My training with land and culture repair has fallen in the realms of deep ecology, nature connection, mentoring with the wild, wilderness awareness, and racial equity realms. Huge shout out to some of my mentors in these wisdom ways:
- Sobonfu Somé
- Warren Brush and the whole Quail Springs Crew
- Jon Young and the beautiful network stemming from The 8 Shields Institute
- Lia Grippo and the entire Academy of Forest Kindergarten Teachers
- Lee Warren, Susan Hough, and Doug Elliott
- Sharon Tollefson and my beloved Wilderness Youth Project community
- James Stark and Christopher Kuntzsch, with so much gratitude for The Ecology of Leadership
- Nadia Chaney with Partners for Youth Empowerment
- All the teachers I’ve had through the Racial Equity Institute
Thank you. (There’s so many others who I’m forever grateful to as well.)
I discovered permaculture in 2007 when I arrived at Earthaven for the first time.
When I came to Earthaven, I was immediately immersed in permaculture because I was living within a village built from its principles and within a community whose residents were daily practitioners. Permaculture principles carry important messages that encourage us toward right-awareness, right-relationship, and right-consciousness with both the human and more-than-human worlds.
However, something I’ve come to understand more recently is that the permaculture movement has fallen short on the inclusion of black and brown voices, on addressing systemic injustices, and on acknowledging where most of its land-based wisdom originated.
In an effort to explore the permaculture principles through a more equitable lens we are offering a five-part workshop series entitled Decolonizing Permaculture starting Saturday, May 22.
I am super excited about it because it features three fabulous people: Amakiasu Turpin-Howze, Tyson Sampson, and Lee Warren. |
