The Spirit Weavers community extends beyond the annual Gathering. Every year Spirit Weavers Gathering chooses a number of different organizations to support. This year, we are honored to support and for a few selective organizations, donate a percentage of ticket sales to the causes listed below.
Causes we have supported in the past:: Save the Redwoods, Call of the Forests, Idle No More, Indigenous Environmental Network, Happy Period, Radical Monarchs, Umpqua Band of Indians, Restoration of Camp Navarro, Standing Rock, Purple W.I.N.G.S and Save Little Lake.
( 2019 Recipients will be announced in the Spring)
Grandmother Agnes Baker Pilgrim is one of the Valleys most sacred treasures. We are honored to hold the gathering in her home land of the Takelma people.
Agnes Emma Baker Pilgrim is a First Nations spiritual elder from Grants Pass, Oregon. She is the oldest member of her tribe, the Takelma. She is also the Granddaughter of Jack Harney, the first elected Chief of the Confederated Tribes of SiletzPilgrim was elected chairperson of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers at its founding in 2004.“She has been honored as a “Living Treasure” by the Confederated Tribes of Siletz, and as a “Living Cultural Legend” by the Oregon Council of the Arts. You can read more about Grandma Agnis here.
Cecemmana Student of Color Scholarship Fund
Cecemmana is a word in Nahuatl, an indigenous language of Mexico, which means to plant seeds. Cecemmana is dedicated to planting seeds in our diverse Bay Area communities for future generations of herbalists to grow and thrive. We know that each herbalist we train will go out and serve their communities with the knowledge that they learn.
Many communities of color are still connected to their traditional herbal knowledge, although people of color are still unequally represented in herb school classrooms. We launched this fundraising campaign to provide financial support to our students of color to help cover the cost of their herbal education.
If you would like to donate, Ancestral Apothecary School of Herbal, Folk and Indigenous Medicine in Oakland, California is creating real change for HOC. They are specifically raising scholarship money for offer financial assistance to students enrolled in their Cecemmana nine month herbalist training program. Please visit Cecemmana to learn more.
Roots of Labor Birth Collective (RLBC) believes that everyone deserves a doula, regardless of one’s ability to pay. When you hire an RLBC doula, you are investing in the wellness of the greater Bay Area birthing community.
We partner with Santa Rita Jail and Bay Area clinics who serve low-income and communities of color. We offer compassionate physical, emotional, and informational support to those members of our community who are most vulnerable to systemic oppression. When you choose to hire an RLBC doula, your decision to work with us also provides quality doula care to all birthing people– including those who are incarcerated, immigrants, survivors, low-income, of color, trans*, queer, and/or disabled.
Queer Nature’s program envisions and implements ecological awareness and place-based skills as vital and often overlooked parts of the healing and wholing of populations who have been marginalized and even represented as ‘unnatural.’ Their curriculums necessarily go beyond recreation in nature to deep and creative engagement with the natural world to build inter-species alliances and an enduring sense of belonging.
Queer Nature is a queer-run nature education and ancestral skills program serving the local LGBTQ2+ community. We recognize that many people, including LGBTQ2+ people, have for various reasons not had easy cultural access to outdoors pursuits, especially ‘survival skills’ like bushcraft, tactical skills, and (ethical) hunting. Our program envisions and implements ecological literacy and wilderness self-reliance skills as vital and often overlooked parts of the healing and wholing of populations who have been silenced, marginalized, and even represented as ‘unnatural.’ Our curriculums necessarily go beyond recreation in nature to deep and creative engagement with the natural world to build inter-species alliances and an enduring sense of belonging. This hands-on type of relationship building both serves to promote environmental stewardship and also nourishes and resources the human souls who have been made to feel that they do not belong. We also utilize traditional skill-building and naturalist knowledge to rekindle and revitalize our connection to all of our ancestors, as well to explore right relationship with the ancestors and living First Nations people of the land we are occupying. In that vein, we strive to understand further how this work can support indigenous communities in Turtle Island who continue to be harmed by processes of colonization.
It is personally empowering to learn survival and earth-based living skills on both physical and emotional levels, and gaining proficiency in these sorts of skills also can offer peace of mind in uncertain times. Empowerment and preparedness are undeniably part of what we do, but our overarching vision is for a deep, resilient sentiment to take hold in human hearts, and that is the sentiment of solidarity. As LGBTQ2+ people and social justice advocates, we tend to have some understanding of the value of human solidarity, but in these times of rapid habitat and biodiversity loss, continued displacement of indigenous peoples, and extreme political antagonism, it is clear to us that an even larger ‘ecological’ notion of solidarity is called for that defies easy political categorization. We don’t pretend to have ultimate answers about what that looks like, but we do believe that the more we discover about ecology and our place within it, the more we can grow our definitions of solidarity, allyship, and humanity, while also growing our inner resources for personal resiliency.
Skills like wildlife tracking, trailing, learning bird language, and situational awareness training in particular lend themselves to an expansion of our ability to feel oriented in the natural world, because these skills are essentially about training latent abilities for perception, awareness, and pattern recognition that allow us to literally see, hear, and feel more because we are expanding our repertoire of what counts as information. This is not only valuable to us personally on a tactical level, but it means that we can translate what we’re seeing to our wider human communities and increase ecoliteracy. Natural crafts like basketweaving, carving, and leather-making allow us to realize our vital roles as creators and collaborators with the natural world, rather than just consumers of it. Moreover, as we learn from the natural world, we maintain skepticism at the modern (and colonial) idea that nature is perfect, harmonious, or predictable. Ecosystems and living beings do what they need to do to survive, and this doesn’t always correspond to idealistic visions of what nature is like. Queer people often have diverse and varied experiences of survivor-hood, and it is powerful to have that reflected back by the natural world. There are many mysterious and beautiful ways in which nature reflects queerness.
For The Wild preserves and strengthens the integrity of Earth’s natural communities through land conservation and ecological restoration. Powered by community efforts and bioregional native plants nurseries, its work centers around the reforestation and diversification of degraded landscapes, informed by Traditional Ecological Knowledge. For The Wild conducts ecological research to improve restoration techniques and to adapt them to our rapidly changing climate and human landscape.
Ayana from For the Wild also has a project called For The Wild Podcast, a radio program/podcast, brings you conversations with the philosophers, scientists, activists, healers, artists and others who are leading the movements to restore our beleaguered planet and reimagine our role in this wild web of life. Key topics include the transition to a regenerative and biocentric society, ecological renewal and resistance, and healing from the paradigm of separation. They travel deep into ancient forests, align with the struggles and ways of Earth-based people, and rekindle the mysteries of intuition. The radio series has been heard across America on Pacifica-affiliate radio stations, delivering an artful blend of visionary ideas and empowering, tangible information to the growing community of biophiliacs and Earth defenders. Find out more at http://forthewild.world
