What is it that drives our individualistic pursuits for ethical purity? How do we embrace complicity as the starting point and begin to take responsibility for our messy histories? In this episode, we're joined by Dr. Alexis Shotwell, whose 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 and the author of Knowing Otherwise: Race, Gender, and Implicit Understanding and Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times. The musical offering shared in this episode is Mother by Jared Sowan, provided to us by Indigenous Cloud.  Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast and multimedia journal exploring our paths to collective healing, ecological regeneration, and true abundance and wellness for all. Support our work: Patreon.com/GreenDreamer  *Our episodes are minimally edited. Please view them as invitations to dive deeper into every topic explored and resource mentioned.

322) Alexis Shotwell: Purity politics in compromised times

Green Dreamer explores our paths to collective healing, biocultural revitalization, and true abundance and wellness *for all*.

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In this episode, Sophy Banks shares her rich wealth of knowledge, teachings, and experiences about what it means to truly support ourselves and others through both collective and personal traumas.  Cultures of individualism often lead us to navigate trauma on our own— without rituals of shared and collective space holding. For some, particularly those who have been victims of oppression, colonialism, and dispossession, the rivers and oceans of grief held within are often too vast and too deep to be carried alone. Join us in this episode as Sophy offers medicine for our souls, asking vital questions about collective grief tending. How do we notice trauma? How do we disrupt ways of managing grief that possibly reinforce systems and cultures of destruction? And what does it mean to truly care for and hold one another through times of darkness and despair? Tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app, and join us on Patreon for the extended version of this episode.

Sophy Banks: Grief tending and collective pathways to healing justice

What do the terminologies we often use to describe plants reveal about human and human-plant relations? How is the current landscape of the plant world entangled with human histories of desire, power, and imperialism? Drawing from her experience living across various countries and continents as a third-generation migrant, Jessica J. Lee delves into the nuances of shifting attitudes towards both plant and human migration stories throughout time. Join us as we explore how terms such as “weeds,” “naturalized” or “invasive” are defined and used to describe the plant world, how we might expand our understandings of belonging through recognizing the movement, as well as rootedness, of plants, and more. Subscribe to Green Dreamer and support our show at Patreon.com/GreenDreamer.

Jessica J. Lee: The entangled histories of human and plant migration (EP424)

How do we show up as sensitive, creative and intuitive beings in a system that does not honor the uniqueness of our spirits? How can we stay true to our calling when we’re so busy simply trying to survive? In this episode, Niharika Sanyal shares sweet fruits of wisdom on the radical act of honoring our unique gifts as offerings during times of darkness. In guiding us towards the deepest desires and whispers of our hearts, Sanyal draws from her personal experiences, yoga philosophy, and Vedic myths. Her teachings shine a light on the collective pathways that can lead us towards more divine ways of being, feeling and co-existing through tuning into our innate inner wisdom, knowledge and unconditional love. Get our transcript and episode show notes at greendreamer.com; support our show at patreon.com/greendreamer.

Niharika Sanyal: Returning to the longing in our hearts and intuition

“We consume not only stuff but also knowledge, experiences, critique. And this consumption, many times, is not even digested. It is the consumption for consumption’s sake so that we can feel better.” What might it mean for humanity to reach a level of maturation to be able to confront the multilayered crises we now face—calling upon us to “grow up and show up” for ourselves and our planet? And how might recognizing the differing historical contexts that we were raised within help us to have more empathy when navigating our generational differences? In this episode, we revisit our past conversation with Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, a Brazilian educator and Indigenous and Land Rights advocate. She is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities, and Global Change at the University of British Columbia. She is one of the founders of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research Collective and part of the coordination team of the "Last Warning" campaign. Vanessa is also the author of Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and Implications for Social Activism.

EVERGREEN | Vanessa Andreotti: Allowing the earth to dream through us

What could it mean to heal our relationship with the dead, the decaying, and the dark in order to move towards more liveable futures? What possibilities might arise when we shift from cultural narratives of fear, discomfort, and disgust with these unseen worlds — to ones which honor the wisdoms that they may be able to offer? In this episode, Perdita Finn draws on her book Take Back the Magic to invite us to find kinship and guidance from beings that have passed. Through a renewal of ancient practices and rituals, Finn invokes the reclamation of our bodies, inner wisdom, and personal mantras that keep us whole and grounded during the troubled times of modernity. Subscribe and listen to Green Dreamer via any podcast app and read on for our episode transcript. 

322) Alexis Shotwell: Purity politics in compromised times

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