For The Wild

In 2018 former Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy, what we didn’t know was that beginning in 2017 the Trump administration ran a secret pilot program that began rapidly separating children from their families in El Paso, Texas. After running this pilot program, Customs and Border Protection unequivocally told the administration that the program was a failure because they were unable to track parents and children after separation. In the face of these conclusions, the administration went forward with their policy which ultimately separated over 2,500 children, many of whom will most likely never be reunited with their parents. In this week’s episode, we speak with artist, immigration lawyer, and activist Carolina Rubio MacWright on the ongoing travesty of family separations, the inherent trauma of U.S. detention centers, and how we can begin revamping our laws, values, policies, and systems when it comes to migration. Carolina Rubio MacWright is an artist, immigration lawyer, and activist fighting for immigrant and humanitarian rights. She believes ART is the most powerful way of bringing humans together and dissolving walls and cages that separate us. She has thus mixed her law and art into a non-profit called Touching Land that uses hands-on experiential arts to empower, build bridges and decolonize food. Music by Madelyn Ilana and Samuela Akert.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points. Support the show

We are often reminded of the tremendous amount of loss that transpires every day on this Earth; loss of language, biodiversity, and ancestral knowledge. In response, it’s understandable that many of us may be hyper-fixated on preserving whatever we can and fighting to stave off the mass changes that have been set in motion. But what if we challenged ourselves instead to recognize the autonomy of living knowledge, land as its own entity, and the inevitability of constant change? In this week’s episode, guest Enrique Salmón uses the lens of kincentric ecology to challenge our propensity for memory banking, our difficulty grappling with a changing Earth, and our inadvertent oversimplifications of complex living relationships. Enrique Salmón is a Rarámuri. He is head of the American Indian Studies Program at Cal State University–East Bay. He holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Arizona State University and has published many articles on Indigenous ethnobotany, agriculture, nutrition, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge. He is the author of Eating the Landscape: American Indian Stories of Food, Identity and Resilience and Iwígara. Music by Justin Crawmer, Katie Gray, and Sara Serpa. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

“We forget that so much is given freely, that this world is meant to be enjoyed.” This week, we heed this powerful reminder by guest Ella Noah Bancroft. As our belief systems have become entwined with the dominant economic structure, we see the commodification of our wellness, intimacy, and connectivity - a phenomenon that is severely hindering our ability to connect authentically. In conversation, Ella traces the powerful connection between our ability to go against mainstream capitalist ways of being and our capacity for deep connection with ourselves and each other. With intimacy as an entrance point, our conversation explores what happens when we derive our pleasure from extraction, the kind of deep embodiment and connectivity that threatens capitalistic and colonial structures, and how we can journey back into spaces of trust through practices that don’t have to cost us a thing. Ella Noah Bancroft is a Bundjalung woman based in the Northern New South Wales, Australia. Ella identifies as mixed heritage Indigenous, gay woman. She grew up living in both worlds, her Indigenous world and the mainstream Australian world. Both challenged her identity in different ways. She is an Australian born artist, storyteller, mentor and founder of “The Returning” and Yhi Collective. Music by Harrison Foster, Lady Moon & The Eclipse, and Sucúlima. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

How can queerness guide us as we move through this liminal time period? How can queer ecology radically change our way of knowing? This week’s episode, initially aired in December of 2018, acknowledges that in order to expand ourselves to our fullest capacity, we must bend beyond the cultural and gender binaries that dominant society projects amongst us, to begin this process we need not look further than what has always been. Guided by culturally informed queer ancestral futurist dreams, Pinar and So Sinopoulos-Lloyd of Queer Nature explore how queering our awareness can dismantle the supremacist, ecocidal, and genocidal story we have found ourselves in. Queer Nature is an education and social sculpture project based on Arapaho, Ute, 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 contexts. Co-envisioned by Pinar and So Sinopoulos-Lloyd, Queer Nature designs and facilitates nature-based workshops and multi-day immersions intended to be financially, emotionally, and physically accessible to LGBTQ2+ people and QTBIPOCs. Music by Y La Bamba and Elisapie. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Our attention has operated as currency for the past couple of decades, but with the invasiveness of social media and technology, our ability to exit and enter the attention economy has been severely hindered. As we feel pressure to post and comment on everything for an unknown audience, do we inherently limit our capacity for complexity and vulnerability? And what are the extended ramifications of becoming illiterate in complexity? How does this ripple out into all of our relationships? In lieu of the demanding world buzzing inside our devices, guest Jenny Odell shares the brilliance of doing “nothing”, tending to the ecological self, and growing deeper forms of attention through a commitment to bioregionalism. Jenny Odell is a writer, artist, and enthusiastic birdwatcher based in Oakland, California. She is the author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Odell teaches digital art at Stanford University. Music by Harrison Foster, Bosques Fragmentados, Samara Jade, and Kritzkom. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

As so-called powerful “industrial civilizations” continue to decline into dysfunction, unable to care for the vast majority, the call to localize, reinvest in household economies, and strengthen our capacity for self-reliance is becoming emphatic. Amongst failing institutions and the remnants of exploitative wealth, this week’s guest, David Holmgren, encourages us to lean into crisis as a temporary portal that allows us to focus on the potential of all that lies around us. In conversation David explores creative reuse, salvage economies, ethical relationships, permaculture, and the intricacies of mass movements that are trying to override a system that is deeply committed to a machination of consumerism and debt. David Holmgren is the co-originator of the permaculture concept following publication of 'Permaculture One', co-authored with Bill Mollison in 1978. His most recent book, 'RetroSuburbia: The Downshifter’s Guide to a Resilient Future' shows how people can downshift and retrofit their homes, gardens, communities and above all, themselves to be more self-organised, sustainable and resilient into an uncertain future. Music by Roma Ransom and Jody Segar. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Emboldened by the rapid development of technology, a cultural ethos of rugged individualism, globalization, and the monopolization of our media, the era of efficiency in the so-called Global North has significantly altered our communal symbiosis. For many, acts of service that would have once been fulfilled by neighbors and community have now been replaced by apps and gig workers, ultimately commodifying most of our social relations in one form or another. This week on the podcast, we are joined by guest Vijay Prashad to explore how societies take care of themselves, what true public action looks like in crisis, and how movements across the world have resisted the privatization of life and the devaluation of care that we have become accustomed to. Vijay Prashad is the Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Chief Editor at LeftWord Books and Chief Correspondent for Globetrotter. His most recent book is Washington Bullets, just out from Monthly Review Press with a preface by Evo Morales Ayma. Music by Nathan Keck, Lizabett Russo, Sidi Touré, and Jonathan Yonts. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In the United States, land ownership is dishonorable no matter how you frame it. For example, 60% of land in the U.S. is owned privately and 30% is owned by the federal government, comparatively tribal nations own about 2.5% of their land. Meanwhile, the Gates family recently became the largest owners of American farmland, owning a total of 260,000 acres of land across 19 states, with 242,000 acres being characterized as “farmland.” In today’s episode, we are joined by guest Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy to explore what land ownership means across the United States, how to begin seeding the concept of land return in mainstream consciousness, and the grave injustices we perpetuate when we continue to draw upon Traditional Ecological Knowledge for climate mitigation and adaptation without working towards land rematration simultaneously. Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy is an Associate Professor and Department Chair of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University. Her research focuses on California Indians, Indigenous feminisms, social & environmental justice, and decolonization. Dr. Risling Baldy is Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk and an enrolled member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe in Northern California. In 2007, she co-founded the Native Women's Collective, a nonprofit organization that supports the continued revitalization of Native American arts and culture. Music by Aisha Badru, Holy River, and Theresa Andersson. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Currently, less than 15% of terrestrial land exists in some form of protected area, the percentage of marine protected areas is significantly lower. It’s undeniable that protecting some of the last vestiges of wild places from industrial decimation is a critical and worthy cause. However, large-scale land conservation projects have also historically displaced many populations and distressed communities that have relied upon pasture and forest for their livelihoods because of previous colonial impositions. In this episode, we explore the complex world of large-scale land conservation and wildlife restoration through the work of Tompkins Conservation with guest Tom Butler. A writer and conservation activist, Tom Butler is author, volume editor, or co-editor of more than a dozen books including Wildlands Philanthropy, Plundering Appalachia, and Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot, and ENERGY: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth. Music by Jeffrey Silverstein and Galen Hefferman. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points. Support the show

Cumberland Island is one of Georgia’s most biologically diverse barrier islands, with its maritime forests, coastal beaches, and salt marshes providing a habitat for many endangered kin, in addition to being a resting point along the transatlantic migratory flyway. This wild place has been fervently loved and protected over the past couple of decades by biologist, naturalist, environmental activist, and full-time resident of the island, Carol Ruckdeschel. This week on the program we speak to Carol about the importance of places like Cumberland Island, some of the most pressing threats Cumberland currently faces, and the dangerous precedent that will be set if we continue to allow private-interest to chip away and fragment the very little bit of wilderness that is currently protected. Music by Eliza Edens, Kesia Nagata, Lauren Alegre, and I Goodfriend. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show