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Dear For The Wild Community, 

We’re welcoming in 2024 with the feral energy needed to dismantle oppressive mindsets, cultures of distraction, and the very structures of empire. 

This past month of episodes boldly asks us to investigate the ways in which we are complicit in empire, and asks us to consider how movements can be structured to focus on collective liberation, rather than individual gain. 

As we work to both understand our present moment and approach it with grounded action, we hope the conversations we highlight offer a reminder of the power we all carry in our souls, the possibilities for life beyond these systems, and the vitality of resisting together.

TYSON YUNKAPORTA on Inviolable Lore /362

What beckons us, calls to us from beyond? Tuning into a magic that flows from the universe, not from an individualized self, Tyson Yunkaporta offers lucid insight into the current state of the world in this week’s episode. In maddening times of dissonance and disconnection, Tyson speaks to the need for the Right Story, for LORE. As he dives into his new book Right Story, Wrong Story, Tyson discusses rampant disinformation, the stories that prop up empire, and the need for lore that cuts through such propagandistic drivel. 

This convivial and expansive conversation is a brilliant exploration and critique of the  current cultural fabric, and it invites crucial questions of how we can disrupt cycles of violence, power, and greed. 

Throughout the conversation, 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 Tyson strikes at the heart of how we (the collective we) must be materially and fiscally decolonial for the real work to be done.

In a timely and heart-wrenching episode, returning guest Layla K. Feghali 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. 

Layla reminds us that in urgent times, action must come before grief and before healing. You cannot heal a wound that is still actively bleeding. Remembrance is a key part of liberation from the systems that tried to force disconnection from the land. As Layla shares throughout the episode “the land is in our bones.” 

Artwork by Mirella Salamé titled Inner spring does come even when it is not spring (earth and plant pigment, watercolor, on reclaimed wood)

• Layla’s Book Launch and Mutual Aid for Palestinian Families 

  This campaign is an ongoing effort between trusted friends and families with immediate relationships on the ground and in the diaspora. Through our networks of kinship and community love, we redistribute funds directly to families who need it. These funds will support basic survival including relocation fees for those seeking to leave, natal and postnatal care, the cost of tents and basic living supplies under excruciating circumstances and limitations imposed by genocidal violence. 

• Join a local organization to support direct actions in your community, block weapons labs and ports transporting them, create legislative pressure towards ceasefire, etc.

• Support Arab and impacted communities facing legal discrimination and hate violence across the US and beyond.

• Find your local Arab community organizers and support their material and daily nourishment and needs. Feed them meals, provide childcare, and generally help make their lives easier.

• Get creative about strategic and personal ways to be involved, and how to leverage your personal privileges and skills towards a Free Palestine.

• Keep talking, educating, sharing in your communities and disrupting business as usual until the goals of Palestinians on the ground are met.

• Highlight, trust, and center the voices and lived experiences of Palestinian and Arab people whose knowledge is anchored in a lifetime of lived experience.

• Educate yourself on the ways the struggle against Settler Colonialism relates to your own lineages, homes, and communities to fortify your solidarity from a more anchored place inside your own being.

• Support Indigenous communities in your own cities and across the earth fighting for Landback.

• Do whatever you can to support the sacred effort to help Empire crumble, for the good of our earth and communities across the board.

What if we started with gratitude? With love? In this episode Ayana is joined by longtime mentor Molly Young Brown in a discussion that tends to what it means to be human in times of polycrisis and unraveling.

Grounding the conversation in practice of group processing, activism, and relationality, Molly speaks to the reality of our time. We simply can’t go on like this, and it is dizzying to pretend anything else. This truth is illuminating, but does not need to be wholly devastating. At the peak of crises, how might we turn towards a world that imagines things differently, a world that is not driven only by profit, a world where we might center love? Molly encourages listeners to turn to deep time – our connection to our ancestors and to all who come in the future – and to root into a relationship with humanity and the earth that recognizes our interconnectedness.

This past month’s episodes inspire deep questions and options for conversation.  Write with these prompts in your journal, share them with your kin, or shout them into the wild. However you engage with them, we hope they offer a moment of pause, respite, and imagination.

THEME: What We Must Dismantle

• What tangible actions of support matter most to you, how can you contribute to communities where this support is prioritzed?

• How are you feeling these times of unraveling? How does this moment feel in your bones, your soul?  

• How do the tendrils of empire show up in your daily life? 

• How does this world encourage you to think individualistically, how can you embrace a collective approach? 

• How do you recognize your connection to community not only directly near you, but around the world? 

• How can you prioritize / balance both the poetry and the action needed to sustain a cultural shift? 

Take a Look at Our Zine Library!

For more in-depth reflections, practices, reflection prompts, and episode excerpts themed around topics like grief, ritual, and gratitude, purchase on of our zines here.

To access our zine, you can purchase it on our website or you can sign up for our Patreon at The Study ($5 USD) tier or higher.

Join us on Patreon for a library of deeply-rooted resources.

In an effort to continue this work and support our small team we would deeply appreciate your support. As a grassroots, independent media producer, listener support is one of our main funding sources. If you have found value or meaning in our offerings, please consider making a one time donation at forthewild.world/support or by joining us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild.