Cultivating Culture

a 9-week online course on ancestral repair, reclamation & renewal

the next cohort begins on october 13, 2024

Join in kinship and life-affirming experiences to recover our indigenous marrow and transform our ancestral inheritances into liberatory futures.

What does it mean to be human?

To spring forth from ancient and enduring lineages, known and unknown?

What does it mean to know that this breath, yes, this one (pause… notice your inhale… let it deepen into a long, s l o w exhale…) is an outcome of countless beings that conspired for your survival and arrival to this precise moment. Here and now. As these words meet your eyes and digest through the miraculous mechanisms of your mind, settling into your tissues and bones.

To be alive is to be a vessel for infinite wisdom and intelligence encoded into your DNA through the many lifetimes lived before you.

You.

Singular.

Sacred.

Integral thread in the fabric of human existence.

What does it mean to forget ourselves?

To become lost to – or severed from – the magic and medicine of our ancestry as something both past and still living?

What does it mean to be separated from the grand story humanity is writing?

The cacophonous and all-consuming forces of systemic and structural oppression drown out the whispers of our unique cultural inheritances that knew how to live in solidarity and cherish diversity. These forces break the sacred, inherent bonds woven between all beings and deny the truth that our wellbeing, our freedom, and our thrival is bound up with each others’.

The art of finding and remembering ourselves, is a vital component of reclaiming ourselves as active participants in the shaping of more possible collective futures. As we position ourselves in the truth of our stories we come closer to our common humanity — a critical step toward dismantling all that aims to divide and oppress. Through this work, we responsibly release systems of separation and rebuild broken solidarity to nourish the seeds of collective liberation.

This experience is for all people who are drawn to composting internalized cultures of oppression whatever your background. This space wants to hold you at the intersection of your identities.

A baseline understanding of one’s relationship to privilege within dominant culture is important to join us on this journey.

"It has been so incredible to be part of a community that's all asking the same questions with a shared understanding of the challenges we're facing, shared grief, shared sensitivities, and shared dreams. I think I felt alone in these questions for so long. And that's so frustrating, because they're questions that permeate every moment of my existence. "Who am I? Where do I belong? What is my gift? What is asking to be healed? Where am I going? Where did I come from?" There's no way to dream in a new world without asking these questions.Otherwise, I keep recreating the old world and I just can't do that anymore."
–Aviva

We meet at the crossroads of our initial knowings.

We may not know where to begin, we may not have many connections to our past, we may feel overwhelmed. Dominant culture has left us with sparse and frayed threads of our heritages, has dispossessed us of our ancestral wisdoms, has extracted from us to assimilate us, and has forced us to neglect, hide, or abandon our ancestral truths.

We also compassionately recognize that our ancestors made decisions to survive. They may have chosen to participate in dominant culture, and this was the only way for the spark of us to be here, now, but this also affords us the opportunity to make different choices. No matter your heritage or identity, this is our work to do together.

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
– James Baldwin

“All of us have ancestral memory of what it’s like to live connected, interdependent lives. We may be cut off or too far away from those traditions to claim them, but we can listen to our needs, our longings, and through ritual, rite, and practice build a way of being in the world that honors and makes tangible our connections to one another, to nature, and to spirit.”
– Mia Birdsong

We venture forward by plunging deeper.

This is an invitation to turn inward and look backward, so that we can move forward. We will:
dig into our roots, lineages, origin stories, and ancestral journeys of biological and chosen elders and ancestors that enabled us to be here today to develop a personal ancestral anthology in whatever formation feels best to you
gather the treasures, secrets, wisdom, medicine, and magic suppressed, stored, and saved for us—recipes, songs, tales, dialects, lifeways—as guidance, lessons, and ways of being that can open portals of liberation
retrieve these artifacts and ourselves simultaneously
be hospice workers for dominant culture
rediscover technologies of resilience, belonging, and thriving in diverse communities
As we journey into our past, we tether each other to present time, helping us come back to ourselves, make sense of what we learn, and reorient continuously to toward healing, integration, liberation, and possibility.
***In community, we will* *cultivate culture through ceremonial inquiry, collective sense-making, and creative expression as a way to remediate our soils toward personal and collective flourishing.***

save your space

"I was entirely transformed by our time together. My heart has possessed me. When we first began these sessions just twelve short weeks ago, I didn't know how to connect with myself, with others, or with the potential futures I was envisioning. You set me on a path that led me beyond the abuse and erasure that shaped my ancestors for generations. Then you showed me how to make my own way. Our ceremonies and love for one another liberated me from patterns of behavior, much self-doubt, and memories of loneliness that made me a stranger to my own heart for a very long time. Furthermore, these practices helped me envision new, heart-centered ways of being that immediately became my reality."
– Clara

“I want to acknowledge that some of the first Indigenous People’s that were forced into hiding were the medicine women of Old Europe. Let us reclaim our Earth Selves no matter what ‘race’ you are and do it soon! The earth may depend on it.”

— Lyla June

Program Arc

GATHERING

Greeting present selves

Setting our container, greeting our community

2. Connecting to place

Meeting our more-than-human kin, cultivating reciprocity

3. Welcoming perspectives

Listening to ancestors, opening to guidance

ALCHEMIZING

4. Healing through inquiry

Embodying truths, holding contradictions

5. As within, so without

Situating the personal and the collective

6 Burning and blooming

Releasing ∞ seeding ∞ transforming

INTEGRATING

7. Dreaming possible futures

Envisioning personal and collective liberation

8. Navigating new paths

Harvesting resources, harnessing tools

9. Closing our experience

Integrating lessons, affirming connections

"I was here for the journey and it blew my mind. Three practices stood out the most: the family anthology allowed me to map out and see a big picture of all the elements I wanted to bring into this practice, digest, understand, rewrite and reclaim; the relative interview helped me root into the connections and ways things are passed through generations in a really tangible form as well as more deeply connect with my grandma; the ceremony brought so much together and solidified much of my thinking throughout the journey and allowed me a place to let go and reclaim in community; all such a powerful combination. The ways it was such a somatic, bodily experience at the core rather than an intellectual exercise are what I’m most grateful for. The impact was profound. It felt like I moved so much through the body and reconnected to my intuitive knowing and being. Overall I feel so much more expansive in my heart and in my entire body."
– Julie

Program design:

Intimate community: There will be no more than 13 participants in the program. This helps to build trust, a sense of safety, and enables deeper relationships.
Weekly gatherings: Nine two-hour facilitative co-learning full-group live sessions.
Practices, tools, and prompts: Guided meditations, somatic/embodiment practices, creative expression prompts, critical inquiry, storytelling, divination tools, rituals, ceremony and more.
Weekly materials: A companion document updated weekly to revisit at your own pace with invitations to deepen your practice between sessions and supplemental articles, podcasts, and other resources for additional learning.
One 1:1 support session: for deeper support and integration during your experience.
Online gathering space: A platform to gather, share, and communicate with fellow community members throughout the journey together.

Time & Place

Start + End: The next cohort will launch on Sunday October 13, 2024
Frequency & Length of Sessions: 2 hours weekly, 4-6 pm MST
Place: Virtually on Zoom

enroll here

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

— Albert Einstein

What to expect:

A thoughtfully nourished community of support and companionship that moves at the speed of trust with whom you can sit in experimental exploration and provocative discussion
Tools and resources to support you in tangibly rediscovering information and building and strengthening your relationship with your ancestors
Explorations of physiological, spiritual, psychic, political, economic, historical, and environmental intersections with ancestry
Questions and prompts for inquiry and creative expression (writing, movement, film, music, collage, watercolor, whatever calls to you…) with opportunities to exchange/share at your discretion
Somatic/embodiment practice: trust in the inherent wisdom and healing within each of our bodies, and in the collective body
Guided meditation, visualization, prayer, ritual, and ceremony
Agency and autonomy in your path to participate as you feel comfortable
Opportunities to incorporate your unique gifts, practices, traditions, rituals, ceremonies and other offerings to make the experience yours
Emergence: we can’t quite know what this will be or what it wants to be; we will dive into the mystery together, let it be changed and allow it to change us, to generate the experience that we each need at this particular time and place

"I feel that, as Joy Harjo puts it, the ‘post-colonial insecure jitters’ have simmered down a bit within myself. I felt so many things come up to be released, healed, and held throughout this experience. I feel a deeper connection to my ancestors, grace and accountability held hand in hand for my family, and a richer groundedness of self. I feel more connected to the life and World that I wish to exist in and create communally, and that I am a loved and important part of that World. I am looking more to chosen ancestors as well, people who I see living radiantly and shamelessly, who remind me that creating the World I wish to be a part of starts with showing up authentically and loving the places that I have held shame within myself."
- Robin

Payment details

While actively working to discontinue the horrors of capitalism, I acknowledge that we remain entangled within this system. This experience is committed to contributing to a systemic shift toward an economic formation that composts the toxicity of white-supremacist, patriarchal, hierarchical, colonial, and extractive capitalism as a continuous practice. Your financial contribution amplifies this in critical ways:

Quality over quantity: Capitalism pressures us to scale quickly, but this work insists on moving in contrast to that pace. This pricing is reflective of a devotion to the beauty of small and slow.
A deep personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal investment: This in-depth experience is designed to support you throughout your lifetime. Think of it like investing in an heirloom treasure that will benefit generations.
Redistribution Commitment: 10% of your contribution will be donated to support Black- and Indigenous- led community organizing and land re-matriation projects.
Sliding Scale: This program is offered at a sliding scale of $325 - $525. This range was chosen with significant consideration. I hope to provide access to this program in a way that is manageable and enables agency. Please choose the price point that feels right for you with some guidance to consider:
- your personal circumstances, resources, and access to income and financial wealth, both current and anticipated
- the people counting on your financial livelihood including dependents and community members
- the socio-economic conditions of your locale (relative to other places in your country and in the world)
- the ways you have or have not been granted unearned advantage by the systems we live within
- the ripple effect of this investment on yourself, your family, your community, and beyond
- that your offering can be a prayer — a small enactment of your commitment to restoring balance and right relationship
- what would feel joyful to give!
  *note: you are enthusiastically invited to exceed the high end of the scale. Paying on the higher end of the sliding scale, or beyond it, makes this program more accessible for participants who would not be able to join otherwise and increases our redistribution contribution.
Payment Plans/Alternatives: Whether or not you can pay, no one is turned away. Please reach out if none of the above options work for you and we can discuss alternatives such as a payment plan. Limited scholarship options are available for those who need it.

*note: you are enthusiastically invited to exceed the high end of the scale! Paying on the higher end of the sliding scale, or beyond it, makes this program more accessible for participants who would not be able to join otherwise and increases our redistribution contribution.