For The Wild - LEILA DARWISH on Grassroots Earth Repair ⧸23

00:00:00.000 It's high on a mountain

00:00:23.360 The warm winds are blowin'

00:00:25.040 And where the winds are blowin' to

00:00:27.680 There ain't no way of knowin'

00:00:29.680 The mountain grass is short

00:00:32.960 It's dry and close to burning

00:00:35.840 Crying out for water

00:00:38.940 As the season's turning

00:00:41.960 The sweet smell of the pine

00:00:45.520 Tall western cedar

00:00:48.620 Drifting on the wind

00:00:52.060 Through the mountains like a river

00:00:59.680 Hello, my name is Ayanna Young, and I welcome you to Unlearn and Rewild, where we explore

00:01:10.420 radical ideas relating to earth renewal.

00:01:14.220 Today we are speaking with Layla Darwish.

00:01:16.400 Layla is a community organizer, author, permaculture designer, educator, urban gardener, and grassroots

00:01:24.480 herbalist with a deep commitment to environmental justice, decolonization, food sovereignty,

00:01:31.400 and to providing accessible and transformative tools for communities dealing with toxic

00:01:36.560 contamination of their land and drinking water. Over the last decade, she has worked as a

00:01:42.920 grassroots bioremediation instructor for different environmental organizations and community groups

00:01:49.020 in Alberta, B.C. and the USA on campaigns such as tar sands, fracking, nuclear energy, coal,

00:01:58.360 climate justice, water protection, and more. We will be discussing her book from New Society

00:02:04.740 Publishers entitled Earth Repair, A Grassroots Guide to Healing Toxic and Damaged Landscapes.

00:02:12.180 Leila, it is so great to have you with us. Welcome. Right on, right on. Well, we have connected.

00:02:19.020 I would love if you could start us off by sharing a bit about how you came to your work in this field

00:02:24.860 and how you discovered the power of grassroots bioremediation.

00:02:29.980 Yeah, I guess for me, I had spent a few years working as a community organizer,

00:02:35.600 mainly in Alberta, Canada.

00:02:38.200 That's where I'm from.

00:02:39.520 And if folks don't know where that is, just think tar sands.

00:02:42.820 That's what Alberta is famous for, unfortunately.

00:02:45.920 And so I've been doing a bunch of work in Alberta.

00:02:48.060 And a lot of the communities I was working with in terms of doing environmental justice work were dealing with toxic contamination from poorly disposed waste or oil spills.

00:03:00.800 And people were getting really, really sick.

00:03:02.240 And when you work in places like that where you start to get close to people and you see what they're facing and you see them trying to live off the land but not being able to and the cancer and all the stuff that goes with it, it's pretty heartbreaking.

00:03:14.020 And so as an activist, I was able to sound the alarm and help politically in some ways.

00:03:19.980 But at the end of the day, we were always asking the government and asking the corporations who had made the mess to do something about it.

00:03:26.760 And they didn't want to or they would turn a blind eye or basically tell people it wasn't happening.

00:03:31.080 Right. And so at some point, you're like, it's going to fall on communities, even though it's not necessarily the responsibility.

00:03:36.840 Those are the folks who are living there and who are committed to those places and to future generations and who have the heart and the courage to do the work.

00:03:43.280 And so I think I just really wanted to find a way to help people do that work as well as empower folks to heal the land that they're living on and step in and kind of, you know, do what their governments and these companies will not do for them.

00:03:58.760 And then I think the other piece for me is beside all that stuff, I was learning permaculture and I also did a little bit of a stint where I was doing organic farming and gardening.

00:04:09.540 And when you start growing food and you're living in urban areas, you're always looking for places to grow your food and you're constantly running up against the land that's usually available is not always the cleanest land.

00:04:20.260 It might have heavy metals.

00:04:21.260 It might have chemicals on it because of how we live.

00:04:24.080 Our whole society is built on toxic materials and disposing of things in improper ways.

00:04:31.240 And so how do you grow safe and healthy food?

00:04:33.780 How do you gather safe and healthy medicine?

00:04:35.860 Those are all coming up for me.

00:04:37.160 I was just trying to find a way to do the work.

00:04:41.280 I'm so appreciative that your work goes beyond the nuts and bolts of earth repair and explores

00:04:46.660 the roots of the destructive mentality that has landed us in this ecological predicament

00:04:51.440 and the social repercussions of capitalism unloading its toxic legacy on marginalized

00:04:57.760 communities. So would you mind elaborating on that chapter of your book where you take on

00:05:04.240 environmental injustice and other legacies of colonialism? Aha. Oh, so many ways you can go

00:05:12.040 with that. One, I think, you know, when we're looking at healing contaminated and damaged

00:05:21.120 landscapes. You know, I say this in the book, but there's a reason why those places got damaged

00:05:25.640 and why they have been destroyed. It's often the same reasons why the people who lived on those

00:05:32.300 lands and who are living closest to those lands are also dealing with a constant oppression and

00:05:38.360 assault and violence. And it's that same to me, when I look at colonization, when I look at

00:05:42.700 oppression, capitalism, all those things, those are things that destroy land, but they also destroy

00:05:47.320 people. And they are the reasons why we see, you know, the siting of toxic projects and industries

00:05:54.120 and waste dumps far more in, you know, indigenous communities, communities of color, low income 1.00

00:05:59.500 communities. And if you're richer, white community, that's something you're going to have to deal with 0.80

00:06:04.560 a lot less, although you still might have to deal with it. But at the end of the day, you know, 0.91

00:06:08.480 where I come from, the government loves to put projects in the backyards of indigenous communities

00:06:14.700 In the States, you guys have a lot of that, too, especially with communities of color. 0.71

00:06:19.060 And I think it's just something we've got to pay attention to because at the same time, a lot of those communities do not have access to the solutions.

00:06:26.240 Right.

00:06:26.580 When there is a spill, they don't get a quick response.

00:06:29.620 They might not even get a response at all.

00:06:31.460 So I think that's why, for me, we have to talk about it.

00:06:34.040 because again, if we don't talk about some of those issues and we don't acknowledge some of

00:06:38.740 those issues, whatever earth healing work we do is just going to be destroyed by the very thing

00:06:45.020 that keeps kind of cycling that destruction. And that's systematic. And that's part of, you know,

00:06:50.920 the attitudes that are destroying this planet. And that is colonialism and that is capitalism.

00:06:56.300 And so that's why I think it's really important we talk about decolonization and we talk about,

00:07:00.380 you know, how to not just, you know, come in there and clean up the land with mushrooms and

00:07:04.760 plants, but how we keep the land from being destroyed in the first place and how we also

00:07:08.120 support the people who've been defending and protecting that land far beyond, you know,

00:07:13.160 people like me who are relative newcomers. So yeah, it's all important. And again, a lot of

00:07:17.680 my work has been inspired by the folks on the front lines and watching them live their struggle

00:07:22.980 and have the courage to fight back every day.

00:07:26.300 Absolutely.

00:07:27.460 I've also been deeply inspired by our friends

00:07:30.960 who are defending the forests, grasslands, oceans, rivers.

00:07:36.800 And I think any discussion on earth repair

00:07:39.880 should begin with an honest analysis of our culture's patterns

00:07:43.120 and parallel efforts to avoid further damages.

00:07:46.900 So can you give us a little intro into bioremediation

00:07:50.280 as a way to put the radical ideas into action.

00:07:54.600 Right. Yeah, it's really important to define it. It's also important to say that industry

00:08:00.340 uses the word biomediation for some of the things that they do, and they're not always the best

00:08:04.820 things. I talk about grassroots biomediation because I'm trying to differentiate from kind

00:08:09.680 of industrial or corporate. Grassroots biomediation is working with the plants, the mushrooms,

00:08:16.120 the bacteria, that have been nature's response to disaster and working with these different

00:08:22.000 allies to either break down different chemicals or to immobilize and extract heavy metals.

00:08:30.140 They all have their different ways of doing it. In some situations, we work with mushrooms because

00:08:35.160 they're really good at breaking down more complex and persistent chemicals. And then another

00:08:40.260 situation that's really good to work with bacteria because they'll help immobilize heavy metals.

00:08:46.120 and keep them from going into the plants. Same thing with certain fungi in the soil. And then

00:08:50.480 we always talk about plants, about how they can either suck up different heavy metals,

00:08:54.060 or some plants are really good at breaking down chemicals. And so depending on the contaminant

00:08:58.860 they're working on, depending on the site, all of them work in different ways together to heal

00:09:03.720 the land. And the beautiful thing about a lot of the biomediation I talk about in my book is that

00:09:07.840 whether you're dealing with a toxic situation or a piece of land that's been severely damaged or

00:09:13.360 degraded, all of these things will help bring life back and help kind of regenerate the ecologies

00:09:19.380 so that the land can start to heal itself. But just in the beginning, as human beings,

00:09:23.380 we have to kind of get in there and maybe try to right some of the wrongs that have kind of

00:09:27.200 happened on our watch and kind of allow for the land to get a bit of a head start at coming back

00:09:32.140 together. We were standing in the garden and I had a machine that made silence. It just sucked

00:09:42.840 Top of a whole opinionated in

00:09:46.180 And there were no people on the payroll

00:09:51.000 And there were no monkeys on our backs 0.98

00:09:53.920 And I said, baby, show me what you look like without skin

00:09:58.700 Science chases money 0.77

00:10:03.700 And money chases its terror

00:10:06.760 And the best minds of my generation can't make better

00:10:12.840 But the bacteria are coming to take us down, that's my prediction

00:10:19.200 It's the answer to this culture of the quick fix prescription

00:10:25.440 But in the garden of simple, where all of us are nameless

00:10:34.140 You're never anything but beautiful to me

00:10:38.640 And you know they've never really owned you

00:10:43.620 You just carried them around you

00:10:46.780 And then one day you put them down and found your hands were free

00:10:51.660 And I'll turn you on

00:10:56.140 You emphasize the grassroots aspect of earth repair, which keeps it local

00:11:03.780 and allows communities to be the stewards of the land

00:11:06.960 and to respond with carefully designed, low-impact techniques.

00:11:13.560 So is there anything redeeming about large-scale corporate or government orchestrated bioremediation?

00:11:21.040 Or does it generally just give the illusion that the problems are fixed?

00:11:27.060 Yeah, I mean, it really depends on the type of contamination.

00:11:30.280 And, you know, people always talk about this isn't bioremediation, this is conventional remediation.

00:11:34.080 And they talk about how like one of the most common ways that contaminated sites are handled in terms of, let's say, a bunch of contaminated soil is dig and dump.

00:11:42.240 You excavate all this contaminated soil.

00:11:43.960 You haul it away to someone else's backyard, drop it there. 0.99

00:11:46.800 Again, usually that backyard is in a marginalized community of some sort. 0.99

00:11:51.160 And then you truck in clean soil. 0.94

00:11:53.520 And you can't see my quotation marks with my fingers.

00:11:55.740 But, again, that's using a lot of resources that we don't live on a planet that has infinite space.

00:12:01.840 You know, landfills are filling up.

00:12:03.160 and we don't have infinitely clean soil to keep drawing on, right?

00:12:06.560 And so the neat thing about bioremediation, grassroots bioremediation,

00:12:09.560 is trying to find ways to clean up contamination in situ, on site,

00:12:13.820 and not kind of externalizing so much of the problem.

00:12:16.980 When governments do bioremediation, it really depends on who's doing it and how they're doing it.

00:12:21.300 Sometimes they can probably do really good efforts with bioremediation, which is working with plants.

00:12:26.760 I haven't seen governments take on what we call micro-remediation,

00:12:30.080 which is working with the mushrooms very well or effectively or at all. With working with the

00:12:35.920 microorganisms like bacteria, you see more of that in industry. And there are some examples

00:12:41.520 with oil spills of folks trying to do kind of industrial biomediation. And again, sometimes

00:12:48.040 they do it okay. And other times it gets a bad name because, you know, they just come on a site

00:12:53.800 and they spray a bunch of fertilizer and that works or it doesn't work or it causes other

00:12:57.780 forms of contamination. Or they'll talk about bioremediation and do something called land

00:13:03.020 farming, which is where you take contaminated soil and you spread it out, kind of allow it to

00:13:07.500 volatilize and like off gas, or it'll seep into the groundwater and contaminate other places.

00:13:13.100 And that's something, again, it's not, I don't know how often it's done, but all these industries,

00:13:18.180 there is that thing where people are just trying to hide the problem. They're trying to kind of

00:13:20.560 get it off their plate and say, we did our cleanup job, we can keep going on and making more money.

00:13:25.000 Yes. And the problem with any kind of conventional remediation is that it's about money. It's about the cheapest option and the quickest option. Or it's about, you know, paying the people, you know, like business to business who you've always had a contract with and making money off the problem, some form of disaster capitalism.

00:13:40.400 And it's not good for communities who are often trying to find a cheap, accessible way for us to do this. It doesn't involve lots of money spent, you know, moving contaminants on and off site, doesn't involve weird chemicals. Yeah, that's actually cheap, accessible, you know, regular folks like you and I could do. And it might take longer. And it might be, you know, something where we actually have to work with living beings. We can't just bomb them with chemicals. But in the end, it's something that we can do. And it's depending on resources that we have, not things that we're running out of in the world.

00:14:10.400 A great example is BP dumping 2 million gallons of Corexit in the Gulf of Mexico to dispel the visible oil, when really it just created tiny oil droplets that coated the ocean floor and were ingested more easily by sea life.

00:14:27.760 Now, in your experience, when you're not seeing the visible signs of contamination, are there indicators to alert you to toxicity in your soil or in your water?

00:14:39.660 Right, because usually when there's an oil spill, you kind of know.

00:14:42.000 Right, exactly.

00:14:42.820 There's something where it alerts the people.

00:14:45.680 Again, it really depends on what you're dealing with.

00:14:47.460 Unfortunately, you have to keep saying it depends.

00:14:49.340 But, you know, in a lot of communities where folks, you know, they want to grow gardens,

00:14:52.680 they want to have food security, potentially heavy metals in the soil.

00:14:57.000 And there aren't, I mean, some people talk about how some plants can be indicators for that.

00:15:01.620 But it's not, I wouldn't find that so helpful, because they might be, but they also might not be, you know.

00:15:07.660 oftentimes the indicator or why you'd be concerned about whether there's contamination in the soil

00:15:13.340 is looking around and saying what has been here before me and so I think it's really important

00:15:18.720 that people understand where contamination comes from so for example you know I lived in an older

00:15:23.480 neighborhood and it was this you know really sweet hippie neighborhood and everybody gardened

00:15:27.260 and I wanted to grow a garden um kind of a guerrilla garden somewhere and people actually

00:15:31.340 stopped me and said you know the place you're about to grow your garden has really high lead

00:15:34.880 contamination. And I couldn't understand why. And then you start hearing about, you know,

00:15:38.840 older neighborhoods with older houses, people used to use paint that had lead in it. And then,

00:15:46.140 you know, the lead paint ships off into the soil. And so any place where there's been old houses,

00:15:50.720 you're going to have to worry about that. Or, you know, next to roads, we used to use leaded

00:15:54.020 gasoline. And we don't use it anymore, but these things stick around. Or, you know, you look at

00:15:59.460 places where maybe they were spraying pesticides or chemicals, um, where people have been dumping

00:16:04.980 things. If there's been any kind of fire that burnt waste or structures down, you're going to

00:16:09.640 have everything from heavy metals to dioxin to PAHs. Um, if there's been incinerators in the

00:16:15.580 community that can definitely give you a toxic load. And so oftentimes, you know, anywhere we

00:16:20.280 are given the world that we live in and how we don't build in a good way and we don't necessarily

00:16:25.500 live in a good way when it comes to health and nature. And you just have to kind of look at

00:16:31.460 what's around you and then say, what could there be in terms of contamination? Or you can do a

00:16:35.620 soil test and find out really quickly. And that's the part with remediation. Bioremediation

00:16:40.780 is very financially accessible, except when you start testing soil and then it starts to

00:16:46.380 go up in price. But it's a really good thing to start off by doing because then you know what

00:16:51.040 you're dealing with. And then you know kind of whether you are actually cleaning it up or not.

00:16:55.500 So besides testing, is there any other way to know if the effects of bioremediation are

00:17:03.700 working or to what level they're working?

00:17:07.200 I mean, testing is the best in terms of, you know, I mean, sometimes you can, you're dealing

00:17:12.480 with a really desiccated, really destroyed, toxic place that is, you know, maybe so toxic

00:17:16.860 that nothing could actually grow on it.

00:17:18.760 That could be because of acidity or alkalinity, things like that.

00:17:21.720 But, you know, if you're dealing with a site where, you know, you walk onto your site and

00:17:24.520 you're like nothing is here that's also a good indication if you have like a piece of land where

00:17:28.700 there's stuff growing and then all of a sudden there's bear patches it's like well i wonder what's

00:17:32.400 going on there you know like a lot of times with this work we have to kind of tap into our intuition

00:17:35.920 and our instinct and you know you asked earlier about decolonization um and by our mediation and

00:17:41.700 you know there's kind of talking about the really political side of that right um with justice and

00:17:48.140 injustice and then there's also the piece where we need to come into a better connection with

00:17:52.640 the land that we're working with and the allies that we're working with and so how do you learn

00:17:56.720 how to listen to the land and also listen to what the mushrooms and the plants and the the

00:18:01.480 microbes might be telling you and and tune into that and you can't completely go off the deep end

00:18:06.000 with that and kind of go hippie on it where you just think you're communicating with the land

00:18:09.320 really you're just not doing anything like you have to actually hone that skill and also temper

00:18:14.120 it with practice and science it's art and science and magic kind of woven together you know there is

00:18:19.400 a certain thing of kind of looking around and seeing what's growing on the site you know if

00:18:23.500 you bring things back you're going to start to see a different community of organisms that are

00:18:27.360 going to show themselves um in terms of plants and and you know the soil is going to look different

00:18:32.340 it might smell different uh in terms of more alive again I would not say that by doing all

00:18:37.980 those things I would be able to say now you can eat out of this and feel really good about that

00:18:41.980 like I'd be a little leery if you don't have the money to test you do your remediation you know

00:18:46.580 you work with the different plants, the different mushrooms. You do that for a couple of years

00:18:49.900 because they often save the remediation, you know, two to five years if you're dealing with

00:18:54.900 kind of low to moderate. And if you're dealing with things that are, you know, pretty difficult

00:18:58.840 to clean up or a bunch of different contaminants, it goes up in years. But, you know, give it a

00:19:03.900 couple of years and a couple of seasons of your remediation. And then if you don't have time to

00:19:08.340 test or you can't test, I would build soil up on the site and do like sheet mulching or raised beds

00:19:14.300 then plant my food crops into that just to be safe, right? Because you've done that work of

00:19:20.480 actually giving back to the land and saying, hey, I'm a human, I'm responsible, I'm going to take

00:19:24.300 some ownership here and do that healing work. Because I'm feeding this to my kids, I'm going

00:19:28.380 to also grow up. So you can do that. Another thing I've heard people do, and this is an idea that

00:19:34.040 comes from the Amazon Micro Renewal Project, which is a really great project down in Ecuador.

00:19:38.320 they do something called plant bioassays which is basically where they take plants and they grow

00:19:45.320 them in soils of different contamination and they kind of look and see how the plants look at kind

00:19:51.300 of the different contamination levels oh wow and then that can give you a bit of a qualitative

00:19:55.820 thing to be like okay at this level of contamination you know nothing grows at this level it grows but

00:20:01.520 really poorly or it takes this long and then at this level it's starting to look a bit better

00:20:05.700 But again, not a for sure thing. And if people's lives and health is at stake, I would say do a bit of fundraising and get that test.

00:20:13.820 We hear this term baseline a lot. The polluters claim there's a safe dose of contamination.

00:20:19.500 So do you attempt to reduce contaminants to baseline, meaning what's, quote, normal?

00:20:25.600 Or is there another standard that you strive for?

00:20:29.900 hmm yeah good question the thing with what governments deem a safe level of contaminants

00:20:37.800 um you can go online or you can look this up and find that okay in america the safe level of lead

00:20:44.020 is this much parts per million and in canada the safe level of arsenic is this much and so when

00:20:49.120 you're doing your remediation and you're testing the interesting thing about that is well several

00:20:53.600 things one they're talking about a safe level of one contaminant but they don't talk about what

00:20:58.860 happens with certain things combined. So if you have multiple contaminants in the soil, how is

00:21:03.500 that going to impact your body? So that's one issue. The other issue is that they're incredibly

00:21:06.840 political. They're political numbers. So for example, the safe level of lead in Canada is

00:21:13.720 much less than that in America. Wow. Like I think ours is a hundred parts per million, 70 to 140

00:21:20.100 parts per million, depending on whether it's a park or kind of agricultural use. And I think

00:21:24.240 for you guys it's 400 oh my gosh i i think i hope i'm not getting this wrong but i always talk about

00:21:30.400 this when i'm teaching in canada and we we kind of make fun of it because we're like why is it so

00:21:34.280 high in the states it's not because they're bigger people than us like that doesn't make sense and

00:21:38.540 it's because of potentially the lobby you know like different polluters lobbying um or there

00:21:43.720 already being a certain level of pollution in the cities that you know they have to basically say

00:21:48.360 this is what's safe otherwise the government would be liable in so many ways like you look at japan

00:21:52.720 with the radiation and the safe level of radiation just keeps going up because that's the new it's

00:21:57.840 like that is your base like it's like what are you going to do about it and so that's a huge issue

00:22:02.340 and we live in a world that there is a lot of toxicity you know it's it's sometimes it's very

00:22:07.980 people can get kind of worked up about it because if you go through all the different things that

00:22:11.420 are out there people start to get freaked out and you know we have to realize that this is the world

00:22:15.100 we live in that our bodies can handle it to a certain extent um and the land can handle it to

00:22:21.320 a certain extent, but we always have to be finding ways to kind of clear that and to

00:22:24.520 help detox that and to give ourselves more of a capacity.

00:22:28.040 So, yeah, I don't quite know what to say to that, but it is important.

00:22:31.700 And often, you know, even with remediation, when we're working with the plants and the

00:22:35.460 bacteria and the mushrooms, you know, we're either trying to immobilize or bind the

00:22:41.760 contamination so that it can't really move into water or move into food that we're eating.

00:22:47.360 so kind of locking it into the soil by combining it with biology or just making it less mobile

00:22:53.200 or we're trying to extract it and actually take it out of the soil via a plant or via a mushroom

00:23:00.600 and whenever we do those things there's just different trade-offs but you know one thing I

00:23:05.000 talk about is you know if you're dealing with contamination in the soil just because it's in

00:23:07.900 the soil doesn't mean it's going to make it into your plants depends on what metal let's say you're

00:23:13.840 working with. But there's certain things you can do to kind of lock it at the roots or in the soil

00:23:19.100 itself. And the plant that you end up eating might be a lot safer. Or people talk about something

00:23:24.600 called fate of transport. And that's where different plants will accumulate different

00:23:28.900 heavy metals in different parts of the plant. People use sunflowers to accumulate certain

00:23:33.920 heavy metals. And they worry then about birds eating the sunflower seeds and then poisoning

00:23:38.920 themselves. But what's interesting is it won't make it up to the seeds. Lead is a pretty clunky,

00:23:44.420 really hard to kind of move metal and it doesn't travel up to the seeds. So the seeds of a sunflower

00:23:50.100 grown in lead contaminated soil are not going to have that much contamination. But if you're

00:23:54.400 dealing with cadmium in it as well, the cadmium will make it all the way to the seeds. And so

00:23:59.260 there's a whole, there's a lot of studies on this. There needs to be a lot more, but folks looking at

00:24:04.020 what plants accumulate what where. And I think when it comes to food justice and people having

00:24:08.040 to grow food, not having years and years to kind of clean up the soil, it's important

00:24:11.920 to know some of those things.

00:24:38.040 Give me gasoline

00:24:47.040 I fall 1.00

00:24:50.040 And she give me gasoline 1.00

00:24:54.040 Lord, good Lordy Lord 1.00

00:24:58.040 Right, Lord, I want home

00:25:05.960 But I won't get back home

00:25:10.360 Right, Lord, I want home

00:25:18.640 But I won't get back home

00:25:22.980 Lord, good Lordy, Lord 0.97

00:25:26.060 To go back to Fukushima and nuclear fallout, I'm glad you mentioned Japan's shifting baseline

00:25:35.400 because there's so much confusion about this topic, and the media blackout prevents any real

00:25:41.740 information from reaching the outside world. I know you're also on the West Coast, and I'm

00:25:48.240 wondering where is the fallout ending up, and does bioremediation offer us any solutions?

00:25:53.440 yeah i mean one of the things that also motivated me to write this book on remediation was things

00:26:01.480 like big environmental disasters like oil spills like nuclear accidents but also the funny thing

00:26:07.600 is in doing so it's kind of saying okay we must have we have these massive environmental disasters

00:26:11.720 how can we as regular people deal with them when it comes to power remediation you know there are

00:26:17.400 some things we can do but these things are massive they're massive and they're they're a big deal

00:26:22.780 like I'm trying not to swear I'm like they they are a really big deal I don't want to be selling

00:26:27.660 false hope and I want to be saying to people that this is like you know it'll fix everything

00:26:30.620 because you know when I was learning permaculture and people were saying you know mushrooms are

00:26:33.440 going to save the world and heal the world it's more nuanced than that I think it's important

00:26:37.860 that people know that so that we actually are willing to do the work and also understand that

00:26:42.840 I think at some point in the game plants mushrooms and bacteria can definitely do a lot of healing

00:26:49.080 work right now there's a bit of a gap you know there's a lot of people talking about it there's

00:26:53.540 studies happening in the labs and there's not enough things happening on the ground and not

00:26:57.920 enough kind of in communities people learning it and testing it and experimenting and pushing it

00:27:02.320 farther and I think in doing that we'll actually manage to start having some of the real conversations

00:27:07.400 about you know dealing with some of these bigger issues but I think when it comes to nuclear

00:27:11.920 it's really hard because there's so much we don't know about what's going on with Fukushima

00:27:16.420 and in what ways contamination is reaching us.

00:27:20.580 And I know in Canada,

00:27:21.560 we are not getting that information at all.

00:27:24.760 Right.

00:27:25.380 And so who do you believe?

00:27:26.580 And you don't want to make people afraid,

00:27:28.280 but you also want to make people cautious

00:27:29.800 and give people the opportunity

00:27:31.860 to take care of themselves.

00:27:33.640 When it comes to staying healthy

00:27:36.080 in kind of the face of that,

00:27:37.660 in the book, I have a whole chapter

00:27:38.980 on how to support your body

00:27:40.620 in terms of toxicity,

00:27:41.860 just because if you're doing the work of remediation,

00:27:44.220 you sometimes end up being around,

00:27:45.500 a lot of contamination. Or if you're just living again in this world, you are dealing with some of

00:27:50.040 this stuff anyway. And so we talk a little bit about how to handle radiation. And I mean, what

00:27:55.440 a lot of people say is when you're around radiation, you're worried about in the end getting

00:28:00.360 cancer. You're also worried about how it impacts subsequent generations, right? So there are

00:28:06.700 certain things like medicinal mushrooms that are really, really helpful for the body in terms of

00:28:13.020 preventing cancer. And that's a huge thing. If you've been exposed to any contamination,

00:28:17.540 you know, like in an oil spill or again, the things like radiation, especially you want to

00:28:21.360 be on it when it comes to watching out for cancer and trying to do your best to kind of

00:28:25.200 prevent that in the body. And, you know, mushrooms like reishi, shiitake, maitake

00:28:31.100 are really good. And so, you know, we talk about that a little bit. We talk about things like

00:28:37.180 miso being really, really helpful. Other things in the body like turmeric, garlic, also very

00:28:43.200 helpful. Spirulina, something that they were experimenting with after Chernobyl and found

00:28:48.640 some interesting results. There's quite a lot of information on all these things. Seaweed is

00:28:52.740 another one that people talk about to getting radiation out of your body. The problem with

00:28:57.940 seaweed is that it also accumulates radiation. So if you're trying to eat seaweed from a place

00:29:03.080 where there might be radiation in the water, that's not going to help you at all. But I don't

00:29:06.480 know if that answers your question in terms of the actual remediation people talk about you know

00:29:10.340 with um radiation we have found that certain mushrooms paul stamets talks about this how

00:29:16.020 certain mushrooms are good at pulling up things like cesium and strontium so are certain plants

00:29:22.160 like uh post chernobyl they were um experimenting with a kind of transgenic sunflower that was

00:29:26.980 really good at pulling up certain radioactive uh contamination and then they were also finding a

00:29:32.100 certain form of fungi that was actually growing in Chernobyl and kind of using the radiation as

00:29:37.680 food. So there's some neat things there. And also post-Chernobyl, people were finding that you

00:29:42.720 couldn't eat the mushrooms in the area of fallout because mushrooms hyperaccumulate radiation. And

00:29:48.280 so all these things you can kind of use to get radiation out of the environment. The problem

00:29:52.460 with nuclear, and it's always been the problem with nuclear, is that we as human beings have

00:29:56.280 no idea what to do with radioactive contamination once we have it. So we can concentrate it and

00:30:01.220 trying to move it somewhere. But where are we going to put it? We don't have any safe way to

00:30:04.640 dispose of it. So it's not the best. We don't have a lot of solutions to that, to be honest.

00:30:09.760 It definitely makes a case for the anti-nuclear movement. And we should be honest that we live

00:30:15.120 in a toxic period. There are 2 million unique chemicals used in industry. But that doesn't

00:30:21.560 mean we're helpless. In fact, we have a responsibility to fight this poisoning of

00:30:26.200 our mother earth. We do what we can. Yeah, because the world does not need us to be debilitated right

00:30:29.700 now. The world needs us to be acting. Yes. So it's like you have to fight that. And I mean,

00:30:34.060 again, some places are more toxic than others. Some places are not that toxic. It really depends

00:30:38.540 on kind of the land and its own ability to kind of cleanse and also what's happened in those places.

00:30:43.620 But I definitely think what you said is really important. It's a case that I make in the book

00:30:47.920 and in life in general is that the best medicine is preventative medicine. When it comes to trying

00:30:52.120 to clean up things like oils bill and nuclear, there is some potential, especially, you know,

00:30:56.540 with oil, like we can find different ways using mushrooms and bacteria to break it down,

00:31:00.880 but it is really hard to do it, especially at a huge scale. And so if you're trying to kind of

00:31:06.120 help the land and like support communities, you want to make sure these spills don't happen,

00:31:11.560 which means that we have to, you know, in terms of activism and organizing, we have to oppose

00:31:17.420 some of these projects that are trying to go forward, whether it's the big pipelines from

00:31:20.840 the tar sands, whether it's fracking, all these industries, they push forward these projects and

00:31:25.640 they say they know how to clean them up but they don't right and we watch things like BP you know

00:31:30.600 say like oh sorry we still don't know how to get the oil and in Canada it's a similar thing where

00:31:34.760 there's you know spills going on and the companies are running around looking like they have no idea

00:31:38.420 what to do because you know they got their plans approved basically saying this I'm going to clean

00:31:43.580 it up and it wasn't tested or it doesn't go as planned and so we have to make sure that these

00:31:48.180 things don't go ahead that we don't get more nuclear than we already have going on that we

00:31:51.400 don't allow some of these pipelines to go through because with pipelines, with tankers, it's not a

00:31:56.600 matter of if there's going to be a spill, it's when. And you can count on the fact that your

00:32:00.600 government and the companies will probably not do a really good job cleaning it up. Oil spills are

00:32:05.240 really close to my heart because I'm from Alberta. And, you know, you start reading about the

00:32:08.520 statistics and a company, if they're doing a good job, they might be able to recover, you know, 15

00:32:14.840 to 20% of the oil spilled. Wow. And that's like, yes, we did it. And the rest is going to kind of

00:32:22.100 be left in the environment to break down over time, which it might, because again, we always

00:32:26.880 have to remember the earth can do some of this work itself. But if the earth has been severely

00:32:30.700 impacted and a lot of the beings like the indigenous bacteria aren't used to the oil or

00:32:36.760 they were killed in the initial toxicity, it's not going to clean itself up very fast. Look at

00:32:41.740 things like the Exxon Valdez. It's just one of those things where we need to prevent some of

00:32:46.040 these things from happening, you know, and we need to make sure that the ones that are already going

00:32:49.500 on, because there are pipelines, there is oil moving around all the time. There are nuclear

00:32:53.820 projects currently operating. We need to make sure that, you know, they have the pressure on them to

00:32:59.240 be monitored and getting upgraded in terms of safety. Because again, when spills happen and

00:33:03.640 accidents happen, it's hard to clean them up, whether you're doing conventional or

00:33:08.280 by remediation. So I'm a big proponent of the activism.

00:33:38.280 We'll be right back.

00:34:08.280 We're here with Layla Darwish, author of Earth Repair, and we're talking about reversing the

00:34:28.560 damages wrought by civilization. And we've already touched on fungi as a tool for remediation,

00:34:33.760 but let's go a bit more in depth. You know, people are awakening to the miracles of the

00:34:39.100 fungal kingdom, in part due to the radical mycology movement. I know you've been involved

00:34:44.720 with that. So can you tell us about the amazing work being done by radical mycologists and their

00:34:50.580 fungal allies? Mushrooms are amazing. I just get excited talking about it. The funny thing

00:34:59.040 about mushrooms is whenever I teach about remediation, the majority of the people in the

00:35:04.580 room are excited to talk about mushrooms. Sometimes I make them wait and I talk about

00:35:08.600 bacteria and plants first. I want to make them stay for the whole thing. But mushrooms have this

00:35:12.460 ability. I don't know if it's their mystery or the fact that, yeah, they have this beautiful

00:35:17.200 mystical history and ways that they act with human beings. And yeah, I'm not quite sure what

00:35:23.220 the hook is. But when it comes to remediation, you look at some of the pollutants, like the

00:35:29.880 chemicals that are really hard to break down. And mushrooms have shown an ability to kind of

00:35:35.200 do that work and do it quicker sometimes than the plants and the bacteria. And oftentimes when we're

00:35:40.960 talking about remediation, you know, we'll take something like certain really long chains of

00:35:45.660 hydrocarbons and use mushrooms to kind of break them into smaller bits so that the bacteria and

00:35:50.320 the plants can then come in and do their work. And also its ability to kind of tackle some of

00:35:55.120 these problems that folks don't have solutions for. And the neat thing about it is it's not

00:35:59.180 just problems in the land, it's also problems in our own body. So things like cancer, arthritis,

00:36:05.020 inflammation, Alzheimer's and dementia, you know, they're starting to see like certain mushrooms

00:36:09.640 have pretty powerful abilities to heal these issues that, you know, we're not finding a lot

00:36:14.980 of solutions for in other things. And so I think that's why I think mushrooms really captivate

00:36:19.340 people. I think it's also in remediation. When it comes to plants, people know how to work with

00:36:25.260 plants. A lot of people know how to plant something. Some folks know how to do things

00:36:29.140 like when we're talking about the bacteria, people might've made compost. But when it comes to

00:36:33.660 mushrooms, very few people know how to actually grow them and how to kind of take care of them

00:36:38.480 on a site. And so I always feel like that's why we hear people talk a lot about, you know, the

00:36:42.780 power of mushrooms to heal the land. But when you actually go looking for examples of micro

00:36:47.060 or mediation, you don't find a lot. Or the ones that you do find are kind of failed attempts by

00:36:52.220 a lot of people because we need to take the time to actually connect with the mushrooms and learn

00:36:56.300 how to work with them and have them kind of guide us in that way. And the folks who I work with who

00:37:01.360 are really rad mycologists and part of the rad mycology movement are folks who've taken that

00:37:06.400 time. And they're incredible at not just using mushrooms for healing the land, but also they're

00:37:10.780 really good at growing them. So when they kind of engage in these cleanup projects, they can actually

00:37:15.160 get the mushrooms going, right? Because if you don't get the mushrooms going, you can't really

00:37:19.340 do the cleanup. When it comes to radical mycology, I love radical mycology. It's a movement about

00:37:26.020 trying to get the love of mycology, of fungi, mushrooms out to the masses and having it come

00:37:32.540 from the ground up. Instead of it being something where mycology and the study of fungi is only

00:37:38.000 being talked about in universities or kind of being taken by corporations, it's coming from

00:37:44.560 regular folks in community who are often teaching themselves about mushrooms via what they're

00:37:50.460 reading or what they're learning from other folks. And then they spend all this time experimenting

00:37:55.560 and trying to find easier ways to grow mushrooms or trying to figure out how mushrooms can tackle

00:38:01.000 what forms of pollution. And it's neat to see the radical mycology movement grow by the contributions

00:38:07.560 of the grassroots, by people taking it on themselves to kind of experiment, expand the

00:38:12.280 information and freely share it. Because often with this stuff, people do not share the information,

00:38:16.800 right? We don't necessarily share our successes or our mistakes. Maybe people try to patent it

00:38:20.620 or make a profit out of it. And radical mycology is not about that. It's about doing the work,

00:38:25.600 sharing the work, teaching and spreading that work and also spreading the love of fungi to the

00:38:31.880 masses because not a lot of people necessarily understand it or know it. There's been radical

00:38:37.280 mycology convergences that have taken place. And they've been these five-day, three-day

00:38:43.380 convergences where it's essentially free, a little donation if you want, but it's nonstop

00:38:49.500 workshops taught by anybody who wants to apply about everything from using mushrooms in medicine

00:38:55.240 to foraging for mushrooms for food and medicine to using them in remediation and applying that

00:39:01.260 with other forms of remediation. Really neat stuff. Also talking about the entheogenic and

00:39:06.000 of spiritual properties of mushrooms. And there's also going to be a tour with some of those folks

00:39:10.300 going across the states and trying to, again, teach more people about doing this work and

00:39:14.640 getting the skills into people's hands. Because the more people who are growing them and who know

00:39:18.540 how to grow them, the more we have access to using the mushrooms and the mycelium to actually heal

00:39:23.420 the land. Oh, gosh, I experienced the excitement of a radical mycology convergence in Washington

00:39:30.340 State. And it was in such contrast to the droned out indifference typical of our generation.

00:39:37.640 So I'd like to ask, in your experience with grassroots organizing, when you go to teach

00:39:44.360 remediation, do you encounter this indifference? And how do you get people fired up to take on an

00:39:52.300 environmental challenge? I think a lot of it, there are some places where people are just

00:39:57.160 energized to do the work because they have to. Um, what do they say? Necessity is the mother

00:40:02.540 of invention. Like folks are just like, we got to do this. How do we do it? You know? And you

00:40:06.900 don't need to necessarily pump them up about it. You just need to tell them how, um, then there's

00:40:10.800 other communities where people invite me into the community and they want to know about it because

00:40:14.620 they've just had a spill, you know, and they're, and they're really nervous and they're really

00:40:17.940 concerned. And then other places where, again, I feel like people just haven't heard a lot about

00:40:21.920 this. It sounds kind of high tech and kind of intellectual and academic, and you just have to

00:40:26.840 find ways to break it down. And one of the things I've been doing is just teaching workshops.

00:40:31.260 I just taught a three-month workshop in Vancouver that was, you know, we met once a week and, you

00:40:36.800 know, just went through like all the different forms of grassroots biomediation. And what I

00:40:41.560 find really interesting is when you work for people a little bit longer, they actually get

00:40:44.900 to integrate the information. They're not overwhelmed by it. They get to apply it and

00:40:48.240 they get to also start building some of those different connection pieces where they learn

00:40:51.680 how to trust their own intuition in the work and become those really good healers. And I always

00:40:56.740 kind of equate the two as, you know, when I look at a lot of my friends who are, you know, herbalists

00:41:00.320 and healers of the human body, what are the skills they need to be able to do their work really well?

00:41:05.100 And I try to try to get some of that same stuff going on and people want to be earth healers and

00:41:09.020 earth workers. But I think a lot of it is, again, trying to have as many opportunities for education

00:41:14.420 as possible. And more importantly, getting people doing the work so that people start to physically

00:41:19.640 see it. They actually see things transform. They walk through sites and go, oh, wow, this is what's

00:41:25.100 going on here. And so at a certain point in the game, we can't keep talking about stuff or writing

00:41:29.680 about it. We actually have to make it a physical act that actually speaks to people's experience

00:41:34.520 and physically transform space. I haven't had a lot of trouble getting people stoked about

00:41:38.780 remediation. I mean, I think the word remediation is pretty awful and I don't know what's a better

00:41:43.380 word, to be honest. But I know with radical mycology, a lot of people are into radical

00:41:50.540 mycology either because they're into the spiritual aspect of the mushrooms, or they're into the

00:41:54.320 medical aspect of it, or they're into the remediation aspect. So a lot of folks come

00:41:58.760 and they want to know about remediation. And both radical mycology and grass-inspired remediation,

00:42:03.360 they overlap in so many ways. And at the Radical Mycology Convergence, we talk about all those

00:42:08.740 things. And we teach all those things, um, which I think is really neat. And I know when I was

00:42:13.600 writing the book and I was meeting all these different people, I found that the folks that

00:42:17.620 I liked the most were the radical mycology folks, um, because they were just super lovely and

00:42:23.080 intriguing people. And, and there's some of the folks that I've kept working with. Um, but yeah,

00:42:27.540 I don't know if that answers your question, but I think again, you know, we got to come into

00:42:30.620 communities. We got to meet people where they're at. We have to find ways to kind of address the

00:42:36.300 really hard to talk about things that are causing people anxiety or despair, but then we need to do

00:42:41.760 something with that. And often the thing that we do with it is we say, this is a situation. Let's

00:42:46.300 not kind of crater in this. This is the stuff we can do. And it's not perfect, but we've inherited,

00:42:51.720 you know, a toxic legacy that's decades in the making and the cleanup and the healing will start

00:42:57.920 with us. And hopefully we can leave things a little bit better than we've inherited them.

00:43:01.380 environmentalism can get extremely analytical with so much data and so many reports and impact

00:43:09.640 studies and i was wondering if you could speak about the need to listen to the land when deciding

00:43:15.500 how to approach its healing right each person is different in how they connect to land i mean i've

00:43:23.900 always i'm i do my work from a spiritual place although sometimes i don't talk like that just

00:43:29.440 because the communities I'm in, you know, I'm from Alberta, we don't walk in and kind of advertise

00:43:33.400 how woo we are in any situation. But I would say, again, I'm motivated by being a healer. And so

00:43:40.760 some of the work I also do herbalism, and I've been learning a lot about herbalism over the

00:43:44.080 years. And the people who I've seen are some of the best healers for people are folks who have

00:43:49.140 these really deep relationships with the plants that they're working with. And they hear things

00:43:55.180 from them, or they kind of are guided by those plants. And they have this kind of intuition

00:43:58.800 going on in this relationship going on maybe they dream about those plants um and it makes them

00:44:04.040 really good at their work like i've seen it i've felt it physically so for me i'm like how do we

00:44:08.900 take that and apply that to the remediation work especially given that a lot of conventional

00:44:13.580 remediation people are coming at it like engineers or business folks um and to me also land is a very

00:44:21.120 powerful spiritually charged beautiful you know intricate community and also life force and so

00:44:26.780 I think we need to honor that. And when we've had places that have been destroyed and dishonored so

00:44:31.620 much, you know, we have to kind of come into those spaces and try to remember the life that was once

00:44:36.460 there and try to communicate with it and try to bring it back. And so I think it's kind of a bit

00:44:41.560 of an honoring practice and a respectful piece and also part of that decolonization and also that

00:44:45.960 rewilding that needs to happen for us to kind of live in a better way and do our work in a better

00:44:49.960 way. And some of it is, you know, going to places that are really impacted, destroyed sites and

00:44:56.240 sitting there and kind of just seeing what you feel or what you see or what you hear that's

00:45:02.320 important and then going to places that are these beautiful lush kind of sanctuaries and seeing what

00:45:06.700 you feel and what you think and what you hear and what comes up another thing that I tend to do when

00:45:11.600 I teach some of my classes is we do these things called plant and mushroom circles where it's

00:45:17.780 something that people do with herbal medicine but you basically take you know tinctures of the plant

00:45:23.640 or the mushroom or tea forms and you know what they are but nobody else knows what it is and you

00:45:29.400 kind of send it around and everybody takes a little bit and then you meditate and people are

00:45:33.260 supposed to kind of pay attention to their thoughts where things go in their body what they feel any

00:45:37.660 imagery anything that comes up and then once you're done kind of meditating and sitting silently with

00:45:42.040 that people report back what they've experienced and it's so fascinating to have people sometimes

00:45:46.920 say the exact same thing and to actually you know you'll be doing some kind of plant and people will

00:45:52.320 basically tell you all the different things they felt. And if you were to look up what that plant

00:45:56.180 medically does, they nailed it. And so I think that's part of teaching people that you actually,

00:46:01.820 your body tells you things, you know, this plant is telling you things, this mushroom is telling

00:46:06.260 you things. And you need to get better at learning how to listen. Because we have not been taught

00:46:12.160 that or we've had to dumb that down because of the world that we live in. And so we want to

00:46:16.260 reawaken that in people and whichever way we can figure out how to do that, you know, that's a

00:46:20.520 really easy one to do um and one that people really seem to enjoy and it also teaches people

00:46:25.520 who their allies are because some people will work really well with certain plants and mushrooms and

00:46:29.880 other people that's not their guide and so it's really neat to see who are the mushroom people

00:46:33.880 and who are the plant people right or which plant or what mushroom and they have different

00:46:38.340 personalities and when people get to kind of experience that in whatever form whether it's

00:46:42.160 doing some kind of plant circle or mushroom circle or meditating out on the land or engaging

00:46:46.900 something a little bit more spiritual and trippy, that sits with people and allows them to kind of

00:46:51.400 do their work in a different way. So I think that's a really important practice and one that

00:46:56.840 I try to share with my students and give them the opportunity to kind of go deeper with.

00:47:01.420 I often feel, again, you go to a site and often I feel like the land on places that are really

00:47:07.560 damaged, sometimes it's very hard to hear anything because when there's that level of

00:47:12.400 disrespect and destruction that's happened, it can force certain things to leave the land or to just

00:47:18.080 become very, you know, very silent. And so sometimes you don't really hear anything. That's

00:47:22.320 something I've noticed from being up in the tar sands and different places, just the absolute

00:47:26.100 deathly silence of those spaces. But then other places you hear quite a bit. So I think, again,

00:47:31.220 it's just kind of working with that. There's neat things. I don't know if you know a lot about

00:47:34.980 biodynamic, but in biodynamics, that's a form of agriculture that's pretty mystical and pretty

00:47:40.040 beautiful. And they also do a lot of work in terms of healing the land and making these homeopathic

00:47:44.740 preparations. And I remember talking to this one biodynamic farmer who makes this homeopathic

00:47:49.960 preparation of nettle. And he was saying how nettle as a plant and an herb, its role in

00:47:55.980 biodynamics is to basically, if there's something that has really traumatized the land, what it'll

00:48:04.200 do is it'll make everything go into this kind of isolation and nothing's working together.

00:48:07.600 everything's kind of hunkered down and afraid and what he'll do is plug in these nettle preps

00:48:13.060 all over the land like kind of like poking holes and putting nettle in these holes and creating

00:48:17.220 this grid and nettle is the grand conductor and so when you kind of put it throughout the land

00:48:21.860 supposedly what it does is it kind of takes all the discord the things that are disconnected and

00:48:26.040 connects them back into a symphony and he talked about that as like this neat kind of healing thing

00:48:30.100 that they do so i think there's a lot of different ways that people do this work and that guide them

00:48:34.460 this work, but it's important to go there a little bit.

00:49:04.460 Dancing like an arrow

00:49:07.400 Spreading joy

00:49:10.400 Beneath your feet

00:49:13.340 And your hands

00:49:16.280 That wave like tall grass

00:49:19.840 In the wind

00:49:21.480 As you speak

00:49:25.000 With the shyness

00:49:28.000 Of a small child

00:49:31.000 And the wisdom

00:49:32.900 Of a saint

00:49:36.140 I tell you now

00:49:38.640 There is no reason

00:49:41.460 To be afraid

00:49:44.500 Brother warrior

00:49:54.640 There are none of us

00:49:57.740 Who walk this path alone

00:49:59.860 Spirit healer

00:50:02.860 Is the only life that we have ever known

00:50:08.560 And I see your smile in the sunlight

00:50:14.040 I hear your songs in the rain

00:50:20.000 And I hold you here inside me

00:50:25.880 Feel your love and know your pain

00:50:31.320 At this time when the earth is waking

00:50:36.720 To the dawn of another age

00:50:43.340 I tell you now

00:50:45.360 There is no reason to be afraid

00:51:01.320 guitar solo

00:51:31.320 We are crying for a vision

00:51:41.200 That all living things can share

00:51:47.080 And those who care are with us everywhere

00:52:01.320 you're such an incredible earth activist in so many ways and I'm sure our audience would love

00:52:16.640 to know what you're doing where they can get a hold of you how they can sign up for your next

00:52:21.840 workshop so what's your website yeah um I have a website it has some extra information on it I'm

00:52:28.780 always working on it because i want to put more and more kind of free info up there for people

00:52:32.700 but if folks want to find me online they can go there and then they can contact me as well

00:52:37.840 and the website for that is www.earthrepair.ca and it has information about workshops mediation

00:52:48.280 stuff going on um also has information about my book if people want to buy it things like that

00:52:53.820 But I also wanted to say on the whole spiritual side and how important it is to do this work and, again, how having some of those deeper relationships helps you do the work.

00:53:04.000 I think about all the mushroom folks I know who are really good cultivators are folks who, again, have really deep relationships with the mushrooms.

00:53:12.220 And a lot of that comes from some interesting spiritual and theogenic kind of exploring with mushrooms.

00:53:18.020 But it's just, again, the best cultivators have that relationship.

00:53:21.340 and the best people at remediation have that.

00:53:25.160 And I think it's really important to bring it back.

00:53:26.840 So I also think about the fact that, you know,

00:53:29.120 our world needs a lot of support right now

00:53:31.940 in terms of healing on the physical level.

00:53:35.500 And science hasn't necessarily caught up to it

00:53:38.120 in terms of, you know,

00:53:38.860 being able to address some of those challenges.

00:53:40.880 And so when I think about how much we have to learn

00:53:43.180 and how quick we have to kind of push it,

00:53:45.860 some of that information is going to come from testing

00:53:47.760 and studies and labs and things like that.

00:53:49.840 And some of it's going to have to come from other things. So that's something that, again, I'm always like, let's try to listen to the land. Let's try to also place it and the mushrooms and the plants as our teachers. But also very important to read textbooks and to go to workshops and to learn and try to marry that together.

00:54:04.220 And on the whole idea of learning, I want to say that, you know, sometimes things sound intimidating with remediation or with mycology or, you know, any of that stuff. But all that's in the book is stuff that I learned by reading and by talking to people and interviewing people.

00:54:20.920 so it's totally possible to teach yourself and it's really fun to kind of get together with other

00:54:26.400 people and maybe start like a study group or just try to bring people into your community who have

00:54:31.020 these skills but it's definitely not as hard as it sounds it's very complex and intricate in a

00:54:37.940 beautiful way but it's definitely something that we have the ability to do so i really encourage

00:54:42.660 people to get out to experiment to try um and to connect with other people in doing that beautiful

00:54:48.860 Thank you. This is just really wonderful work you're doing. And I'm really happy that we spoke about the rewilding aspect of it. Because I know for me, that's kind of the wall I was hitting. I was learning and I was trying to get all this information in.

00:55:04.380 And then I got to a point where I needed to have the other side of that coin to revive

00:55:11.720 myself and to realize that without that deep, intimate connection with the land, that I

00:55:17.940 couldn't keep going on with the purely analytic side of it alone.

00:55:22.220 It was really disheartening.

00:55:24.360 I felt just really depressed about it.

00:55:27.260 And I know a lot of people are feeling overwhelmed, sad.

00:55:31.920 And I think grieving is definitely part of the process. But then being able to have that connection, have tools like grassroots bioremediation to be productive in this and know that we don't just have to sit back and wait for somebody else to do something or nothing, but that we can actually do it ourselves and empower ourselves in our communities. So thank you for coming on. I know you're so busy with all of your wonderful workshops and classes you're teaching.

00:56:00.340 Oh, it's my pleasure. And just to speak to the, the heartbreak and the grieving just before I leave, and on a happy note, what's really neat is, again, if people, if you're in this world, and it is breaking your heart, you know, with the destruction, and whether that's the destruction you're seeing directly on the land, or it's the constant bad news stories about what's going on with the earth, or it's watching people who are impacted by that. And those might be your own people.

00:56:24.000 regardless I always feel like if your heart is sensitive enough to kind of really feel that

00:56:29.800 it means that you're a good healer and that you have the power and I think the strength of heart

00:56:34.900 to do this work more than anybody who's coming at it from a financial or like a technical ability

00:56:40.380 you have you know the the fierceness and the courage and and the sensitivity to do it and so

00:56:45.940 we got to find the ways to kind of alchemize that despair into some kind of offering in this world

00:56:51.200 and to do something beautiful for the land and for those we love.

00:57:13.480 You've been listening to Leila Darwish,

00:57:16.660 author of Earth Repair on Unlearn and Rewild.

00:57:21.200 I'm the producer, March Young.

00:57:24.440 And the music selections we heard today

00:57:26.720 were Ani DeFranco with Garden of Simple,

00:57:32.400 Tommy Johnson with Cool Drink of Water,

00:57:36.880 Thievery Corporation with Sound the Alarm,

00:57:40.620 and Kate Wolfe with Brother Warrior

00:57:43.660 and our theme music, Like a River.

00:57:51.200 Thank you.

For The Wild - June 27, 2015

LEILA DARWISH on Grassroots Earth Repair ⧸23

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