For The Wild - QUEER NATURE on Reclaiming Wild Safe Space ⧸101

00:00:00.240 Hey everyone, it's Ayanna here, and I wanted to let everybody know that we are migrating

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00:00:25.500 for the wild.

00:00:26.760 Alright, now on to the show. 0.91

00:00:30.000 Yeah, I think that I grew up in a world where to find belonging as a queer person, you move

00:00:43.500 to cities and, you know, met other humans who were queer.

00:00:46.980 And I think that there's still and will always be so much intelligence and beauty to that.

00:00:53.500 And I also feel I feel like I felt inspired over the years to just not not like reverse that at all, like not say like, oh, we shouldn't gather in urban areas or like this is wrong, but rather question how we can build tools of resilience for being in like rural.

00:01:12.600 And, you know, I don't like using the word wilderness, but remote, let's just say remote settings.

00:01:17.940 Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we are speaking with So

00:01:29.000 and Pinar from Queer Nature. Queer Nature is an education and social sculpture project

00:01:35.080 based on Arapaho, Utdi, and Cheyenne territories that actively dreams into decolonially informed

00:01:43.040 queer ancestral futurism through mentorship in place-based skills with awareness of post-industrial,

00:01:50.780 globalized, ecocidal context. Place-based skills include naturalist studies, handcrafts, 0.97

00:01:57.340 quote, survival skills, and recognition of colonial and indigenous histories of land,

00:02:03.060 and are framed in a container that emphasizes deep listening and relationship building with

00:02:08.180 living and non-living earth systems. Co-envisioned by Pinar and so Sinopolis Lloyd, Queer Nature

00:02:15.460 designs and facilitates nature-based workshops and multi-day immersions intended to be financially,

00:02:21.860 emotionally, and physically accessible to LGBTQ2 plus people and QTBIPOCs. Queer Nature carries 0.99

00:02:31.640 the story and hope that these spaces create resilient narratives of belonging for folks

00:02:36.340 who have often been made to feel by systems of oppression that they biologically, socially,

00:02:42.160 or culturally don't belong. Queer Nature has collaborated with Wilderness Awareness School,

00:02:47.020 the University of Colorado Boulder, Naropa University, Women's Wilderness, and Rewild

00:02:52.260 Portland. Well, Pinar and So, I'm truly grateful that you were both able to make time for this

00:02:58.720 conversation, and thank you so much for all the work you are doing with such meticulous care for

00:03:05.140 people and place. And before we begin, I would like to open this moment up to each of you

00:03:10.320 to introduce yourselves in the way or in any way you feel called to, whether it be

00:03:15.300 acknowledging your ancestry or a brief telling of the journey of connection that brought queer

00:03:20.980 nature into fruition. Thank you. Yeah. So my name is Pinar and I use they, them, their pronouns. 0.67

00:03:28.900 And yes, I think introducing my ancestors feels really in alignment. So my matrilineage is Wonka, which is native to the Andes in East Cuchaca area, as well as Chinese from Spanish enslavement from the 1700s in so-called Peru.

00:03:49.200 And then my patrilineage is Turkish, which is where I actually grew up for half of my

00:03:54.320 childhood.

00:03:55.580 And I also want to acknowledge my queer and trans ancestors, which in my lineage, my Andean

00:04:02.020 lineage, we are called Khwari Warmis, which is a two-spirit kind of cousin down in the

00:04:07.340 Andes.

00:04:08.160 And lastly, one of the things that I also really love to introduce is actually really

00:04:12.960 inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, where she introduces the

00:04:19.760 lands that have raised her. And I wanted to introduce one of the Creeks who has raised me

00:04:26.560 on Yavapai and Apache territories named Hakavsuwa. And this might come up in our interview,

00:04:33.160 but they've been so instrumental in how queer nature runs and how I do my work and

00:04:38.860 who I keep accountable to in my life. And also wanting to name that I'm neurodivergent and a

00:04:46.760 psychiatric survivor, as well as a suicide survivor. And this is such an integral piece

00:04:51.800 of what brings me to nature connection and my work in the world as someone who's experienced

00:04:58.840 parallel realities and has felt most of my belonging to the more than human kin.

00:05:05.060 thank you for that and so I'd love to hear from you as well thanks Ayana and I also just want to

00:05:12.320 say thank you for also inviting me to be here because I know that you might not often do

00:05:18.520 interviews with two people at once and so I just am really grateful for that and yeah and excited

00:05:24.040 and yeah a little bit about myself I am white queer person of Anglo-Saxon settler descent on

00:05:32.980 my dad's side, and my mom is a Greek immigrant. So on her side, I'm first generation on Turtle

00:05:41.040 Island. And yeah, I grew up in Alnobak, or also called Abenaki Territory, also known as Vermont,

00:05:48.600 which the northern hardwood forests are really near and dear to my heart. And

00:05:54.080 I think that something else I like to talk about or sort of pick up the thread of when

00:06:01.720 introducing myself and talking about nature connection is well a couple things one of them

00:06:07.860 is my connection to sheep and shepherding and throughout college I basically became really

00:06:13.720 curious about small-scale agriculture and particularly like cheese making and shepherding

00:06:19.960 traditions that were you know more small-scale and organic based or organic-ish and that was

00:06:28.060 kind of for me a way to connect with actually my my Greek heritage and ancestry since my most of my

00:06:35.140 that half of my family does live in Greece and I lived there in elementary school and have just

00:06:41.640 just this nostalgia and connection to that land that I think is kind of common to people who are

00:06:46.680 from two different cultures and I or multiple cultures more than two and I know Pinar might

00:06:52.360 be able to relate to that. And so I basically embarked upon this journey of, yeah, like working

00:07:00.040 with sheep and doing shepherding on some different farms around so-called New England. And there was

00:07:06.440 something about that that was really just deeply informative in terms of the journey I kind of

00:07:13.360 later went on in terms of delving into place-based skills and so-called paleolithic skills, I guess.

00:07:20.900 there was something about sheep that really inspired me I think partially because our culture 0.94

00:07:26.600 sees them as as dumb and that's often like this trope like that they they are these complete 0.72

00:07:33.160 complicit or complacent animals and what I saw instead was this deep intelligence of like the 0.98

00:07:38.360 flock or the hive the hive mind which I think is something that we really fear in this culture and

00:07:43.660 and that just really drew me in like that non-human and often kind of even scary form of

00:07:49.380 intelligence to us. And I started to become really curious about the ways of belonging and being in

00:07:55.840 relationship with land that were more interdependent and interrelational rather than just

00:08:01.240 this narrative of sort of self-sufficiency and individuality. So yeah, that's actually how I

00:08:08.000 got started sort of on this journey of nature connection. And I can probably say more about

00:08:12.020 that later, but I just wanted to touch upon it for now. I really appreciate hearing both of your

00:08:18.720 a little bit into both of your stories and gosh I really really enjoyed hearing so about your

00:08:26.860 connection with the sheep and how derogatory we can be with sheep oh sheeple the sheep you know 0.98

00:08:33.040 kind of how we speak down to them as if they're stupid and this whole idea of hive mind and the 0.97

00:08:38.440 brilliance and the intelligence in that so I I would love to hear more about that later

00:08:43.460 I just want to say that so much of Queer Nature's work is intertwined in narratives of belonging, and I'd really like to now begin this interview with a dialogue on the overlap between queer identity and the legacy of dominant environmentalism, which are both very much about not belonging.

00:09:04.060 You know, as mentioned in Queer Nature's bio, queer folk have long been made to feel that they don't biologically or socially or culturally belong.

00:09:14.160 And this is a whole conversation in and of itself.

00:09:17.880 But I also can't help but think about how much of the environmental legacy that many of us are familiar with and the ethos around wild spaces is that humans don't belong there either.

00:09:33.240 And then traditional conservation has situated humans as merely visitors in, quote, wild places who are meant to leave without a trace, suggesting that our more than human kin couldn't possibly remember our presence or the relationship we have with them.

00:09:48.020 So I would just love if both of you could speak to the intention of belonging and why it's at the core of the work queer nature facilitates. 0.60

00:09:56.120 yeah that's such a great series of questions and I almost feel like we could spend the whole

00:10:02.580 interview like just delving into that and I think it's yeah a really rich place to start

00:10:07.680 yeah I think when I think about belonging and I've been thinking we've both been thinking a lot

00:10:13.120 about this lately and belonging I feel like can almost run a risk these days of becoming sort of

00:10:20.320 a new buzzword or like catchphrase, sort of like sustainability. And I just want to be wary of

00:10:26.380 that, especially this is so speaking to like, just as a white person and a settler, I feel like I

00:10:33.620 have, I'm doing this dance of deep care and openness and listening around what belonging

00:10:39.520 means. But I think one of the things it means to me is sort of being entangled within a web of

00:10:47.280 relationships of reciprocity, but also accountability and not always in a way that's

00:10:52.340 totally that totally feels good either. But because accountability, I think, is sometimes

00:10:58.800 often about conflict. So I think that's kind of one of my basic definitions of belonging and

00:11:06.600 that it really does include interspecies relationships as well. And also that it's a

00:11:13.860 process I feel like belonging is a noun but I feel like it's productive for me and for us to

00:11:21.080 think of it as more of a verb and I also don't know if it's a process that's ever complete and

00:11:25.340 that kind of comes back to my own consciousness as a white settler on Turtle Island um and like

00:11:31.820 I don't know if I can really say that like I can't promise belonging as a as a nature-based

00:11:38.120 mentor or practitioner like as if it's sort of the result of an equation um or I can't say that

00:11:43.660 belonging has been accomplished here on Turtle Island. But I think what we can do or what we're

00:11:50.520 interested in doing, which is why in one of the notes that you sent to us before, I like that you

00:11:56.060 mentioned the intention of belonging, because I think we have this intention around place-based

00:12:02.240 skills as basically skills of belonging and interspecies relationship cultivation as skills

00:12:09.140 of belonging, but also that a skill of belonging that might not be as concrete is challenging

00:12:14.440 different supremacies like white supremacy while we're engaging in these skills and privilege

00:12:20.460 and just acknowledging our role in that.

00:12:23.140 And that that's also like that these anti-racist and anti-oppressive stances are also like

00:12:29.140 skills of belonging, as well as like learning, you know, how to identify different plants

00:12:34.500 or how to create medicine or how to, you know, make fire from rubbing sticks together.

00:12:40.360 That's kind of one place I would start.

00:12:42.660 And then another point that I wanted to make before handing it over to Pinar is I really

00:12:48.540 love that you brought up this narrative of, you know, this, of course, false narrative

00:12:53.520 of wilderness as this place where we're just visitors.

00:12:56.940 And this is, of course, a very colonial conception of wilderness.

00:13:00.800 and it also reminds me of the ethic of leave no trace which we as you know as wilderness guides

00:13:06.300 encounter a lot and there's so much that's good about the intention of leave no trace but

00:13:11.960 one thing that we both encounter a lot is that we do impact and change the land both as people

00:13:18.920 living now and people who lived in the past including paleolithic peoples and land-based

00:13:24.280 peoples and i think there's sometimes a narrative that that like to be in harmony with the land is

00:13:30.360 to not change change it or change your environment when you know now there's so much research coming

00:13:36.460 out about how other like non-human animals have culture and change the land like beavers of course

00:13:42.920 we've kind of known that for a while but you know other creatures like bower birds down in the

00:13:47.760 tropics who basically have have forms of cultural transmission and build these elaborate structures

00:13:53.020 that they cannot build if they're in captivity or they just build kind of little deranged like 0.65

00:13:58.880 versions of them. So I feel like that question of changing the land and impact, so it's not really

00:14:05.580 about that we don't have an impact or that we should try to sort of cease our impact, but it's

00:14:10.840 rather like, how do we want to have an impact? So that's just, I'll just leave it at that and then

00:14:16.780 see if Pinar or Ayanna, if you want to respond to any of that. I can add something. I just,

00:14:22.360 one thing that really stood out to me with what, how you began the question is, you know, how

00:14:27.960 there's this narrative that queer people don't belong, period, but also just don't belong in

00:14:33.700 our bodies or don't belong to the earth or to culture. And one thing that I want to be

00:14:38.420 really clear about is trans and non-binary people have always existed and always will.

00:14:45.360 And the narrative that we are a new phenomena is a colonial story, and that two-spirit and

00:14:52.040 other indigenous gender expansiveness is older than America, and that we are ecological formations

00:14:59.560 and also ecological indicators of health, of place, and of culture. So that's something that 0.59

00:15:06.420 is really important for me to share. And also, yeah, just like really sit with that, that there

00:15:13.240 is this narrative of erasure, of queerness, of gender expansiveness, of transness, of two-spirit

00:15:21.940 folks and yeah and just really challenging that that we're actually you know we do belong and

00:15:28.340 we have the right to be here and and bring our gifts to the world and how important those gifts

00:15:36.040 are right now especially since you know in my Andean tradition there is something called

00:15:42.400 Pachacuti which essentially means like a cataclasmic change to the culture as we know it

00:15:48.180 And cosmologically speaking, like the first Pachacuti to happen, at least in like the Incan empire or the Incan culture, there was actually like this, it brought up a lot of fear, you know, for the people.

00:16:04.380 And the story goes that like the Kwariwami people, the third gender or the gender liminal people were actually invoked at that time of transition during the first Pachacuti because like we know how to move through liminality because we are liminal people.

00:16:24.620 And that's something that I think about so often is like, you know, this idea of Pachacuti

00:16:28.880 being a cataclasmic change to our culture as we know it, to me, is actually really pretty

00:16:35.480 much a parallel way of saying that whatever the culture is in the moment is going through

00:16:40.240 a rite of passage.

00:16:41.980 And in a rite of passage, there are three stages, which is like the severance stage

00:16:48.820 and then the threshold slash liminal stage.

00:16:52.220 and then lastly the reincorporation stage of coming back and what i find really fascinating

00:17:00.000 is that that liminal space is a place where at least in my tradition the quarry warmies

00:17:05.140 we know very intimately and so that's something that i also want to bring in as we're discussing

00:17:10.900 what we're discussing and and it makes me think furthermore about how around like environmentalism

00:17:18.220 especially around like how we look at land is really steeped in white environmentalism of we

00:17:24.620 can't leave a trace which I totally understand and there's very beautiful reasons you know that

00:17:29.940 are really honorable to like take care of land and steward and being relationship with land

00:17:35.220 and it reminds me you know eight years ago when I was formally studying deep ecology

00:17:40.020 we were reading a lot of white cishet men or cis heterosexual men or cisgendered heterosexual men

00:17:47.820 as well as sometimes white cishet women, discussing how essentially people are a plague of this earth.

00:17:55.440 And around this time, I was involved with indigenous solidarity work in Black Mesa.

00:17:59.720 And whenever I brought up decolonization, no one saw the relevance to deep ecology in my program.

00:18:06.260 And I just found that really upsetting at the time.

00:18:09.700 And the analysis, yeah, I just feel like there's this idea that all humans, this colonial idea that all humans are bad.

00:18:18.660 There's this generalization rather than seeing who has systematically perpetuated ecocide.

00:18:25.660 And sometimes I wonder, you know, I think this is really, this is changing in some ways in deep ecology of bringing in more decolonization and indigenous perspectives, which I'm incredibly grateful for, although it's been very slow moving.

00:18:39.700 And I just am so curious of this, like, lack of analysis and or what has been historically a lack of analysis of, like, bringing in white supremacy and settler colonialism in that, yeah, in that inquiry.

00:18:54.620 And that's just something that I'm really curious about.

00:18:57.960 And I know something that so has brought up in terms of exploring what ecocide means has been really impactful for me.

00:19:05.280 We've been, we discussed this quite a bit in our work. And something that I love that So brings in is they're Greek and they studied ancient Greek as well, that the root for ecocide, ecos, essentially means household.

00:19:20.580 And one of the things that they were discussing is how ecocide means not just the systematic killing of the environment, the living environment, but actually the killing of our ability to be at home, which is the dispossession of belonging.

00:19:35.960 And, you know, for folks of different marginalized identities, ecocide results in displacement, lack of access to land based living, the creation of militarized borders and so many other things.

00:19:47.800 So this is something that we often think about is like how environmentalism that is not explicitly anti-oppressive is complicit in white supremacy as well as, you know, human supremacy and other of the project of settler colonialism as well.

00:20:02.440 So this is things that we are so passionate about exploring, not just on our own, but within our own communities and other folks who are discussing this around like the intersection of decolonization.

00:20:17.800 Thank you.

00:20:47.800 보충

00:20:50.840 苦惑

00:20:55.920 奴

00:20:59.900 苦惑

00:21:03.180 いう

00:21:07.560 苦惑

00:21:13.120 Oh, I am

00:21:18.280 Oh, I am 0.82

00:21:43.120 i really appreciate you pinar talking about that queerness is not something new it's trans isn't

00:21:53.980 new it's not some trend that's just of today this has been something that has this is a part of our

00:22:00.900 humanity from the beginning and it's really important to remember that it's been the colonization

00:22:06.040 and systems of oppression and white supremacy that have squelched any way of being that wasn't

00:22:14.080 what the dominant culture prescribed. And I think that's such an important point. And

00:22:21.180 the deep ecology and environmentalism not taking into account indigenous perspectives

00:22:27.980 and people of color's perspectives. I mean, all of these points are so huge in trying to understand

00:22:35.360 these massive systems and if we're not looking at it with that lens and if we're not doing a deep

00:22:42.620 analysis then what are we really doing we're really just kind of perpetuating this uh rat

00:22:48.820 wheel that we're never going to get out of if we don't actually look at like look under the rocks

00:22:54.140 you know dig dig a little deeper and start to see how all of this was compounded and built on top of

00:23:01.500 one another so i i so gosh i so respect both of your analysis and i i learned so much just in that

00:23:08.460 one question um i want to bring up this quote that queer nature has written quote the binary doesn't

00:23:14.500 need to be destroyed but rather blown open and expanded to reflect the complexity of our ecological

00:23:20.920 and celestial kin i stand for queerness that is inextricably informed by interspecies solidarity

00:23:28.340 by lichen, dust chorus, swamps, coral, incubiotic soil. Queerness is not another venue for the

00:23:37.560 simulation of human exceptionalism and white supremacy that serves the project of settler

00:23:43.140 colonialism. It is a devotional practice of decentering our human centrism to continually

00:23:49.280 expand our co-liberation and remember that our queerness is a disruptive, remediative fruit of 0.86

00:23:55.500 the earth, end quote. Gosh, that was so beautifully written. I'm wondering if you could expand upon

00:24:01.880 how queerness can destabilize supremacy, or furthermore, how an ecologically informed

00:24:08.780 awareness of gender is imperative in destabilizing supremacy.

00:24:15.080 Yeah, thank you for that quote. It was kind of co-written by the both of us, but the majority

00:24:21.600 of it was written by me, Pinar. And yeah, it's such a good question. It actually makes me think

00:24:28.760 about back to my queer and like transcaster, like lineage of Kauri Warmi. And because I can only

00:24:37.460 kind of, it don't, it feels important for me to talk about my own experience of gender, as well

00:24:43.760 as like, that's culturally informed rather than just saying like, you know, queerness as a whole.

00:24:48.000 so I'll just move into that a little bit and I'll probably also move into the larger picture but

00:24:53.840 as I was sharing around like how Kwariwarmes essentially were came to be in our cultural

00:25:01.500 story because of the Pachacuti at least the first Pachacuti and colonization is also a Pachacuti

00:25:08.240 that we're still moving through I believe and it's often something that we discuss is that you know 0.63

00:25:13.100 whose dystopia or apocalypse are we living in right now and how, you know, a lot of indigenous

00:25:19.560 folks are, have been like living in apocalypse of sorts for, you know, since 1492. But that's 0.95

00:25:28.220 something that I'm just so passionate about is thinking about the role of liminality, you know,

00:25:33.040 specifically talking about Kauri Wormis and this idea that like Kauri Wormis are people who move

00:25:39.420 between the masculine and the feminine, as well as people who move between or see and have gifts

00:25:45.780 around the transition between death and birth and midwives and as well as like hospice of sorts.

00:25:53.940 And just like these like spaces that are unknown to us. Right. And to me that that feels really

00:25:59.580 deeply personal, especially in my the story that I was talking or how I was introducing myself

00:26:06.520 earlier, being a psychiatric survivor and being a person who has been deeply immersed in liminal

00:26:13.840 spaces that actually were pretty pathologized growing up and also having experiences with

00:26:20.400 being institutionalized for having these experiences and liminal spaces or in liminal

00:26:25.740 realities as well as with the more than human world. But as I've come to find out, as I have

00:26:31.560 been doing more research on my, specifically around Kauriwarmi, that these are the gifts

00:26:36.980 that, you know, we bring. And so in a lot of ways, I feel like with Kauriwarmi medicine in particular,

00:26:45.020 I do feel like it does destabilize a lot around supremacy because, you know, since we are,

00:26:52.940 the culture is moving through a rite of passage in so many ways and what some people are calling

00:26:58.100 like the Anthropocene, it just feels like we need these liminal, we're in a liminal space.

00:27:03.620 So we need guides to help us move through liminality. And this idea that we're like

00:27:08.640 grasping onto a story, like the dominant narrative of like, no, this, we are living this,

00:27:15.820 essentially this story, that's an ecocidal story, a genocidal story, and like hanging on to it,

00:27:21.620 that perpetuates and like upholds so many different supremacies, including white supremacy, 0.84

00:27:27.140 to have the liminal folks come in and really aid that transition and kind of like literally a death

00:27:35.460 you know because rites of passage really discuss like psycho-spiritual deaths as well as sometimes 0.99

00:27:42.080 physical deaths but what needs to be let go and what no longer serves and what needs to be 0.96

00:27:46.540 decomposed back into this earth and you know and I feel like for so many reasons like white

00:27:53.640 supremacy and the project of settler colonialism has like, is ready to die. And it's been so

00:27:59.780 apparent for so long, you know, and I think it's in the death throes right now. And so yeah,

00:28:06.340 just having those guides towards the transition right now feels so integral. And to bring it back

00:28:13.080 to like queerness as well. I feel like queerness is not the only way to disrupt and remediate

00:28:19.420 supremacy. It's, you know, it's pretty prevalent in our queer community for folks to use queerness

00:28:23.640 like as a band-aid, not to look at their whiteness and how they can uphold, you know, 0.87

00:28:29.160 anti-indigeneating and anti-blackness. So that's also something to also remember for me is like, 0.96

00:28:35.940 you know, we have to, there's so much magic in queerness and there's also so much work we need

00:28:41.880 to do in our communities that's like nestled right now within white supremacy as well as

00:28:47.280 settler colonialism so that's also something that we I'm really passionate about being in

00:28:52.660 conversation with with our communities and like you know being in conversation in ways that are

00:28:57.760 inviting to more dialogue and more healing and not necessarily like ones that are about like

00:29:04.680 criticism and disempowerment but rather like how are we going to move through this together right

00:29:09.320 now you know and with all of our differences and within like the queer community but also beyond

00:29:15.860 the queer community. Because, you know, within our ecological communities, biodiversity creates

00:29:23.420 resilience. So listening to all the stories and really amplifying and uplifting the ones who are

00:29:29.080 most impacted in our communities feels like such an integral part of moving through the Pachacuti

00:29:34.560 and moving through the liminal space that we're in right now as a species. So yeah, I hope that

00:29:41.920 answers your question I have so many more thoughts and I also bringing back to like the quote that

00:29:48.160 you read too like my individual queerness is riparian and riparian you know means like

00:29:55.360 essentially one that is like related to rivers and creeks and specifically within like an ecosystem

00:30:04.620 and an ecological community and I just also want to say too that like my queerness is really held

00:30:10.980 accountable by those systems, you know, by rivers and creeks, and especially the one who has raised

00:30:16.980 me, Hakapsua, and they have been my queer elder. And really just expanding that too, because like

00:30:23.760 our queer communities have remained very human centric, which for a really good reason, because

00:30:28.780 we've moved through so much trauma together as a community and as communities. So we're doing

00:30:36.140 very intra species healing right now, which makes so much sense at the moment, but really remembering

00:30:42.460 to like expand, expand ourselves to our capacities, which are, you know, queerness is really informed

00:30:49.640 by the earth and is informed by so much more than just our human bodies and our human intelligences

00:30:56.320 and our, and so much more than just that. So just wanting to also name that as well and see if so

00:31:01.360 wants to answer anything um yeah wow i i just appreciate everything that you said panar

00:31:09.160 and i'm trying to even remember like the how the question was framed but i feel like

00:31:16.160 it was something about kind of queer ecology and how also queerness can destabilize different

00:31:23.020 supremacies so i feel like what what i would add to that is also like just what queer means to me

00:31:29.500 And I think it means something different to everyone. And I know some people listening to this might not know what queer, what we even mean when we say queer. And I feel like especially in the context of ecology, you know, and the study of relationships between beings and between living systems and non-living systems, I feel like to me queer kind of indicates non-binary.

00:31:55.060 but I don't actually mean like, cause I mean, I also identify as non-binary, like as my gender,

00:32:00.180 but I actually don't mean it just as a gender identity. I mean it like as sort of like a

00:32:04.980 questioning of, of different dualities or dichotomies and, and also a sort of hybridity.

00:32:10.860 It could be a cultural hybridity or there's like sort of a natural type of hybridity that

00:32:18.000 is present being a settler on this land as well that feels relevant. And, and then also

00:32:24.680 you know another thing I associate with queerness really is mystery and mysticism and and I think a

00:32:31.900 core tenet of mysticism is knowing basically knowing that the divine or whatever your notion

00:32:38.400 of the divine is be it the universe or nature or that it can't be fully grasped intellectually and

00:32:44.300 the surrender is really required in the face of of that unknowing and that mystery and so to me

00:32:51.780 this this all feels very relevant to talking about ecology and environment and challenging

00:32:59.100 notions of futurity or futurism that are present in sort of dominant views of environmentalism

00:33:06.840 and so to me like in terms of ecology queerness is kind of a growth or a growth is a weird word

00:33:13.800 because I think it is used a lot in sort of capitalistic ways but I think a better term is

00:33:18.520 becoming, like a becoming from some sort of destabilization or dissolution of fixed categories

00:33:24.500 or, you know, a becoming from an in-between space or an edge space, which as we know from

00:33:29.760 studying ecotones or edges in bioregions or in ecological systems, those are spaces of such

00:33:36.760 fertility and fecundity. And so, yeah, that's something that I also wanted to bring in.

00:33:43.760 And I think an example of sort of this becoming from destabilization or dissolution is, you know, something that evolutionary biologists talk about, which is also kind of a debated or contested concept, and it's the concept of acceptation, which is basically almost a counterpoint to adaptation, although it's also part of adaptation.

00:34:05.780 And it's the process by which features different features of bodies might acquire functions

00:34:12.020 for which they were not originally sort of adapted to or not originally for.

00:34:17.400 And a really common example of this is feathers, which were originally found, you know, in

00:34:22.300 the fossil record on dinosaurs who didn't fly.

00:34:25.180 And they were, you know, the ancestors of modern birds.

00:34:28.500 And so I love thinking about this.

00:34:30.240 And also to say that this is a controversial thing because there's some evolutionary biologists

00:34:35.240 who say well nothing was actually ever designed what it's currently used for so there's just this

00:34:41.620 interesting queerness there where i feel like yeah what what are we what adaptations are we

00:34:47.900 gaining or discovering as queer people that are kind of these acceptations or these responses to

00:34:55.180 our weird and sort of bizarre and maybe pre- or post-apocalyptic environment that that are um

00:35:03.740 you know, coming out of actually that, that trouble and that, um, it's kind of a term from

00:35:09.820 Donna Haraway, like that, that trouble that we're in. And, you know, I also think of like

00:35:14.220 these earthworms that can now, you know, degrade plastics or thrive in, you know, heavy metal

00:35:20.160 soils and, and maybe even help break down those, those toxins. So those are some of the things I

00:35:27.080 also think about too. I just was thinking about intimacy with our more than human kin. And I think

00:35:37.020 it is such a loss when we don't give ourselves the space and give the space and the respect to

00:35:46.700 our non-human kin to honor them by being an intimate relationship with them. And I think

00:35:54.680 things like that relationships whether it's with a human or not takes time it takes attention

00:36:00.200 it takes sacrifice it it takes a lot that i think in this dominant culture not only are we oftentimes

00:36:09.120 not willing to give that but we're not even taught that that's actually what we need to give to be in

00:36:14.220 reciprocity you know i just think about any human relationship any human relationship whether it's

00:36:19.760 a family member, a lover, a friend, a co-worker, we have to put time into those human relationships.

00:36:29.220 And I really believe it's the same thing when it comes to plants or insects, furry creatures,

00:36:36.500 you know, four-leggeds, two-leggeds, winged ones. It's in the same vein. And I really appreciate

00:36:42.540 you speaking to that. Gosh, there are so many places I want to take this conversation. There's

00:36:46.760 is so many questions I have for both of you. But I guess the next thing I wanted to talk about

00:36:53.020 before we moved on from our more than human kin is, so I know that both of you track and trail,

00:37:00.060 and I know you've written reflections on tracking as an act that is both pragmatic and profoundly

00:37:05.660 spiritual. And with regards to healing, so often we turn towards spiritual guidance and faith

00:37:12.180 when we tend our wounds. So I wonder if either of you can elaborate on how engaging with tracking

00:37:18.040 has furthered your understanding of this practical spirituality, and how based on your experiences,

00:37:25.680 whether or not you see the direct connection between ecological literacy and relationship

00:37:29.780 with the divine. Yeah, this is such a good question, Ayanna, and this is so speaking,

00:37:37.340 because I am well we're both very geeky and obsessed with tracking and it's probably one of

00:37:43.440 I would say like our core practices if if I could name like a practice that's grounding all of these

00:37:51.660 things that we're talking about that maybe seem really certainly probably seem very theoretical

00:37:55.960 or intellectual to some folks but yeah tracking is such a way of grounding all of this and for me

00:38:03.400 and I have actually written about this, so I might, you know, use some of the phrases that

00:38:08.460 could be found in that writing. But for me, tracking, which is basically just, it's a few

00:38:13.980 things. I mean, one of it is just following, you know, identifying and seeking out tracks and sign

00:38:19.760 of living beings on the landscape. But it, you know, it could also, you could really expand

00:38:25.460 tracking into being like any form of sort of pattern recognition or seeking out of of sequences

00:38:34.060 of patterns in our environment you know and and so that goes all the way to like celestial sort

00:38:40.700 of navigation and um tracking the skies and the stars um and also doing things like looking at

00:38:48.480 you know a tree stump and and looking at the rings and seeing what that can tell you

00:38:53.040 actually about, you know, the history of that forest that could go back, you know, even even

00:38:58.660 100 or more years. So it's it's definitely something that track like to me, it's it's a

00:39:03.820 way of knowing really, that's how, you know, I've contextualized it a bit. And that way of knowing

00:39:10.140 and like, this really just seems to tie back into a lot of what we've already been saying, because

00:39:14.120 that way of knowing is basically like this synergy of, of these categories of art and science that

00:39:22.760 we've really divided in, especially in Western, the Western sort of colonial mindset and in

00:39:28.720 Western science. And the reason that it's kind of this blending or synergy of art and science is

00:39:35.440 that there's definitely a lot of quantitative analysis and deductive logic and reasoning

00:39:41.040 involved, which I think can sometimes be triggering, especially it has been to me because

00:39:45.640 those forms of thinking when over relied upon have been used to really dismiss me as a queer

00:39:50.840 person or dismiss identity politics or the emotions of marginalized peoples. And I think

00:39:58.080 that's part of the healing in it for me is that realizing and coming to this place where I am

00:40:04.580 gathering evidence and I am sort of like gathering this empirical evidence, but I'm also really

00:40:10.640 using my imagination and using our capacity, just this beautiful gift we have as the creatures that

00:40:17.300 we are of storytelling, and that really tracking can't be done in any really successful way without

00:40:23.560 those two things. And perhaps, you know, in other cultures, it's described in a different way,

00:40:29.600 or what I'm dividing into two ways of thinking is really one way of thinking. And I'm totally

00:40:33.400 open to that. But to me, I guess, in like squaring it with my sort of upbringing, it really is this

00:40:40.380 blend of imagination and sort of quantitative analysis. And I think that that's been really

00:40:49.500 healing for me because it just has forced me to slow down and really not jump to conclusions.

00:40:57.100 I'm someone who has a really active intellect. And also I struggle with anxiety too. And I feel

00:41:04.100 like tracking really helps me regulate my nervous system. And it really disrupts this tendency for

00:41:09.580 me to go into like this sympathetic fight or flight which can be done in an intellectual way

00:41:14.340 in the form of jumping to conclusions so yeah that's that's something that I would would say

00:41:20.640 and just want to sort of create some space for bringing up anything else because there's there's

00:41:27.080 so much with tracking and yeah I feel like another thing that ties back to the previous question in

00:41:32.860 a beautiful way is that our psychological and emotional needs just can't can't be met by just

00:41:38.220 humans. And this is similar to the notion that a lot of people share that, you know, your emotional

00:41:43.680 needs can't always just be met by one person, which I'm not saying that everyone thinks that

00:41:48.540 or that everyone should think that. But that's certainly something that is brought up a lot,

00:41:52.220 especially in, you know, healing spaces and queer and radical spaces. And there is a sense in which

00:41:59.180 beyond just just my personal experience, I know that Pinar and I have talked a lot about

00:42:05.100 how there's something about really like listening and orienting and pattern recognition and really

00:42:11.180 those three things, doing those, engaging in those three things in the quote unquote natural world

00:42:16.740 that can, I think, help us heal trauma. And I know that I don't think there's been a ton of

00:42:22.740 research on this. I mean, I know that EMDR therapy is partially based on this principle of like

00:42:30.200 that orienting to stimulus across one's visual field, you know, calms the nervous system.

00:42:36.820 But just in terms of following paths and trails, there's something about it that's,

00:42:43.280 I think, entrancing. And then so it also brings in almost a practice of trance or entrancement that

00:42:51.020 I certainly don't feel that I had an outlet for as a person growing up in sort of a Protestant

00:42:57.280 white setting with the various views and confinements of religion or of the sacred

00:43:03.560 that can happen in those settings. So yeah, I think that that's the seeds that I'll plant and

00:43:11.380 see if, Pinar, if you want to like jump off from any of those, because I know there's so much else.

00:43:16.460 Oh my gosh. Tracking is like our, like so said, one of our core practices. So there's

00:43:23.520 pretty much any question that's asked can be even has nothing to do tracking I feel like can

00:43:29.900 for me be reflected on from my tracking experiences one thing I did want to go back

00:43:36.260 to a little bit which I know is a little bit different from where tracking and trailing

00:43:42.100 intersect with spirituality but it's kind of I mean it kind of is but it kind of isn't but

00:43:47.840 I wanted to go back to what So was saying regarding like tracking in regards to how it's

00:43:53.820 supported and supports the practice that supports nervous system regulation. And for me growing up

00:44:00.620 as a neurodivergent person, tracking was something like that I didn't necessarily do in terms of like

00:44:08.360 wildlife tracking, quote unquote, but I would be tracking the spaces that I was in, you know,

00:44:14.640 like for instance growing up like I was pretty hyper aware due to trauma and traumatic experiences

00:44:21.420 not only of this lifetime but intergenerationally and so what I found really beautiful when as I

00:44:28.540 started to learn tracking and started to also learn a little bit about stealth craft as well

00:44:33.440 is that it it felt very familiar to me and it was this really incredible convergence of like

00:44:40.040 my love for the more than human world and also a skill that I've already developed, not by choice,

00:44:46.880 but because as someone who's a trauma survivor. And that's something that I'm incredibly fascinated

00:44:54.300 by and did some research in and writing on in my undergraduate studies, which was in like somatic

00:45:02.000 and depth eco-psychology. And I'm super fascinated and inspired by that intersection,

00:45:10.120 especially for folks of marginalized communities of like, okay, like let's learn these skills

00:45:17.520 with tracking and like hone the skills that we already have with our awarenesses that we need

00:45:23.680 as like, and that we've honed and developed already to survive within the culture that,

00:45:29.580 you know systematically erases us or targets us so that's something that I wanted to also bring

00:45:35.740 up is just this like how tracking can actually be this really beautiful tool for empowerment

00:45:40.780 not only to ourselves but also like expand again to like remember that we're all you know the more

00:45:48.120 than human community is like willing and open to also be potentially in relationship with us and

00:45:54.980 is something that, you know, we were talking about breaking that myth around human centricism

00:46:00.220 and breaking that species isolation, which I think is so healing for everyone, and also

00:46:05.920 particularly for folks of marginalized statuses. So that's something that I also really want to

00:46:12.200 bring up, because it's just such a place of inspiration to me. And, and also one other

00:46:17.900 thing when I think about tracking is, you know, that encounter, like so was saying around mystery

00:46:23.380 and how so really beautifully put that into words and the thing that I think about too is this

00:46:30.200 longing that I personally feel within like my own ancestral bodies of like wanting to trail and it's

00:46:38.720 again goes back to that that idea that of blood memory or this like ancestral memory that we have

00:46:45.460 of trailing and like because our ancestors pretty much if you're alive right now all of our ancestors

00:46:51.720 tract and, you know, trailed wild animals and wild beings. And so to me, like that, it's also a

00:47:00.360 practice of connecting to like my ancestral body, which to me is a very spiritual practice. And that

00:47:06.420 is very interesting as someone who, again, is hybrid, because I, I feel this deep, I'm actually

00:47:12.820 looking at one of my arm tattoos right now. And where I have like several of my Andean more than

00:47:20.520 human kin tattooed on me and one of them is a guanaco which is a wild relative of the llama

00:47:27.060 and it's just so fascinating to me because I like really long to track them like there's this like

00:47:33.860 core part of myself that's just like I really like I've never even encountered them actually

00:47:39.680 but I really deeply desire the encounter and that mystery and relationship of being on

00:47:45.780 my ancestral lands and trailing this being who my ancestors have trailed for millennia. And

00:47:53.360 I think also, I also reflect back and I'm like, does the land also miss our bodies? The places

00:48:00.180 that we're indigenous to in particular is what I'm thinking of. Like, does it miss our bodies 1.00

00:48:05.280 trailing in that relationship to place and that intimacy between, you know, Guanaco and Andina

00:48:12.520 of people. That's just something that I also, that comes up for me when I think about that

00:48:17.260 intersection of like spirituality and tracking and relationship with the divine.

00:48:22.900 Thank you for that. So because I have so many questions for you, I'm going to

00:48:28.060 just jump into another topic. Well, it's not another topic, but it's a different angle

00:48:36.180 on what we've been talking about.

00:48:39.820 And, you know, this has kind of been mentioned a few times in the conversation,

00:48:43.800 but I'm thinking about how there's, you know,

00:48:47.660 a lot of communities that are built around the practice

00:48:49.900 and sharing of what they call, quote,

00:48:51.720 primitive living or ancestral arts or survival skills, et cetera.

00:48:56.760 And, you know, these are relatively exclusive spaces,

00:49:00.240 and oftentimes they can perpetuate both the erasure of indigenous people

00:49:04.560 or romanticize their presence as like this marker of a removed time and it's it just feels like it's

00:49:12.940 a larger or it's a part of a larger conversation around who has historically or who has historically

00:49:18.660 had access to outdoor recreation and what kind of culture has developed in response

00:49:23.860 and of course like not just indigenous people can be excluded from these spaces but also people of

00:49:30.100 color and queer and trans people. So I feel like as a group that centers people of color and queer

00:49:36.960 people and decolonial practices, I'd like to ask what generalizations or tendencies around 1.00

00:49:44.440 survival skills or natural studies do you think are the most pressing to disband? You know, one

00:49:50.500 that immediately comes to my mind is this very masculine and individualized notion of survival,

00:49:56.380 you know that we must know how to do everything on our own type of mentality yeah thank you for 0.51

00:50:02.240 that question honestly the first thing that that brings up for me is like you know at queer nature

00:50:07.880 we we love to challenge the narrative of like which bodies get to survive especially within

00:50:14.980 the context of white supremacy and settler colonialism as well as you know ecocide if you

00:50:21.720 just google survival skills or bushcraft you will likely see white cishet bodies and mostly men

00:50:30.800 sorry I forgot to mention that but and you know that to me just like also continues this erasure

00:50:37.440 like you were saying this like the erasure of indigenous people and people of color as well as

00:50:42.840 you know it's funny because like people romanticize indigenous people first nations people for their

00:50:48.280 like their survival skills or what they you know in the community of like ancestral skills people

00:50:54.660 are seen as like playing Indian quote unquote which you know we're definitely like challenging

00:50:59.800 that now and you know see that as really harmful and problematic and bringing in more perspectives

00:51:05.940 again going back to like challenging the narratives of who gets to survive and whose apocalypse are we

00:51:12.060 living in and like I just find that so so much richness in that dialogue especially again talking

00:51:18.720 about Pachacuti referring back to that like right now I'm living in my ancestors apocalypse or

00:51:26.080 people will call that potentially Pachacuti and you know right now I feel like there's this like

00:51:32.520 in dominant kind of white culture colonial culture there's this fascination with the

00:51:39.340 apocalypse now and you know all these like movies and like coming out regarding that and and I just

00:51:46.220 find that so you know just so fascinating of just like okay like this isn't new for us the people

00:51:52.360 who are black and indigenous and other people of color and that's something that is something that 0.85

00:51:58.140 we bring up a lot in queer nature is again challenging like what survival skills means 0.99

00:52:03.140 as well because you know remembering our own survival skills as folks who are systematically

00:52:08.300 targeted, especially again, black, indigenous, trans and queer bodies is so integral. And what

00:52:14.460 I mean by against survival skills is like the skills that we have honed and developed

00:52:19.760 intergenerationally to continue to still like be resilient and like, you know, be alive right now

00:52:26.900 in a system that has like, really like try to erase and kill us off. So that's something that

00:52:34.020 also comes to my mind as you like bring that question forth. And one of our biggest passions

00:52:40.000 is to teach stealth craft, or some people will call that like scouting or scout skills, which

00:52:45.960 can be like tactical skills and skills of evasion. And instead of calling it like the skill, like a

00:52:52.660 skills of invisibility, we tend to call it skills of or practices of belonging. And one of the

00:52:58.460 things that I think about too with, you know, stealth craft. Again, if you like Google scout

00:53:03.120 or even probably stealth, like whose bodies are you going to see? And just really wanting to honor

00:53:09.840 that there's so much, there are so many stories of scouting like going on, you know, right now

00:53:16.760 with like the border crossings of indigenous and migrant communities and also like the underground

00:53:22.040 railroad like that's like so integral to bring up that like scouting isn't who's like scout stories

00:53:29.360 are we like actually uplifting when we're actually thinking about those those skills um especially

00:53:35.640 because like today i just i don't mean to interrupt panar but that just reminds me of like this modern

00:53:40.680 current fascination with like the commando and how that that is an example of this archetype of

00:53:47.500 sort of scout or stealth or like warrior that that is so uplifted and there is this fascination

00:53:53.320 and that's that's sort of this example of the militarization of survival skills or or like the

00:54:00.060 sort of military framing around those skills but I didn't mean to interrupt yeah totally thanks for

00:54:07.300 pointing that out but yeah I just feel like going off of that too like this hyper individualist

00:54:13.120 survival or survivor concept is such a product of colonialism and and I also think about like

00:54:20.920 whiteness and how there's this idea you know for that's like I don't know I think about some of my

00:54:27.400 white friends who are doing anti-oppression work or trying to like look at their own whiteness

00:54:31.940 and they kind of at first let's just say um because I don't want to overgeneralize I see

00:54:36.680 people like do it by themselves in isolation because there's this narrative that like we have

00:54:42.060 to specifically around whiteness that, that is like inherently alienating, not to say white

00:54:48.020 culture itself is that or white folks are inherently like perpetuating that, but just

00:54:53.440 white supremacy is like built off of this idea that we have to like alienate ourselves and isolate

00:55:00.040 ourselves and do everything again, like by ourselves. One thing that I think about too,

00:55:06.060 is like, you know, ecosystems teach us interdependence so beautifully and something

00:55:10.800 that we've learned over and over in our queer nature programs is that like um like for instance

00:55:16.820 in one of our courses that we teach with like friction fire is that a lot of our community

00:55:22.520 members actually challenge that and are like hey like let's actually like work on this friction

00:55:28.080 fire kit together like let's do it in um in tandem even if we don't even like suggest that

00:55:34.240 they just go straight to it and we're just like whoa like this is so beautiful that there's this

00:55:38.780 breaking of that narrative. And I think that that's especially in the queer community and also

00:55:44.180 within black indigenous people of color and our communities there as well, that there we know that

00:55:49.680 there is power in communal survival because we've had to do that to like survive. And that's a

00:55:55.440 beautiful adaptation that we have built together. So, yeah, I just feel like that's something that

00:56:01.960 I also want to bring into regarding your question, because that just feels like there's so much

00:56:06.400 richness in, in your question that, um, we can delve so deep into. Yeah. And just to add on that,

00:56:14.120 I, Pinar pretty much said like most of what I would have said in answer to this question.

00:56:19.120 And then one, one thing that I feel could be added is just in terms of what we need to dismantle in

00:56:25.840 these mainstream notions of survival skills. And, and that's just, and this is going back to threads

00:56:31.840 previously, but just the notion that the environment or that the, or that wilderness

00:56:36.260 is hostile, not, not to say it's not ever hostile, but, and, you know, that's, that's

00:56:41.380 kind of this polar opposite of this sort of romantic notion that things are always harmonious

00:56:47.840 and, you know, in, in natural spaces or in the wilderness, but, but yeah, this idea that

00:56:53.060 there's almost like this, I feel like, especially in colonial culture, there's like this strange

00:56:59.980 phenomenon where it seems like there's almost this collective trauma around surviving in a

00:57:04.700 hostile place but that trauma was ironically like caused by these these people um these people's

00:57:12.580 ancestors or our ancestors engaging in colonial settlements and imperial expansion in the first

00:57:17.620 place so i yeah so i'm not trying to like center that trauma as being like oh like that like we

00:57:24.620 need to really focus on that but but just merely acknowledging it like there is something there

00:57:29.560 Where like in these notions that you see in pop culture, like on the show Naked and Afraid, for example, is a really great stark example, literally stark naked and like in the dark and afraid and, you know, just scraping by basically is that.

00:57:45.560 And there's something there that does remind me of like the conceptions of the wilderness as hostile and of, you know, and First Nations, like encounters with First Nation folks and how how those folks were were framed and seen by by colonists.

00:58:03.520 And so I feel like there's just a thread of that that's unfortunately continuing in these

00:58:09.220 mainstream notions of survival skills.

00:58:12.000 And like with Naked and Afraid, I mean, there's this aspect where people are dropped in a

00:58:17.060 bioregion, in a place they don't know at all.

00:58:19.640 They literally haven't been allowed to research or to know where they're going.

00:58:24.480 And they're dropped there.

00:58:26.100 They don't even have clothes on and they have to, you know, figure it out and survive.

00:58:30.040 And one thing that we talk about a lot is that we often point out like there's pretty much no context in which that would have ever happened to most of our our ancient and also pretty recent ancestors.

00:58:43.640 That's not to say that learning about emergency sort of crap hitting the fan skills, there's no place for it.

00:58:50.440 And I feel like there really is a place for it. 0.84

00:58:52.600 I mean, I'm a wilderness EMT and I'm really interested in disaster response and those sorts of skills.

00:58:58.020 But I also feel like we have to be careful with how we're imposing that rhetoric on like all of what we're calling survival skills, you know, and kind of reminds me too of our, the Iceman or Otzi, I think is his name.

00:59:14.740 you know this thousands of maybe 5,000-ish year old fellow who was discovered in the ice

00:59:20.840 with basically this full kit of gear like this literally full kit of what what we might now call

00:59:27.500 like ultralight backpacking gear and it was all you know handcrafted and you know he had fire

00:59:33.860 starters and arrows and a flint knapping kit in order to make new arrowheads and so just kind of

00:59:40.520 this bringing in this awareness of that we don't have to have this fear like or at least organize

00:59:47.860 this this this learning journey around this fear that we're going to like be dropped somewhere

00:59:53.820 without anything and without knowing anything and that there are things that we can do like engaging

00:59:59.000 in relationship building with our our non-human um and non-living world that that can really

01:00:05.820 lead to helping us in those moments. Um, so yeah, I just wanted to add that.

01:00:28.040 Take me to the rodeo and I'll be kind.

01:00:35.820 Way past the mountains with all the fountains of youth

01:00:44.820 Take me to my little island, I'll be silent all summer

01:00:51.820 From my room, I'll watch the moon go under

01:01:00.940 Oh, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada

01:01:13.160 Oh, here I go again

01:01:30.940 Gosh, there are so many amazing points brought up by both of you from this whole idea of who, quote, gets to survive, you know, who is survivability for and the romanticization of what surviving was and just the erasure of entire histories.

01:01:48.120 Or this whole idea of Naked and Afraid and how the mainstream media even talks about the apocalypse and survival and, you know, the movies, billion-dollar movies probably that have these special effects with everything going down and the anxiety that it produces in people and then the scarcity that it produces in people and then how that allows people to hurt each other even more and steal resources, so on and so forth.

01:02:16.500 I mean, we really live in that world where we're constantly being injected with this type of anxiety that we have to steal from others just so that we can somehow survive.

01:02:28.920 And because it's really, it's deep.

01:02:31.460 I mean, it's a whole vortex and how that plays out into the ancestral skills community, which is getting more and more trendy.

01:02:40.240 And, you know, how do we, if we do want to be involved, you know, we have to ask ourselves, how do we get involved with integrity? How do we actually start, for some of us, how do we start to relearn these skills in a way that is decolonial in nature rather than just perpetuating this white supremacist resource stealing, scarcity, afraid, anxiety mindset?

01:03:05.300 I mean, it's really deep. And I know we've been on this conversation for a while. I have two

01:03:10.340 more questions if you both are open to that. Yeah, definitely. Okay, great. Okay, so this

01:03:16.480 question I know is going to definitely speak to a lot of our urban relatives. And I know that one

01:03:24.220 of Queer Nature's focuses is the development of place-based skills through nature-based workshops 0.63

01:03:29.620 and immersions specifically for LGBTQ2 plus people and queer people of color. But I'm thinking about

01:03:37.340 the function of space and specifically urban space. And in doing the research for this interview,

01:03:42.660 I came across a reflection on how, you know, just so often queer community grows and finds refuge

01:03:49.140 in urban areas. So I would really love if you could share more about the dynamics between urban

01:03:54.540 refuge versus the healing work and rites of passages that queer nature facilitates in say

01:04:00.580 the mountains and forests of the Arapaho or the Uti or the Cheyenne territories that you're

01:04:05.400 both currently located in? Yeah, I can answer that question. That's a really great question

01:04:11.980 and I really appreciate it. So often, so and I, we notice, you know, that there is this like

01:04:18.320 kind of yeah historical story around how at least in like in the colonial context how queer folks

01:04:27.640 have found refuge in urban spaces and that you know rural uh spaces or like yeah rural places

01:04:34.460 are close to like the more than human world which they probably wouldn't call in that context but 0.80

01:04:39.740 like in spaces that are close to wilderness as not safe because queer phobic and transphobic

01:04:44.800 violences that have occurred in those regions like specifically in the rural context and I think

01:04:52.240 you know that's something we we we do discuss because like we often are either like within like

01:04:59.820 within like our more than human community in a park or like that's like kind of close to urban

01:05:06.020 areas or we're even further away and people don't often think like oh queer community let's go be

01:05:13.060 outside but most of the time there's like again going back to like our collective trauma as queer

01:05:19.620 folks within a colonial context that you know there is a lot of trauma in which we've like

01:05:25.700 historically speaking have congregated at like gay bars or at bars like around alcohol or around

01:05:33.020 different substances and and I think there's so much intelligence to that because of the collective

01:05:38.400 trauma that we've been through. And my hope is that we will continue moving towards healing and

01:05:44.620 not congregate just within like those spaces and, you know, queer nature, our spaces are sober

01:05:50.760 and that's really important to us. And so I think, yeah, I feel like creating and facilitating queer

01:05:58.980 spaces outside that acknowledge that collective trauma and also acknowledge again that the

01:06:05.040 colonial context of like having to like essentially find yeah like you said refuge within urban spaces

01:06:11.740 to you know be ourselves is really important to you know voice and also you know to tend to

01:06:19.280 relationship to place and inner species solidarity you know through ancestral skills place-based

01:06:24.960 skills rights passage and nature connection is such a amazing potential to like really tend to

01:06:32.540 that healing and that resilience within our communities. So yeah, and I think in terms of

01:06:38.840 rites of passage work, that feels really potent in terms of, you know, like with the rites of

01:06:45.520 passage work that we do facilitate, it is structured in a sense that there's like a space,

01:06:51.960 a timeframe that you're outside, immersed with the more than human community by yourself as a human,

01:06:59.040 because you're not by yourself, you know, obviously with the more than human kin around

01:07:02.640 for a certain amount of time fasting. And what's beautiful within those queer specific spaces is

01:07:10.060 how, because of the queer framing and the container and the people who are drawn,

01:07:17.440 there's actually this like incredible possibility and potential to have like mirroring happen from 0.69

01:07:25.840 the natural world of our own queerness and our own gender as well as again not just to like to

01:07:31.780 me I'm kind of cautious around saying that sometimes because I think the rite of passage

01:07:36.060 community can inadvertently be extractive in the sense that it's like oh we're going out to

01:07:43.580 the more than human community community to extract meaning for ourselves versus being like oh actually

01:07:50.580 maybe this isn't just one way, but maybe it's actually reciprocal that it is like this

01:07:55.840 co-creation of meaning and co-creation of relationship that's happening. I feel like

01:08:00.740 that's also important to say and like to clarify as I'm talking about this. I think that there's

01:08:06.520 just so much, again, potential with creating spaces for queer, trans, non-binary and two-spirit

01:08:13.280 folks to be within a container where they can engage in these more than human conversations

01:08:18.940 through, you know, self-generated ceremonies that potentially will mirror back across species our

01:08:25.840 resilience to one another. And sometimes that shows up as reflecting back our queerness to

01:08:31.420 ourselves and being affirmed in that way in particular. And what is our gift that we're

01:08:37.460 bringing back to our communities that also include our more than human communities that are

01:08:42.500 potentially really tied and like bound and amplified by our gender expression or sexuality,

01:08:49.200 but not necessarily always have to be bound to that, but are informed by. So that's something

01:08:54.240 I would add to that question. Yeah. And just like, probably to echo some of the stuff that's

01:08:59.740 been said, but like, it might be helpful to to just give like a personal anecdote for some of

01:09:05.420 this stuff. Because when I was in eighth grade, I believe that's when, you know, Matthew Shepard

01:09:10.560 was murdered and I feel like as you know I'm I guess I'm sort of on the older end of millennials

01:09:16.500 but I do feel like there's such a legit fear of rural spaces I mean it just there just is you

01:09:23.140 know in in our consciousness and that that's like a trauma like I definitely feel traumatized by that

01:09:30.500 and so yeah I think that I grew up in a world where to find belonging as a queer person you

01:09:36.720 moved to cities and, you know, met other humans who were queer. And I think that there's still

01:09:42.200 and will always be so much intelligence and beauty to that. And I also feel I feel like I

01:09:49.780 felt inspired over the years to just not like reverse that at all, like not say like, oh,

01:09:56.280 we shouldn't gather in urban areas or like this is wrong, but rather question how we can build

01:10:01.300 tools of resilience for being in like rural. And I don't like using the word wilderness,

01:10:07.820 but remote, let's just say remote settings. And it just seems like, yeah, the more we get to know

01:10:13.900 our non-human and other than human kin, even if we just have a few touchstones of how to relate

01:10:20.000 to non-human beings in like reciprocal ways or in ways that can help us ground when we're in

01:10:29.240 these spaces, you know, that builds resilience, which I feel like in one aspect of resilience

01:10:34.640 psychologically is just feeling kind of feeling competent. And I am hesitant to use that word

01:10:40.020 because I feel like the concept of resilience has been really, is really like focused on the

01:10:45.640 individual in mainstream psychology. And I don't agree with that, but like just this, yeah, this

01:10:50.600 notion of like, sometimes, you know, for a lot of people being out in the woods can feel like

01:10:55.680 intimidating partially because there's not, we haven't been provided with the ability to see

01:11:01.160 things with granularity because we grew up in a context where like I, at least me, where I,

01:11:06.680 I, as a kid loved like counting license plates and counting different like logos, you know what

01:11:12.740 I mean? And, but I wasn't necessarily taught how to identify different plants and trees. And so

01:11:18.720 it's totally natural that if I, as that person initially I'm going into the woods and everything

01:11:25.100 just looks like this big brown and green wall of indecipherability and so i think there's there

01:11:32.220 there's something in us that where we really we really crave taxonomy and i don't just mean that

01:11:38.260 in sort of a purely sort of western science sense but i also i just mean like yeah we crave pattern

01:11:43.940 recognition is so we're so like thirsty for that and and children display that all the time just

01:11:49.580 as I did when I was a kid. And so if we, you know, can turn some of those beautiful capacities

01:11:55.220 and skills and then compound that with like our like additional survival skills as queer people

01:12:00.480 and as and as folks of color that Pinar already spoke to, how much resilience can we have in rural

01:12:06.820 and remote settings? Like it kind of seems like I don't even know the answer. It just sounds really

01:12:12.440 awesome. And I want to like keep moving towards that because it yeah, like just building this

01:12:18.760 familiarity and also using you know the queer nature spaces as kind of a lab for practicing

01:12:25.640 these skills of resilience because it's in some ways right now it's really hard to to feel safe

01:12:32.260 in the human world for me and in the social and political climate and so yeah like we also try to

01:12:38.020 create spaces where we can sort of practice being in situations or scenarios that might be more

01:12:45.700 stressful if they were really happening to us but we we have this privilege and opportunity to

01:12:52.120 to practice these skills like with each other in a space that's safe and fun and like kind of

01:12:57.220 emergent and I think that can really transfer over and and I hope it can really help folks

01:13:03.520 when they're in settings that are socially unfamiliar but maybe they recognize the songbirds

01:13:08.780 there and they're like oh yeah there are the chickadees doing their doing their thing and

01:13:12.940 like squabbling with each other. And that for nervous system regulation, I think that can go so

01:13:17.900 far. I was looking at my notes and I, I honestly probably have another three hours of questions.

01:13:24.200 So I'm going to reel myself back in and really how I'd love to close this conversation is just

01:13:32.500 by giving you both the space to mention anything that you feel passionate about mentioning in this

01:13:40.180 moment. Also, it'd be helpful to know how people can support queer nature and where they can find

01:13:47.120 you and how they can get involved. So I'll just leave you both the space to fill in the blanks

01:13:52.640 however you see fit and then hopefully sometime soon have a follow-up conversation. Yeah. I just

01:14:00.480 wanted to say there's something that I want to bring in that I feel like we touched upon, but

01:14:05.160 I also have like kind of this concern that some of the things I said about naturalist studies or

01:14:12.700 about categorizing things or knowing the names of things could be slightly misleading. And I guess

01:14:18.260 this also is a segue into like an invitation for folks who want to get more into nature connection

01:14:25.560 or tracking or naturalist studies, but don't really know where to start. And I guess what I

01:14:31.100 want to say is like all of the things that Pinar and I hold space for and I guess teach and mentor

01:14:37.580 you know whether it's wildlife tracking or observing bird behavior or you know carving

01:14:44.240 something out of wood it's all grounded in listening and I feel like if we can look at

01:14:50.440 naturalist studies and and also just science in general as being grounded in listening

01:14:55.540 and witnessing, which I feel like we think of as a pretty passive act. And it doesn't have to,

01:15:03.380 I think it's perhaps subtle and kind of unassuming, but it's not totally passive. It's definitely

01:15:10.020 active. And one, I mean, this is something that's so brought in through indigenous science. And I

01:15:15.880 really want to acknowledge that, like the work of Robin Wall Kimmerer is so integral. And she

01:15:21.500 says something where she's like you know western science asks us to learn about organisms where

01:15:27.360 indigenous science asks us to learn from them and i think that's actually from actually a podcast

01:15:32.500 interview with her maybe on on being um i forget exactly where but and that's something that that

01:15:38.980 we always return to and i think it can be helpful because i think in naturalist studies there's this

01:15:45.020 focus on naming things and on knowing the name and it's like oh if i don't know the name or if

01:15:49.260 I don't remember the Latin name.

01:15:50.540 I'm not good at, I'm not a good naturalist or I'm, and I, I just want to sort of dispel

01:15:55.260 that as well because, you know, this newer and also indigenous, which is very old view

01:16:00.440 of ecology is that, you know, it's made up of not just elements, but, but relationships

01:16:05.320 and relationships are actually the core.

01:16:07.780 And so one of my biggest advices that I feel like I give folks who want to get more into

01:16:13.200 nature connection, including in cities is like, just, just pick a spot and go there

01:16:18.600 regularly and just observe and listen. And it doesn't matter if you don't know who those beings

01:16:24.220 are called by Western science and even encouraging curiosity about what could be the original names

01:16:31.240 of those beings, which is something I've been trying to work on discovering as like a white

01:16:36.360 settler. So yeah, just kind of emphasizing that. And there's so much where that confluences with 0.75

01:16:43.500 trauma work and trauma studies, because I feel like healing trauma is so much about listening

01:16:49.220 and witnessing and being witnessed and being listened to. And so I just wonder with our gifts

01:16:55.100 as marginalized folks and queer folks, with our gifts of tracking and listening, that we're born

01:17:00.480 out of adversity and, you know, often trauma, what gifts can we offer to our non-human kin

01:17:06.980 of listening and holding space for them just as we're listened to by them? And I don't pretend

01:17:12.720 to have the answer to that or that it's going to be a magic bullet. But I just I just wanted to

01:17:17.300 leave leave that as the last as at least my last word there. Yeah. Thank you so much for this rich

01:17:25.140 dialogue. I feel like, yeah, I feel like we could talk to you for for hours and we really appreciate

01:17:32.060 the space. Yeah, I feel like one of the ways that you can get a hold of us just to bring that in

01:17:40.120 a bit is, you know, we're pretty active on Instagram. So at queer nature is the way to

01:17:46.060 find us or our website, queernature.org, our Facebook page. We're not as active on that,

01:17:52.800 but you can just find us on queer nature if you search that on Facebook. And there's also a couple

01:17:58.820 other things that I wanted to share too, which there's a few like upcoming events happening

01:18:05.220 and we have other stuff that are being dreamt up so definitely keep in connection with us through

01:18:10.720 Instagram or however is the best way for you with the options that we gave above or beforehand but

01:18:18.340 some of the events that are happening that I wanted to mention because I some folks might be

01:18:22.400 interested in coming is we're going to be doing in July and mid-July after or sorry before Echoes 0.62

01:18:28.640 in Time which is a gathering and a place-based skills gathering happening in Oregon a queer

01:18:34.520 scout craft intensive. So, and that will likely be three to five days. We're still figuring out

01:18:41.560 the dates, but that's something that we're super passionate about teaching. So wanting to uplift

01:18:47.040 that as well as we'll be teaching in Bainbridge Island in mid February, I think it's February 8th

01:18:55.120 to the 10th at this, um, compassion camp. It's called compassion camp. And that I believe is

01:19:00.980 that's open to anyone that compassion camp um so it's not queer specific and we're also going to

01:19:08.440 be leading or i am panar i'm going to be leading a queer black indigenous people of color backpacking

01:19:14.220 trip with venture out project and wild diversity august 1st till august 5th near portland oregon

01:19:21.560 which i'm super stoked about um that queer nature is collaborating with those two awesome

01:19:26.160 organizations. And then for all the stuff that I said above is for adults. But I wanted to also

01:19:33.160 mention that we also have something specific for queer and trans and non-binary youth, which is

01:19:39.460 the Queer Mountain Quest, which is happening again this August, which we're really excited about.

01:19:45.120 And that's going to be August 12th to August 25th in the Olympic National Park. And that is open to

01:19:52.040 folks who are 13 to 18 years old. Um, so if you're interested in that, get in contact with us through

01:19:59.180 Instagram and there's a lot more dreaming happening in progress. So just keep in contact

01:20:05.400 with us through our Instagram. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You both have so much to share

01:20:11.600 and I'm so appreciative that you've spent the last, uh, you know, over an hour with us being

01:20:17.260 able to share these thoughts. So, so much gratitude and thank you again. Yeah. And thank you so much

01:20:24.400 for your commitment to being accountable across species and across deep time. I'm just really,

01:20:30.920 yeah, just very moved to see your work and, and be in conversation.

01:20:47.260 Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast.

01:21:01.960 I'm Ayanna Young.

01:21:03.320 The music you heard today was from Ila Bamba and Elisa P.

01:21:08.360 The music is Like a River by Kate Wolfe.

01:21:11.300 As always, I'd love to thank our production team,

01:21:14.300 our producer and editor Andrew Storrs,

01:21:17.260 Our other producer and writer, Francesca Glassbell, media director, Molly Lebov, and music coordinator, Carter Lou McElroy.

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01:21:41.820 All right, until next week.

01:21:43.100 On the concrete trails and wide

01:21:45.060 Through the canyons dark and wide

For The Wild - December 20, 2018

QUEER NATURE on Reclaiming Wild Safe Space ⧸101

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