Green Dreamer: Seeding change towards collective healing, sustainability, regeneration

What can grief teach us about being truly alive? And how might seeds, and the compassionate acts of tending to them, be the “helpers and teachers” of mediating our collective grief?In this episode, we are honored to welcome Vivien Sansour, founder of the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Project—an initiative centered on caring for and preserving seeds as keepers of ancestral connection and models of subversive advocacy.Join us as Vivien shares about the systemic violence of disconnection and relational severance, the socio-economic pressures turning many historically food-centered farms into monocultural plantations of commercial tobacco for export, how Palestinian agriculturalists are standing up to reclaim food sovereignty, and more.

What might the histories of human and gray whale relations show us in terms of how the stories we tell shape the texture of our relationships to our more-than-human kin? How can adopting a plurality of narratives and cultural perspectives in and around a particular species disrupt the kinds of binaries that so often underly academic research methods? And what might a more diverse, accessible, and context-specific approach to field research look like with humility and deep-listening at its core?  Tune in to this episode with our guest, Anna Guasco, to explore these questions and more.

Join Gabes Torres, Anisa Sima Hawley, and Kamea Chayne as they discuss imagination, escapism, discomfort, and transformation. They explore diverse modalities in trauma processing, embracing discomfort as a catalyst for growth, and reimagining healing and community infrastructures. Delve into the intersection of capitalism, escapism, and imagination, and the importance of co-creating new systems for collective healing and sustainability.

Ang Roell, founder of They Keep Bees, discusses the need for localized, regionalized, and sustainable agriculture. The podcast explores the exploitation of honeybees in industrial agriculture, the power of collective organizing and resource mobilization, the importance of responsiveness and slowing down, and finding hope and connection through seeds.

In Green Dreamer's episode 413, we welcome Dr. Hilding Neilson, who shares with us his knowledge of the night skies and expertise as an astronomer traced by his Mi’kmaw lineage. Trained in the Western-scientific sphere of astrophysics and shaped by Mi'kmaq methodologies, Dr. Neilson aims to disrupt the Euro-centric claim on the night sky as codified through historical and modern Astro-colonial pursuits of objectivity, discovery, nomenclature. In demanding that Indigenous stories and systems of knowledge not only be heard but given a leading role on the stage of public policy making, Hilding invites us to reflect upon the value of night sky knowledge and ponder how it reflects and shapes life on earth, as well as how we choose to ethically engage with this knowledge moving forward.

In this episode, we are joined by A. Laurie Palmer: a writer, artist, and author of the book The Lichen Museum. In paying attention to lichen, Laurie looks to these symbiotic organisms as a template for enriching human and multi-species relationality. How might lichen, and their refusal to be scientifically categorized, offer a model of living that nurtures slowness, adaptability, and diversity? In what ways do they remind us how to practice mutual aid, and reconfigure narratives of dominance? Join us in conversation with Laurie as she invites us to dream and play with lichen through artistic explorations of multiplicity and prosperity. And join us in alchemize to be invited into imagination practices inspired by lichen ways of worlds.

In this episode, we welcome our guest Dekila Chungyalpa, who reminds us of our intra-dependant existence with all of life. Traced by a lineage of Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, Dekila weaves together teachings from her cultural and religious upbringing with her work as an environmental program director—from which she invites us to reflect on the ways in which Western conservation efforts fall short. In her work with faith-based organizations, Dekila prompts a dialogue around binary paradigms that persist even within environmental and activist movements.Join us as we dive further into Dekila’s world and unravel the intricacies of interdependence, deep time, and more.Episode song feature: Scissor-tailed Flycatcher by Ben White via Spirit House RecordsSupport our podcast: patreon.com/greendreamer

“My life goal is to get our governments to understand that Indigenous sovereignty and freshwater fish futures are completely linked.”In this episode, we welcome Dr. Zoe Todd, who invites us to think alongside a critical lens of Indigenous fish philosophy and examine relationships between Indigenous sovereignty and fish well-being in Canada. By asking how we can learn with fish as they “listen with their whole being,” Zoe prompts discussions on compassionate listening, the fundamental link between the future of fish wellbeing and Indigenous sovereignty worldwide, and their relationship with art as research practice.Tune in as we swim in waters of critical attunement to our wider ecological entanglements, as inspired by Zoe’s devotion to fish as companions of care.Music credit: Spirit House RecordsSupport our work: Patreon.com/greendreamer

In this episode, we welcome our guest Charlotte Wrigley, who invites us to contemplate the upheaval of extinction as a discontinuous process—a becoming, rather than an end. Charlotte’s inquiry into this matter straddles the edges of human relations, geography, climate science, and ethics against the backdrop of permafrost and its changing form. Unveiling the intra-connected worlds of thawing permafrost and de-extinction efforts, Charlotte waltzes with sticky tensions of a rapidly heating planet and the need to “cool down” expeditious techno-races. How might we learn from permafrost itself, as well as Arctic communities / biomes, and stay with the trouble of the unfixed and unpredictable?  Support our show: patreon.com/greendreamerGet the transcript and episode references: greendreamer.comSong feature: Concept of Love by Cheery via Spirit House Records

“Once folks start to pick away at that scab of understanding how much of a role microbes play in the lives of other things in good ways and bad ways temporally, spatially, physically, and spiritually, it really does open up a rich vein of a new dimension — to start considering the world around us and how we fit in that world.”In this episode we are joined by Siv Watkins, founder of the platform “Microanimism”. Inviting us to deepen our intimacy with the complex, multi-faceted microbial world, Siv deploys the lenses of science, mysticism, and animism to advocate for some of the smallest, and most mysterious, beings on the planet.We glimpse into the depth of entanglement between microbes (also referred to as “the smalls”) and their ancient relationship with cycles of life and death; sink into a purview of deep time; and explore questions of “what makes us human?”. Are “our” micro-biomes even “ours”?Join us as we “shrink down” to expand cosmic perspectives in relation to the reverent, and sometimes terrifying, microbial kin.(The musical offering featured in this episode is Scissor-tailed Flycatcher by Ben White.)Enjoying our podcast and want to see it continue? Join us on Patreon today starting at $2/mo: www.greendreamer.com/support