This Slow Study Course is a series of lectures and practice prompts from Bayo’s 2023 edition of We Will Dance With Mountains: Vunja! wherein 1400+ people gathered. It is a carnivalesque course in postactivism, a decoration of the walls of the cracks, a cultivating of bewilderment together, and a sitting-together-until-something-happens.

Ross and Ayana consider what it means to get people interested in protecting the places that sustain us. How can we inspire the connection with the land that brings people to defend it? 

These three visionary Black men, along with Victoria Santos and Omonblanks, invite us into a radical re/imagination of how we respond to our time. They sense into emergent possibilities, triangulating toward a synthesis of new forms, new magic, and new directions.

This captivating conversation explores how the denial of pleasure contributes to our own oppression, how radical honesty and kindness can transform our relationships, the importance of pleasure beyond sex, and how our pain and sorrow is a measurement of our pleasure and joy.

Erik shares his spiritual path of recognizing interdependence with the Earth and shares how he dreams towards a future where we exist in a mutualistic relationship to the Earth. His wisdom and groundedness is a balm for those tired by the rhetoric of our overculture. 

“An account of life that doesn't include fungi is an account of life that doesn’t exist.” Our relationship with fungi is non-negotiable. Merlin invites listeners to pay attention to what this relationship means and how it shapes not only our lives, but the entanglement of life across the world.

Weaving together the ephemeral worlds of emotion and Indigenous identity with the grounding power of shared values and reciprocity, Sky reminds us that art is meant to provoke, inspire, and make the space needed for feeling to emerge.

Speaking on the theme “Turning Towards Each Other, Not Against Each Other: Bridging in Times of Crisis” the panelists address what it means to build towards co-liberation in difficult times – especially in the context of the war on Gaza.

Sylvia and Ayana consider questions at the very foundation of our cultures. Winding through questions of patriarchy, religion, and violence, Ayana and Sylvia do not find singular answers, but rather a wisdom that arises from questioning the things that are deeply enmeshed in our culture.

Tyson contemplates how we may open ourselves up to being beckoned outside of the ego, and how we may resist the individualizing neoliberal urge—decolonization is not just about poetry, or word, or aesthetics, and how we must be materially and fiscally decolonial for the real work to be done.

Layla shares the power and perseverance of homeland, even in the face of colonial violence. As the genocide in Palestine continues and worsens, Layla offers a powerful call to listen to our rage and take real action against empire.