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

Green Dreamer is a community-supported, in(ter)dependent podcast exploring our paths to collective healing, biocultural revitalization, and true abundance and wellness *for all*. Curious to unravel the dominant narratives that stunt our imaginations and called to spark radical dreaming of what could be, we share conversations with an ever-expanding range of thought leaders — each inspiring us to deepen and broaden our awareness in their own ways. Together, let's learn what it takes to thrive — in every sense of the word.

408) Siv Watkins: Intimacy with the microbial world 09/28/2023

407) Patricia Kaishan: Lessons from fungi as queer companions 09/14/2023

406) Eshe Lewis: Black anthropology and streamlining storytelling 08/25/2023

405) Lama Khatieb: Reclaiming local knowledge for food interdependence 08/10/2023

404) Danel Ruiz-Serna: Living territories and the ecological violence of war 07/27/2023

403) Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: The political questions of science and technology 07/14/2023

402) Aparna Venkatesan: Protecting space as ancestral global commons 06/29/2023

401) Melissa K. Nelson: Living in storied and moral landscapes 06/17/2023

THANK YOU & WHAT'S NEXT... 06/05/2023

400) Anand Giridharadas: Expanding empathy and breaking political binaries 05/22/2023

399) Vince Beiser: The global sand trade and how it remade 'modernity' 05/12/2023

398) Helena Norberg-Hodge: Artisanal futures and economics of happiness 05/05/2023

397) Rosamund Portus: A preemptive mourning of bee decline 04/28/2023

397) Rosamund Portus: A preemptive mourning of bee decline “When I talk about extinction as a bio-cultural process, what I’m seeing or what I’m talking about is the fact that there’s lots of different species who are alive and who are working within a cultural entanglement which is shaping their capacity to either thrive or perhaps become endangered and go into decline... I see art as giving people a way to engage with that grief, and to engage with that emotional connection with the subject, but also to engage with a sense of agency over it.” In this episode, we welcome Rosamund Portus, an artist, writer and researcher of environmental humanities. Drawn to bees at an early age, by way of her exposure to gardening, Rosamund conducted her undergraduate dissertation on humans’ understanding of bee culture. She later pursued a Ph.D. in the social and cultural dimensions of bee population declines. In turn, Rosamund has gone on to complicate black and white “whodunit” narratives around species extinction, while advocating for creativity and art as pathways of relational becoming. Speaking from her context of living in the U.K., and through a lens of “bio-culturalism,” Rosamund is interested in how modern, consumerist, human culture (at least in the West) have become entangled with a perception of bee culture, particularly the trope and role honeybees in agricultural systems. She invites us to challenge what renders a “meaningful” life and death, which species get to matter within mainstream extinction dialogues, and how storytelling plays an important role in enriching our capacities of engagement with bees, other species, and ourselves. (The musical offering featured in this episode At the Edge of It by Oropendola. The episode-inspired artwork is by Cherie Kwok.) This episode was brought to you by our supporting listeners. Join us on Patreon to help us keep our show alive: www.greendreamer.com/support /episode/index/show/greendreamer/id/26677689

396) Staci K. Haines: Somatics for trauma healing and transformative justice 04/20/2023

395) Andreas Weber: The ecological dimension of love 04/13/2023

394) Vijay Prashad: Reviving collective life and scaling small gestures of care 04/06/2023

393) James Bridle: Artificial intelligence and the fallacy of a computerizable world 03/30/2023

392) Eben Kirksey: Boundless entanglements with the virosphere 03/23/2023

392) Eben Kirksey: Boundless entanglements with the virosphere “I like thinking with viruses because they’re constantly infecting us, changing our nature. Some of them are even changing our genome. We’re constantly in relation with the world around us even though we can barely perceive and understand all of this complexity.” In this episode, we are joined by anthropologist Eben Kirksey, who invites us to think and feel through a new wave of viral theory through a lens of multi-species entanglement. Through his insatiable curiosity about nature-culture, Eben humbly approaches the viral world as one that reflects the limitations of fixed or reductive categorization. Ultimately, he leaves us with an invitation to explore how radically re-thinking viral systems can offer alternative ways of approaching contemporary socio-political predicaments. He asks: how can we sit with the complexities of symbiotic assemblages amongst species, and what novel relationships are imperative to uplift in an age of extinction? About the guest: Eben Kirksey is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oxford where he teaches Medical Anthropology and Human Ecology. He earned his PhD at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and helped found one of the world's first Environmental Humanities programs at UNSW Sydney in Australia. Investigating some of the most important stories of our time—related to biotechnology, the environment, and social justice—led him to Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas. His books include Freedom in Entangled Worlds (2012) and Emergent Ecologies (2015)–plus The Multispecies Salon (2014), and The Mutant Project (2020), a book that follows some of the world’s first genetically modified people. (The musical offering featured in this episode Lose My Mind by RVBY MY DEAR. The episode-inspired artwork is by Luci Pina.) Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast. Join our Patreon and contribute a gift of any amount today to help keep our platform alive: greendreamer.com/support /episode/index/show/greendreamer/id/26313687

391) Enrique Salmón: Ancestral foodways that enrich local landscapes 03/16/2023

391) Enrique Salmón: Ancestral foodways that enrich local landscapes "I came up with the idea of ‘Eating the Landscape’ because I was thinking about our Indigenous ancestral foodways. It’s not just about food. It’s not just about nutrition. ‘Eating the Landscape’ is about this large, interconnected matrix of our relationship to place." In this episode, Enrique Salmón, Ph.D. guides us to see Indigenous foodways as parts of an interconnected matrix of our relationship to place. Introducing the concept of “kincentric ecology,” Enrique problematizes one-size-fits-all approaches to caring for the land. He also elaborates on why many Native peoples are opposed to memory banking as a way to preserve Indigenous knowledge. Having completed his dissertation on how the bioregion of his Rarámuri people of the Sierra Madres of Chihuahua, Mexico influences their language and thought, Enrique invites us to understand the layered meanings behind the phrase “Eating the Landscape”—looking at food not just as sources of nourishment but as avenues of growing one’s kinship. Ultimately, as opposed to the doom and gloom perspectives prevalent in mainstream environmentalism in regards to the role of humankind, Enrique leaves us with a calling of recognizing humans as a keystone species—where creation is not only a matter of what came before but an act of relational responsibility. About the guest: Enrique Salmón is the author of Iwígara: The Kinship of Plants and People and Eating The Landscape, a book focused on small-scale Native farmers of the Greater Southwest and their role in maintaining biocultural diversity. With a PhD. in anthropology from Arizona State University, he has been a Scholar in Residence at the Heard Museum and on the Board of Directors of the Society of Ethnobiology. Enrique has published several articles and chapters on Indigenous ethnobotany, agriculture, nutrition, and traditional ecological knowledge, and he teaches American Indian Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Cal State University East Bay. also serving as their Tribal Liaison. The musical offering featured in this episode is Flute Dance by Enrique Salmón. The episode-inspired artwork is by Cherie Kwok. Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast. Join our Patreon and contribute a gift of any amount today to help keep our platform alive: greendreamer.com/support /episode/index/show/greendreamer/id/26111250

390) Rosetta S. Elkin: Troubling mass tree-planting and afforestation 03/01/2023

389) Dany Celermajer: Multispecies justice and more-than-human entanglements 02/22/2023

388) Daniel Immerwahr: Empire remade in form through technology 02/15/2023

387) shakara tyler: Black farming as joyous, victorious, glorious 02/08/2023

386) Jen Telesca: The managed extinction of the giant bluefin tuna 02/01/2023

386) Jen Telesca: The managed extinction of the giant bluefin tuna “What I find worth remarking upon is the fact that the vast majority of people are so alienated from the Bluefin’s life world that they don’t know what an extraordinary creature she is—and instead just widely see her as a foodstuff, trafficked on the global market. It’s imperative for that worldview to change.” In this episode, we welcome Jennifer E. Telesca, Associate Professor of Environmental Governance in the Department of Geography, Planning, and Environment at the Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University, the Netherlands. Her work takes a critical approach to ocean studies, spanning the interests of environmental diplomacy, ethnographies of international law in society, the human–animal relationship, political economy, the politics of extinction, and science and technology in policymaking. She conducts fieldwork at the United Nations and in treaty bodies, diplomatic missions, and other sites scaled supranationally. Red Gold: The Managed Extinction of the Giant Bluefin Tuna (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) is Telesca’s first single-authored book. Its on-the-ground, first-person research has shown just how damned the lives of fishes are in the very world entrusted to care for them in ocean governance. Her second book on hydrothermal vents, tentatively titled, The Midnight Zone, invites readers to honor creatures in all their mysterious and seemingly impossible forms at sites in the deep dark sea—open to regulatory oversight—where scientists believe life on Earth began. Some of the topics we explore in this conversation include how the Giant Bluefin tuna went from being food for the poor to becoming a global delicacy symbolic of luxury, how fish have long been "an object through which global empires have been mediated," Jen's concerns with the scams and blue-washing of eco certifications in seafood, and more. (The musical offering featured in this episode Over It by RVBY MY DEAR. The episode-inspired artwork is by .) Green Dreamer would not be possible without direct support from our listeners. Help us keep the show alive by reciprocating a gift of any amount today! GreenDreamer.com/support /episode/index/show/greendreamer/id/25629462

385) Thom van Dooren: The evolving cultures of the more-than-human world 12/20/2022

384) Rebecca Giggs: The world as reflected in the whale 12/13/2022

383) Gabes Torres: Re-rooting therapy and re-membering community 12/06/2022

382) Min Hyoung Song: From everyday denial to everyday attention 11/22/2022

381) Stacy Alaimo: Our bodies are the Anthropocene 11/16/2022

380) Loren Cardeli: Who really feeds the world? 11/09/2022

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

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