00:01:39.680Today we are speaking with So and Pinar from Queer Nature.
00:01:43.840Queer Nature is an education and social sculpture project based on Arapaho, Utdi, and Cheyenne territories that actively dreams into decolonially informed queer ancestral futurism through mentorship in place-based skills with awareness of post-industrial, globalized, ecocidal context.
00:02:06.120Place-based skills include naturalist studies, handcrafts, quote survival skills, and recognition of colonial and indigenous histories of land, and are framed in a container that emphasizes deep listening and relationship building with living and non-living earth systems.
00:02:23.160Co-envisioned by Pinar and so Sinopolis Lloyd, Queer Nature designs and facilitates nature-based workshops and multi-day immersions intended to be financially, emotionally, and physically accessible to LGBTQ2 plus people and QTBIPOCs.
00:02:43.800Queer nature carries the story and hope that these spaces create resilient narratives of
00:02:48.220belonging for folks who have often been made to feel by systems of oppression that they
00:02:53.400biologically, socially, or culturally don't belong.
00:02:57.260Queer nature has collaborated with Wilderness Awareness School, the University of Colorado0.82
00:03:01.080Boulder, Naropa University, Women's Wilderness, and Rewild Portland.0.58
00:03:06.700Well, Pinar and So, I'm truly grateful that you were both able to make time for this
00:03:11.760conversation. And thank you so much for all the work you're doing with such meticulous care for
00:03:18.180people and place. And before we begin, I would like to open this moment up to each of you
00:03:23.360to introduce yourselves in the way or in any way you feel called to, whether it be acknowledging
00:03:29.320your ancestry or a brief telling of the journey of connection that brought queer nature into fruition.
00:03:35.020Thank you. Yeah, so my name is Pinar, and I use they, them, their pronouns. And yes, I think0.91
00:03:43.520introducing my ancestors feels really in alignment. So my matrilineage is Wonka, which is native to
00:03:51.460the Andes in East Cuchaca area, as well as Chinese from Spanish enslavement from the 1700s in so-called
00:04:01.060Peru. And then my patrilineage is Turkish, which is where I actually grew up for half of my
00:04:07.360childhood. And I also want to acknowledge my queer and trans ancestors, which in my lineage,
00:04:14.600my Andean lineage, we are called Kwari Warmees, which is a two-spirit kind of cousin down in the
00:04:20.380Andes. And lastly, one of the things that I also really love to introduce is actually really
00:04:26.000inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, where she introduces the
00:04:32.820lands that have raised her. And I wanted to introduce one of the Creeks who has raised me
00:04:39.600on Yavapai and Apache territories named Hakavsua. And this might come up in our interview, but
00:04:46.320they've been so instrumental in how queer nature runs and how I do my work and who I keep accountable
00:04:53.440to in my life. And I'm also wanting to name that I'm neurodivergent and a psychiatric survivor,
00:05:00.920as well as a suicide survivor. And this is such an integral piece of what brings me to
00:05:06.740nature connection and my work in the world as someone who's experienced parallel realities
00:05:13.260and has felt most of my belonging to the more than human kin.
00:05:18.960Thank you for that. And so I'd love to hear from you as well.
00:05:23.400Thanks, Ayanna. And I also just want to say thank you for also inviting me to be here,
00:05:28.420because I know that you might not often do interviews with two people at once. And so I
00:05:33.920just am really grateful for that. And yeah, and excited. And yeah, a little bit about myself. I
00:05:39.460am white, queer person of Anglo-Saxon settler descent on my dad's side. And my mom is a Greek
00:05:49.200immigrant. So on her side, I'm first generation on Turtle Island. And yeah, I grew up in Alnobak
00:05:57.380or also called Abenaki Territory, also known as Vermont, which the northern hardwood forests are
00:06:04.340really near and dear to my heart. And I think that something else I like to talk about or sort of
00:06:12.400pick up the thread of when introducing myself and talking about nature connection
00:06:17.740is, well, a couple of things. One of them is my connection to sheep and shepherding. And
00:06:23.660throughout college, I basically became really curious about small scale agriculture and
00:06:29.980particularly like cheese making and shepherding traditions that were, you know, more small scale
00:06:36.900and organic based or organic ish. And that was kind of for me a way to connect with actually my
00:06:44.500my greek heritage and ancestry since my most of my that half of my family does live in greece and
00:06:50.980i lived there in elementary school and have just just this nostalgia and connection to that land
00:06:57.440that i think is kind of common to people who are from two different cultures and i i or multiple
00:07:03.280cultures more than two and i know panar might be able to relate to that and so i basically embarked
00:07:09.420upon this journey of, yeah, like working with sheep and doing shepherding on some different
00:07:16.700farms around so-called New England. And there was something about that that was really just
00:07:22.820deeply informative in terms of the journey I kind of later went on in terms of delving into
00:07:29.260place-based skills and so-called paleolithic skills, I guess. There was something about sheep
00:07:35.900that really inspired me, I think partially because our culture sees them as dumb. And1.00
00:07:42.220that's often like this trope, like that they are these complicit or complacent animals. And what0.56
00:07:48.840I saw instead was this deep intelligence of like the flock or the hive mind, which I think is
00:07:54.100something that we really fear in this culture. And that just really drew me in like that non-human
00:07:59.740and often kind of even scary form of intelligence to us.
00:08:03.460And I started to become really curious about the ways of belonging and being in relationship
00:08:09.300with land that were more interdependent and interrelational rather than just this narrative
00:08:15.360of sort of self-sufficiency and individuality.
00:08:18.800So, yeah, that's actually how I got started sort of on this journey of nature connection.
00:08:23.480And I can probably say more about that later, but I just wanted to touch upon it for now.
00:08:27.340I really appreciate hearing both of your, a little bit into both of your stories. And gosh, I really, really enjoyed hearing so about your connection with the sheep and how derogatory we can be with sheep. Oh, sheeple, the sheep, you know, kind of how we speak down to them as if they're stupid. And this whole idea of hive mind and the brilliance and the intelligence in that. So I would love to hear more about that later.
00:08:57.340I just want to say that, you know, so much of Queer Nature's work is intertwined in narratives
00:09:02.320of belonging. And I'd really like to now begin this interview with a dialogue on the overlap
00:09:08.600between queer identity and the legacy of dominant environmentalism, which are both very much about0.65
00:09:16.180not belonging. You know, as mentioned in Queer Nature's bio, queer folk have long been made to0.97
00:09:22.060field, that they don't biologically or socially or culturally belong. And this is a whole1.00
00:09:28.400conversation in and of itself. But I also can't help but think about how much of the environmental
00:09:37.160legacy that many of us are familiar with and the ethos around wild spaces is that humans don't
00:09:44.840belong there either. And then traditional conservation has situated humans as merely
00:09:49.880visitors in quote wild places who are meant to leave without a trace suggesting that our more
00:09:55.360than human kin couldn't possibly remember our presence or the relationship we have with them
00:10:00.560so I would just love if both of you could speak to the intention of belonging and why it's at the
00:10:06.920core of the work queer nature facilitates yeah that's such a great series of questions and I
00:10:13.140almost feel like we could spend the whole interview like just delving into that and I think it's
00:10:18.840Yeah. A really rich place to start. Yeah. I think when I think about belonging and I've been
00:10:24.300thinking, we've both been thinking a lot about this lately and belonging, I feel like can almost
00:10:31.020run a risk these days of becoming sort of a new buzzword or like catchphrase sort of like
00:10:35.900sustainability. And I just want to be wary of that, especially this, this is so speaking to
00:10:42.240Like just as a white person and a settler, I feel like I have I'm doing this dance of deep care and openness and listening around what belonging means.
00:10:53.660But I think one of the things it means to me is sort of being entangled within a web of relationships of reciprocity, but also accountability and not always in a way that's totally that totally feels good either.
00:11:08.280But because accountability, I think, is sometimes often about conflict.
00:11:14.420So I think that's kind of one of my basic definitions of belonging and that it really does include interspecies relationships as well.
00:11:27.540I feel like belonging is a noun, but I feel like it's productive for me and for us to think of it as more of a verb.
00:11:35.560And I also don't know if it's a process that's ever complete.
00:11:38.280And that kind of comes back to my own consciousness as a white settler on Turtle Island.
00:11:42.860And, like, I don't know if I can really say that, like, I can't promise belonging as a nature-based mentor or practitioner, like, as if it's sort of the result of an equation.
00:11:55.500Or I can't say that I, like, belonging has been accomplished here on Turtle Island.
00:12:00.040But I think what we what we can do or what we're interested in doing, which is why in one of the notes that that you sent to us before, I like that you mentioned like the intention of belonging, because I think we have this intention around place based skills as basically skills of belonging and interspecies relationship cultivation as skills of belonging.
00:12:22.840But also that a skill of belonging that might not be as concrete is challenging different supremacies like white supremacy while we're engaging in these skills and privilege and just acknowledging our role in that.
00:12:36.100And that that's also like that these anti-racist and anti-oppressive stances are also like skills of belonging, as well as like learning, you know, how to identify different plants or how to create medicine or how to, you know, make make fire from rubbing sticks together.
00:12:53.360That's kind of one place I would start.
00:12:55.540And then another point that I wanted to make before handing it over to Pinar is I really love that you brought up this narrative of, you know, this, of course, false narrative of wilderness as this place where we're just visitors.
00:13:09.660And this is, of course, a very colonial conception of wilderness.
00:13:14.240And it also reminds me of the ethic of Leave No Trace, which we as, you know, as wilderness guides encounter a lot.
00:13:20.620And there's so much that's good about the intention of Leave No Trace.
00:13:24.720But one thing that we both encounter a lot is that we do impact and change the land, both as people living now and people who lived in the past, including Paleolithic peoples and land based peoples.
00:13:37.980And I think there's sometimes a narrative that that like to be in harmony with the land is to not change, change it or change your environment when, you know, now there's so much research coming out about how other like non-human animals have culture and change the land.
00:13:54.500like beavers. Of course, we've kind of known that for a while. But, you know, other creatures like
00:13:59.080bowerbirds down in the tropics who basically have have forms of cultural transmission and build
00:14:04.820these elaborate structures that they cannot build if they're in captivity or they just build kind
00:14:10.260of little deranged like versions of them. So I feel like that question of changing the land and
00:14:17.200impact. So it's not really about that we don't have an impact or that we should try to sort of
00:14:22.560cease our impact but it's rather like how do we want to have an impact so that's just I'll just
00:14:29.000leave it at that and then see if Pinar or Ayanna if you want to respond to any of that I can add
00:14:34.080something I just one thing that really stood out to me with what how you began the question is
00:14:39.780you know how there's this narrative that queer people don't belong period but also just don't
00:14:46.260belong in our bodies or don't belong to the earth or to culture and one thing that I want to be
00:14:51.460really clear about is trans and non-binary people have always existed and always will.
00:14:58.400And the narrative that we are a new phenomena is a colonial story, and that two-spirit and
00:15:05.080other indigenous gender expansiveness is older than America, and that we are ecological formations
00:15:12.600and also ecological indicators of health, of place, and of culture. So that's something that0.59
00:15:19.460is really important for me to share and also yeah just like really sit with that that there is this
00:15:26.820like there is this narrative of erasure of of queerness of gender expansiveness of transness
00:15:34.300of two-spirit folks and yeah and just really challenging that that we're actually you know
00:15:39.640we do belong and we have the right to be here and and bring our gifts to the world and how
00:15:47.920important those gifts are right now especially since you know in my Andean tradition there is
00:15:54.660something called Pachacuti which essentially means like a cataclasmic change to the culture
00:16:00.160as we know it and cosmologically speaking like the first Pachacuti to happen at least in like
00:16:08.860the Incan empire or the Incan culture there was actually like this it brought up a lot of fear
00:16:15.860you know, for the people. And the story goes that like the Kwari Warmi people, the third gender0.86
00:16:23.040or the gender liminal people were actually invoked at that time of transition during the first
00:16:29.860Pachacuti, because like, we know how to move through liminality because we are liminal people.
00:16:37.660And that's something that I think about so often is like, you know, this idea of Pachacuti being
00:16:42.520a cataclasmic change to our culture as we know it, to me, is actually really pretty much a
00:16:48.940parallel way of saying that whatever the culture is in the moment is going through a rite of passage.
00:16:55.020And in a rite of passage, there are three stages, which is like the severance stage,
00:17:02.360and then the threshold slash liminal stage. And then lastly, the reincorporation stage of coming
00:17:09.520back. And what I find really fascinating is that that liminal space is a place where, at least in
00:17:16.560my tradition, the Kauriwarmis, we know very intimately. And so that's something that I also
00:17:22.400want to bring in as we're discussing what we're discussing. And it makes me think furthermore
00:17:28.180about how around environmentalism, especially around how we look at land as really steeped in0.96
00:17:35.760white environmentalism of we can't leave a trace, which I totally understand. And there's very0.99
00:17:40.980beautiful reasons, you know, that are really honorable to like, take care of land and steward
00:17:46.620and being relationship with land. And it reminds me, you know, eight years ago, when I was formally
00:17:51.720studying deep ecology, we were reading a lot of white cishet men or cis heterosexual men,
00:17:58.940or cisgendered heterosexual men, as well as sometimes white cishet women, discussing how0.93
00:18:04.640essentially people are a plague of this earth. And around this time, I was involved with
00:18:10.100indigenous solidarity work in Black Mesa. And whenever I brought up decolonization,
00:18:15.380no one saw the relevance to deep ecology in my program. And I just found that really
00:18:21.060upsetting at the time. And the analysis, yeah, I just feel like there's this idea that all humans,
00:18:28.120this colonial idea that all humans are bad. There's this generalization rather than seeing
00:18:33.760who has systematically perpetuated ecocide. And sometimes I wonder, you know, I think this is
00:18:41.340really, this is changing in some ways in deep ecology of bringing in more decolonization and
00:18:46.920indigenous perspectives, which I'm incredibly grateful for, although it's been very slow moving.
00:18:53.100And I just am so curious of this like lack of analysis, and or what has been historically a
00:19:00.660lack of analysis of like bringing in white supremacy and settler colonialism in that,
00:19:06.080yeah, in that inquiry. And that's just something that I'm really curious about. And I know something
00:19:11.720that So has brought up in terms of exploring what ecocide means has been really impactful for me.
00:19:18.320We discussed this quite a bit in our work. And something that I love that So brings in is
00:19:24.060They're Greek, and they studied ancient Greek as well, that the root for ecocide, ecos, essentially means household.
00:19:34.400And 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.
00:19:48.100And, 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.
00:20:00.860So 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.
00:20:15.360So 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.
00:21:45.360I really appreciate you, Pinar, talking about that queerness is not something new.
00:22:05.960Trans isn't new. It's not some trend that's just of today.
00:22:10.200This has been something that has, this is a part of our humanity from the beginning, and it's really important to remember that it's been the colonization and systems of oppression and white supremacy that have squelched any way of being that wasn't what the dominant culture prescribed.
00:22:30.020And I think that's such an important point. And the deep ecology and environmentalism, not taking into account indigenous perspectives and people of color's perspectives. I mean, all of these points are so huge in trying to understand these massive systems.
00:22:51.400And if we're not looking at it with that lens, and if we're not doing a deep analysis, then what are we really doing? We're really just kind of perpetuating this rat wheel that we're never going to get out of if we don't actually look at, like look under the rocks, you know, dig a little deeper and start to see how all of this was compounded and built on top of one another.
00:23:14.960So I so, gosh, I so respect both of your analysis, and I learned so much just in that one question.
00:23:22.900I want to bring up this quote that Queer Nature has written.
00:23:25.980Quote, the binary doesn't need to be destroyed, but rather blown open and expanded to reflect the complexity of our ecological and celestial kin.
00:23:35.480I stand for queerness that is inextricably informed by interspecies solidarity, by lichen,
00:23:43.220dust chorus, swamps, coral, and cryptbiotic soil. Queerness is not another venue for the
00:23:50.600simulation of human exceptionalism and white supremacy that serves the project of settler
00:23:56.180colonialism. It is a devotional practice of decentering our human centrism to continually
00:24:02.340expand our co-liberation and remember that our queerness is a disruptive, remediative fruit of0.86
00:24:08.540the earth, end quote. Gosh, that was so beautifully written. I'm wondering if you could expand upon
00:24:14.940how queerness can destabilize supremacy, or furthermore, how an ecologically informed
00:24:21.820awareness of gender is imperative in destabilizing supremacy.
00:24:26.220hmm yeah thank you for that quote it was kind of co-written by the both of us but um the majority
00:24:34.600of it was written by me panar and yeah it's such a good question it actually makes me think about
00:24:42.120back to my queer and like trans-cester like lineage of kwari warmi and because i can only
00:24:50.500kind of it don't it feels important for me to talk about my own experience of gender as well
00:24:56.800as like that's culturally informed rather than just saying like you know queerness as a whole
00:25:01.040so I'll just move into that a little bit and I'll probably also move into the larger picture but
00:25:06.900as I was sharing around like how Kwariwarmis essentially were came to be in our cultural
00:25:14.560story because of the Pachacuti, at least the first Pachacuti. And colonization is also a
00:25:20.720Pachacuti that we're still moving through, I believe. And it's often something that we discuss
00:25:25.460is that, you know, whose dystopia or apocalypse are we living in right now? And how, you know,
00:25:31.680a lot of indigenous folks are, have been like living in apocalypse of sorts for, you know,1.00
00:25:38.540since 1492. But that's something that I'm just so passionate about is thinking about the role
00:25:44.440of liminality you know specifically talking about quarry warmies and this idea that like
00:25:50.080quarry warmies are people who move between the masculine and the feminine as well as people who
00:25:56.560move between or see and have gifts around the transition between death and birth and um midwives
00:26:03.840and as well as like hospice of sorts and just like these like spaces that are unknown to us right and
00:26:10.400to me that that feels really deeply personal, especially in my the story that I was talking
00:26:17.660or how I was introducing myself earlier, being a psychiatric survivor and being a person who has
00:26:24.040been deeply like immersed in liminal spaces that actually were pretty pathologized growing up and
00:26:30.880also, you know, having experiences with being institutionalized for having these experiences
00:26:36.540and liminal spaces or in liminal realities, as well as with the more than human world. But as
00:26:42.380I've come to find out, I, as I have been doing more research on my, um, specifically around
00:26:48.320quarry warmi that these are the gifts that, you know, we bring. Um, and so in a lot of ways, I
00:26:54.260feel like with quarry warmi medicine in particular, I do feel like it does destabilize a lot around
00:27:02.440supremacy because you know since we are the culture is moving through a rite of passage
00:27:08.880in so many ways and what some people are calling like the anthropocene it just feels like we need
00:27:14.220these liminal we're in a liminal space so we need guides to help us move through liminality
00:27:19.620and this idea that we're like grasping in onto a story like the dominant narrative of like no this
00:27:26.340we are living this, essentially the story that's an ecocidal story, a genocidal story,
00:27:32.820and like hanging on to it that perpetuates and like upholds so many different supremacies,0.94
00:27:39.140including white supremacy, to have the liminal folks come in and really aid that transition
00:27:45.740and kind of like literally a death, you know, because rites of passage really discuss like0.60
00:27:52.280psycho-spiritual deaths as well as sometimes physical deaths but what needs to be let go
00:27:57.540and what no longer serves and what needs to be decomposed back into this earth and you know and
00:28:02.220I feel like for so many reasons like white supremacy and the project of settler colonialism
00:28:09.080has like is ready to die and it's been so apparent for so long you know and I think it's in the death
00:28:16.420throes right now. And so, yeah, just having those guides towards the transition right now feels so
00:28:23.780integral. And to bring it back to like queerness as well, I feel like queerness is not the only
00:28:30.940way to disrupt and remediate supremacy. It's, you know, it's pretty prevalent in our queer
00:28:34.960community for folks to use queerness, like as a bandaid, not to look at their whiteness and0.89
00:28:40.100how they can uphold, you know, anti-indigeneating and anti-blackness. So that's also something to0.82
00:28:46.260also remember for me is like you know we we have to there's so much magic in queerness and there's0.82
00:28:53.420also so much work we need to do in our communities that's like nestled right now within white
00:28:59.020supremacy as well as settler colonialism so that's also something that we I'm really passionate about
00:29:05.260being in conversation with with our communities and like you know being in conversation in ways
00:29:10.280that are inviting to more dialogue and more healing and not necessarily like ones that are
00:29:16.940about like criticism and disempowerment, but rather like, how are we going to move through
00:29:21.400this together right now? You know, and with all of our differences and within like the queer1.00
00:29:27.220community, but also beyond the queer community, um, because, you know, within, within our
00:29:33.700ecological communities, biodiversity creates resilience. So listening to all the stories
00:29:39.280and really amplifying and uplifting the ones who are most impacted in our communities feels
00:29:44.060like such an integral part of moving through the Pachacuti and moving through the liminal space
00:29:50.060that we're in right now as a species. So yeah, I hope that answers your question. I have so many
00:29:57.040more thoughts. And I also, bringing back to the quote that you read too, my individual queerness
00:30:04.520is riparian. And riparian, you know, means like, essentially one that is like, related to rivers
00:30:13.640and creeks, and specifically within like an ecosystem and ecological community. And I just
00:30:20.080also want to say to that, like, my queerness is really held accountable by those systems,
00:30:26.140you know, by rivers and creeks, and especially the one who has raised me, Hakapsua, and they
00:30:32.100have been my queer elder and really just expanding that too because like our queer communities have
00:30:38.560remained very human-centric which for a really good reason because we've moved through so much
00:30:43.340trauma together as um as a community and as communities so we're doing very intra-species
00:30:50.920healing right now which makes so much sense at the moment but really remembering to like expand
00:30:56.700And expand ourselves to our capacities, which are, you know, queerness is really informed by the earth and is informed by so much more than just our human bodies and our human intelligences and so much more than just that.
00:31:11.980So just wanting to also name that as well and see if so wants to answer anything.
00:31:18.500I just appreciate everything that you said, Pinar.
00:31:22.060and I'm trying to even remember like the how the question was framed but I feel like it was
00:31:29.820something about kind of queer ecology and how also queerness can destabilize different supremacies
00:31:36.720so I feel like what what I would add to that is also like just what queer means to me and I think
00:31:42.960it means something different to everyone and I know some people listening to this might not know
00:31:48.180what queer what we even mean when we say queer and I feel like especially in the context of ecology
00:31:54.960um you know and the study of relationships between beings and between living systems and
00:32:02.840non-living systems I feel like to me queer kind of indicates non-binary but I don't actually mean
00:32:09.360like because I mean I also identify as non-binary like as my gender but I actually don't mean it
00:32:14.700just as a gender identity I mean it like as sort of like a questioning of of different dualities
00:32:20.160or dichotomies and and also a sort of hybridity it could be a cultural hybridity or there's like
00:32:27.220sort of a natural type of hybridity that is present being a settler on this land as well
00:32:35.100that feels relevant and and then also you know another thing I associate with queerness really
00:32:40.840is mystery and mysticism and and i think a core tenet of mysticism is knowing basically knowing
00:32:48.280that the divine or whatever your notion of the divine is be it the universe or nature or that it
00:32:55.000can't be fully grasped intellectually and the surrender is really required in the face of of
00:33:00.920that unknowing and that mystery and so to me this this all feels very relevant to talking about
00:33:08.840ecology and environment and challenging notions of futurity or futurism that are present in sort of
00:33:16.820dominant views of environmentalism. And so to me, like in terms of ecology, queerness is kind of a
00:33:24.640growth or a growth is a weird word because I think it is used a lot in sort of capitalistic ways. But
00:33:30.160I think a better term is becoming like a becoming from some sort of destabilization or dissolution
00:33:36.520of fixed categories or a bit coming from an in-between space or an edge space, which as we
00:33:42.380know from studying ecotones or edges in bioregions or in ecological systems, those are spaces of such
00:33:49.820fertility and fecundity. And so, yeah, that's something that I also wanted to bring in.
00:33:57.680And I think an example of sort of this becoming from destabilization or dissolution is something
00:34:04.900that evolutionary biologists talk about which is also kind of a debated or contested concept and
00:34:10.900it's the concept of acceptation which is basically almost a counterpoint to adaptation although it's
00:34:17.380also part of adaptation and it's the process by which features different features of bodies
00:34:23.780might acquire functions for which they were not originally sort of adapted to or not originally
00:34:29.860And a really common example of this is feathers, which were originally found, you know, in the fossil record on dinosaurs who didn't fly. And they were, you know, the ancestors of modern birds. And so I love thinking about this. And also to say that this is a controversial thing, because there's some evolutionary biologists who say, well, nothing was actually ever designed what it's currently used for.
00:34:51.960Or so there's just this interesting queerness there where I feel like, yeah, what what are we what adaptations are we gaining or discovering as queer people that are kind of these acceptations or these responses to our weird and sort of bizarre and maybe pre or post apocalyptic environment that that are, you know, coming out of actually that that trouble.
00:35:20.960And that it's kind of a term from Donna Haraway, like that, that trouble that we're in. And, you know, I also think of like these earthworms that can now, you know, degrade plastics or thrive in, you know, heavy metal soils and, and maybe even help break down those, those toxins. So those are some of the things I also think about too.
00:35:41.140I just was thinking about intimacy with our more than human kin. And I think it is such a loss when we don't give ourselves the space and give the space and the respect to our non-human kin to honor them by being an intimate relationship with them.
00:36:06.400And I think things like that, relationships, whether it's with a human or not, takes time, it takes attention, it takes sacrifice, it takes a lot that I think in this dominant culture, not only are we oftentimes not willing to give that, but we're not even taught that that's actually what we need to give to be in reciprocity.
00:36:28.060You know, I just think about any human relationship, any human relationship, whether it's a family member, a lover, a friend, a co-worker, we have to put time into those human relationships.
00:36:42.220And I really believe it's the same thing when it comes to plants or insects, furry creatures, you know, four-legged, two-legged, winged ones.
00:45:45.500so that's something that I wanted to also bring up is just this like how tracking can actually be
00:45:51.500this really beautiful tool for empowerment not only to ourselves but also like expand again to
00:45:58.400like remember that we're all you know the more than human community is like willing and open to
00:46:04.960also be potentially in relationship with us and is something that you know we were talking about
00:46:10.660breaking that myth around human centricism and breaking that species isolation, which I think
00:46:15.860is so healing for everyone and also particularly for folks of marginalized statuses. So that's
00:46:23.740something that I also really want to bring up because it's just such a place of inspiration to
00:46:28.780me. And also one other thing when I think about tracking is, you know, that encounter, like so
00:46:35.320was saying around mystery and how so really beautifully put that into words and the thing
00:46:41.820that I think about too is this longing that I personally feel within like my own ancestral
00:46:46.940bodies of like wanting to trail and it's again goes back to that that idea that of blood memory
00:46:55.880or this like ancestral memory that we have of trailing and like because our ancestors pretty
00:47:02.200much, if you're alive right now, all of our ancestors tracked and, you know, trailed wild
00:47:08.080animals and wild beings. And so to me, like that, it's also a practice of connecting to like my
00:47:15.220ancestral body, which to me is a very spiritual practice. And that is very interesting as someone
00:47:21.140who, again, is hybrid, because I, I feel this deep, I'm actually looking at one of my arm tattoos
00:47:27.640right now and where I have like several of my Andean more than human kin tattooed on me and
00:47:35.240one of them is a guanaco which is a wild relative of the llama and it's just so fascinating to me
00:47:43.860because I like really long to track them like there's this like core part of myself that's just
00:47:49.000like I really like I've never even encountered them actually but I really deeply desire the
00:47:55.520encounter and that mystery and relationship of being on my ancestral lands and trailing this
00:48:01.340being who my ancestors have trailed for millennia and I think also I also reflect back and I'm like
00:48:09.320does the land also miss our bodies the places that we're indigenous to in particular is what
00:48:15.280I'm thinking of like does it miss our bodies trailing and in that relationship to place
00:48:21.120And that intimacy between, you know, Guanaco and Andina people, that's just something that I also, that comes up for me when I think about that intersection of like spirituality and tracking and relationship with the divine.
00:52:27.320And what I mean by against survival skills is like the skills that we have honed and
00:52:31.880developed intergenerationally to continue to still like be resilient and like, you know,
00:52:38.360be alive right now in a system that has like really like tried to erase and kill us off.
00:52:45.540So that's something that also comes to my mind as you like bring that question forth.
00:52:50.440And one of our biggest passions is to teach stealth craft, or some people will call that like scouting or scout skills, which can be like tactical skills and skills of evasion. And instead of calling it like the skill, like skills of invisibility, we tend to call it skills of or practices of belonging.
00:53:10.540And one of the things that I think about, too, with, you know, stealth craft, again, if you like Google scout or even probably stealth, like whose bodies are you going to see? And just really wanting to honor that there's so much there are so many stories of scouting like going on, you know, right now with like the border crossings of indigenous and migrant communities and also like the Underground Railroad.
00:53:35.740Like, that's, like, so integral to bring up that, like, scouting isn't, whose, like, scout stories are we, like, actually uplifting when we're actually thinking about those skills?
00:53:47.240um especially because like today i just i don't mean to interrupt panar but that just reminds me
00:53:52.680of like this modern current fascination with like the commando and how that that is an example of
00:53:59.120this archetype of of sort of scout or stealth or like warrior that that is so uplifted and there
00:54:05.380is this fascination and that's that's sort of this example of the militarization of of survival
00:54:11.220skills or, or, or like the sort of military framing around those skills, but I didn't mean
00:54:17.640to interrupt. Yeah, totally. Thanks for pointing that out. But yeah, I just feel like going off
00:54:23.940of that too, like this hyper individualist survival or survivor concept is such a product
00:54:30.060of colonialism. And, and I also think about like whiteness and how there's this idea, you know,
00:54:37.580that's like I don't know I think about some of my white friends who are doing anti-oppression work
00:54:42.940or trying to like look at their own whiteness and they kind of at first let's just say because I
00:54:48.020don't want to overgeneralize I see people like do it by themselves in isolation because there's this
00:54:53.720narrative that like we have to specifically around whiteness that that is like inherently
00:54:58.720alienating not to say white culture itself is that or white folks are inherently like
00:55:05.200perpetuating that but just white supremacy is like built off of this idea that we have to like
00:55:11.100alienate ourselves and isolate ourselves and do everything again like by ourselves one thing that
00:55:18.200I think about too is like you know ecosystems teach us interdependence so beautifully and
00:55:23.580something that we've learned over and over in our queer nature programs is that like um like for
00:55:29.580instance in one of our courses that we teach with like friction fire is that a lot of our community
00:55:35.580members actually challenge that and are like hey like let's actually like work on this friction
00:55:41.120fire kit together like let's do it in tandem even if we don't even like suggest that they just go
00:55:47.840straight to it and we're just like whoa like this is so beautiful that there's this breaking of that
00:55:52.980narrative and I think that that's especially in the queer community and also within black
00:55:58.280indigenous people of color and our communities there as well, that there, we know that there
00:56:02.880is power in communal survival because we've had to do that to like survive. And that's a beautiful
00:56:08.920adaptation that we have built together. So yeah, I just feel like that's something that I also want
00:56:15.540to bring in too regarding your question, because that just feels like there's so much richness in
00:56:20.160in your question that we can delve so deep into. Yeah. And just to add on that, I,
00:56:27.260I pretty much said like most of what I would have said in answer to this question.
00:56:32.180And then one one thing that I feel could be added is just in terms of what we need to
00:56:38.060dismantle in these mainstream notions of survival skills.
00:56:42.040And and that's just and this is going back to threads previously, but just the notion
00:56:46.340that the environment or that or that wilderness is hostile, not not to say it's not ever
00:56:52.400hostile but and you know that's that's kind of this polar opposite of this sort of romantic
00:56:58.340notion that things are always harmonious and you know in in natural spaces or in the wilderness but
00:57:04.280but yeah this idea that there's almost like this I feel like especially in colonial culture there's
00:57:11.660like this strange phenomenon where it seems like there's almost this collective trauma
00:57:16.160around surviving in a hostile place but that trauma was ironically like caused by these these
00:57:23.940people these people's ancestors or our ancestors engaging in colonial settlements and imperial
00:57:29.620expansion in the first place so I yeah so I'm not trying to like center that trauma as being like oh
00:57:36.880like that like we need to really focus on that but but just merely acknowledging it like there
00:57:41.180is something there where like in these notions that you see in in pop culture like on the show
00:57:46.760naked and afraid for example is a really great stark example literally stark naked and like in
00:57:53.860the dark and afraid and you know just scraping by basically is that and and there's something there
00:57:59.820that does remind me of like the um conceptions of the wilderness as hostile and of you know and
00:58:07.220First Nations, like encounters with First Nation folks and how those folks were framed
01:01:43.980Gosh, 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.
01:02:01.160Or 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.
01:02:29.540I 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.
01:02:44.520I mean, it's a whole vortex and how that plays out into the ancestral skills community, which is getting more and more trendy.
01:02:53.300And, 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?
01:03:18.340I mean, it's really deep. And I know we've been on this conversation for a while. I have two more
01:03:23.560questions if you both are open to that. Yeah, definitely. Okay, great. Okay, so this question
01:03:29.800I know is going to definitely speak to a lot of our urban relatives. And I know that one of
01:03:37.420Queer Nature's focuses is the development of place-based skills through nature-based workshops0.66
01:03:42.660and immersions specifically for lgbtq2 plus people and queer people of color but i'm thinking about
01:03:50.380the function of space and specifically urban space and in doing the research for this interview i
01:03:56.020came across a reflection on how you know just so often queer community grows and finds refuge in
01:04:02.480urban areas so i would really love if you could share more about the dynamics between urban
01:04:07.580refuge versus the healing work and rites of passages that queer nature facilitates in,
01:04:13.600say, the mountains and forests of the Arapaho or the Uti or the Cheyenne territories that you're
01:04:18.440both currently located in? Yeah, I can answer that question. That's a really great question,
01:04:25.040and I really appreciate it. So often, so and I, we notice, you know, that there is this, like,
01:04:31.340kind of yeah historical story around how at least in like in the colonial context how queer folks
01:04:40.700have found refuge in urban spaces and that you know rural uh spaces or like yeah rural places
01:04:47.500are close to like the more than human world which they probably wouldn't call in that context but0.80
01:04:52.800like in spaces that are close to wilderness as not safe because queer phobic and transphobic
01:04:57.860violences that have occurred in those regions like specifically in the rural context and I think you
01:05:05.480know that's something we we we do discuss because like we often are either like within like um
01:05:13.420within like our more than human community in a park or like that's like kind of close to urban
01:05:19.060areas or we're even further away and people don't often think like oh queer community let's go be
01:05:26.100outside but most of the time there's like again going back to like our collective trauma as queer
01:05:32.660folks within a colonial context that you know there is a lot of trauma in which we've like
01:05:38.740historically speaking have congregated at like gay bars or at bars like around alcohol or around
01:05:46.060different substances and and I think there's so much intelligence to that because of the collective
01:05:51.440trauma that we've been through. And my hope is that we will continue moving towards healing and
01:05:57.660not congregate just within like those spaces and, you know, queer, queer nature, our spaces are
01:06:03.440sober and that's really important to us. And so I think, yeah, I feel like creating and facilitating
01:06:11.700queer spaces outside that acknowledge that collective trauma and also acknowledge again,
01:06:16.780And that the colonial context of like having to like essentially find, yeah, like you said, refuge within urban spaces to, you know, be ourselves is really important to, you know, voice.
01:06:29.780And also, you know, to tend to relationship to place and interspecies solidarity, you know, through ancestral skills, place based skills, rites passage and nature connection is such a amazing potential to like really tend to that healing and that resilience within our communities.
01:06:48.640So, yeah, and I think in terms of rites of passage work, that feels really potent in terms of, you know, like with the rites of passage work that we do facilitate, it is structured in a sense that there's like a space, a time frame that you're outside, immersed with the more than human community by yourself as a human, because you're not by yourself, you know, obviously with the more than human kin around.
01:07:15.680for a certain amount of time fasting and what's beautiful within those queer specific spaces is
01:07:23.100how because of the queer framing and the container and the people who are drawn
01:07:29.380there's actually this like incredible possibility and potential to have like mirroring happen from0.65
01:07:38.880the natural world of our own queerness and our own gender as well as again not just to like to
01:07:44.820me, I'm kind of cautious around saying that sometimes because I think the rite of passage
01:07:49.100community can inadvertently be extractive in the sense that it's like, oh, we're going out to the
01:07:57.260more than human community to extract meaning for ourselves versus being like, oh, actually,
01:08:04.260maybe this isn't just one way, but maybe it's actually reciprocal that it is like this
01:08:08.900co-creation of meaning and co-creation of relationship that's happening. I feel like
01:08:13.780that's also important to say and like to clarify as I'm talking about this. I think that there's
01:08:19.560just so much, again, potential with creating spaces for queer, trans, non-binary, and two-spirit
01:08:26.320folks to be within a container where they can engage in these more than human conversations
01:08:31.980through, you know, self-generated ceremonies that potentially will mirror back across species our
01:08:38.900resilience to one another. And sometimes that shows up as reflecting back our queerness to
01:08:44.480ourselves and being affirmed in that way in particular. And what is our gift that we're
01:08:50.520bringing back to our communities that also include our more than human communities that are
01:08:55.540potentially really tied and bound and amplified by our gender expression or sexuality, but not
01:09:03.220necessarily always have to be bound to that, but are informed by. So that's something I would add
01:09:07.840to that question yeah and just like probably to echo some of the stuff that's been said but like
01:09:13.680it might be helpful too to just give like a personal anecdote for some of this stuff because
01:09:19.100when I was in eighth grade I believe that's when you know Matthew Shepard was murdered and I feel
01:09:26.480like as you know I'm I guess I'm sort of on the older end of millennials but I do feel like there's
01:09:31.020such a legit fear of rural spaces I mean it just there just is you know in in our consciousness and
01:09:38.560that that's like a trauma like I definitely feel traumatized by that and so yeah I think that I
01:09:45.980grew up in a world where to find belonging as a queer person you move to cities and you know met
01:09:51.820other humans who were queer and I think that there's still and will always be so much um
01:09:57.560intelligence and beauty to that. And I also feel, I feel like I felt inspired over the years to
01:10:04.840just not like reverse that at all, like not say like, oh, we shouldn't gather in urban areas or
01:10:10.980like this is wrong, but rather question how we can build tools of resilience for being in like rural
01:10:18.240and I don't like using the word wilderness, but remote, let's just say remote settings.
01:10:22.780And it just seems like, yeah, the more we get to know our non-human and other than human kin, even if we just have a few touchstones of how to relate to non-human beings in like reciprocal ways or in ways that can help us ground when we're in these spaces, you know, that builds resilience, which I feel like in one aspect of resilience psychologically is just feeling kind of feeling competent.
01:10:51.140And I am hesitant to use that word because I feel like the concept of resilience has
01:10:55.500been really is really like focused on the individual in mainstream psychology.
01:11:01.800But like just this, yeah, this notion of like sometimes, you know, for a lot of people
01:11:06.500being out in the woods can feel like intimidating, partially because there's not we haven't been
01:11:12.460provided with the ability to see things with granularity because we grew up in a context
01:11:16.980where like i at least me where i i as a kid loved like counting license plates and counting different
01:11:23.940like logos you know what i mean and but i wasn't necessarily taught how to identify different
01:11:30.420plants and trees and so it's totally natural that if i as that person initially i'm going into
01:11:36.740the woods and everything just looks like this big brown and green wall of indecipherability
01:11:42.980and so I think there's there's something in us that where we really we really crave taxonomy
01:11:49.800and I don't just mean that in sort of a purely sort of western science sense but I also I just
01:11:55.420mean like yeah we crave pattern recognition is so we're so like thirsty for that and and children
01:12:01.000display that all the time just as I did when I was a kid and so if we you know can turn some of
01:12:06.540those beautiful capacities and skills and then compound that with like our like additional
01:12:11.840survival skills as queer people and as and as folks of color that Pinar already spoke to
01:12:16.980how much resilience can we have in rural and remote settings like it kind of seems like
01:12:22.800I don't even know the answer it just sounds really awesome and I want to like keep moving towards
01:12:28.440that because it yeah like just building this familiarity and also using you know the queer
01:12:35.660nature spaces as kind of a lab for practicing these skills of resilience because it's in some
01:12:41.600ways right now, it's really hard to, to feel safe in the human world for me and in the social and
01:12:47.500political climate. And so, yeah, like we, we also try to create spaces where we can sort of practice
01:12:54.540being in situations or scenarios that might be more stressful if they were really happening to
01:13:00.700us. But we we have this privilege and opportunity to to practice these skills like with each other
01:13:07.580in a space that's safe and fun and like kind of emergent. And I think that can really transfer
01:13:13.040over. And and I hope it can really help folks when they're in settings that are socially
01:13:18.720unfamiliar, but maybe they recognize the songbirds there and they're like, oh, yeah, there are the
01:13:23.460chickadees doing their doing their thing and squabbling with each other. And that for nervous
01:13:29.040system regulation, I think that can go so far. I was looking at my notes and I honestly probably
01:13:35.260have another three hours of questions. So I'm going to reel myself back in. And really how I'd
01:13:42.940love to close this conversation is just by giving you both the space to mention anything that you
01:13:50.560feel passionate about mentioning in this moment. Also, it'd be helpful to know how people can
01:13:57.340support queer nature and where they can find you and how they can get involved. So I'll just leave0.90
01:14:03.520you both the space to fill in the blanks, however you see fit. And then hopefully sometime soon have
01:14:09.260a follow-up conversation. Yeah. I just wanted to say there's something that I want to bring in
01:14:16.260that I feel like we touched upon, but I also have like kind of this concern that some of the things
01:14:23.180I said, about naturalist studies or about categorizing things or knowing the names of
01:14:28.640things could be slightly misleading. And I guess this also is a segue into like an invitation for
01:14:34.740folks who want to get more into nature connection or tracking or naturalist studies, but don't
01:14:41.320really know where to start. And I guess what I want to say is like all of the things that Pinar
01:14:46.560and I hold space for and, I guess, teach and mentor, you know, whether it's wildlife tracking
01:14:52.960or observing bird behavior or, you know, carving something out of wood, it's all grounded in
01:15:00.440listening. And I feel like if we can look at naturalist studies and also just science in
01:15:06.440general as being grounded in listening and witnessing, which I feel like we think of as
01:15:12.500a pretty passive act and it doesn't have to I think it's perhaps subtle and kind of unassuming
01:15:20.620but it's not totally passive it's definitely active and one I mean this is something that's
01:15:26.620so brought in through indigenous science and I really want to acknowledge that like the work of
01:15:30.920Robin Wall Kimmerer is so integral and she says something where she's like you know western science
01:15:37.100asks us to learn about organisms where indigenous science asks us to learn from them and I think
01:15:43.320that's actually from actually a podcast interview with her maybe on on being I forget exactly where
01:15:49.720but and that's something that that we always return to and I think it can be helpful because
01:15:56.160I think in naturalist studies there's this focus on naming things and on knowing the name and it's
01:16:00.860like oh if I don't know the name or if I don't remember the Latin name I'm not good at I'm not
01:16:04.760a good naturalist or I'm and I I just want to sort of dispel that as well because what you know this
01:16:10.380newer and also indigenous which is very old view of ecology is that you know it's made up of not
01:16:16.240just elements but but relationships and relationships are actually the core and so one of my like
01:16:22.680biggest advices that I feel like I give folks who want to get more into nature connection
01:16:27.020including in cities is like just just pick a spot and go there regularly and just observe and listen
01:16:33.760And it doesn't matter if you don't know who those beings are called by Western science and even encouraging curiosity about what could be the original names of those beings, which is something I've been trying to work on discovering as like a white settler.
01:16:50.020Sure. So, yeah, just kind of emphasizing that. And there's so much where that confluences with trauma work and trauma studies, because I feel like healing trauma is so much about listening and witnessing and being witnessed and and being listened to.
01:17:06.080And so I just wonder with our gifts as marginalized folks and queer folks, with our gifts of tracking and listening, that we're born out of adversity and, you know, often trauma, what gifts can we offer to our non-human kin of listening and holding space for them just as we're listened to by them?
01:17:24.920And I don't pretend to have the answer to that or that it's going to be a magic bullet, but I just wanted to leave that as the last, at least my last word there.
01:17:34.120um yeah thank you so much for this rich dialogue I feel like yeah I feel like we could talk to
01:17:41.220you for for hours and we really appreciate um the space yeah I feel like uh one of the ways that you
01:17:50.240can get a hold of us just to bring that in um a bit is you know we're pretty active on Instagram
01:17:56.540so at queer nature is the way to find us or our website queernature.org our facebook page
01:18:04.260we're not as active on that but you can just find us on queer nature if you search that on facebook
01:18:09.460thank you thank you thank you you both have so much to share and i'm so appreciative that you've
01:18:16.880spent the last uh you know over an hour with us being able to share these thoughts so
01:18:21.700so much gratitude and uh thank you again yeah and thank you so much for your commitment to
01:18:28.860being accountable across species and across deep time i'm just really yeah just very moved to
01:18:35.980um see your work and um and be in conversation
01:18:51.700Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast.