confluence of medicine

cultivating ecooperatives and ceremony

What conditions generate the headwaters of change?

What supports us in bringing our movements and coalitions together?

How can we both honor and release the binaries that try to separate us?

Enter, Earth ceremony . . .

I often think that if everyone had access to Earth ceremonies we could heal supremacist mindsets and those devastatingly targeted by them now and for generations back.

My first experience in ceremony was with Olivia Chumacero the Anabolic Monument in downtown, close to the LA River and Tongva village known as Yaanga. In the center sand circle surrounded by native flora grown by Olivia, the farmers at FarmLab (mer!), and Everything is Medicine students, we were transported through altar, intention, sage, prayer, song, ancestor, water, and memory.

Logic, rationality, and the other Western science-mindedness released its need to control and “make sense” while multidimensional fields of simultaneous reality entered the field of perception. Experiencing Earth medicine practices whose cultural counterparts in my lineages have been lost for more lost for more than three generations on both sides of my family reverberated a homecoming in my being. Earth ceremony helps us come back to ourselves.

Ceremony was held by Olivia with protocol for spiritual and physical safety, permission by Tongva people, elder wisdom, and guidance. It landed so differently than experience white-led yoga practices where each person prayed to clear their personal Karma. It was a collective offering to Earth, by us as Earth.

An image of an Ofrenda altar to the ancestors by Olivia with eimers and the Metabolic Studio, downtown LA, or Yaanga, approx November 1, 2010

Going to a queermoon ceremony with Delia and Zena in Long Beach shortly thereafter opened the field even wider. In addition to West African ancestral practices and Southern Indigenous rituals via Queen’s grandmother, we also expanded, blended, and adapted ceremonies to uplift our identities beyond heteronormative gender binaries while honoring the rise of the divine feminine. Queerness is nature, is ancestral, and is inclusive of all gender and sexual expressions.

When I talk about divine feminisms, I don’t mean anti-men or post-men (although i get it when some people do lol). I speak to a balancing of the male dominance that has led to femicide, climate catastrophe, poverty in late-stage capitalism, fossil-fueled warfare, women having less than 80% of landholdings worldwide, and a majority male nation-state governments creating global crisis after global crisis.

I’m talking about divine masculinity uplifting and amplifing women’s voices, protecting women’s bodies, and the incorporation of ecowomanisms into every aspect of our lives. The male-female continuum is also empower when balanced with the whole gender-spectrum, including those who hold both equally, or one more than the other, regardless of the bodies they were born into.

Our gender is fluid like nature is fluid and queerness doesn’t take away from straightness nor cisgender nor masculinity. It’s all sacred because….

We are all from the same material in unique expressions. This oneness pulls us back into being a planet, which makes it easier to care for ourselves, our communities, and ecosystems.

Bringing planetary movements together opens more healing portals than have been active in most of our lifetimes. People remembering to connect to the power of themselves, feeling inspired to continue reorienting their lives, spiritualities, educations, economies, families, and governing structures to sovereign sustainability.

Lidagat, age 9, with our lemon balm harvest, or give-aways for the Confluence, Ohlone lands

So many folks don’t have access to land, nor Earth ceremonies. So many Black and Indigenous people and women were persecuted for these practices and they became lost, or went underground. The good news is it’s in our blood memory still (another concept I learned from Olivia). More and more cultures and communities are recovering their practices, or when orphaned from ancestral roots, we are relearning hybrid ones from the teachers and information we have access to.

A rule of thumb can be beginning in offering and gratitude for all that sustains your life. And closing in gratitude, as well. Incorporating the elements air, water, fire, earth all help, too. And special feathers, stones, plants that you feel a bond with. And people you feel safe with.

Community closing the portal at our 2nd Annual Ecocene Confluence, Feminist Center for Creative Work, Tongva Land, LA, Sunday June 22nd

This past weekend of convening brought tears, release of grief, witness of interdisciplinary brilliance, prayer for peace, collective ritual, healing, dancing, and joy. The LA community deserves this sustenance, as they are a front-line communty in climate crisis and militarized state oppression on Indigenous lands that have hosted migration for millenia. Follow to our Ecocene Loveletter and IG for forthcoming posts and pictures of the Confluence!

I’m so grateful to:

• Olivia for sharing the keynote eim session and bringing so many of us to Earth Medicine through her teachings and connected ceremony

• Ecocene stewards and participants, past and present, for collaborating so courageously to create the educations we want to see in this world

• ‘Ooxor ‘Aweeshko for supporting our children’s village all day, both days!

• Food not Bombs LA for feeding us

• Mycelia Market vendors sharing living examples of Earth-friendly, small business autonomy outside of capitalism

• Memoriver capturing audio journal and testimony from our hearts in the moment

• Ecocene workshop presenters inviting community to be prepared for survival, heal themselves with the elements, cultivate ecooperative economies, practice Everything a Medicine, and weave yucca fibers into cordage

• DIY PhD presenters showing up vulnerably to awe us with their in-process projects, journeys, experiments, and experiences of aligning their path with their deep callings

• Feminist Center for Creative Work for centering this and other expressions of woman, non-binary, and trans-led art and culture in Los Angeles for 10 years now!

• Lidagat Luna, for being a loving expression of her own divine energy, showing up and embodying multi-generational that makes me and her ancestors so proud!

Lidagat at our habitat and sea booth, where she sold out of her jewelry on Day 1!

Thank you, beloveds, for reading and supporting this habitat research and artist~mama~Earthworker!

Let’s root in the reality that there haven’t been this many humans tapping into Earth medicine and ancestral practices for several generations now. May this power be a critical mass of quantum healing for all.