sacred earth activism

 Jolie Elan shares her experience of tapping into the wisdom of the oaks for guidance in hard times.

Many Indigenous people say that plants reveal their medicine via dreams and visions. What if these types of relationships are within everyone’s reach? How do we go about building mutually beneficial relationships? On a decade long adventure to eat acorn food, ethnobotanist Jolie Elan became so intertwined within the oak web of life that the oaks began to reveal myths and medicines in dreams and visions. Join Ethnobotanist and oak lover Jolie Elan as she tells her ethnobotanical love story that discusses the ecology, botany, medicine, myth, spirit, and food of the mighty oak.

Jolie Elan, M.S. is the Founding Director of Go Wild Institute. She is a deep ecologist, ethnobotanist, consulting botanist, and educator. She has inspired thousands of people to deepen their relationship with nature. Jolie has worked with ethnobotanical projects on four continents including restoring sacred forest groves in India and developing the herbal medicine sector in war-torn Kosovo. Jolie is also a certified permaculture designer and a seasoned environmental advocate with twenty years of experience building diverse networks, especially with Indigenous groups focused on protecting sacred sites. Combining her love for the earth and spirit, Jolie completed her training as a Spiritual Director and acts as a spiritual companion for those who wish to increase their intimacy with the divine, especially through the natural world. 

Jolie is adjunct faculty at the College of Marin and regularly teaches at Point Reyes Field Institute, the San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus, as well as a large variety of herbal medicine schools, and environmental and spiritual organizations throughout the west. She works with Jewish organizations, like Hazon, Wilderness Torah, Temple Emek Shalom and the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco to offer eco- Jewish classes that ground Jewish practices and teachings in the Earth. Jolie received her B.A. from the Evergreen State College in Environmental Studies, her Master’s degree in Natural Resources from Humboldt State University, and her certification in Spiritual Direction from the Chaplaincy Institute. She has served as the President of the Marin Chapter of the California Native Plant Society. Jolie can often be found foraging wild foods and medicines and hanging out with oak trees.  To learn more about Jolie’s work visit the Go Wild Institute website.

Ann Armbrecht, an anthropologist, is the director of the American Botanical Council’s Sustainable Herbs Program. She is the author of The Business of Botanicals: Exploring the Healing Promise of Plant Medicines in a Global Industry which documents her journey following herbs from seed to shelf. She is also the co-producer of the documentary Numen: The Nature of Plants and the author of the award-winning ethnographic memoir Thin Places: A Pilgrimage Home, based on her research in Nepal.

From Ann:

“As a nation, we are struggling with a profound lack of imagination. We don’t see the forests being cut down to build our homes, the lakes being drained as we fill our tub. We live on the far side of a broken connection. Not seeing the people and places on the other side – not seeing the moral and ecological consequences of producing these commodities – simply makes them easier to buy.” 
— Wendell Berry 

Healing this broken connection, Berry concluded, begins with seeing beyond what the market wants us to see.

I began the Sustainable Herbs Program to follow herbs through the supply chain, to make visible the people and places behind the finished products because I believe that knowing those stories, as Berry points out, is the first step toward being more responsible for the moral and ecological consequences of our choices.

In this conversation, I will explore the ways herbal medicines offer an invitation to live in a deeper relationship with the world around us. I will talk about my work with the Sustainable Herbs Program, how we are sharing stories and resources to help inspire more sustainable and regenerative practices in the industry as a whole.

But I am also interested in much broader questions about our role as citizens of the world and how, through our choices about the commodities we buy, we impact that world. Plants are alive and yet they are also commodities bought and sold on a global market governed by the laws of capital. Is it possible to buy herbal medicines produced with these plants in ways that honor and respect that aliveness? What might exploring stories about efforts to responsibly source and produce herbal products show us about living more lightly on the earth? What insights do they offer for how to treat each other, the earth, and ourselves with more care and respect? And finally, what can we learn about creating worlds that are healthier—physically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually?

I’ll explore these questions by focusing on companies working to ensure that the vision and values of herbal medicine apply to the entire medicinal plant supply chain, not just the end product. In this way, I hope to show how changing this particular industry is a way to change the world.

Geneen Marie-Haugen explores an emerging dimension of the human/Earth relationship – a relationship in which the human capacity for imagination is an essential component of planetary ecology. We’ll consider the possibility that our manner of approaching the wilder Others make a difference – both reawakening the older mind in us that knows the animate nature of the world, as well as re-enlivening the wilder Others themselves. 

“A practice of celebrating the wild Earth and cosmos – like other practices – holds the possibility of re-shaping consciousness; the more our thoughts, words and gestures are intertwined with the beings among whom we abide, the more the world pulses with life, the more we hear the exuberantly singing Earth, and perhaps even the songs of starlight.” –Geneen Marie Haugen from her essay, “Thomas Berry And The Evocation Of Participatory Consciousness,” which appears in Thomas Berry: Dreamer of the Earth.

Dr. Geneen Marie Haugen grew up a little wild, with a run-amok imagination. As a guide to the intertwined mysteries of nature and psyche, she delights in multidimensional listening and in offering perceptive questions, ceremonies, escapades, and reflections that help expand a sense of our own possibilities as individuals (and as a species) and deepen our experience of participation with an intelligent, animate Earth/Cosmos. Her writing has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth; Thomas Berry: Dreamer of the Earth; Written River; Parabola Journal; Kosmos Journal; Ecopsychology; and The Artist’s Field Guide to Greater Yellowstone. A former tipi-dweller and whitewater river guide, she now lives amidst the creatures and features of southern Utah’s sandstone labyrinth. She is exploring the awakening of what she calls “planetary imagination,” and the possible emergence of a new mode of the human that she has called Homo imaginans. She is committed to the world-transforming potential of the human imagination in collaboration with the Earth community.

To know more about Geneen’s work visit https://animas.org or see her offering this spring at Esalen.

 Earth Activist, Ardelle Ferrer shares about the regeneration of the Ceiba Tree on Vieques, Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.  She also speaks about the creation of a park around the ancient Ceiba Tree and the meaning it holds for the community and the land.

Excerpt from:  An Ancient Ceiba Tree Blooms Once Again After Puerto Rico’s Devastating Storms 

A protest movement, known among locals as “the struggle,” finally ousted the Navy in 2003. Four years later, Ferrer and others started La Ceiba Community Project to remove trash and debris from the grassy area around the ancient tree.“She brought us all together to restore that space, which is now used by the locals all the time,” Ferrer said. “It’s a symbol of hope that we can continue, that things may get hard but if we stand strong we can make it.”Today, the ceiba is the centerpiece of a 51-acre coastal park where endangered manatees, green turtles, and brown pelicans live. On rainy days, water pools in the bowl-shaped crannies between the tree’s twisted limbs, attracting tiny crabs and wild horse, who drink the rainwater.

Nature is Ardelle’s artistic muse. Her life is colored by evolutionary change, as is her art. Ardelle’s artistic history has and will continue to eternally emphasize the protection of our natural environment. Her deep connectivity to nature started as a child and has continued to be inspired by Puerto Rico’s natural wonders, where she first learned how to connect with the trees of El Yunque rainforest and the raw elements of nature.

Since 2007, Ardelle has dedicated endless community-based efforts to the preservation of a 400-year-old Ceiba tree site, located in the heart of El Parque de Ceiba in Vieques, Puerto Rico. Ardelle is the principal force promoting the legacy of the sacred ceiba tree and the primary organizer of projects that encourage the youth of Vieques to absorb the wealth of knowledge the ceiba tree has to offer to the local and global community. The goal of the community outreach project is to incorporate art, culture, nature, and spirituality, in a way that emphasizes the conservation of the land of our ancestors, the sacredness of the tree, and its teachings.

Ardelle received her BFA, Magna Cum Laude, from the Puerto Rico School of Fine Art and postgraduate studies at the Urban Glass studio in New York. She has been awarded several prizes for artistic excellence and her art includes multiple performances, expositions, symposiums, stained and fused glass, sculptures, public murals, installations, and monumental works of the ephemeral.

Karyn Sanders, herbalist and activist,  talks about healing our relationship with nature and our vital need for connection to all beings. Her analysis focuses on the trauma caused by living in a way that separates us from our power and the resulting loss of connection with all our relations. Karyn will also speak about how to overcome this separation and heal the wounds we have been carrying in our own lives.

An essential evolution of Sacred Earth Activism is taking the step from healing our own trauma to then serving all our communities. Karyn will speak to this as she talks about her “sacred site” and “water” work and their meaning in the world.

Karyn has been working with plants for most of her life. She was first trained in Native American traditional plant medicine. In her mid-teens, she apprenticed with a Mexican curandera and has subsequently studied with various traditional teachers as well as Western herbalists. Karyn has been teaching and practicing herbal medicine from an energetic perspective for over 42 years.

Karyn has a live radio show, The Herbal Highway, that has aired weekly since 1996 on KPFA, 94.1FM out of Berkeley, California. She co-hosts this program with Sarah Holmes. You can listen to her show live through the internet at http://kpfa.org/herbal-highway, Thursdays from 1 to 2pm PST. Karyn is also available to teach at other schools, community groups, and conferences.  To learn more about Karyn Sanders, visit her website at https://www.blueotterschool.com/

Brooke Medicine Eagle shares about the wisdom of the Buffalo and the co-creative journey and sacred ecology shared by the people, the land, and the herd. This talk is rife with rich stories about living in regenerative partnership with the land- see below for photos of the herd and the Old Moccasin Place - near the medicine springs shared by Brooke after the seminar. 

Brooke Medicine Eagle is a legendary indigenous Earthkeeper, wisdom teacher, mentor, healer, visionary, singer/songwriter, shamanic practitioner, catalyst for wholeness, and sacred ecologist. She is the best selling author of the Native American literary classic, Buffalo Woman Comes Singing, and of The Last Ghost Dance. Her individual and group work is empowering, enlightening, and supportive of your very best self.

As a sacred ecologist Brooke has a focused interest in promoting a conscious and sensuous relationship to All Life and to living a harmonious, sustaining lifestyle. She has a deep personal dedication to the honoring and preservation of our sacred waters. What she has to offer has been deepened remarkably by going back to her childhood home buffalo ranch in the mountains of Montana.

Over the last 40 years, her many music recordings, teachings, writings, conference appearances, and wilderness spiritual retreats have touched the hearts and minds of people all over the world. Blossoming Into Harmony, the primary ongoing resonance of her work, promotes a heart-centered, ecologically sound, healing way for the flowering of Mother Earth and all our relations. She is now traveling and teaching internationally, enjoying the experience of being a Gaian citizen.  For more information about Brooke visit www.MedicineEagle.com and https://brookemedicineeagle.wordpress.com/

Felicia Kainat Norton and Charles Muinuddin Smith speak about feeling into our sacred connection and how this can be a source for the transformation needed at this time. They will speak of our shared issues and how each of us can be a force for change by continually joining our inner cultivation with hope and Sacred Action.

Felicia Kainat Norton is a senior teacher, retreat guide, and faculty member of Suluk Academy in the Inayati Sufi Order. She serves as the International Head of the Ziraat Activity which is devoted to inner cultivation and sacred ecology. She also tours as a solo dance theater artist internationally with the one-woman show ‘NOOR’.

Charles Muinuddin Smith, Ph.D is a senior teacher, retreat guide, and teacher of Ziraat in the Inayati Sufi Order. He teaches leadership and sustainability studies at Hofstra University.

They are both longtime students of Pir Vilayat Khan within the Sufi tradition and in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

Together Felicia and Charles co-authored the book, An Emerald Earth: Cultivating a Natural Spirituality and Serving Creative Beauty in Our World. and they have published articles in Resurgence and Ecologist magazine and The Jung Journal.

They offer meditation workshops and retreats worldwide.

Lauren Valle, O.N.E. Vision Council Member,  shares about her experiences as an environmental activist in her 20’s and her evolutionary journey to become a Sacred Earth Activist, and the importance of the internal source of activism.

The source of our activism is equally as important as the action itself.  Although fear, anger, outrage etc. can certainly serve us at times, action initiating from our connection within nature is an effective and sustainable model for environmental change.

Lauren is a healer and community herbalist dedicated to bringing the healing powers of plant medicine and nature to her Cape Cod community. She is the founder of Kinship Herbal and Holistic Healing. Prior to founding Kinship she worked in the field of ecological engineering, working to build ecological wastewater and water remediation systems around the world based on the intelligent design of nature. She received a B.A. from Columbia University and during her college years and early twenties she worked as an environmental activist focused on issues of environmental justice, fossil fuel consumption, and natural resource depletion. She has also lived and worked on two organic farms and has a longstanding interest in permaculture and whole system design. She is deeply committed to a mission of visioning and creating a healthy future for all through reconnecting to the earth and our biological heritage.  She currently lives on her homestead with her husband where they raise chickens, grows an abundance of good food, and many of the medicinal herbs she uses her in practice.