Green Dreamer: Seeding change towards collective healing, sustainability, regeneration

“English embeds certain things just by virtue of its structure. It’s a very thing-ifying language; it’s very noun-heavy. Most of the Indigenous languages that I know of are very relational and verb-heavy. It’s a fundamentally different way of relating to the world and to community. If [the] Indigenous literature [you see] is all in English, then you’re missing a significant reality in terms of Indigenous forms of expression.”

In this episode, we welcome Daniel Heath Justice, a Colorado-born citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He works on Musqueam territory at the University of British Columbia, where he is Professor of Critical Indigenous Studies and English and holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture. A literary scholar, fantasy novelist, and cultural historian, his critical and creative work considers Indigenous kinship, sexuality, speculative fiction, and other-than-human relations.

Some of the topics we explore in this conversation include the role of storytelling in shaping culture, the politics of what gets validated as literature, the power of speculative fiction in seeding imaginations for other ways of being, and more.

(The musical offering featured in this episode is Tear Down The Wall by Forest Veil. The episode-inspired artwork is by Subin Yang.)

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"The transition from oral cultures into written cultures, for me, really signals a conceptual change that then uproots us from an embedded, environmental, relational existence, in such a way that a certain analytical, linear, and reductionist thinking becomes possible."

In this episode, we welcome Sophie Strand, 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 in Fall 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 to her newsletter, and follow her work on Instagram.

Some of the topics we explore in this conversation include how the historical transition from oral to chirographic cultures might have reshaped how people perceive of and relate to the world, what it means to reroot myths and storytelling, the relationship between myth and science, and more.

(The musical offering featured in this episode is Everyday Magic by Luna Bec. The episode-inspired artwork is by Xiao Mei.)

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“There’s a lot of awareness about the direct lobbying of big money in politics. But that doesn’t take into account the much more dangerous way that big money is shaping the narrative through the media, even through funding in science and academia. That has led to this narrow fixation on carbon and an embrace of robots and satellites as the way to deal with climate change.”

In this episode, we revisit our past conversation with Helena Norberg-Hodge, a pioneer of the new economy movement and a leading proponent of “localization” (or decentralization). As the author of Ancient Futures and Local is Our Future, she also founded The International Alliance for Localization and Local Futures, which works to renew ecological, social and spiritual wellbeing by guiding communities towards a sustainable future of interconnected, localized economies.

Some of the topics we explore in this conversation include the limitations of using economic wealth as the indicator of a community’s quality of life, the false promises of “progress” and “development”, how economic globalization has been driving an erosion of relationships, and more.

(The musical offering featured in this episode is Tear Down the Wall by Forest Veil.)

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“Under a capitalist system of production or any system of production based on the extraction of value via wages, it’s always going to be the case that mechanization leads to more work and lower wages...”

In this episode, we welcome Annie McClanahan, an Assistant Professor of English at UC Irvine, where she is also a faculty advisor for UCI-LIFTED, a prison education program. Her first book, Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and 21st Century Culture, was published in 2016, and she is currently finishing a second book, Tipwork, Gigwork, Microwork: Culture and the Wages of Service.

Some of the topics we explore in this conversation include the history of today's service and tip work economies, the trend of automation driving deskilled labor and microwork, the possibility of a world disentangled from wages, and more.

(The musical offering featured in this episode is Come The Rain by Maggie Clifford. The episode-inspired artwork is by Ellie Yanagisawa.)

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"We sometimes forget that the knowledge systems we use to conceptualize the world are not necessarily exactly the same thing as the world that we're conceptualizing. We mistake the model of the model for the thing that is being modeled. We mistake the map for the territory. We mistake the word for the thing."

In this episode, we welcome Catriona Sandilands, a professor of environmental arts and justice at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University. Having written, edited, or co-edited four books and close to 100 essays and articles, her research areas include queer and feminist posthumanities, critical plant studies, biocultural histories, ecocriticism, and public environmental engagement through literature and storytelling.

Some of the topics we explore in this conversation include cultivating plurality within the stories we tell, remembering histories of reciprocity coming from Western traditions, the connection between how we relate to the more-than-human world and our views of and experiences with sexuality, and more.

 

(The musical offering featured in this episode is Everyday Magic by Luna Bec. The episode-inspired artwork is by Ellie Yanagisawa.)

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“We are all pretty familiar with the concept of the ‘biosphere’, which is the ‘living layer’ of the earth. The ‘noosphere’ is the ‘thinking layer’ of the earth that grows in and from that biosphere. It includes human thought and activity but is also much more than that.”

In this episode, we welcome Dr. Micha Rahder, the author of An Ecology of Knowledges and an independent scholar, freelance editor, indexer, and writing coach living in North Carolina. Her research and writing address environmental themes ranging from forest conservation in northern Guatemala to extraterrestrial futures.

(The musical offering in this episode is Everyday Magic by Luna Bec. The episode artwork is by Xiao Mei.)

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“Lies, deceit, and dupery are also very much part of the story. Often, these promises are made in the early stages of oil palm development, but they do not end up materializing in practice.”

In this episode, we welcome Dr. Sophie Chao, a Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) Fellow and Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney. Her research investigates the intersections of Indigeneity, ecology, capitalism, health, and justice in the Pacific.

Chao is the author of In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua (Duke University Press, 2022) and co-editor of The Promise of Multispecies Justice (Duke University Press, 2022).

(The musical offering in this episode is Come The Rain by Maggie Clifford.)

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"Instead of being head over heels, be heels over head—privilege your sense of touch. I think that shifts the weight of an overactive mind back into the body, [towards] our full body-mind experiences."

In this episode, we welcome Gavin Van Horn, Ph.D, Executive Editor at the Center for Humans and Nature and leads the Book Series for the Center for Humans and Nature Press. He is the co-editor, with Robin Wall Kimmerer and John Hausdoerffer, of the five-volume series, Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations; and the author of The Way of Coyote: Shared Journeys in the Urban Wilds.

(The musical offering in this episode is Power to Change by Luna Bec.)

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"We are not a lacking people. We are more than capable to provide for ourselves. The issue is those who continue to pretend that they are here to help are here for other intentions.”

In this episode, we welcome Dimah Mahmoud, who facilitates order by manipulating chaos and stops at nothing for Truth, Justice and Love. She co-creates grassroots solutions by growing her knowledge, skills and community to build alliances for inclusive collective growth. As a self-proclaimed Warrior of Truth, Dimah vowed to beat the drums of Truth till the world knows Unity.

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(The musical offering in this episode is Deja Vu by M!tch.)

“The sooner we are able to get rid of these two commodities, oil and coal, the better it will be... But 'green' technologies such as electric cars, solar panels, and wind turbines, don’t come out of thin air.” –Guillaume Pitron

In this episode, we revisit our past conversation with Guillaume Pitron, an award-winning journalist and documentary-maker for some of France’s leading TV channels. From Chinese rare earth metals, oil extraction in Alaska, to Sudanese gum arabic and khat trading in Djibouti, he focuses his work on commodities and on the economic, political, and environmental issues associated with their use. His first book, The Rare Metals War: The Dark Side of the Energy Transition and Digitalization, explores our new dependence on rare metals.

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(The musical offering in this episode is Power to Change by Luna Bec.)