Imagining Community

"Our core mandate is to raise resources for programs serving young women. Girls and young women, and connecting them to nature, to outdoor adventure and outdoor education opportunities. Where I live in California in the Bay Area, and other places, it can be easy to loose sight of the fact that women, and particularly girls, remain very, very inequitably served with those sort of opportunities." -- Alison Wright, co-founder of The Cairn Project 

Imagining Community spotlights The Cairn Project, for girls and young woman, expanding outdoor access by supporting community-based wilderness and outdoor education groups around the country through a small grants program.

We open our segment with audio excerpts from the recent youtube video "Would you like ice with that?" produced by outdoor adventurer Annie Le Outside who spent the entire month of February, 2021 immersing herself in the frigid waters near her home in Scotland to raise money for The Cairn Project. Followed by audio from a 2018 video by co-founder Sarah Castle as she trains for her Collegiate Peaks Loop hike, leading us into an Imagining Community phone interview with The Cairn Project's other co-founder, Alison Wright.

"Unfortunately a lot of folks in this area who make decisions about native plants are not cultural practitioners, or tribal cultural practitioners. So their world view point on plants is obscure, and almost different than a tribal's. That means I find things out here to eat, whereas some of the other folks who are native plant lovers will just admire it and try to preserve it, not knowing the plant has a relationship with me and wants to be eaten by me." -- Ali Meders-Knight 

Our guest host is life loving contemplative poet Cory Himp Hunt with a segment on Verbena Fields, an outdoor education setting in Chico California. Ali Meders-Knight, Mechoopda tribal member and Traditional Ecological Knowledge educator, details the community interactive native plant work she leads every Friday, and how they are managing plants and seeds, unlike the relationship the community has with Bidwell Park. Meders-Knight also covers the California Environmental Quality Act and vandalism to native American artwork within the city limits of Chico. 

This segment first aired on the KZFR 90.1FM Peace and Social Justice Show on Friday, March 5th. The P&SJ Show celebrates 30-years of community broadcasting and can be heard Fridays from 11:30 till 1PM on KZFR 90.1FM, or via livestream at kzfr.org. Sapient Sessions with Cory Himp Hunt airs first Fridays, Pastor Jess Kearns on 3rd Fridays and longtime host and provocateur Chris Nelson the rest of the month.

On the last Monday in February Imagining Community joined Jim Brobeck, watershed policy analyst with Aqualliance, for a tour of the water diversion infastructure at five-mile recreation area in Bidwell Park. This is the audio from our youtube channel >>> https://youtu.be/AY5Vaqvrq48

An Imagining Community conversation with farmer and cultural activist Eric Chisler regarding Rock Creek Regenerative Farm, a small Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm with ecologically-informed regenerative practices in Chico, CA. The farm uses no till practices to dramatically improve the health of the soil and it's ability to retain water. The agriculture.com article from 3/5/2021, no-till saved their farm[1], is an excellent resource for the regenerative properties of no-till farming. 

[1] https://www.agriculture.com/crops/conservation/no-till-saved-their-farm

Our musical guest is Jim Brobeck who concludes our segment with a performance of "The Men that Steal the Water," recorded by Imagining Community in February, 2021, adjacent to a vernal pool in the Five Mile Recreational Area of Bidwell Park.

The words and recorder music of naturalist and longtime outdoor educator Robert Dresden, primes the pump for an interview with Ari Kosel and Alyssa Winkelman with Sacramento Source to Sea, who along with filmmaker Jamie Trapp from Alaska, will paddle the Sacramento river from its headwaters in Mount Shasta all the way to the sea. Their kayak adventure starts on March 14th and ends with a paddle near the Golden Gate bridge roughly three weeks later. Our interviewer for this segment is Jim Brobeck, musician and water policy analyst with aqualliance.net

Imagining Community's final season one podcast on Traditional Ecological Knowledge, as aired on KZFR 90.1FM in February of 2020. Featuring the first TEK training session held by tekchico.org on January 25, 2020 at Butte Creek Ecological Reserve.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge featuring a January 2020 pyrogeography field tour by Don Hankins, professor of Geography and Planning at California State University at Chico. The walk was a component of a Prescribed Burns on Private Property workshop hosted by Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve, and highlights major aspects of using fire to shape and heal the landscape including necessary burn qualifications, native grasses, burn techniques and practical tips by Hankins. You'll hear from a handful of the two-dozen participants, including wildland firefighter Ross Brannon and Wolfy Rougle, conservation associate at Butte County Conservation District. It's fitting that the walk was entirely in the rain, sometimes heavy, for our in production season 3 year long story on water! The low rumble of pitter patter you'll hear is rain bouncing off the umbrella protecting our recording equipment. 

Mechoopda Tribal Member and TEK educator Ali Meders-Knight provides commentary on the audio excerpts and leads our segment with Miwok tribal member Don Hankins qualifications as an internationally recognized expert in the field of pyrogeography.

It's Broken -- a teaser for our, in production, year-long season three series on water. View the music video here >>> https://youtu.be/dzi44cbelHc

Our Season one premier is a first glimpse into Traditional Ecological Knowledge, commonly referred to as TEK, that was produced from radio broadcast excerpts on KZFR 90.1FM in 2019 and 2020, just as the Covid-19 pandemic was exploding into the lives of everyone around the globe.

Our featured guests are Mechoopda Tribal member and TEK educator Ali Meders-Knight and Mel Figueroa, a PHD candidate at U.C. Berkeley. Together they founded the Butte County, California based TEKchico.org, in support of Indigenous-led land management for community resilience & shared prosperity. We'll also be hearing from Ross Brannon, a wildland firefighter as we delve into what TEK is in the first of a three part series.

The second TEK segment publishes February 22nd, features Don Hankins, pyrogeographer and professor of Geography and Planning at Chico State as he leads a group through Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve. Our third segment publishes March 1st and features the inaugural TEK training hosted by TEKchico.org, along with studio interviews with educator and Mechoopda tribal member Ali Meders-Knight.

We appreciate your commitment to community and hope you'll follow our first series covering Traditional Ecological Knowledge!