Nikki Hill with Sigh Moon on Botany as Archaeology, to Stop a Lithium Mine
Release Date: 09/29/2022
#87: Samuel Bautista Lazo and Mandalin Sattler on becoming good food for rock woman in Oaxaca, Mexico
The Ground Shots Podcast
Episode #89 of the Ground Shots Podcast was recorded in the gallery at Dixza Farm and Rugs in Teotitlan de Valle, Oaxaca Mexico, in early February. It was recorded with Samuel Bautista Lazo, past podcast guest, and Mandalin Sattler, whose music has been featured on the podcast in the past. Samuel is Benizaa (Zapotec) and lives Xiguie'a (Teotitlán del Valle), located in the Central Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. Samuel, his family and community come from a long line of weavers and farmers who have been tending the same land for thousands of years. This region is considered one of the cradles of...
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Episode #86: Wild Tending Series/ Samuel Bautista Lazo & Damián Jiménez Martínez on Tseé Xigie radio - ecology, wild tending, land politics (Español/English)
The Ground Shots Podcast
In this episode of the podcast, we talk about: the biodiversity of agaves, some of the issues with cultivation under pressure of capitalism, and private land ownership complexity of the commons in Oaxaca under pressure of modernity agave use for textiles, wild and rare species, and benefit of planting in polycultures we speak to ideas about wild tending in Oaxaca and the issues that come up when trying to reintegrate old ways of tending land in modern times the fact that oaks are not wild tending here or eaten but used to be long ago, what could people here learn from indigenous peoples to the...
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The Ground Shots Podcast
This episode of the Ground Shots Podcast is with Dr. Cara Judea Alhadeff. We did this interview in person this past summer in Paonia, Colorado. I have been sharing studio space with her partner Wild, a woodworker. This summer I was working on some carpentry in my trailer in the yard of the shop, and we retreated here for this conversation out of the heat and the hubub of the wood studio. Cara is a Mother, Artist, Author, Professor, Action-Philosopher, Environmental-Justice Organizer with writings, photography projects, performance art work with old and new...
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The Ground Shots Podcast
full shownotes and maps to reference in this episode: Episode #84 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Jeff Wagner out of Paonia, Colorado, director of Groundwork, a regional nonprofit educating about food systems in a changing world and more. Groundwork is a place-based education program working to deepen our society’s relationships with land, food, and water and to cultivate generative and regenerative ways of living and relating. Our mission is to inspire the cultural shifts needed for a sustainable future. Rising to meet the challenges posed by climate change, ecological...
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The Ground Shots Podcast
for full shownotes to this episode, go to Episode #83 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Callie Russell, an interview recorded in the field on a goat walk in New Mexico this past March. You may know Callie from the Alone show, though I have never watched it. We have known each other for many years and this past Spring we camped together for a few weeks by a river, with friends and her goats. We took time to record a conversation together for the podcast. The episode starts with us at camp with Rain, an old friend, and our banter getting ready to leave for a walk. If you want...
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The Ground Shots Podcast
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The Ground Shots Podcast
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The Ground Shots Podcast
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The Ground Shots Podcast
Family loving, community enthusiast Jacquie Hill is a plant person doing planty things on the Western Slope of Colorado. After practicing her blend of story-rich, folk herbal medicine for 10+ years, she took her studies to academia, earning a bachelor’s degree in botanical sciences from Bastyr University in 2019. While there she made the most of the opportunities and gleaned from teachers, mentors, and nature taking, every field class offered and immersing herself in the wonders of western Washington. With a deep love of opposing forces, Jacquie keeps one foot in the scientific as well as...
info_outlineEpisode #69 of the Ground Shots Podcast was recorded in southern Oregon this past August among old Juniper trees tucked just below a special Tableland mesa, with Nikki Hill of Walking Roots, and Sigh Moon assisting in the conversation.
Link to our website where you can donate to the podcast, and find the blog post on the podcast episode with photos and bios of Nikki and Sigh Moon as well as a few photos from where we recorded the episode: www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/lithiummine
We talk about:
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What is a tableland or mesa?
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Nikki’s intention in doing survey work at Thacker Pass, a place in Nevada slated to become a large lithium mine
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Questioning the sustainability of lithium
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Seeing wild gardens and patterns on the landscape that reflect historical relationships of indigenous peoples and places
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How deserts have been hard for European ancestored folks to conceptualize and how this makes it easy for us to consider it a wasteland to be inverted to perpetuate modern culture
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Considering certain lands sacrifice zones comes from the idea that we are separate from land and that we can actually have an effect
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the effects of private land ownership on the water table and water flows on land
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seeing through a lens of botanical archaeology
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how archaeology is often focused on ‘settled’ life evidence not nomadic life evidence
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how do we start to re-see why plants are on the landscape in relationship to human historical tending of those plants?
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the misinformed idea that hunter-gatherers (gatherer-hunters) were not sophisticated in their tending
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what is the point in caring about anthropogenic landscapes?
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Nikki’s plant survey process at Thacker Pass in Nevada and some of the plants she found like Yampah, Biscuitroots, Mariposa Lilies and more.
Links:
Nikki’s Website: Walking Roots
Counterpunch article by Nikki: “Botany as Archaeology, to Stop a Lithium Mine’
Nikki’s instagram page: walking.roots
Sigh Moon’s Instagram page: tenderwildeyes
Sigh Moon’s Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrmu0A77ja3o8DZ32ttOsIA/videosSave
‘The Ecology of Eden: An Inquiry into the Dream of Paradise and a New Vision of Our Role in Nature’ book by Evan Eisenberg, a book I read in college on critical ecology that feels relevant to this episode
“The Void, The Grid & The Sign: Traversing The Great Basin” by William Fox, all about concepts of void and land value in the Great Basin Desert, a fascinating book
“1491” and “1493” by Charles Mann, alternative histories to North and South America mentioning anthropogenic landscapes including ‘terra preta’ in the Amazon, mentioned on the podcast
Save Oak Flat and the Apache Stronghold Campaign
Angela Moles Ground Shots Podcast interview mentioned on the podcast: Episode #57: Gabe Crawford interviews Angela Moles P.h.D. on the rapid evolutionary responses of plants due to climate change, challenging scientific dogma
Past episodes of the podcast featuring Nikki Hill:
Episode #31: Wild Tending series / Nikki Hill and Gabe Crawford on the basics of wild-tending