Future Primitive

Author and filmmaker Helena Norberg-Hodge is the founder and director of ISEC. A pioneer of the ‘new economy’ movement, she has been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecological well-being for more than thirty years. She is a widely respected analyst of the impact of the global economy on identity, community and local economies, and is a leading proponent of ‘localization,’ or decentralization, as a means of countering those impacts.

Since 1975, she has worked with the people of Ladakh, or “Little Tibet,” to find ways of enabling their culture to meet the modern world without sacrificing social and ecological values. Trained as a linguist, she was the first Westerner in recent times to master the Ladakhi language, and co-produced the first Ladakhi-English dictionary. Her book, “Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh” has been described as “an inspirational classic,” and sold almost half a million copies. She is on the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, and is a co-founder of both the International Forum on Globalization and the Global Eco-village Network.

www.localfutures.org

Helena speaks with Joanna about the pressure of globalization on traditional cultures, … the relationship between beautiful, healthy and sustainable, … local communities and economies as a sustainable alternative to global consumer culture, … the connection path of community and nature, … and her latest film as co-director: “The Economics of Happiness”…

Music: “Part 8” (from Salzau. Music on the Water) by Danielsson/Dell/Landgren

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Kimerer LaMothe, Ph.D., is a philosopher, dancer, and scholar of religion who lives with her partner and their five children on a farm in upstate New York. After earning a masters degree in Christianity and Culture from Harvard Divinity School and a doctorate in Theology of the Modern West from Harvard University, LaMothe taught at Brown and then Harvard Universities. She received fellowships for her work in religion and dance from the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study and the Center for the Study of World Religions; and is an award-winning author of several books, including What a Body Knows: Finding Wisdom in Desire, Nietzsche’s Dancers: Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, and the Revaluation of Christian Values, and her latest, Family Planting: A farm-fed philosophy of family relations.

www.vitalartsmedia.com

Kimerer speaks with Joanna about our basic human impulse to connect with one other and the natural world,, attuning to the bodily self, the “sting of impossible desire”, thinking and bodily movement, the rhythms of nature, ecstasy and natural birth…

Music: “End” (from Ibero-Caucasian Style) by The Shin

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Joan Halifax is a Zen Buddhist Roshi, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver, and the author of several books on Buddhism and Spirituality. She currently serves as abbot and guiding teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a Zen Peacemaker community which she founded in 1990. In the 1970s she collaborated on LSD research projects with her ex-husband Stanislav Grof, in addition to other collaborative efforts with Joseph Campbell and Alan Lomax. She is founder of the Ojai Foundation in California, which she led from 1979 to 1989. As a socially engaged Buddhist, Halifax has done extensive work with the dying through her Project on Being with Dying (which she founded). She is on the board of directors of the Mind and Life Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated in exploring the relationship of science and Buddhism.

Roshi Joan speaks with Joanna about aging and death, engaged Buddhism and systemic activism, personal and social transformation, the historic significance of LSD as a Dharma door, embodied compassion with dying people, speaking truth to power…

Music: “Song without words to Bohdana Pivnenko, I.-Elegy”  (from Fleeting Melodies) by Valentin Silvestrov {Bohdana Pivnenko (violin) and Valeriy Matiukhin (piano) }

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John Seed is founder and director of the Rainforest Information Centre in Australia.

www.rainforestinfo.org.au

Since 1979 he has been involved in the direct actions which have resulted in the protection of the Australian rainforests. He has written and lectured extensively on deep ecology and has been conducting Councils of All Beings and other re-Earth ing workshops  around the world for 25 years. In the US, his workshops have been hosted by Esalen, Omega, Naropa and the California Institute of Integral Studies. With Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming and Professor Arne Naess, he wrote “Thinking Like a Mountain – Towards a Council of All Beings” (New Society Publishers) which has now been translated into 10 languages. He is an accomplished bard, songwriter and film-maker and has produced 5 albums of environmental songs and numerous films www.rainforestinfo.org.au/video.htm

From 1984 to the present he has traveled around the world each year with roadshows raising awareness about the plight of the rainforests and raising funding for their protection. In 2007 he launched the Rainforest Information Centre’s climate change campaign and has offered “Climate Change, Despair & Empowerment” presentations and workshops in Australia, Canada and the US. www.rainforestinfo.org.au/climate/roadshow.htm

John speaks with Joanna about “climate change, despair and empowerment”, the evolutionary importance of human feeling, working ecologically with Nature, his experience in the reforestation project at Arunachala, experiential tip ecology practices,  Earth Changes, his present work, his love of the earth…

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For 25 years Mark Winne was the Executive Director of the Hartford Food System, a private non-profit agency that works on food and hunger issues in the Hartford, Connecticut area. During his tenure with HFS, Mark organized community self-help food projects that assisted the city’s lower income and elderly residents. Mark’s work with the Food System included the development of a commercial hydroponic greenhouse, Connecticut’s Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, several farmers’ markets, a 20-acre community supported agriculture farm, food and nutrition education programs, and a neighborhood supermarket.

Winne now writes, speaks, and consults extensively on community food system topics including hunger and food insecurity, local and regional agriculture, community assessment, and food policy. He also does policy communication work for the Community Food Security Coalition. His essays and opinion pieces have appeared in numerous newspapers, organizational and professional newsletters and journals across the country. He is the author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty (Beacon Press 2008) and Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart Cookin’ Mamas: Fighting Back in an Age of Industrial Agriculture (Beacon Press, 2010). He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

www.markwinne.com

Mark speaks with Joanna about the food system and emotional connectedness, freedom from the industrial food system, active citizen engagement, re-learning cooking skills as a life-changing shift, the nightmare of the industrial slaughterhouses, food and reinvigorating democracy…

Music: “Adagio” (from String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters”) by Leos Janacek.

Note: A special thank you to Pam Roy and FarmToTable for making this interview possible.

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From a lineage of 15 generations of learned practitioners of the Krishna Yajur Veda, Shri Vivek is the main teacher and principal of Sri Krsna-Yajurveda Pathasala, a school in Satara, India, which specializes in the revitalization of the Oral Tradition of the Vedas. Shri Vivek is an accomplished Vedic astrologer and is widely known for his evocative Vedic chanting and his love of performing yajna (Vedic fire ritual). In addition, he is recognized for his accessible and fascinating explanations of Vedic philosophy, ritual and culture.

www.vedikaglobal.org/vedika_gurukula/faculty/SriGodbole.html

www.ancientwisdomrising.com

Shri Vivek speaks with Joanna about the Vedic tradition, the fire ritual, retrieving our relationship with Mother Earth…

Music: “We are the Ones“, live music from the conference

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Desa Van Laarhoven joined the Marion Institute in 2006 after volunteering to organize the first Connecting for Change: A Bioneers by the Bay conference.

She has been the Executive Director since 2007, and works assiduously to oversee and develop the programs and Serendipity projects of the Marion Institute. Desa has her B.A. in Biology with a minor in Environmental Science from Stonehill College. Before her work at the Marion Institute, Desa spent time volunteering for both the Americorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC*) where she was awarded the total commitment award from the southeast campus and the California Conservation Corps (where she lived in the woods for a few months bathing in a stream— seriously;). She firmly believes in the work she does, this passion was recognized in 2009 when she was awarded the Massachusetts SouthCoast Woman of the Year along side the late Senator Edward Kennedy. In addition, Desa spends a few weeks every year in Costa Rica at Rancho Mastatal, a sustainable education center, working to empower the community to live in a more restorative manner.

www.marioninstitute.org

Desa speaks with Joanna about her commitment to the environment through her work as executive director of The Marion Institute, a member based non-profit that acts as an incubator, dedicated to identifying, promoting programs and serendipity projects that seek to find a solution for the root cause of an issue, both on a global and local level, in the realms of sustainability and social justice.

Music: “Second Sense” (from Insides), by Jon Hopkins

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Jason Kirkey grew up in the North Atlantic watershed of Massachusetts in a small town north of Boston. He moved to Boulder, Colorado where he attended Naropa University and in 2007 obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in “Interdisciplinary Studies with concentrations in Contemplative Psychology and Environmental Studies.” Throughout his undergraduate career he was also heavily influenced and inspired by deep ecology, ecopsychology, Buddhism, and the Shambhala tradition of enlightened warriorship as taught by Chögyam Trungpa.

He has released three collections of poems, Portraits of Beauty (2006), Songs from a Wild Place (2007), and The Ballad of the Sea-Sweet Moon and Other Poems (2008).

In late 2008 Jason completed a manuscript entitled The Salmon in the Spring: The Ecology of Celtic Spirituality which deals with the themes of Irish mythology and the re-invention and integration of the human species into consonance with the living cosmos. It draws heavily on ecological studies, mythology and folklore, and the nondual mystical traditions.

Most recently Jason has moved to San Francisco to study at the California Institute of Integral Studies in the “Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness” program. He is in the early stages of writing a fourth collection of poems and is developing experiential programs in order to bring his work with Place, Nature, Soul, and Story to the public.

http://www.jasonkirkey.com

Jason speaks with Joanna about nature, soul, storytelling, ecological mysticism and his own initiatory experiences from the diferent facets of the Irish Dreamtime

“We can’t engage with the entire universe, or with the aspect of our being that is the universe until we start engaging with our local identity, our local place, our local culture, our ecosystem, through that engagement, we can find the larger story, but it has to start with the local wawtershed, and finding our own story there, before finding the Big Story.”

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Matthew Hornback is a Licenced Massage Therapist and Health Care interpreter. He is currently working with Gender Alchemy and more recently with Earth Medicine, a project to restore a healing relationship between humans and the sentient land, and a path to reconcile a disconnected and abusive species. He is also working with Red Lightning, a Gender Alchemy camp at Burning Man, with a focus on the Healing Domes and Earth Medicine. He hopes to, soon, dawn Earth Medicine as a 501(c). http://forloveoflife.wordpress.com

Matthew speaks with Joanna about defending the forest, healing the individual/collective shadow, transmissions from the medicine teacher plants, his experiences with the Forest Being…

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Pam Montgomery is the originator of Green Terrestrial Herbal Products of Vermont and was one of the founding members of the Northeast Herbal Association where she served as their president for four years. For a decade, Pam was on the Executive Council of the Board of Directors of United Plant Savers, an organization dedicated to preservation of our native medicinal plants. Pam has been organizing the Green Nations Gathering for nineteen years and has presented the Spirit Healing Conference and the Healing With Flowers Conference. She teaches workshops internationally on herbal medicine, Plant Spirit Healing, and spiritual ecology.  Pam is the author of “Plant Spirit Healing; A Guide to Working with Plant Consciousness” and “Partner Earth; A Spiritual Ecology”, and a contributing author in “Planting the Future”.

Pam speaks with Joanna about developing an intimate relationship with plants / beyond Gaia theory / the value of stillness /  the Great Healing .

http://www.partnereartheducationcenter.com/index.htm

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Craig Chalquist, PhD is a core faculty member in the School of holisitic Studies at John F. Kennedy University. He has worked as a family therapist, conflict resolution facilitator, lecturere, and group facilitator, He earned his PhD at PAcifica Graduate Institute, where he studied depth psychology with an ecological approach.

For his doctoral work he explored the history of California one mission city and county at a time while inspecting its geography, ecology, infraestructure, culture, lore, and imaginal life to synthesize a “psychoanalysis of place” to trace connections between the trauma and health of the land and the symptoms and syndromes of its inhabitants. He has written, among other books, “Terrapsychology: Reengaging the Soul of Place”, and is co-editor with Linda Buzzel-Saltzman, of “Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind”. See: http://www.chalquist.com/

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Vandana Shiva, physicist, feminist, philosopher of science, writer and science policy advocate, is the Director of The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy. She serves as an ecology advisor to several organizations including the Third World Network and the Asia Pacific People’s Environment Network.  In 1993 she was the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, commonly known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”.  She has also written several works include, Staying Alive, The Violence of the Green Revolution, Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge, Monocultures of the Mind and Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit.

vandanashiva.org

navdanya.org

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Lars Schmidt is an artist, facilitator, project developer and sustainability educator.As founder of Art, Ecology & Education, The Pollinators and initiator/co-developer of Integral Ecoawareness Training and Practice, Lars is a pioneer and visionary in the field of creating and facilitating transformative processes and projects for integrated, sustainable living.

He studied acting, dance, singing and photography in Germany and the US, worked internationally as actor for film, television and theater, as acting coach, photographer, musician/singer/songwriter, filmmaker and poet. He has lived and worked on organic farms in France and Italy, and is engaged in permaculture and living systems theory for several years.

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David Crow is one of the world’s foremost experts and leading speakers in the field of botanical medicine, natural health and ecological sustainability. He is a master herbalist, aromatherapist and acupuncturist with over 20 years experience and is an expert in the Ayurvedic and Chinese medical systems. He is a renowned author and the founding director of Floracopeia Aromatic Treasures. Through writing, teaching, and activism, David Crow is promoting the creation of a grassroots healthcare system based on community gardens. He is a co-founder of The Learning Garden at Venice High School in Los Angeles. David currently travels and teaches throughout the world. Through his visionary synthesis of medicine, ecology, and spirituality, he has helped transform the lives of thousands.

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Susan Griffin is a poet, essayist, playwright and screenwriter. Her work moves beyond the boundaries of form and perception as she draws connections between the destruction of nature, the diminishment of women and racism, and traces the causes of war to denial in both private and public life. Her groundbreaking book Woman and Nature is an extended prose-poem and is the classic work that inspired eco-feminism. Wrestling with Angel of Democracy, the Autobiography of an American Citizen her most recent book, explores the state of mind that engenders and sustains democracy.

Named by Utne reader as one of a hundred important visionaries for the new millennium, she has been the recipient of an NEA grant, and a one year Macarthur Grant for Peace and International Cooperation. She lectures widely in the United States and abroad, and teaches occasional courses at the California Institute of Integral Studies and Pacifica Graduate School.

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Godfrey Reggio is an inventor of a film style which creates poetic images of extraordinary emotional impact for audiences worldwide. Reggio is prominent in the film world for his QATSI trilogy, essays of visual images and sound which chronicle the destructive impact of the modern world on the environment.

Reggio has been a community activitist since the sixties and co-founded a number of organizations dedicated to assisting communities in Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico. In 1974 and 1975, with funding from the American Civil Liberties Union, Reggio co-organized a multi- media public interest campaign on the invasion of privacy and the use of technology to control behavior. His first film, Koyaanisqatsi, was released in 1983.

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Slava Trigubovich is a Russian conservation biologist and the co-founder of the Altai Foundation of Russia, a non-profit organization devoted to protecting the natural and cultural heritage of the Altai Mountains, and to supporting initiatives that sustain, enhance, or expand Russia’s network of nature reserves or “zapovedniks.” He was previously headed the Siberian Interregional Center Zapovedniki (SICZ).
* This is the first part of an interview to be completed at a later date. *

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Isabela Coelho is an educator and performing artist; graduate in International Affairs from the University of Colorado. She has worked in many arts and social projects with youth and adults in Brazil, Nicaragua and the USA. She is co-founder and co-director of OPA, a non-profit organization which emerged from the desire to combine permaculture and arts in order to build bridges between cultural, social and environmental sustainability in the urban setting.

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Glenys Livingstone is the author of PaGaian Cosmology, Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Glenys’ doctoral research at the University of Western Sydney in the School of Social Ecology was an experiential study of the three phases of ‘Goddess’ – Virgin, Mother, Crone – as Creative Cosmological Dynamic.

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Elaine Seiler is the director of ReGenesis Enterprises Pty. Ltd., a living laboratory and showcase in Northern New South Wales, Australia for a variety of land based projects that focus on organic whole systems agriculture, ecological forestry, environmental repair and sustainable human settlement.

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Joanna Harcourt-Smith interview featuring Dr. Roger Payne, founder and President of the Ocean Alliance, and his wife, Lisa Harrow, actress and environmentalist…and Mike Hagan interview featuring Star Newland, founder of the Sirius Institute, and Dr. Michael Hyson, co-founder and research director.

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