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I was honoured to be interviewed on The Numinous P

I was honoured to be interviewed on The Numinous Podcast this week by the incredible @carmenspagnola. We got very personal about family, our skills journeys, and kinship with the more-than-human world.
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We also talk about a necessary part of ancestral skills in a settler-colonial context: redress.
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Redress is the compensation made for a grievance. For a while, the word ‘reconciliation’ was used to sidestep the crux of this. ‘Reconciliation’ implies that two parties should meet halfway; to reconcile their differences as if each has done the other wrong.
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Redress, on the other hand, makes no excuses. It is literal. It is action. Reparations are a form of redress, as are the personal compensatory acts we can each do in our daily lives. If we are settlers on Indigenous lands - whether we are mixed or not, whether our ancestors also suffered or not - we inherited a legacy that is ours to claim and do justice to.
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I want to take this moment to give voice to a commitment I made moments prior to Covid. The public hide tanning + ancestral skills workshops that I offer are free for Indigenous people.
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Workshops from here on out are available on a sliding scale, starting at $0 for Indigenous people who so choose, and scaling up for settlers to step in and co-create redress.
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I thought I was already offering this, but with feedback I realized I had not made my intentions clear nor communicated the reality of the offering, which I had previously (ahem, erroneously) framed as a “bursary.” And since many Indigenous folks I know and love are bougie af, lemme make this clear that I offer this to anyone who chooses it, not as a commentary on personal finances but as a way to centre redress - and ultimately, healing - at the core of ancestral skills.
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I am still gauging how to take this model to private workshops and 1:1 consultations, but with this interview I want to share my process now, one that is forming + formulating.
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Thank you @vidyacrawley for helping guide this; @femme.magic + @kialaluu for the community care; and @burnt.sundreamz + @shauna.mikomi for how much I learn with + from you!

Link to Carmen’s and my convo in bio. 🦌🐏🐃

Bio•philia, the impulse to love living systems.

Bio•philia, the impulse to love living systems.

In conversation with my friend @carmenspagnola today, we talked about the compulsion we each felt the first time we tanned hides.

When I first tanned a hide, and when I first learned the names and qualities of plants, it was like a switch turned on. I went from not knowing something was missing in my life, to knowing exactly what I had been pining for.

This Pipsissewa flower - Chimaphila umbellata - is so rare to see, a tiny bloom in a sea of evergreen leaves. It was one of the first medicines I used to support my body through a chronic health crisis and emerge in wellness. I am forever grateful to it, not only for helping me heal but for teaching me confidence in my relationship to wild plants. To trust that innate sense of wonder and yearning.

Now whenever I see its evergreen leaves I remember an important journey, and these rare moments of flowering totally stop me in my tracks.

A spread for hide tanning, of sorts. Fish skin ta

A spread for hide tanning, of sorts. Fish skin tanning.

The middle is the final product, fishskin leather tanned with just Red Rose tea.

To the left: the shimmery skin that’s about to be sliced from the fillet and scraped of scales and fat. To the right: the fillet that moments later went on the fire.

Above: mezzalunas, the Italian housewife knife (similar to ulus, but legit not as versatile as them tbh) and handhold scrapers, a Scandinavian style tool.

In one week the fresh salmon skins will be leather!

The luxuriousness that is Buffalo wool. If your s

The luxuriousness that is Buffalo wool.

If your sound is on and you’re wondering what we’re taking about, it’s the eternal question of whether applying a blow dryer to a hide is a legitimate use of technology. 🤖🐃

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#hidetanning #ancestralskills #hunting #foraged #wildcrafting #buffalo #braintanned #survivalskills #artisan

A long-awaited step has been taken in the life of

A long-awaited step has been taken in the life of Limina Gathering. It’s been grounded and turned into a nonprofit, as Limina Collective.

As we bring @limina.collective into being this week, we work in hide camp.

This is @shauna.mikomi and @burntsundreamz framing a woodland Buffalo hide, with one more on a scraping beam, up next.

After five days of intermittent rain and sun, we’ve had to take things slow. We’re all so used to going hard during hide camp. Putting in long days, being consumed by the work. This time, we’ve had time to reflect. We are envisioning what the creation of this collective can bring.

Follow @limina.collective for more.

A long time ago I left a sectarian religion, the o

A long time ago I left a sectarian religion, the only community I’d known, and one that has cost many people their freedom and dignity. More recently, I’ve appreciated that I can take parts of something without condoning the whole. I can be grateful for the experience it’s lent me, without being grateful to the abusive conditions.
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One thing this religion instilled in me: connection to community is real; allegiance to a nation state is a construct.
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I have never celebrated Canada Day. My family’s allegiance was to their god, mediated through their community. While their idea of god is also a construct (because hey, cognitive dissonance is itself a powerful god), I am grateful for the early teachings I received on rejecting patriotism and prioritizing community.
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On July 1, we are told that we should be grateful for this idea of Canada. We don’t need to be.
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There would be no Canada if not for colonization. There would be no Canada if not for Indigenous genocide. Patriotism is also a powerful god, a construct of human imagination that distracts from the historical and ongoing abusive conditions that create Canada. From the Seven Years War (1756) to the Unist’ot’en yintah invasion (2020), and everything in between, the cost is the freedom and dignity of many.
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What I am truly grateful for? The community I’ve been able to connect with, through ancestral skills. This is what’s real, this is what keeps me sane amidst the cognitive dissonance of patriotism. This is what lasts, this is what heals.

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day, today and every day.

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day, today and every day.
Here are some amazing Indigenous IG accounts to follow to learn deeper, on the path to decolonization:
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@everydayindigenousresurgence
@decolonialatlas
@decolonizefirst
@decolonizemyself
@decolonizethisplace
@iiycfamily
@indigenousclimateaction
@indigenousfoodsinitiative
@mama_maiz
@seedingsovereignty
... 📷 Lil’wat territory

This week, the USA supreme court upheld employment

This week, the USA supreme court upheld employment rights for the queer and trans community. And, the US HHS deleted protection against discrimination for trans people in health care. Healing is not linear, whether personal or collective.
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But healing is happening, we can trust this. And yes, trans people gaining rights within the state is a sign of healing: healing from a colonial worldview imposed upon this continent.
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Recently, cishet white women, and one especially famous one, have been reigniting anti-trans sentiments. From the perspective of ancestral healing, I want to take a moment to unpack one of their claims.
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The claim goes like this: ‘if anyone can say, “I’m x gender” then men will invade women’s safe spaces. In being critical of trans people, we are therefore protecting women.’
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There’s a lot here. But can we see the deflection? This claim says that the violence it anticipates would be enacted by cis men. Not trans men, not trans women. That cis men would use trans rights as an avenue to enact violence.
... If this is the fear, why not address the critique to cis men? ...
The answer is that the right to violence by white cis men is taken for granted. It is considered a constant, while the right to safety of everyone else is considered a variable.
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Historically, white cis women have sheltered themselves from violence by identifying first with their race, in a hierarchy that resembles the trickle-down-economy. In the trickle-down safety hierarchy, the people at the top are the safest, and violence trickles down to the bottom.
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Though white women experienced domestic abuse, disempowerment in community, and violence by white men, they in turn oppressed and colonized BIPOC communities, often employing this exact tactic of victimhood identity to do so.
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👇🏾 continued

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