Land Tenure & Community Governance – The Convergence

Indigenous Voices Panel

Magdelion Moondrop — Sat, 22 Sep 2018 23:44:28 +0000

Sweetwater will open the panel with a 30 minute talk on Decolonizing our Activism
To heal from historical trauma, you must first understand how colonization has impacted indigenous people. By acknowledging our collective past and focusing on the present healing often leads participants to become aware of historical barriers that can be effectively removed in a safe and comfortable environment.

In this panel we will hear from our Indigenous relatives, Sweetwater Nannauck, Cheryl Angel, Kanyon Sayers-Roods. We are honored to have them here. This will be one of our most powerful and well attended panels, so please put it on your schedule.

Emotional Literacy & Reading Human Landscapes

Magdelion Moondrop — Fri, 21 Sep 2018 05:50:30 +0000

Are you emotionally intelligent? Do you know what is going on inside yourself and others? Can you ‘read’ human landscapes like you read land systems? The dominant culture has not supported us in being connected with our emotions – indeed, we are often shut down, especially males. Permaculture meant to help us move forward into more sustainable paths, and has People Care as core ethic, and does talk about ‘invisible landscapes,’ but the place from which permaculture was taught and practiced has not always supported the development of emotional awareness of ourselves or others, or the skill of reading human landscapes.

A central aspect of permaculture is designing so that needs can be met in healthy, regenerative ways. Human needs and wants, and our ways of trying to get them met, are extremely complex and powerful ecologies, and affect almost all of our permaculture design work. Developing awareness and skill in emotional literacy, and being able to read human needs and patterns in the ‘Zone 00’ of others and ourselves, supports us in being more response-able permaculturalists. This interactive workshop will give powerful insight into human ecologies and help us lift up emotional intelligence, which is much-needed as we transition into the next age of consciousness and we grow a more wholistic understanding of permaculture landscapes & practices.

Presented By: Jillian Hovey

Pollinating the Permaculture Paradigm: Blooming Biodiversity’s Global Permaculture Journey

Convergence Program — Tue, 18 Sep 2018 22:26:55 +0000

Bloom and Anahata have travelled globally with their organization, the Blooming Biodiversity Permaculture network, living at and visiting a rich diversity of Eco-villages, intentional communities, indigenous farms, and Permaculture projects. Through their slideshow presentation, you will have the opportunity to dive into their journey and experience vibrant photos and videos of the Permaculture gems they have been to. They will share best practices, innovative inventions, inspiring models, and paradigm shifting lessons they have learned from the multitudes of positive impact centers, followed by an open solutionary discussion counsel and action plans.

Presented By: Robin Liepman & Anna Simone Combi

Access to Water, Access to Life

Convergence Program — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 21:44:08 +0000

A social, ecological and human rights perspective exploring themes such as environmental racism, social and environmental justice, landscape resiliency, and overall repair of the water cycle in today’s climate as it relates to water.

This panel assumes that water rights equate to the most basic human right to life. We will be looking at concepts that have lead to a global water crisis, where 1 in 4 people lack access to safe drinking water to be able to live.

“Right to Life” is defined not just for humans but for all life, including plants, animals, ecosystems, and microorganisms. Viewing policy reform not as a political entity but as an essential component to creating change.

A social, ecological and human rights perspective exploring themes such as environmental racism, social and environmental justice, landscape resiliency, and environmental, ecological, social, political, and structural repair of the water cycle in the modern day.

This panel intends to explore the frontlines of environmental consciousness: cultivating mindfulness in our relationship to water and discuss action steps that could lead toward a revolution where all beings have an absolute right to clean water.

Presented By: Water Now

2018 Convergence Panelists: Cheryl Angel, Cleve Steward, & Karuna Warren

Designing for Resilience

Convergence Program — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 19:39:40 +0000

Lets talk about how to use Permaculture Design that supports people and the planet, from the bottom up!

Brandi Mack, AKA, Mama B, will share her 5 steps to Resilient design that support people and the planet, with and infuses on highlighting melanated women and children.

FRIDAY Keynote Presented By: Brandi Mack

Introduction to Permaculture

Convergence Program — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 19:52:04 +0000

Laying an important foundation to the 2018 Permaculture Convergence, this intro class will give a brief overview of the origins of permaculture from the 1970s in Austrialia until the present in the US, with some focus on the SF Bay Area for the past 30 years, including ethics, principles, strategies and techniques for applied ecology.

Intro to permaculture course taught by Bay Area urban gardener and urban ecologist, seedsman and seed librarian, community gardener and community organizer Christopher Shein. He brings 17 years of teaching a PDC at Merritt College, many more years of teaching in community gardens and public schools, and knows he doesn’t know everything about permaculture or teaching or …
Christopher brings the most diverse students together (race, class, gender, etc…) to build the most plant and species diverse public gardens in the commons in urban SF East Bay. www.wildheartgardens.com, www.merrittlandhort.com

Presented By: Christopher Shein

Place Justice with City Repair

Convergence Program — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 02:28:22 +0000

Sharing Power through Co-Collaborative Placemaking

For this workshop, Ridhi D-Cruz and I will start by giving an overview of The City Repair Project. We will explain what the organization represents, how the Village Building Convergence (VBC) works, and why this event is part of the permaculture movement. Then, we will specifically describe how the VBC has helped marginalized communities stand up for social justice and equality. We will give examples of how we are building bridges of diversity and what communities can do to share power through co-collaborative placemaking.

Presented By: Ridhi & Ashley Bonn

Intentional Communities: The Unfolding Story

Convergence Program — Sun, 19 Aug 2018 22:36:33 +0000

A panel discussion on the intentional communities movement – past, present, and future.

Join us for a panel discussion on the future of the intentional communities movement. Where have we been, what is happening now, and how do we imagine the role of intentional communities into the future? Learn from community founders and network leaders. Bring your questions to this exploratory conversation.

Presented By: Cynthia Tina

Anchor The Dream

Convergence Program — Sat, 18 Aug 2018 02:54:01 +0000

A visionary playshop in which participants learn to leverage the Law of Attraction collectively to birth new earth realities as blueprints that enter and positively impact our collective consciousness with great integrity and love.

Anchoring The New Dream of Earth
Since 2005

ANCHORING THE NEW DREAM OF EARTH is a large group visionary stewardship process that activates us into our bliss and sense of connection with one another and all of life so that we can create new “blueprints” for earth Life.

From this place of harmony and mutual cooperation. People from all walks of life and religious traditions are invited to participate, with the understanding that we are celebrating our Unity in our Diversity, and connecting with the Universal Power and Presence of Love in non-religious yet intrinsically “spiritual” ways that are non-exclusive.

THE PROCESS FOLLOWS PARTICIPANTS’ PASSIONS ABOUT PARTICULAR EARTH-LIFE TOPICS, FOR EXAMPLE:

• How could our children’s education be the most loving, empowering, confidence building, joy inducing experience possible for them?
• Could politicians be World Servers?
• What do you want the environment to be like?
• How do people get well?
• Can all corporations become Earth Stewards, creating with sustainable technologies?
• Can all our technologies to be sustainable?
• What does it look like? What does it feel like?
• How could government be in its highest aspect based on harmony and love?
• How could international relations be at their highest level of harmony and mutual sustainability?
• And more.

The group discovers their passion for topics of earth life that are most alive for them at that present moment of the workshop.

WHAT’S YOUR VISION FOR THE BEST OF THE BEST POSSIBLE FOR LIFE ON EARTH?

Participates learn to retrieve Source Sanctioned Visions for Life on Earth and/or their Organization or Community in this Visionary Stewardship Playshop. Accolades for the experience have come in since its inception in 2005. Pods co-create a visionary theater piece to express this new vision for earth life, with the most fun ever! Dynamic, synergistic Reality Creation at its best.

Presented By: Chireya Dharma

Place Justice with City Repair Project

Convergence Program — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:57:38 +0000

We will explore case studies of placemaking work we are doing with marginalized communities.

City Repair has over 20 years of experience with grassroots, community-initiated placemaking in Portland, Oregon. Our model for building place-based empowerment is inspiring communities across the nation and even globally from countries like Canada, the UK and even Australia. Here in Oregon, however, our biggest learning edge is integrating a social justice lens to ensure that the people and the places that we are working with provide benefit to some of the most vulnerable groups in our community. For us it has meant working with People of Color in one of the most ethnically Caucasian cities and also with folks experiencing houselessness. We will share stories of placemaking with these communities and how they contribute to what we are calling Place Justice.

Presented By: Ridhi DCruz

Micro to Macro: Soil Science Made Easy with Matt Powers

Convergence Program — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:55:13 +0000

Learn Soil Science from the Micro to the Macro with Matt Powers for everyone in all contexts.

Trained 1:1 by world renowned soil expert Dr. Elaine Ingham to convey complex ideas to a K-12 audience, Matt Powers is an educator that can make soil understandable. Dive deep with Matt and learn about the world beneath your feet in and out of the garden sourcing Dr. Elaine’s work, Radical Mycologist Peter McCoy’s work, and dozens of experts from around the world as well as his own experience growing in 140F soils in Central Valley California. Join Matt for a fun, inspiring, and informative workshop on how to build soils, how to remediate soils, how to feed soil life, and how it all works micro to macro, and then learn how to apply the information to your own site!

Presented By: Matt Powers

Cultivating Resilience Through Defending the Sacred

Convergence Program — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 02:46:58 +0000

Speaking to lessons learned from her time at Standing Rock, indigenous grandmother Winona LaDuke reminds us, “I do not enjoy my time fighting bad guys, or as [John] Trudell would say ‘keeping the beast out of the garden”’, but someone has to keep the beast out of the garden, so someone can garden, and more of us need to keep the beast out of the garden, so that more people can garden.”

With this wisdom in mind, this panel of Indigenous activists, community leaders along with a white ally will dialog around what it means to defend the sacred in a time of socio-ecological crisis. To continue the above metaphor, how can those gardening come to the aid of those keeping the beast out of the garden? How can those tending the wild better support the water protectors and land defenders on the frontlines? What is the role of permaculture in defending the sacred? And, most importantly, how can we all stand more humbly in solidarity with Indigenous peoples of these lands who have been tending her sacredness for generations?

Speakers:

Shelly Covert is the Spokesperson for the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe. She sits on the Tribal Council and is community outreach liaison. She is also the Executive Director of the non-profit, C.H.I.R.P. (the California Heritage: Indigenous Research Project), whose mission is to preserve, protect and perpetuate Nisenan Culture. Shelly is a singer/song writer and tradition keeper within her Tribal group.

The Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribal homelands lay within the Bear and Yuba River watersheds and are the indigenous people who were here before the Gold Rush, survived, and remain in their ancestral homelands today. But, as a “terminated” Tribe, the Nisenan lost their last piece of land when their reservation was sold at auction in 1965. It has been a long-time-coming, but settling communities are finally seeing the value in ancient, Native landpractices and a new era of collaboration with Tribes has begun. The conversation is wrought with uncertainty but is a huge milestone for reclaiming the sacred and protecting the environment.

Cheryl Angel is a Sicangu Lakota spiritual activist dedicated to non-violent direct action and environmental justice. Years of activism led Cheryl to Standing Rock in 2016, where she became a community member of Sacred Stone Camp. She led prayer and ceremonies during the almost year-long occupation to stop the Dakota Access pipeline from infringing on Native rights, and destroying both fragile cultural treasures and clean water. Now she travels the world to share the message of decolonizing Unci Mahka, or Grandmother Earth and protecting her watersheds.

Desirae Harp is an advocate for water rights and indigenous land stuardship. She is a community organizer, singer/songerwriter, and educator. She is a member of the Mishewal Wappo (Ona*tsatis) nation from the central coast of California. She is the founder of the Mishewal Ona*tsaTis language revitalization program. She is the coordinator of the run4salmon campaign to restore the California water ways, salmon runs, and indigenous ways of life. She works for Indian People Organizing for Change to oppose the development of sacred sites and to advocate for California indigenous peoples to be at the forefront of discussions on climate change within the bay area.

Michael Wellman is a doctoral student in the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Revolving at the intersection of resistance, reskilling, and rewilding, his research encompasses the cultures of radical land defense, tending the wild, and traditional healing, where he is interested in what it means to embody the ecowarrior spirit in these times of the Great Turning. He currently resides on traditional mountain Maidu lands in the South Yuba watershed.

Moderated by:

Susan Juniper Park is grateful to be living on beautiful Chochenyo Ohlone ancestral lands (aka Oakland, CA). Originally from the Gyeongsang-Do providence of South Korea (where folks are known to be extra spicy) and long rooted in the East Bay, she is a radical activist who works at the intersection of social and ecological justice, practices anti-colonial solidarity, and facilitates group dialog. She is also a garden-based ecological educator for Elementary School students and devoted to rekindling ancestral Earth skills. Perhaps most dear to her heart, following a 20-year trajectory in healing and spiritual work, she is currently cultivating a justice-based, psycho-spiritual healing practice that honors the connection between individual struggles with systemic oppression, intergenerational trauma and displacement from ancestral lands.She is also a community organizer with the NorCal Resilience Network, an organization that is strengthening the connections between grassroots groups focused on community-based ecological solutions. NorCal Resilience Network is a partner organization to the 2018 Permaculture Convergence.

FairShare: The People’s Permaculture

Convergence Program — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 17:54:53 +0000

Interactive discussion that strategizes The People’s use of the permaculture power tool!

Come join Town and City Permaculture as they facilitate another interactive and invigorating workshop. That will implore participants to really delve into the question “What is Permaculture?” and how can the community use it a diverse and dynamic tool for building ecological economies of environmental equality.

Presented By: Sasha Shankar & Troy Horton

Ayurveda-A Human Experience on Planet Earth

Convergence Program — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 00:30:51 +0000

Our inner & outer landscapes are created by the elements; by listening, communicating and taking action, balance is possible.

Our human form is experiencing very similar imbalances as the earth itself. If we can learn to listen to the elemental symptoms of our bodies, perhaps we can better support the environment around us.
Why reinvent the elemental health wheel, when so many amazing cultures have already figured it out? Let’s back up and look at how we are all brilliantly designed maps, unique in nature, and be willing to listen to ourselves and act accordingly for the sake of balance and shared space.

Presented By: DeAnna Batdorff

Supporting the Cycle – Sustainability Practices that Encourage Community Resilience and Repair the Water Cycle

Convergence Program — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 17:08:54 +0000

An exploration of holistic water practices for communities and villages to explore the reparation of the water cycle

Introduction and exploration of sustainability practices that both repair broken parts of the water cycle, and increase water resilience in communities and villages to be prepared, conscious, and motivated to change the current pattern amidst an unknown future. Systems/Themes to be explored include: Setting up rainwater catchment systems on a micro level and also efforts made in whole villages, the importance of grey water systems, and water filtration systems to eliminate plastic water bottles practices to reduce water consumption. Discussion on the importance of soil health as it pertains to groundwater.

Presented By: Karuna Warren

Stephen Brooks

Chireya Fox — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 16:00:23 +0000

The founder and primary Director of Punta Mona, has been living in Costa Rica, since 1995. Stephen observed the problems facing small farmers and communities in Central America and Costa Rica due to mega-monoculture agricultural practices and loss of dynamic community. He strives to provide students, landowners, businesses and neighbors regenerative solutions and strategies to increase quality of life. Stephen is an avid and passionate ethnobotanist, plant collector, permaculture designer and educator, operator of education environmental and botanical tours, implements permaculture gardens and food forests on home and many hundred acre scales, and community developer. He is the co-founder of both Medicines from the Edge: a Tropical Herbal Convergence and Envision Festival.

Bringing Permaculture to Neighborhoods with the Resilient Hubs Initiative

Convergence Program — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 07:10:45 +0000

Learn about the Resilient Hubs Initiative, a collaboration between the NorCal Resilience Network and Daily Acts, is an exciting new model that uses permaculture principles to create create a network of homes, schools and neighborhood centers that are “ready for anything” – better prepared for natural disasters, climate change and other stresses in our community.

How can we bring permaculture into homes and neighborhoods? What are some effective strategies for neighborhood organizing using our permaculture know-how? How can local governmental agencies support permaculture and community resilience?

The first hour will describe the project and the organizations behind it, supported by a panel of representatives from community farms and homesteads who are part of the pilot project. The second hour will look at specific sites and how this model can be used to transform the site into a model Resilient Hub. The third hour will look at how this project can go viral, from looking at government agencies and other funding sources to getting media attention.

Presented By: Susan Silber

International Permaculture Slideshow Odyssey

Convergence Program — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 03:32:24 +0000

International Permaculturalist, Jillian Hovey, will take you on a journey of some of the best examples of permaculture and eco community projects from around the world. A leading edge practitioner, Jillian has lived and worked in over 35 countries across five continents. With humour and insight, Jillian will share from the wealth of experience & knowledge that she has gained on her path of service over 25 years. This will be a powerful tour of natural building, renewable energy, alternative waste treatment systems, edible landscapes and regenerative agriculture, spiritual & community centres, and more! You will hear real-life stories of people like you, and be inspired by ideas that you can bring to your homes, land, and communities. This ‘live documentary’ is the best of its kind, and has informed and inspired thousands of people around the world. Whether you are new to permaculture, or an old hand, this densely packed odyssey will leave you uplifted and bubbling with possibilities.

Presented By: Jillian Hovey

Reimagining the Commons: GENNA Alliance

Convergence Program — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 02:48:00 +0000

This session will offer practical tools and frameworks for how we can collaborate – based on the recent development of GENNA Alliance.

Collaboration is happening! Explore new collaborative potential within our regenerative movement. GENNA Alliance is a growing platform of individuals and organizations for a thriving communities network in North America. Five organizations have partnered to reimagined the Commons for practical application – shared agreements, resources, projects, and technology. Learn how you can engage, explore similar initiatives around the world, and network with fellow participants during this interactive session.

GENNA Alliance initial partners: Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), Foundation for Intentional Community (FIC), VillageLab, NuMundo, NextGENNA

Presented By: Cynthia Tina

Transition to Permaculture: Scaling Up for Community Resilience

Convergence Program — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 00:36:37 +0000

Learn how to effectively apply Permaculture ethics, strategies, and principles to build a thriving movement for community resilience right where you live.

The international Transition Towns Movement was founded in 2005 by UK-based Permaculture teacher Rob Hopkins in order to engage entire communities in implementing Permaculture solutions for a more resilient future. Since that time, the Transition Movement has spread to over 1,200 communities in 50 countries, including 163 official Transition Initiatives located throughout the US. These initiatives have been successfully revitalizing local food systems, strengthening local economies, reducing dependence on fossil fuels, and reweaving the torn fabric of community for more than a decade now. Come learn from Transition US Co-Director and certified Permaculture Designer, Don Hall, about how to effectively apply Permaculture ethics, strategies, and principles to build a thriving movement for community resilience right where you live.

Presented By: Don Hall