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

What is the “watershed death spiral” that has led to the vicious cycle of more droughts and floods at the same time? How might learning about the water cycle expand our perspectives on climate change? And how can restoring watersheds support the sovereignty of land-based communities?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s Kaméa Chayne speaks with Zach Weiss, who founded Water Stories to help empower as many people as possible to revive their local waters and lands.

Join us in this conversation as we explore the humility of working with ecosystems that resist formulas and master plans, how people can support the revitalization of their own local water cycles, and more.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: “Honor the Water” by Ayla Schafer

 How do we sit with our fears and discomforts around collapse? What might we miss when we demand quick fixes, takeaways, and summaries — without allowing our bodies to ferment and feel through the practices and experiences that could move us more deeply? And what does it mean to retune our literacy of the languages of the Earth?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s Kaméa Chayne speaks with Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, whose latest book is Outgrowing Modernity: Navigating Complexity, Complicity, and Collapse with Accountability and Compassion.

Join us as we hold up a mirror to reflect on questions of complicity and collapse — while sensing into what these fractured times may be asking of us.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: Goodnight Moon Child by Beautiful Chorus

Where do our senses of disgust come from? What does it mean to interrogate and unsettle the ways that our senses of disgust may have been shaped? And how has the Standard American Diet limited curiosity while reinforcing certain social hierarchies?

In this episode, we welcome Matthew Wolf-Meyer, the author of American Disgust: Racism, Microbial Medicine, and the Colony Within.

Join us as we explore the social and biological histories of our most visceral emotion, how disgust has been used as a tool of settler colonialism, and more.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: “Peaches” by Isla Greenwood (@islagreenwood on Instagram)

Why have the majority of coconut trees across the Hawaiian islands not been allowed to bring coconut fruit into maturity? What does it mean to nurture communities of sharing and caring that are more relational, less transactional, and therefore less taxable? And how do Hawaiian ways of knowing — situating the intellectual and sensorial in the biocultural — fundamentally differ from Western epistemologies?

In this conversation, Green Dreamer’s kaméa chayne is joined by Dr. Manulani Aluli Meyer, the author of Hoʻopono: Mutual emergence, and co-director of NiU Now!, a community cultural agroforestry movement emerging to affirm the importance of niu (coconut) and uluniu (coconut groves).

Tune in as we explore the biocultural significance of coconut groves in Native Hawaiian culture, how the ongoing work of revitalizing uluniu supports community food sovereignty in Hawaiʻi, and more.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: “E ʻOlu” by Pohai (ft. Pulama), via Ohana Records

Today, we are doing an episode swap with Dean Spade's podcast, Love in a F*cked Up World, featuring his conversation with adrienne maree brown!

Dean’s show rests on this acknowledgment that social and resistance movements are rooted in relationships and are only as strong as they are — so he explores what it means to build the skills we need for creating and sustaining strong relationships.

If you enjoy this episode, please go check out his podcast, book of the same title, and Patreon as well where they do live events and some bonus content not shared on other more hostile platforms. You can learn more at patreon.com/deanspade

Thanks for tuning in, and I’ll look forward to catching you again next week with our regular programming!

What does it mean to bypass formalized structures of change-making and to engage in mutual aid? How does the philanthropy-nonprofit-industrial complex itself discourage systemic change? And how do we balance participation in immediate care response with the less visible, longer term, more mycelial work of rewiring community power?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s kaméa chayne speaks with Dean Spade of Mutual Aid and Love in a Fucked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up and Raise Hell Together.

Join us as we explore what it means to honor difference and expertise in activism without replicating oppressive hierarchy, reflect on lateral conflicts within the messy terrains of movement building, and more.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song features: “Earth Dog” and “Peaches” by Isla Greenwood (@islagreenwood on Instagram)

How do we stay rooted when experiencing stories of injustice, one after another, while navigating a world that often wants to suppress our grief and anger? What is sacred about rage, and what kinds of rage are sacred? And what do we reorient ourselves towards when the dominant systems of extraction and exploitation tend to discourage acts of radical care, reciprocity, and shared abundance?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s kaméa speaks with Dr. Jennifer Mullan, a major disruptor in the mental health industrial complex and the author of Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma and Politicizing Your Practice.

Join us as we explore what it means to stay human during times of fracture, honoring our dynamic range of emotions from joy to heartbreak, and to tether our sacred rage to movements greater than ourselves.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Music credits:

• “New song old prayer,” by Johanna Warren

What have been the impacts of colonial time on individual well-being and community dynamics? What does it mean to reclaim the state of flow as a birthright? And how can rethinking our perceptions of time enable us to experience life with deeper attunement, responsiveness, and senses of aliveness?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s kaméa is joined by Ixchel Lunar, an Indigenous-Time Ecologist and medicine guide, who guides us to explore the challenges of burnout in a fast-paced world and the historical context of how colonialism has shaped our perception of time.

Join us as we unravel the historical, biocultural layers of decolonial time, and ask ourselves: In such heavy times often demarcated by urgency, purpose, and overwhelm, what can we learn from slowing down and quieting our minds, honoring space for play and pleasure?

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song features:

1. “Time” by Kolinga feat. Booboozzz' All Stars
2. “Grandmother (I am the Earth)” by Ayla Schafer

Why is it that cuisines have historically been dismissed as a serious field of study? How have social factors, such as cultural norms and class, influenced people’s perceptions of the prestige or disgust of different foods across different times? And how are acquired tastes and market demands for food shaped by the broader food landscape that people are situated within?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s kaméa chayne speaks with Thomas Parker, whose latest book is Paranatures in Culinary Culture: An Alimentary Ecology.

Join us as we explore what is possible when we deepen our connections with the sources of our foods, and what it means to understand taste as multi-sensorial, experiential, and context-dependent — not just based on the objective biochemical compositions of what we ingest.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: “I am the Earth” by Olivia Mancuso (@oliviamancusomusic)

What does it mean to cultivate “nestedness” for young children, infants, and future generations? What can we learn from how other species care for their offspring? And what is the importance of recognizing that our desires and cravings are often socially and culturally shaped?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s Kaméa Chayne speaks with Darcia Narvaez, whose recent books include Restoring the Kinship Worldview and The Evolved Nest.

Tap in as we explore the re-integration of care into community life, how we move beyond theories of change towards embodied practices of change, and more.

We invite you to:

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song features:

1. “Novo Amanhecer (Emilio Dias Cover)” by Nessi Gomes (Check out Nessi’s voice work here)
2. “We Belong to Life” by Ayla Schafer and Maneesh de Moor