Spirit Weavers Gathering recognizes the importance of Solidarity and Allyship work. Over the last eight years we have welcomed women from Australia, Indonesia, Spain, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Chile, Canada, Singapore, Kenya, South Korea, Japan, China, Israel, United Arab Emirates, UK, Netherlands, and Latvia. We share this work and our Social Advocacy efforts as an Organization, in hopes to lead with clear intentions and transparency, as well as encourage our community to take part in this vital work for themselves.
Advocacy Work
Below you will find a few of the programs we have created over the last thirteen years, and are continually developing and deepening. The gathering itself is truly an ever-changing and evolving workshop. We have a beautiful opportunity each year to work directly with women within the SW Community for shifts and focus. Thank you for believing in these small but sincere offerings as we strive to create an empowering gathering for all walks of life.
ONGOING ALLYSHIP WORK IMPLEMENTED AT SPIRIT WEAVERS
- Continue to provide and nurture specific spaces within the gathering led for and by Beings of Color to gather, create and share together. You can learn more about these spaces and who they are tended by in the Village section of the website, including our ComeUnity Village, Empowerment Center, Healing Village and more.
- Anyone holding space within the structure of the gathering including all instructors, staff and seva volunteers must commit to reading through our Allyship guide book and facilitation guide book in order to participate. Learn more about these guides below.
- Each bodywork practitioner chosen to share in our Healing Village donates a free session to a BIPOC community member at the gathering, and sliding scale pricing is always offered to BIPOC members of the community throughout the event.
- Herbalists and practitioners in our Wellness Den make and donate tinctures each year for the Come-Unity Village
- A number of attendee tickets are reserved each year for BIPOC attendees, made available at a sliding scale price
- Partial and full scholarships are offered each year to attend the gathering
- Practitioner spaces are reserved and prioritized for BIPOC practitioners in all of our community hubs, including the Adornment Area, Artist Village, Healing Village, and Vendor Marketplace.
You can find more in-depth info about these ongoing allyship efforts below:
ALLYSHIP BOOKLET
The Allyship Booklet was created in 2018 by members of the Spirit Weavers ComeUNITY Village, an inclusive hub within the gathering dedicated to fostering community, dialogue, and educational opportunities that center on equity and inclusion.
This Allyship Booklet was created in service to bridging the gap not only at the gathering, but in our everyday lives as well. Through educational resources and communal spaces, we hope that the Spirit Weavers community will join us in our excitement and dedication to this work.
The Spirit Weavers Allyship Booklet is a guide that is mandatory for all our instructors and staff to read when chosen to hold space at the Gathering. We also make this guidebook available as a resource for our whole community, available in the Camp Store & SWG Website, and all funds from the book go back into our BIPOC scholarship fund at the Gathering.
HONERING GRANDMOTHER AGNES BAKER PILGRIM
As Spirit Weavers found its home in Southern Oregon, we began building relationship with the local Takelma People, whose ancestral lands we now gather upon. In 2019, during our 7th Annual Gathering, we were deeply honored to welcome Takelma Elder and member of the International Council of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, Agnes Baker Pilgrim, who opened our gathering with blessings for the land and for all who had arrived to share in its beauty.
Later that fall, we had the profound honor of hosting Grandmother Agnes and her family at Cedar Bloom for her 95th birthday celebration. Her family brought traditional foods, drumming, and dance to the land, filling the air with joy and prayer. We presented Grandma with a mural of herself and her plant and medicine allies, a lasting tribute that now lives on the land as a place of remembrance and gratitude.
Grandmother Agnes passed into the Spirit Realm on November 27th, 2019, just months after we celebrated her life and legacy together. Her presence continues to bless Cedar Bloom, and her mural stands as a place to pray, reflect, and give thanks for her teachings.
In her honor, we remain committed to ensuring that Cedar Bloom remains open and accessible to the Indigenous people of this region — a place where they may continue to fish, swim, gather, and return to their ancestral homelands.
We carry Grandmother Agnes’s blessings in our hearts and feel forever grateful for the time we were able to share with her in ceremony and community.
OUR SEVA PROGRAM
Each year we offer almost 200 volunteer exchange positions for the gatherings through our SEVA Program. This means that in exchange for seva (selfless service), you receive a free ticket to the session of your choice. This ticket includes all meals, camping, and your choice of early arrival or to stay later on the land. Priority is given to those who would otherwise be unable to attend the gathering on their own. Through our seva program, many women end up returning year after year, increasing their involvement in the community and production of the gathering itself.
If you are interested in joining our Seva Program, please visit the Seva Page in our Village Section of the website.
SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
Our scholarship program provides partial and full scholarships to attend the Gathering. Every year we work hard to increase the number of full scholarships we’re able to offer our greater Spirit Weavers Community.
These scholarships are made possible by you and our web of community support!
Every year, Spirit Weavers hosts a raffle with handmade items all generously donated by our marketplace vendors, sponsorship partners and community members. This raffle takes place throughout the gathering weekend, and 100% of the funds go towards scholarship tickets for the following year. In addition, we have an official Spirit Weavers Merchandise booth and online store where all proceeds also go towards the following year’s Scholarship tickets.
If you feel called to donate or help with our scholarship fund, please email sponsorship@spiritweaversgathering.com.
WOMEN OF COLOR IN THE WILDERNESS
The Spirit Weavers community was honored to host DJ Bibi Mcgill, our SWG guest DJ, and her event “Women of Color in the Wilderness” at Cedar Bloom. The event is a more intimate version of Spirit Weavers, with the intention to connect in the wilderness and find comfort in camping and gathering in the presence of other WOC.
We have been honored to share the land with Bibi and community and look forward to hosting more intimate events supporting our BIPOC community in the future.
Sisters Bonded in Action is a network of local groups of women working in service of the Earth, social justice and indigenous rights and sovereignty. The organization emerged from a seminar given by Ayana Young at the fourth annual Spirit Weavers Gathering, where alliances began to take shape around common passions and complementary processes. A series of actions and projects have already begun in the spirit of unseating the narratives of exploitation of land and livelihood. In August 2016, a group of 10 dedicated women initiated a film and campaign to halt the logging of old growth forests in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. That following Fall, several women ventured to Standing Rock in support of the water protectors. From there Mea Woodruff, Ayana Young, and Jade Begay collaborated with Idle No More SF to organize a powerful woman-led March on San Francisco’s financial district demanding the divestment of the banks involved in the Dakota Access pipeline project. As solidarity actions arose in other American cities, principal financier Wells Fargo agreed to meet with Standing Rock Sioux elders, a major inroad in this ongoing resistance to colonialism and fossil fuels.
Underlying principles include:
- The protection of biodiversity at every level of society
- Decolonization and the support of Indigenous and Marginalized communities
- Direct Action and resistance to institutional threats to natural communities
- Empowerment through ongoing education
PROGRAMS WE SUPPORT
The Spirit Weavers community extends beyond the annual Gathering in June. Every year Spirit Weavers Gathering chooses a number of different organizations to support with a financial donation.
Here are some of the specific organizations we have supported over the years:
- Cow Creek Band of Umqua Tribe of Indians
- Seven Seed Farms
- Happy Period
- Grandmother Agnes and the Takelma Tribe
- Save the Redwoods
- Call of the Forests
- Restoration of Camp Navarro
- Standing Rock
- Purple W.I.N.G.S
- Save Little Lake
Since aquiring Cedar Bloom land, we continue to make a yearly donation to Takelma Families, the first nations people of the Illinois River Valley.
We are always inspired to expand and develop these advocacy efforts.
This work is ongoing and dynamic as our world is always shifting and we learn and grow alongside it.