“What if we could fashion a restoration plan that grew from understanding multiple meanings of land? Land as sustainer. Land as identity. Land as grocery store and pharmacy. Land as connection to our ancestors. Land as moral obligation. Land as sacred. Land as self. The story of our relationship to the earth is written more truthfully on the land than on the page. It lasts there. The land remembers what we said and what we did. Stories are among our most potent tools for restoring the land as well as our relationship to land. We need to unearth the old stories that live in a place and begin to create new ones, for we are storymakers, not just storytellers. All stories are connected, new ones woven from the threads of the old.” -Robin Wall Kimmerer
Ecofeminism Sees A Parallel Between The Earth & Womxn
The Womxn | Nature project explores through interviews and an ecofeminist lens, visual storytelling examining the connection between womxn and nature. Through a series of interviews with local womxn inquiring about their personal experiences, stories, and cultural ties to the Earth. The womxn that I interview are artists, mothers, activists, creators, teachers, and healers, no one is meant or presented as an expert, and each is sharing the truth of their authentic experiences. These are not experts in climate change or feminism, but these are experts of their own lived experiences, and that is what I am interested in sharing with the world, genuine wholehearted stories of womxn who have lived complexity, passionately, wholeheartedly. Womxn who care for others, this planet, the land they live on, and their culture and traditions. These interviews will be transformed into a combination of written and audio blogs, with a finished visual story-based art piece that will culminate in a larger art exhibition.
Throughout this project I am aiming to interview Womxn, from diverse racial and ethnic cultural backgrounds and gender identities. “Womxn” Is part of the new language being used in the western world to include Trans and Queer folks, Fems, Non-binary persons, and Cisgendered women. My goal is to get a view of womxn’s experience in the most holistic way possible. The reason that I gravitate toward ecofeminism as an umbrella term for this project is that it is a form of Intersectional feminism: Feminism which recognizes the overlapping identities across spectrums of class, race, ability, sexuality, gender, and economic status; which recognizes that power structures and systemic oppression differ across these many experiences; and which prioritizes diversity and inclusion. Within this, I also recognize that the history of feminism has included racism, transphobia, and gender binary views, and is not a perfect model but one that I hope will continue to grow and become more self-aware, just as I am through this process.
I believe in this time of radical climate change and social reform that all our current systems of operating be examined. I believe in the power of art and artists to be tools for investigation and change. Womxn are huge agents for change, and I want to uplift and highlight those in my community. I hope that this series will be empowering for womxn and will be eye-opening and transformative for myself, participants, and a broader audience. The earth is much more than just its human residents. I see this project as an opportunity to explore reciprocity between land, humans, and the more than human beings we share this world with. Through this work I hope to remind people and womxn in particular of their stewardship and connection to the Earth. I also anticipate hearing from womxn about the powerful work they already are doing in the world for the preservation and stewardship of nature.
This exhibit will be up for Womxn's history month in March & April 2021, at the Akashic Visions Gallery, 517 Searls Ave, Nevada City, CA 95959
This series is ongoing and will continue after the physical exhibit. Hosted here on my blog and for those who cannot see the exhibit in person.
Many of these artworks are gifts to participants, to honor them and their stories, and a few are for sale with permission from participants.
What is EcoFeminism?
Ecofeminism, also called ecological feminism, is a branch of feminism that examines the connections between women and nature. It closely looks at the intersectionality of human impact on the earth and the ways in which patriarchy, gender inequality, capitalism, and value hierarchy negatively affect the planet and all living beings. This environmental theory seeks to examine the current paradigm and deconstruct systems that subordinate women, all oppressed groups, and the earth.
This series is about REMATRIATION
Noun. rematriation A return to a spiritual way of life with respect for Mother Earth.
“The Indigenous concept of Rematriation refers to reclaiming of ancestral remains, spirituality, culture, knowledge, and resources, instead of the more Patriarchally associated Repatriation. It simply means back to Mother Earth, a return to our origins, to life and co-creation, rather than Patriarchal destruction and colonization, a reclamation of germination, of the life-giving force of the Divine Female.” - Rowen White
“Rematriation; This term describes an instance where land, air, water, animals, plants, ideas and ways of doing things and living are purposefully returned to their original natural context–their mother, the great Female Holy Wild.” -Martin Prechtel
How Important Are Stories?
“Before there was the Word, there was the land, and it was made and watched over by women. Stories from almost every culture around the world tell us that once upon a time it was so. For many native tribes throughout America, Grandmother Spider continually spins the world into being. For the Andean peoples of South America, Pachamama is the World Mother; she sustains all life on Earth. In Scotland and Ireland, the Cailleach – the Old Woman – made, shaped and protects the land and the wild things on it. In these and other Celtic nations, Danu gave birth to all the other gods and was mother to the people who followed. Women: the creators of life, the bearers of the Cup of knowledge and wisdom, personifying the moral and spiritual authority of this fertile green and blue Earth. Do you remember those days? Me neither. Other indigenous cultures around the world may still respect and revere the feminine, but we Western women lost control of our stories a long time ago. The story which I was given to carry as a very young child, the story which both defined me and instructed me about the place I occupied in this world, accorded no such significance to women. In this story, woman was an afterthought, created from a man’s body for the sole purpose of pleasing him. In this story, the first woman was the cause of all humanity’s sufferings: she brought death to the world, not life. She had the audacity to talk to a serpent. Wanting the knowledge and wisdom which had been denied her by a jealous father-god, she dared to eat the fruit of a tree. Even worse, she shared the fruit of knowledge and wisdom with her man. So that angry and implacable god cast her and her male companion out of paradise, and decreed that women should be subordinate to men for ever afterwards.
The stories we tell about the creation of the Earth and the origins of humankind show us how our culture views the world, our place in it, and our relationships with the other living things which inhabit it. And the key consequence of this particular creation myth is a belief, prevalent now for centuries in the West, that women are naturally disobedient temptresses who must be kept firmly in their place. We are weak-willed, easily persuaded to think or do evil, faithless, untrustworthy, mendacious, and motivated purely by self-interest. The story of Eve in the Book of Genesis is the underpinning for countless measures which have limited the actions, rights and status of women. No matter what women might achieve in the world, the fundamental message of the sacred texts of the world’s largest religious grouping, which for 2,000 years have supplied the foundational beliefs of our Western culture, is that men should not trust women, and that women should trust neither themselves nor each other.” -Sharon Blackie (If Women Rose Rooted)
“On one side of the world were people whose relationship with the living world was shaped by Skywoman, who created a garden for the well-being of all. On the other side was another woman with a garden and a tree. But for tasting its fruit, she was banished from the garden and the gates clanged shut behind her. That mother of men was made to wander in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not by filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the branches low. In order to eat, she was instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast.
Same species, same earth, different stories. Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness. One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven.
And then they met—the offspring of Skywoman and the children of Eve—and the land around us bears the scars of that meeting, the echoes of our stories.”
-From Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Some Questions for Participants:
How do you feel connected as a womxn to nature or disconnected?
Do you see your identity as a womxn to be linked to nature? How?
Do you think there is a corollary between the way womxn and nature have been portrayed and exploited currently and throughout history? If so how?
Do you view nature or this planet as a living being and deserving of rights?
Do you think that humans should be elevated above other life on this planet?
How does the intersectionality of your, culture, race, class, gender identity, ability, sexual orientation, location, and religion inform your connection to nature?
Is there some way in which your work in the world helps to protect and empower the planet and or womxn, please share about this?
What does ecofeminism mean to you?
From: Ecofeminism, by Vandana Shiva &Maria Mies
Should women see a relationship between patriarchal oppression and the destruction of Nature in the name of profit and progress? How can they counter the violence inherent in these processes?
Should they look to a link between the women's movement and other social movements?
Interviews|Artwork
Books & Resources For Further Exploration:
Ecofeminism: Toward Global Justice and Planetary Health
Podcast: ECO CHIC 28: ECOFEMINISM: Women + The Environment
”The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution” by Carolyn Merchant
”If Women Rose Rooted: A Life-changing Journey to Authenticity and Belonging” by Sharon Blackie
“Dreaming the Dark : Magic, Sex, and Politics” by Starhawk
“Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation” by Silvia Federici
“Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation” by Ivone Gebara
“Ecofeminism (Critique. Influence. Change.)” by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva
“Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants” by Robin Wall Kimmerer
“Medicine Stories” by Aurora Levins Morales
“Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects” by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown
“Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene” by Donna Haraway