerous literary essays and scientific papers on restoration and plant ecology, as well as the award-winning books “Gathering Moss,” and “Braiding Sweetgrass,” which interweave indigenous knowledge and scientific perspectives.
The first season of this program has explored our ecological predicament from the vantage of activism, science, indigenous knowledge, and eco-psychology, and we have brainstormed and dreamed about how to move towards a regenerative future as an Earth community. The window we must pass through to escape a total unraveling of the climate and biodiversity is so small that we must focus all our creative powers on hitting that target, no matter how radical the changes we must make in our societies and ourselves. The other part of the message is that we can’t do it alone, and we must partner with the plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria, those ancient survivors and healers who give so freely of their gifts. In separation, all creatures perish, but together we comprise a complete intelligence, a beating heart. Our inquiries have often been conceptual, as we dig down to the roots of our collective confusions and shadows. We have set aside the fine-toothed political and economic discussions, because they often conclude that what’s necessary is impossible, and thus produce no meaningful solutions that change our destructive course. Today marks a new direction. Our guest today is a rare breed: a politician who not only can admit our political system is broken and our home planet cries for radical change, but who is absolutely dedicated to building a movement around making it through that diminishing window of opportunity. Jill Stein is the Green Party’s 2016 candidate for President of the United States.
Painting by March Young
A delightful meander into the deep knowledge of the forest! How do trees communicate with one another and act for the common good? Why are oceans utterly dependent on healthy forests? How would a regenerative society meet its resource needs? What do children know that their parents have forgotten? Diana Beresford-Kroeger is a one-woman force of regeneration of the biosphere. A botanist, medical biochemist and self-defined "renegade scientist," she brings together ethnobotany, horticulture, spirituality and alternative medicine to reveal a path toward better stewardship of the natural world. Orphaned in Ireland in her youth, Diana was educated by elders who instructed her in the Brehon knowledge of plants and nature. Told she was the last child of ancient Ireland and told to one day bring this knowledge to a troubled future, Diana has done exactly that. Her Bioplan is an ambitious plan encouraging ordinary people to develop a new relationship with nature, to join together to replant the global forest. Her books include “The Sweetness of a Simple Life,” “The Global Forest,” “Arboretum Borealis,” “Arboretum America,” and “A Garden for Life.” Diana Beresford-Kroeger was inducted as a Wings WorldQuest fellow in 2010 and named one of Utne reader’s World Visionaries for 2011.
Learn more about Diana's amazing upcoming film The Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees at http://dianasjourney.com
Diana Beresford-Kroeger is a one-woman force of regeneration of the biosphere! A botanist, medical biochemist and self-defined "renegade scientist," she brings together ethnobotany, horticulture, spirituality and alternative medicine to reveal a path toward better stewardship of the natural world. Orphaned in Ireland in her youth, Diana was educated by elders who instructed her in the Brehon knowledge of plants and nature. Told she was the last child of ancient Ireland and told to one day bring this knowledge to a troubled future, Diana has done exactly that. Her Bioplan is an ambitious plan encouraging ordinary people to develop a new relationship with nature, to join together to replant the global forest. Her books include The Sweetness of a Simple Life, The Global Forest, Arboretum Borealis, Arboretum America, and A Garden for Life. Diana Beresford-Kroeger was inducted as a Wings WorldQuest fellow in 2010 and named one of Utne reader’s World Visionaries for 2011.
Upcoming event///March 19 Call of the Forest: Climate, Water, and Spirit, in Point Reyes, CA. http://ptreyesbooks.com/goh/call-of-the-forest
Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis)
Come fall in love with plants, not just as teachers and healers, but as powerful partners in land stewardship and renewal. Rosemary Gladstar joins us to discuss her activism in protecting and restoring medicinal plants and their habitats. She is a pioneer in the herbal movement and has been called the 'godmother of American Herbalism'. She began over 35 years ago developing herbal formulas in her shop, Rosemary's Garden in Sonoma County, California. She is the founder of the California School of Herbal Studies, the oldest running herb school in the United States, and is the organizer of the International Herb Symposium and The annual New England Women's Herbal Conference. She is the author of numerous books and has taught extensively throughout the United States and worldwide at venues as varied as backyard gardens, native villages, garden clubs, universities and hospitals. She is also the co-founder of the Traditional Medicinals tea company. Rosemary’s greatest passion has been the work of United Plant Savers, a non profit organization that Rosemary founded in 1994 and is currently president. UpS is dedicated to the conservation and cultivation of at risk North American medicinal plants and to preserving botanical sanctuaries across the U.S. to help preserve the land that these precious native species thrive on. Rosemary lives and works from her home, Sage Mountain Herbal Retreat Center, a 500 acre botanical preserve in central Vermont.
https://www.unitedplantsavers.org/
As we stand in awe before biotic and societal collapse, Andrew Harvey gives us a map of mystical teachings to help us navigate the dark night of the soul and to emerge as empowered Earth defenders. Andrew Harvey is Founder Director of the Institute of Sacred Activism, an international organization focused on inviting concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary global crises by becoming inspired, effective, and practical agents of institutional and systemic change, in order to create peace and sustainability. Sacred Activism is a transforming force of compassion-in-action that is born of a fusion of spiritual knowledge, courage, love, and passion, with wise radical action to preserve and heal the planet and its inhabitants. Andrew was born in south India in 1952, and went to school in England. He studied history at Oxford, receiving England’s highest academic honors. Over the last forty years he has plunged into different mystical traditions to learn their secrets and practices, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Sufism. He has synthesized these mystical explorations with a deep environmental and humanitarian ethic in the practice of Sacred Activism. He is the author of over 30 books.
Today we are speaking with the legendary artist, educator and political activist Buffy Sainte-Marie. In the early Sixties, Buffy played the coffeehouses of Greenwich Village, where her music was so well received that her career skyrocketed to international acclaim. Tune in as we explore creativity in an age of commodification, being indigenous in a global village, demythologizing the power elites, and more!
http://buffysainte-marie.com/
New Album: Power in the Blood
In the race to name this new bizarre geologic era, "Anthropocene" seems to have stuck the most. Some people are cautious to embrace a name meaning the age of humans, as it can be latched onto by industry and used as a justification for the murder of the planet. More descriptive, cautionary names have been suggested, too. Michael Soule suggested the Catastrophozoic Era. Other contenders include Homogenocene, the Age of Homogeneity, Mixocene, the Age of Slime, and the most resonant to me, coined by EO Wilson, Eremocene, the Age of Loneliness. With the human population in explosive expansion, it is easy to forget, the Earth is going through the most rapid extinction crisis the world has ever seen. Joining us today to help us digest the great amount of information being amassed around the globe about this major juncture in Earth’s history, is Elizabeth Kolbert. Elizabeth is a staff writer for The New Yorker, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change, and most recently The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, which has just won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-fiction.
There are virtually no places left that have not been logged, mined, tilled, paved, overfished, overhunted, irradiated, drilled, bombed, or built to the sky. As public discourse swirls around how to meet our material needs as we ap[][1]proach the limits of growth, there is another conversation going on about how to give back and make offerings of beauty amid the plunder. As Albert Einstein said, we can’t solve our problems with the same thinking that created them. Hyper-rational linear thinking alone cannot impassion us to defend the sacred places that are buried beneath the sprawl of infrastructure. Our guest today, Trebbe Johnson, helps people break through the walls that isolate them from the pain and healing of the Earth. She has been leading vision quests, workshops, and ceremonies worldwide since 1994. She is the founder of Radical Joy for Hard Times, a non-profit organization devoted to finding and making beauty in wounded places, and the author of The World Is a Waiting Lover. A passionate explorer of outer as well as inner frontiers, Trebbe has camped alone in the Arctic, traveled in the Sahara Desert, and is an award-winning multimedia producer.
Recent article in Orion Magazine: https://orionmagazine.org/article/uncommon-gratitude/
Radical Joy For Hard Times: http://www.radicaljoyforhardtimes.org/
Does wild nature have a place in the future of farms and human society? How close to the edge of genetic unraveling will we come before stopping biotech pollution and safeguarding seed diversity? Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental thinker and activist. A leader in the International Forum on Globalization, Shiva won the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award) in 1993. Director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy, she is the author of many books, including Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply and Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. Before becoming an activist, she was one of India’s leading Physicists.
An expansive discussion on the climate, past and future: the weight of humanity on natural systems, repercussions of temperature and sea level rise, the future of the amazon, the history of salmon and northwest forests, and more. Curt Stager is an ecologist, paleoclimatologist, and science journalist with a Ph.D. in biology and geology from Duke University. Dr. Stager blends the long-term perspective of a climate historian and multidisciplinary outlook of a biologist-geologist with the communication skills of a lifelong teacher and writer. He has published over three dozen peer-reviewed articles in major journals and has written extensively for general audiences in periodicals such as National Geographic, New York Times, Fast Company, and Adirondack Life. Since 1990, he has also co-hosted Natural Selections, a weekly science program on North Country Public Radio. He currently teaches at Paul Smith's College in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, and holds a research associate post at the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute, where he continues to investigate the long-term history of climate in Africa, South America, and the northeastern United States.
Just as returning wolves to their former territories benefits all other creatures, humans—also apex predators—have an ecological role to play. Our very survival in the face of the inevitable collapse of modern civilization, Peter suggests, depends on us remembering ancestral skills and strengthening the native plant populations that sustain us. Peter is the founder and Executive Director of Rewild Portland, a local non-profit that creates cultural and environmental resilience through the education of earth-based arts, traditions, and technologies.
Leila Darwish is a community organizer, author, permaculture designer, educator, urban gardener, and grassroots herbalist with a deep commitment to environmental justice, decolonization, food sovereignty, and to providing accessible and transformative tools for communities dealing with toxic contamination of their land and drinking water. Over the last decade, she has worked as a grassroots bioremediation instructor for different environmental organizations and community groups in Alberta, BC and the USA on campaigns such as tar sands, fracking, nuclear energy, coal, climate justice, water protection, and more. We will be discussing her book from New Society Publishers entitled “Earth Repair: A Grassroots Guide to Healing Toxic and Damaged Landscapes.”
A master of eloquence and innovative language, Martín Prechtel is a leading thinker, writer and teacher whose work, both written and oral, hopes to promote the subtlety, irony and pre-modern vitality hidden in any living language. With a Pueblo upbringing, Pretchel's life took him from New Mexico to the village of Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala. There becoming a full village member of the Tzutujil Mayan population, he eventually served as a principal in that body of village leaders responsible for instructing the young people in the meanings of their ancient stories through the rituals of adult rights of passage. Once again residing in his native New Mexico, Martín teaches at his international school Bolad’s Kitchen. Through story, music, ritual and writing, Martín helps people in many lands to retain their diversity while remembering their own sense of place in the daily sacred. For more information visit: www.floweringmountain.com
Today, we are talking with the eloquent young visionary Miles Olson, who is living an ongoing experiment in rewilding. Miles has spent the past decade deeply immersed in learning and practicing Earth Skills, while foraging, hunting, gardening and gathering for his livelihood. His experiences have given him a unique perspective on rewilding, radical self-reliance, and the impact of civilization on the natural world. Miles offers a candid discussion into the social and technological drivers of our separation from nature. We muse about collapse scenarios, and revel in thoughts of the beautiful mess of the ensuing wildness.
Today we will take an in depth look at the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska, which has been called the “crown jewel” of Americas forests. The largest of US national forests, it consists of one third of the world’s coastal temperate rainforest ecosystem, which only occurs in three percent of Earths landmass. The Tongass has already had nearly half of its very large old growth trees cut down due to a process known as high-grading—where loggers remove the oldest and largest trees from the forest. These trees are often essential to the ecosystem, simply because they are so large and provide vital habitats for woodland creatures. Last month, an Alaska court approved further logging of this rare heritage old-growth that has just begun and will continue for ten years unless we organize a strong push-back. Joining us today to fill us in about this top-priority conservation issue is Tom Waldo, senior staff attorney with Earth Justice in Alaska, who has dedicated the last 25 years to defending Alaska’s ancient forests and other urgent causes.
Today we explore an epic nature conservation project that encompasses the great North American Rockies, and we examine the infinite delicate relationships between the species that inhabit them. Mary Ellen Hannibal is a Bay Area writer and editor focusing on science and culture. Hannibal’s book The Spine of the Continent is about a social, geographical, and scientific effort to save nature along the Rocky Mountains. A “thoroughly satisfying gem,” The Spine of the Continent chronicles landscapes, people, critters, and issues along the Spine. A former book review and travel editor, Hannibal is Chair of the California Book Awards. She was a 2011 Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow. She is a recipient of the National Society of Science Writer’s Science and Society Award 2012 and Stanford University’s Knight-Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism.
Carbon has become synonymous with “the problem,” but all terrestrial life is based on carbon, and figuring out the carbon cycle is a prerequisite to taking effective climate action. As a continuation of our exploration of restoration agriculture with Mark Shepard, we discuss grassland ecosystems and their capacity to pull massive amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere and back into the ground—representing a real, promising solution to our planetary crisis. Globally, 99% of grasslands are drought-stricken, overgrazed, and weakened by exotic species invasions. With some subtle adjustments to cattle management and some basic awareness of the carbon cycle, we can make a large dent in greenhouse emissions. Imagine what we can do with some more radical changes! Courtney White, formerly a frontline environmental activist and author of Grass, Soil, Hope, is tapping this extraordinary potential by bringing “carbon ranching” to the American Southwest through his work with the Quivira Coalition.
Climbing PoeTree is the combined force of two boundary-breaking soul-sisters who have sharpened their art as a tool for popular education, community organizing, and personal transformation. Poets, performance artists, print makers, video and graphic designers, muralists, and new media architects, Alixa and Naima create compelling works at the service of their vision for a more just and livable world. They just published a breathtaking poetry anthology, available at climbingpoetree.com. They tells us about their valient projects and experiences in art-activism, and then get into the juiciness of vision-work, the future of human society, and their advice to budding "solutionaries."
Many of the topics we cover on this program either deal with the complex and difficult situation humanity has awoken to find itself in, or the growing pool of solutions being proposed. Few authors are able to span both areas as deftly as our guest today. We’re taking a journey into the deep wells of knowledge of restoration agriculture pioneer Mark Shepard, who has created a forest where there once was just degraded Wisconsin farmland, not just any forest, but a mega-permaculture, a 106-acre food production environment. He has just written a phenomenal book entitled Restoration Agriculture: Real-World Permaculture for Farmers, which is a handbook on large scale perennial polyculture, padded with generous servings of philosophy and big-picture analysis on how to move forward through the impasse humanity faces and confront it square-on.
The conversation from last week continues. What has the role of psychedelics been in human and plant evolution? What is the ecological function of art? How is science changing as it moves out of reductionism? What do the heart, the brain, and the gut have in common? Stephen Harrod Buhner is the senior researcher for the Foundation for Gaian studies, described as a bardic naturalist, he is the award-winning author of 19 books, including The Lost Language of Plants, The Secret Teachings of Plants, and Sacred Plant Medicine. His most recent book is Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm. Before retiring from the road in 2013, he taught for more than 30 years throughout North America and Europe. He lives in Silver City New Mexico.
This week’s interview is a mosaic of mind-shattering insights from Earth-poet-philosopher Stephen Harrod Buhner. Stephen is the senior researcher for the Foundation for Gaian studies, described as a bardic naturalist, he is the award-winning author of 19 books, including The Lost Language of Plants, The Secret Teachings of Plants, and Sacred Plant Medicine. His most recent book is Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm. Before retiring from the road in 2013, he taught for more than 30 years throughout North America and Europe. He lives in Silver City New Mexico.
Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy PhD, is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. A respected voice in the movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with five decades of activism. Her group methods, known as the Work That Reconnects, helps people transform despair and apathy, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world, as our larger living body, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth. She offers her wisdom for remaining sane and grounded as life-long activists in the uphill battle of ecological crisis.
We are in the company of Matthew Wood, author and herbalist of thirty years speaking to us on age-old plant medicine usages, the crucial task of upholding the habitat of plant communities, and much more. Matthew Wood has been a practicing herbalist since 1982. In a period when many authors and lecturers are merely "arm chair herbalists" who offer theories and opinions based on book learning, and others have turned to the exotic traditions of India or China, he has been an active practitioner of traditional Western herbalism. He has helped tens of thousands of clients over the years, with many difficult health problems. While Matthew believes in the virtue of many other healing modalities, he has always been inspired to learn, preserve, and practice the tradition of herbal medicine descending to us from our European, Anglo-American, and Native American heritage. He is a member of the American Herbalists Guild (registered herbalist) and has earned his Masters of Science degree from the Scottish School of Herbal Medicine.
Albert Bates has been the director of the Global Village Institute for Appropriate Technology since 1984 and the Ecovillage Training Center at the Farm in Tennessee since 1994 where he has taught sustainable design, natural building, permaculture and restoration ecology to students from more that fifty nations. Albert regales us with his charisma, discussing the miracle of biochar, which can trap carbon while building soil and reversing desertification. We tie carbon farming into the wider climate movement and talk about breaking the cycle of climate denial. Albert goes everywhere from the nuclear reality to the importance of celebration amid the madness.
Become a better steward of your inner environment! Naturopath Xandria Williams demystifies the spectre of cancer, the most insidious "disease of civilization," and recommends a menu and lifestyle for its treatment and prevention, with lots of juicy details. Xandria began her career as a geochemist, but turned to biochemistry and the study of nutrition, naturopathy, homeopathy, and herbal medicine. She has written hundreds of articles, 15 books, and appears frequently on television and radio. Xandria lectures extensively at natural therapy colleges and conferences. She practices in London.
Peter McCoy is the main author of the new book Radical Mycology. What began as a self-guided passion in his younger years has since developed into a life-long devotion to the fungal kingdom and educating the world about its ability to heal the bodies, minds, and ecosystems of the planet.
In 2006, Peter co-founded the Radical Mycology project with a focus on teaching the simplest and most effective methods of mushroom cultivation for the purposes of food sovereignty, medicine production, community-scale remediation, and resilient living.
Today we will have a rare glimpse into one of the last remaining wild places in the Eastern United States, Cumberland Island, a 18 mile long island just off the coast of Southern Georgia, a semi-tropical eden of endangered wildlife and pristine ancient forests that has been protected as a wilderness area since 1982. In addition to loggerhead turtles and wild horses, it is home to Carol Ruckdeschel, subject of the new biography Untamed: the wildest woman in America and the fight for Cumberland Island. Today we are speaking with the author of that book, Will Harlan, the editor in chief of Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine and award-winning journalist. Will was a park ranger on Cumberland Island for nearly twenty years. He initially dreaded crossing paths with this legendary witch of the wilderness, but the real Carol Ruckdeschel turned out to be a distinguished biologist, tireless steward of Cumberland island, and one of the most wildly fascinating people in America.
Matthew Fox might well be the most creative, the most comprehensive, surely the most challenging religious-spiritual teacher in America. He has been renewing the ancient mystical tradition of Creation Spirituality, founding the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland, which incorporates Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Sufi, Native American, goddess, Hindu traditions as well as ecology, social justice, feminist theory and art. Fox’s effort to reawaken the West to its own mystical tradition has included revivifying awareness of Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas and the Cosmic Christ tradition, as well as interacting with contemporary scientists who are also mystics. He has authored two books with British biologist Rupert Sheldrake, and has worked closely with Native American leaders such as Buck Ghosthorse. We discuss deep ecology as a spiritual practice that must be put in action.
Our guest today, Dr. Caroline Fraser, has written the first definitive account of a visionary campaign to confront ecological crises, entitled Rewilding the World, Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution. Breathtaking in scope and ambition, rewilding aims to save species by restoring habitats, reviving migration corridors, and brokering peace between people and predators. Traveling with wildlife biologists and conservationists, Caroline reports on the vast projects that are turning Europe's former Iron Curtain into a greenbelt, creating transfrontier Peace Parks to renew elephant routes throughout Africa, and linking protected areas from the Yukon to Mexico and beyond.
Toby Hemenway is the author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, which for the last eight years has been the best-selling permaculture book in the world. Toby has been an adjunct professor at Portland State University, Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University, and has taught over sixty permaculture design courses. He has presented lectures and workshops at major sustainability conferences such as Bioneers, SolFest, and EcoFarm, and at Duke University, Tufts University, University of Minnesota, University of Delaware and many other educational venues. We discuss the broader social context of food, the ecological problems of civilization, the joys of nomadism, and permaculture’s place in restoration.
Charles Eisenstein is a teacher, speaker, and writer focusing on themes of civilization, consciousness, money, and human cultural evolution. His viral short films and essays online have established him as a genre-defying social philosopher and countercultural intellectual. He is one of the leading voices of the progressive movement and according to Publishers Weekly, he ”will be noted in antiquity as one of the seminal and pioneering storytellers of this new world." Eisenstein graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy. He is the author of Sacred Economics, The Ascent of Humanity, and most recently, A More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. We ask him some of the unabashedly philosophical questions that keep Earth activists up at night.
Dr. Susan Murphy Roshi is a writer, radio producer and film director, film professor, as well as the founding teacher of Zen Open Circle in Sydney Australia. She has a special interest in the way Zen and indigenous Australian sense of 'care for country' come together. Susan is the author of the book, Upside Down Zen and her latest book is Minding the Earth, Mending the World: The Offer We Can No Longer Refuse, a Zen response to our slow-burning planetary emergency. We discuss the meaning of wild and its apparent antithesis, discipline, and much more.
Linda Tucker, an ecological activist, grew up in South Africa during Apartheid and attended the Universities of Cape Town in South Africa and Cambridge in the United Kingdom. In 2002, she founded the Global White Lion Protection Trust, an organization that works to protect not only the white lions, but also the indigenous communities and knowledge of the Tsonga and Sepedi cultures, which celebrate the white lion as a sacred living heritage. Her spellbinding new book, Saving the White Lions: One Woman’s Battle for Africa’s Most Sacred Animal, chronicles her life’s journey as the chosen torchbearer of the white lion shamanic tradition and her valiant battle to preserve these mythical creatures.