Transcript: QUEER NATURE on Reclaiming Wild Safe Space /223 ⌠ENCORE⌡
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So Yeah, I think that I grew up in a world where to find belonging as a queer person you move to cities and you know met other humans who were queer. And I think that there's still and will always be so much intelligence and beauty to that, and I also feel like I've felt inspired over the years to just not not like reverse that at all like not say like, “Oh, we shouldn't gather in urban areas or like this is wrong”, but rather question how we can build tools of resilience for being in like rural and you know, I don't like using the word wilderness, but remote, let's just say remote settings.
Ayana Young Hello, and welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Today we are speaking with So and Pinar from Queer Nature.
Queer Nature is an education and social sculpture project based on Arapaho, Ute, and Cheyenne territories that actively dreams into decolonially-informed queer ‘ancestral futurism’ through mentorship in place-based skills with awareness of post-industrial/globalized/ecocidal contexts. Place-based skills include naturalist studies, handcrafts, “survival skills,” and recognition of colonial and indigenous histories of land, and are framed in a container that emphasizes deep listening and relationship building with living and non-living earth systems. Co-envisioned by Pinar and So Sinopoulos-Lloyd, Queer Nature designs and facilitates nature-based workshops and multi-day immersions intended to be financially, emotionally, and physically accessible to LGBTQ2+ people and QTBIPOCs. Queer Nature carries the story and hope that these spaces create resilient narratives of belonging for folks who have often been made to feel by systems of oppression that they biologically, socially, or culturally don’t belong. Queer Nature has collaborated with Wilderness Awareness School, the University of Colorado Boulder, Naropa University, Women’s Wilderness, and ReWild Portland.
Well Pinar and So, I'm truly grateful that you were both able to make time for this conversation. And thank you so much for all the work you're doing with such meticulous care for people and place. And before we begin, I would like to open this moment up to each of you to introduce yourselves in the way, or in any way, you feel called to whether it be acknowledging your ancestry or a brief telling of the journey of connection that brought Queer Nature into fruition.
Pinar Thank you. Yeah, so my name is Pinar and I use they/them/their pronouns. And yes, I think introducing my ancestors feels really in alignment. So my matrilineage is Wanka, which is native to the Andes, in East Cuchaca area, as well as Chinese from Spanish enslavement from the 1700s in so-called Peru. And then my patrilineage is Turkish, which is where I actually grew up for half of my childhood. And I also want to acknowledge my queer and trans ancestors, which in my lineage, my Andean lineage, we are called Qariwarmi, which is a Two-Spirit kind of cousin down in the Andes. And lastly, one of the things that I also really love to introduce is actually really inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book Braiding Sweetgrass where she introduces the lands that have raised her and I wanted to introduce one of the creeks who has raised me on Yavapai and Apache territory, and this might come up in our interview, but they've been so instrumental in how Queer Nature runs and how I do my work and who I keep accountable to in my life, and also wanting to name that I'm neurodivergent and a psychiatric survivor, as well as a suicide survivor. And this is such an integral piece of what brings me to nature connection, and my work in the world as someone who's experienced parallel realities and has felt most of my belonging to more than human kin.
Ayana Young Thank you for that. And So I'd love to hear from you as well.
So Thanks, Ayana and I also just want to say thank you for also inviting me to be here, because I know that you might not often do interviews with two people at once and so I just am really grateful for that. And, yeah, I'm excited.
=A little bit about myself. I am white, queer person of Anglo Saxon settler descent on my dad's side, and my mom is a Greek immigrant. So on her side, I'm first generation on Turtle Island. And yeah, I grew up in Alnôbak, or also called Abenaki territory, also known as Vermont, which the northern hardwood forests are really dear, near and dear to my heart. And I think that something else I like to talk about, or sort of pick up the thread of when introducing myself and talking about nature, is my connection to sheep and shepherding. And throughout college, I basically became really curious about small scale agriculture and particularly like cheese making and shepherding traditions that were, you know, more small scale and organic based or organic-ish, and that was kind of, for me a way to connect with actually my Greek heritage and ancestry. Since most of my, that half of my family, does live in Greece, and I lived there in elementary school, and have just this nostalgia and connection to that land that I think is kind of common to people who are from two different cultures or multiple cultures more than two. And I know Pinar might be able to relate to that. And so I basically embarked upon this journey of working with sheep and doing shepherding on some different farms around so called New England. And there was something about that that was really just deeply informative in terms of the journey I kind of later went on in terms of delving into place based skills and so called paleolithic skills, I guess, there was something about sheep that really inspired me, I think, partially because our culture sees them as as dumb and that's often like this trope like that they, they are these complete, complicit or complacent animals. And what I saw instead was this deep intelligence of like the flock or the hive, the hive mind, which I think is something that we really fear in this culture and, and that just really drew me in like that non human and often kind of even scary form of intelligence to us. And I started to become really curious about ways of belonging, and being in relationship with land that were more interdependent and interrelational, rather than just this narrative of sort of self sufficiency and individuality. So yeah, that's actually how I got started sort of on this journey of nature connection. And I can probably say more about that later. But I just wanted to touch upon it for now,
Ayana Young I really appreciate hearing both of your stories. And, gosh, I really, really enjoyed hearing, so about your connection with the sheep, and how derogatory we can be with sheep, sheeple, the sheep, you know, kind of how we speak down to them as if they're stupid. And this whole idea of hive mind and the brilliance and the intelligence in that, so I would love to hear more about that later.
I just want to say that, you know, so much of Queer Nature’s work is intertwined in narratives of belonging...I’d like to begin this interview with a dialogue on the overlap between queer identity and the legacy of dominant environmentalism, which are both very much about not belonging. As mentioned in Queer Nature’s bio, queer folk have long been made to feel that they do not “biologically, socially, or culturally” belong. And this is a whole conversation in itself, but I also can’t help but think about how so much of the environmental legacy, that many of us are familiar with, and the ethos around “wild” spaces is that humans do not belong there either. Traditional conservation has situated humans as merely visitors in “wild” places who are meant to leave without a trace, suggesting that our more than human kin couldn’t possibility remember our presence…Can you speak to the intention of belonging and why it is at the core of the work Queer Nature facilitates?
So Yeah, that's such a great series of questions and I think I almost feel like we could spend the whole interview like just delving into that. And I think it's, yeah, a really rich place to start. Yeah, I think when I think about belonging, and I've been thinking, we both have been thinking a lot about this lately, and belonging, I feel like can almost run a risk these days of becoming sort of a new buzzword, or like catchphrase, sort of like sustainability. And I just want to be wary of that, especially this is so speaking to like, just as a white person and a settler, I feel like I have I'm doing this dance of deep care and openness and listening around what belonging means. But I think one of the things that means to me is sort of being entangled within a web of relationships of reciprocity, but also accountability. And not always in a way that's totally, that totally feels good either. But because accountability, I think, is sometimes often about conflict. So I think that's kind of one of my basic definitions of belonging, and that it really does include interspecies relationships, as well.
And also that it's a process, I feel like belonging is a noun, but I feel like it's productive for me and for us to think of it as more of a verb. And I also don't know if it's a process that's ever complete. And that kind of comes back to my own consciousness as a white settler on Turtle Island. And, like, I don't know if I can really say that, like, I can't promise belonging as a nature based mentor or practitioner, like as if it's sort of the result of an equation. Or I can't say that I, like belonging, has been accomplished here on Turtle Island. But I think what we what we can do, or what we're interested in doing, which is why in one of the notes that that you sent to us before, I like that you mentioned like the intention of belonging, because I think we have this intention around place based skills as basically skills of belonging and and interspecies relationship cultivation, as skills of belonging, but also that a skill of belonging that might not be as concrete is challenging. Different supremacy is like white supremacy, while we're engaging in these skills, and privilege. And just acknowledging our role in that. And that's also like that these anti-racist and anti-oppressive stances are also like skills of belonging, as well as like learning, you know, how to identify different plants or how to create medicine or how to, you know, make make fire from rubbing sticks together. That's kind of one place I would start.
And then another point that I wanted to make before handing it over to Pinar is, I really love that you brought up this narrative of, you know, this, of course, false narrative of wilderness as this place where we're just visitors. And this is of course, a very colonial conception of wilderness. And it also reminds me of the ethic of “Leave No Trace”, which we as you know, as wilderness guides encounter a lot. And there's so much that's good about the intention of “Leave No Trace”. But one thing that we both encounter a lot is that we do impact and change the land, both as people living now and people who lived in the past, including Paleolithic peoples and land based peoples. And I think there's sometimes a narrative that, that like to be in harmony with the land is to not change, change it or change your environment, when you know now there's so much research coming out about how other non human animals have culture and change the land, like beavers. Of course, we've kind of known that for a while. But you know, other creatures like bowerbirds, down in the tropics, who basically have forms of cultural transmission and build these elaborate structures that they cannot build if they're in captivity, or they just build kind of little deranged, like versions of them. So I feel like that question of changing the land and impact it so it's not really about that we don't have an impact or that we should try to sort of cease our impact, but it's rather like how do we want to have an impact? So that's just I'll just leave it at that and then see if Pinar or if you, Ayana, want to respond to any of that.
Pinar I can add something I just one thing that really stood out to me with what how you began the question is, you know how there's this narrative that queer people don't belong period, but also just don't belong in our bodies or don't belong to the Earth or to culture. And one thing that I want to be really clear about is trans and non binary people have always existed and always will, and the narrative that we are a new phenomena is a colonial story, and that Two Spirit and other Indigenous gender expansiveness is older than America and that we are ecological formations and and also ecological indicators of health of place and of culture. So that's something that is really important for me to share. And also, yeah, just like really sit with that, that there is this like, there is this narrative of erasure of queerness of gender expansiveness of transmits of Two Spirit folks. And yeah, and just really challenging that, that we're actually, you know, we do belong, and we have the right to be here and, and bring our gifts to the world and how important those gifts are right now, especially since, you know, in my Andean tradition, there is something called Pachakutic, which essentially means like a cataclysmic change to the culture as we know it. And cosmologically speaking like the first Pachakutic to happen, at least in like the Incan Empire or the Incan culture, there was actually like this, it brought up a lot of fear, you know, for the people. And the story goes that like the Qariwarmi people, the third gender, or the gender liminal people were actually invoked at that time of transition during the first Pachakutic because, like, we know how to move through liminality because we are liminal people.
And that's something that I think about so often is like, you know, this idea of Pachakutic as being a cataclysmic change to our culture, as we know it, to me is actually really pretty much a parallel way of saying that, whatever the culture is, in the moment, is going through a rite of passage, and in a rite of passage, there are three stages, which is like the severance stage, and then the threshold/liminal stage, and then lastly, the reincorporation stage of coming back. And what I find really fascinating is that that liminal space is a place where at least in my tradition, the Qariwarmi we know very intimately. And so that's something that I also want to bring in as we're discussing what we're discussing, and, and it makes me think, furthermore, about how around like environmentalism, especially around like, how we look at land is really steeped in white environmentalism of “We can't leave a trace”, which I totally understand, and there's very beautiful reasons, you know, that are really honorable to like, take care of land and steward and being relationship with land. And it reminds me, you know, eight years ago, when I was formally studying deep ecology, we were reading a lot of white cishet men or cisheterosexual men, or cisgendered, heterosexual men, as well as sometimes white cishet women, discussing how essentially people are a plague of this Earth. And Around this time, I was involved with Indigenous solidarity work in Black Mesa. And whenever I brought up decolonization, no one saw the relevance to Deep Ecology in my program. And I just found that really upsetting at the time. And the analysis, yeah, I just feel like there's this idea that all humans, this colonial idea that all humans are bad, there's this generalization rather than seeing who has systematically perpetuated ecocide.
And sometimes, I wonder, you know, I think this is really, this is changing in some ways in Deep Ecology of bringing in more decolonization and Indigenous perspectives, which I'm incredibly grateful for, although it's been very slow moving. And I just am so curious about this, like lack of analysis, and, or what has been historically a lack of analysis, of bringing in white supremacy and settler colonialism in that, yeah, in that inquiry. And that's just something that I'm really curious about and I know something that So has brought up in terms of exploring what ecocide means has been really impactful for me.
We discussed this quite a bit in our work. And something that I love that So brings in is they're Greek, and they studied ancient Greek, as well, that the root for ecocide “ecos” essentially means household. And one of the things that they were discussing is how ecocide means not just the systematic killing of the environment, the living environment, but actually the killing of our ability to be at home, which is the dispossession of belonging. And you know, for folks of different marginalized identities, ecocide results in displacement, lack of access to land based living, the creation of militarized borders, and so many other things. So this is something that we often think about is like how environmentalism that is not explicitly anti oppressive is complicit in white supremacy, as well as you know, human supremacy and the project of settler colonialism as well. So this is something that we are so passionate about exploring not just on our own, but within our own communities and other folks who are discussing this around like the intersection of decolonization.
Ayana Young I really appreciate you Pinar talking about that, queerness is not something new, trans isn't new, it's not some trend. This has been something that has, this is a part of our humanity from the beginning. And it's really important to remember that it's been colonization and systems of oppression and white supremacy that has squelched any way of being that wasn't what the dominant culture prescribed. And I think that's such an important point and the deep ecology and environmentalism not taking into account Indigenous perspectives. And people of color’s perspectives, I mean, all of these points are so huge and trying to understand these massive systems. And if we're not looking at it with that lens, and if we're not doing a deep analysis, then what are we really doing, we're really just kind of perpetuating this rat wheel that we're never going to get out of, if we don't actually look at, like, look under the rocks, you know, dig, dig a little deeper, and start to see how all of this was compounded and built on top of one another.
So I respect both of your analysis, and I learned so much just in that one question. I want to bring up this quote that Queer Nature has written….”The binary doesn’t need to be destroyed, but rather blown open and expanded to reflect the complexity of our ecological and celestial kin. I stand for a queerness that is inextricably informed by interspecies solidarity—by lichen, dusk chorus, swamps, coral and cryptobiotic soil. Queerness is not another venue for the simulation of human exceptionalism and white supremacy that serves the project of settler colonialism. It is a devotional practice of decentering our humancentricism to continually expand our co-liberation and remember that our queerness is a disruptive/remediative fruit of the earth.” Can you expand upon how queerness can destabilize supremacy, or furthermore, how an ecologically informed awareness of gender is imperative in destabilizing supremacy?
Pinar Hmm. Yeah, thank you for that quote. It was kind of co-written by the both of us but the majority of it was written by me Pinar and yeah, it's such a good question. It actually makes me think about back to my queer and like transcestor like lineage of Qariwarmi. And because it feels important for me to talk about my own experience of gender, as well as like that's culturally informed, rather than just saying like, you know, queerness as a whole. So I'll just move into that a little bit. And I'll probably also move into the larger picture but as I was sharing around like, how Qariwarmis essentially came to be in our cultural story because of the Pachakutic, at least the first Pachakutic, and colonization is also a Pachakutic that we're still moving through I believe. And it's often something that we discusses as you know, whose dystopia or apocalypse are we living in right now and how, you know, a lot of Indigenous folks are, have been like living and apocalypse of sorts for, you know, since 1492. But that's something that I'm just so passionate about is thinking about the role of liminality you know, specifically talking about Qariwarmis , and this idea that like Qariwarmis are people who move between the masculine and the feminine as well as people who move between or see, and have gifts around the transition between death and birth, and midwives and as well as like hospice of sorts, and just like these, like spaces that are unknown to us, right.
And to me, that that feels really deeply personal, especially in my, the story that I was talking, or how I was introducing myself earlier, being a psychiatric survivor and being a person who has been deeply like immersed in liminal spaces that actually were pretty pathologized growing up and also, you know, having experiences with being institutionalized for having these experiences and liminal spaces or in liminal realities as well as with the more than human world. But as I've come to find out I, as I've been doing more research on my I, specifically around Qariwarmi, that these are the gifts that you know, we bring, and so in a lot of ways, I feel like with Qariwarmi medicine in particular, I do feel like it does destabilize a lot around supremacy because, you know, since we are, the culture is moving through a rite of passage in so many ways and what some people are calling like the Anthropocene, it just feels like we need these liminal. We're in a liminal space. So we need guides to help us move through liminality. And this idea that we're like grasping onto a story, like the dominant narrative of like, no, this we are living this, essentially this story, that's an ecocidal story, a genocidal story, and like hanging on to it, that perpetuates and like upholds so many different supremacies is including white supremacy, to have the liminal folks come in, and really aid that transition and kind of like, literally a death, you know, because rites of passage, really discuss like, psycho spiritual deaths, as well as sometimes physical death, but what needs to be like go and what no longer serves and what needs to be decomposed back into this Earth. And, you know, and I feel like for so many reasons, like white supremacy, and the project of settler colonialism has, like, is ready to die. And it's been so apparent for so long, you know, and I think it's in the death throes right now.
And so yeah, just having those guides towards the transition, right now feels so integral, and to bring it back to like, queerness as well. I feel like queerness is not the only way to disrupt and remediate supremacy, it's, you know, it's pretty prevalent in our queer community for folks to use queerness like, as a band aid not to look at their whiteness, and how they can uphold, you know, anti-Indigeneity and anti-Blackness. So, that's also something to also remember for me is like, you know, we, we have to, there's so much magic and queerness, and there's also so much work we need to do in our communities. That's like nestled right now within white supremacy, as well as settler colonialism. So that's also something that I'm really passionate about being in conversation with, with our communities, and like, you know, being in conversation in ways that are inviting to more dialogue and more healing, and not necessarily like ones that are about like criticism and disempowerment, but rather, like how are we going to move through this together right now, you know, and with all of our differences and within like the queer community, but also beyond the queer community, because, you know, within, within our ecological communities, biodiversity creates resilience. So listening to all the stories and really amplifying and uplifting the ones who are most impacted in our communities feels like such an integral part of moving through the Pachakutic and moving through the liminal space that we're in right now as a species.
So yeah, I hope that answers your question. I have so many more thoughts and I also bringing them back to like the quote that you read to like, my individual queerness is riparian, you know, means like, essentially one that is like related to rivers and creeks, and specifically within like an ecosystem and an ecological community. And I just also want to say to that, like, my queerness is really held accountable by those systems, you know, by rivers and creeks, and especially the one who has raised and they have been my queer elder and really just expanding that to because like, our queer communities have remained very human centric, which for really good reason, because we've moved through so much trauma together as, as a community and as communities. So we're doing very intra-species healing right now, which makes so much sense at the moment, but really remembering to like expand, expand ourselves to our capacities, which are, you know, queerness is really informed by the earth and is informed by so much more than just our human bodies and our human intelligences and are so much more than just that. So just wanting to also name that as well and see if So wants to answer anything.
So Um, yeah. Wow. I just appreciate everything that you said Pinar and trying to even remember like the how the question was framed, but I feel like there was something about kind of queer ecology and how also queerness can destabilize different supremacies. So I feel like what what I would add to that is also like, just what queer means to me. And I think it means something different to everyone. And I know some people listening to this might not know what queer, what we even mean, when we say queer, and I feel like especially in the context of ecology, you know, and the study of relationships between beings and between living systems and nonliving systems. I feel like to me, queer kind of indicates non-binary, but I don't actually mean like, because I mean, I also identify as non binary like as my gender but I actually don't mean it just as a gender identity, I mean, it like as sort of like a questioning of, of different dualities, or dichotomies, and, and also a sort of hybridity, it could be a cultural hybridity, or that there's like, sort of an natural type of hybridity that is present, being a settler on this land as well, that feels relevant and, and then also, you know, another thing I associate with queerness really is mystery, and mysticism.
And I think a core tenet of mysticism is knowing, basically knowing that the divine, or whatever your notion of the divine is, be it the universe or nature or that it can't be fully grasped intellectually. And that surrender is really required in the face of that unknowing, and that mystery. And so to me, this all feels very relevant to talking about ecology and environment and challenging notions of futurity are futurism that are present in sort of dominant views of environmentalism. And so to me, like in terms of ecology, queerness is kind of a growth, or growth is a weird word, because I think it is used a lot in sort of capitalistic ways. But I think a better term is becoming like, a becoming from some sort of destabilization or dissolution of fixed categories, or, you know, a bit coming from an in between space or an edge space, which as we know, from studying ecotones, or edges in, in bioregions, or in ecological systems, those are spaces of such fertility and fecundity. And so, yeah, that's something that I also wanted to bring in.
And I think an example of sort of this bit coming from destabilization or dissolution is, you know, something that evolutionary biologists talk about, which is also kind of a debated or contested concept and it's the concept of exaptation, which is basically almost a counterpoint to adaptation, although it's also part of adaptation. And it's the process by which features, different features of bodies might acquire functions for which they were not originally sort of adapted to or not originally for. And a really common example of this is feathers, which were originally found, you know, in the fossil record on dinosaurs who didn't fly and they were, you know, the ancestors of modern birds. And so I love thinking about this. And also to say that this is a controversial thing, because there's some evolutionary biologists who say, “Well, nothing was actually ever designed what it's currently used for.”
So there's just this interesting queerness there where I feel like, yeah, what are we? What adaptations are we gaining or discovering as queer people that are kind of these expectations or these responses to are weird and sort of bizarre and maybe pretty? post apocalyptic environment that that are you know, coming out of actually, that, that trouble and that it's kind of a term from Donna Haraway. Like that, that trouble that we're in. And you know, I also think of thess like these earthworms that can now, you know, degrade plastics or thrive in, you know, heavy metal soils and, and maybe even help break down those toxins. So those are some of the things I also think about too.
Ayana Young I just was thinking about intimacy with our more than human kin and I think it is such a loss when we don't give ourselves the space and give the space and the respect to our non human kin to honor them by being in intimate relationship with them. And I think things like that, relationships, whether it's with a human or not, takes time, it takes attention, it takes sacrifice it, it takes a lot that I think in this dominant culture, not only are we oftentimes not willing to give that, but we're not even taught that that's actually what we need to give to be in reciprocity. You know, I just think about any human relationship, any human relationship, whether it's a family member, a lover, a friend, a co-worker, we have to put time into those human relationships. And I really believe it's the same thing when it comes to plants or insects, furry creatures, you know, four legged, two legged, winged ones, it's, it's in the same vein, and I really, I really appreciate you speaking to that. Gosh, there's so many places I want to take this conversation. There's just so many questions I have for both of you, but I know both of you track and trail, and So, I know you have written reflections on tracking as an act that is both pragmatic and profoundly spiritual. With regards to healing, so often we turn towards spiritual guidance and faith when we tend our wounds so I wonder if either of you could elaborate on how engaging with tracking has furthered your understanding of “practical spirituality” and how, based on your experiences, whether or not you see the direct connection between ecological literacy and relationship with the divine?
So Yeah, this is such a good question Ayana. And this is So speaking, because I am, well, we're both very geeky, and I'm obsessed with tracking and it's probably one of, I would say, like, our core practices if I could name like, a practice that's grounding, all of these things that we're talking about, that, maybe seem, really certainly probably seem very theoretical or intellectual to some folks. But yeah, tracking is such a way of grounding all of this. And for me, and I have actually written about this, so I might, you know, use some of the phrases that could be found in that writing. But for me tracking, which is basically just, it's a few things, I mean, one of them is just following, you know, identifying and seeking out tracks and signs of living beings on the landscape. But it, you know, it could also you could really expand tracking into being like, any form of sort of pattern recognition or seeking out of, of sequences of patterns in our environment, you know, and so that goes all the way to, like, celestial sort of navigation and tracking the skies and the stars, and also doing things like looking at, you know, a tree stump and looking at the rings and seeing what that can tell you actually about you know, the history of that forest that could go back, you know, even even 100 or more years.
So, it's, it's definitely something that tracking like, to me, it's, it's a way of knowing, really, that's how, you know, I've contextualized it a bit. And that way of knowing and like this really just seems to tie back into a lot of what we've already been saying, because that way of knowing is basically like this synergy of, of these categories of art and science that we've really divided in, especially in Western, the Western sort of colonial mindset and in Western science and the reason that it's kind of this blending or synergy of art and science is that there's definitely a lot of quantitative analysis and deductive logic and reasoning involved, which I think can sometimes be triggering, especially it has been to me because those forms of thinking when over relied upon have been used to really dismiss me as a queer person or dismiss, you know, identity politics or emotions of, of marginalized peoples and I think that's that's part of the healing and it for me, is the realizing and coming to this place where or I am gathering evidence, and I am sort of like gathering this empirical evidence, but I'm also really using my imagination and using our capacity, just this beautiful gift we have as the creatures that we are of storytelling. And that really tracking can't be done in any really successful way without those two things.
And perhaps, you know, in other cultures, it's described in a different way, or what I'm dividing into two ways of thinking is really one way of thinking, and I'm totally open to that. But to me, I guess in, like, squaring it with my sort of upbringing, it really is this blend of imagination and sort of quantitative analysis. And, and I think that that's, that's been really healing for me, because it just has forced me to slow down and really not jump to conclusions. I'm someone who has a really active intellect. And also I can, you know, I struggle with anxiety too. And I feel like tracking really helps to regulate my nervous system. And it really disrupts this tendency for me to go into like this sympathetic fight or flight, which can be done in an intellectual way in the form of jumping to conclusions. So, yeah, that's, that's something that I would would say, and just want to sort of create some space for bringing up anything else because there's, there's so much with tracking and yeah, I feel like another thing that ties back to the previous question in a beautiful way is that our psychological and emotional needs just can't can't be met by just humans. And this is similar to the notion that a lot of people share that, you know, your emotional needs can't always just be met by one person, which I'm not saying that everyone thinks that are that everyone should think that but that's certainly something that is brought up a lot, especially in, you know, healing spaces and queer and radical spaces. And there is a sense in which, beyond just just my personal experience, I know that Pinar and I have talked a lot about how there's something about really like listening and orienting and pattern recognition. And really those three things, doing those engaging in those three things in the quote unquote, natural world that can, I think, help us heal trauma. And I know that I don't think there's been a ton of research on this. I mean, I know that EMDR therapy is partially based on this principle of like, that orienting to stimulus across one's field, visual fields, you know, calms the nervous system, but just in terms of following paths and trails, there's something about it, that's, I think, in trancing. And so it bring it also brings in all those to practice of trance or in transmit that, I certainly don't feel that I had an outlet for as a person growing up in sort of a Protestant, white setting with the various views and confinements of religion, or of the sacred that can happen in those settings. So yeah, I think that that's the seeds that I'll plant and see if Pinar if you want to, like jump off from any of those because I know there's so much else.
Pinar Oh, my gosh, tracking is like our, like So said one of our core practices. So there's pretty much any question that's asked that can be, even that has nothing to do with tracking, I feel like can, for me, be reflected on from my tracking experiences. One thing I did want to go back to a little bit, which I know is a little bit different from where tracking and trailing intersect with spirituality, but it's kind of I mean, it kind of is, but it's kind of isn't, but I wanted to go back to what So was saying regarding like, tracking in regards to how it's supported, and supports the practice that supports Nervous System regulation. And for me growing up as a neurodivergent person tracking was something like that I didn't necessarily do in terms of like wildlife tracking, quote, unquote, but I would be tracking the spaces that I was in, you know, like, for instance, growing up, like I was pretty hyper aware due to trauma and traumatic experiences, not only of this lifetime, but intergenerationally, and so what I found really beautiful, when as I started to learn tracking and started to also learn a little bit about stealth craft as well, is that it felt very familiar to me. And it was this really incredible convergence of like, my love for the more than human world and also a skill that I've already developed not by choice but because as someone who's a trauma survivor, and that's something that I'm incredibly fascinated by and did some research in and writing on in my undergraduate studies, which was in like somatic and depth ecopsychology. And I'm super fascinated and inspired by that intersection, especially for folks of marginalized communities of like, okay, like, let's learn these skills with tracking, and like hone the skills that we already have with our awarenesses that we need as like, and that we've honed and developed already to survive within the culture that, you know, systematically erases us or targets us. So that's something that I wanted to also bring up is just this, like, how tracking can actually be this really beautiful tool for empowerment, not only to ourselves, but also like, expand again to like, remember that we're all you know, the more than human community is, like, willing and open to also be potentially in relationship with us and is something that, you know, we were talking about breaking that myth around human centrism and breaking that species isolation, which I think is so healing for everyone, and also, particularly for folks of marginalized statuses. So that's something that I also really want to bring up, because it's just such a place of inspiration to me.
And, and also, one other thing, when I think about tracking is, you know, that encounter, like So was saying around mystery, and how So really beautifully put that into words. And the thing that I think about too, is this longing that I personally feel within like my own ancestral bodies of wanting to trail. And it's, again, goes back to that, that idea of blood memory, or this, like ancestral memory that we have of trailing and like, because our ancestors, pretty much if you're alive, right now, all of our ancestors tracked and, you know, trailed wild animals and wild beings. And so to me like that, it's also a practice of connecting to like my ancestral body, which to me is a very spiritual practice. And that is very interesting as someone who again, is hybrid because I, I feel this deep, I'm actually looking at one of my arm tattoos right now, and where I have like several of my Andean more than human kin tattooed on me, and one of them is a guanaco, which is a wild relative of the llama. And it's just so fascinating to me, because I like really long to track them. Like there's this like, core part of myself, that's just like, I really like I've never even encountered them, actually. But I really deeply desire the encounter. And that mystery and relationship of being on my ancestral lands and trailing this being who my ancestors have trailed for millennia. And I think also, I also reflect back and I'm like, does the land also miss our bodies? The places that we’re Indigenous to in particular is what I'm thinking of, like, does it miss our bodies trailing in in that relationship to place, and that intimacy between you know, guanaco, and, and Andean people, that's just something that I also that comes up for me when I think about that intersection of like, spirituality and tracking and relationship with the divine.
Ayana Young Thank you for that, so because I have so many questions for you, I'm going to just jump into another topic. Well, it's not another topic, but it's a different angle, on, on what we've been talking about. And, you know, this has kind of been mentioned a few times in the conversation, but I'm thinking about how there's, you know, a lot of communities built around the practice and sharing of what they call “primitive living, ancestral arts, or survival skills'' are relative exclusive spaces and often times perpetuate both the erasure of Indigenous people or romanticize their presence as a marker of a removed time…Which is apart of a larger conversation around who has historically had access to outdoor recreation and what kind of culture has developed in response. As a group that centers people of color, queer people, and decolonial practices. I’d like to ask what generalizations or tendencies around survival skills or natural studies do you think are the most pressing to disband? One that immediately comes to my mind is this very masculine and individualized notion of survival, that we must know how to do everything on our own type of mentality.
Pinar Thank you for that question. Honestly, the first thing that that brings up for me is like, you know, at Queer Nature we we love to challenge the narrative of like, which bodies get to survive, especially within the context of white supremacy and settler colonialism as well as you know, ecocide. If you just Google survival skills or bushcraft, you will likely see white cishet bodies, and mostly men and, you know, that to me, just like, also continues this eraser like you were saying this, like the erasure of Indigenous people and People of Color, as well as you know, it's funny because like people romanticize Indigenous people, First Nations people, for their survival skills, or what they, you know, in the community of like, ancestral skills, people are seen as like “playing Indian”, which, you know, we're definitely, like, challenging that now and, you know, seeing that as really harmful and problematic and bringing in more perspectives, again, going back to like challenging the narratives of who gets to survive, and whose apocalypse are we living in, and like, I just find so much richness in that dialogue, especially again, talking about Pachakutic referring back to that, like, right now I'm living in my ancestors, Apocalypse, or people will call that potentially Pachakutic. And, you know, right now, I feel like there's this like, in dominant kind of white culture, colonial culture, there's this fascination with the apocalypse, now and, you know, all these like movies and like, coming out regarding that, and, and I just find that so, you know, just so fascinating of just like, okay, like, this isn't new for us, that people who are Black and Indigenous and other people of color, and that's something that is something that we bring up a lot in Queer Nature is again, challenging, like what survival skills means as well, because, you know, remembering our own survival skills as folks who are systematically targeted, especially again, Black, Indigenous, Trans and Queer bodies, is so integral, and what I mean by against survival skills is like the skills that we have honed and developed intergenerationally to continue to still like be resilient, and like, you know, be alive right now, in a system that has like, really, like, try to erase and kill us off. So that's something that also comes to my mind as you like, bring that question forth.
And one of our biggest passions is to teach stealth craft, or some people will call that like scouting or scout skills, which can be like tactical skills and skills of evasion. And instead of calling it like the skill, like a skill of invisibility, we tend to call it skills or practices of belonging. And one of the things that I think about too, with, you know, stealth craft, again, if you like Google “scout”, or even probably “stealth”, like you'll, whose bodies are you going to see? And just really wanting to honor that there's so much there's so many stories of scouting, like going on, you know, right now with the border crossings of Indigenous and migrant communities. And also like the Underground Railroad like that's so integral to bring up that like scouting isn't who's like scout stories are we actually uplifting when we're actually thinking about those skills?
So Especially because like today, I just, I don't mean to interrupt Pinaar but that just reminds me of like this modern current fascination with like the ‘commando’, and how that that is an example of this archetype of sort of scout or stealth, or like, warrior that, that is so uplifted, and there is this fascination and that's, that's sort of this example of the militarization of survival skills or, or like the sort of military framing around those skills, but I didn't mean to interrupt.
Pinar Yeah, totally. Thanks for pointing that out. But yeah, I just feel like going off of that, to like this hyper individualist survival, or survivor concept is such a product of colonialism. And, and I also think about, like whiteness and how there's this idea, you know, for that's, like, I think about some of my white friends who are doing anti-oppression work or trying to, like look at their own whiteness, and they kind of at first, let's just say, because I don't want to over generalize, I see people like do it by themselves in isolation, because there's this narrative that like we have to, specifically around whiteness, that that is like inherently alienating not to say white culture itself, is that or white folks are inherently like perpetuating that. But just white supremacy is built off of this idea that we have to like, alienate ourselves and isolate ourselves and do everything again, like, by ourselves.
One thing that I think about too is like, you know, ecosystems teach us interdependence so beautifully. And something that we've learned over and over in our Queer Nature programs is that like, like, for instance, in one of our courses that we teach with, like, friction fire, is that a lot of our community members actually challenge that and are like, “Hey, like, let's actually like work on this friction fire kit together, like, let's do it in tandem”, even if we don't even like suggest that they just go straight to it. And we're just like, “Whoa, like, this is so beautiful”, that there's this breaking of that narrative. And I think that that's why especially in the queer community, and also within Black Indigenous People of Color, and our communities there as well, that there, we know that there is power and communal survival, because we've had to do that to like, survive. And that's a beautiful adaptation that we have built together. So yeah, I just feel like that's something that I also want to bring into regarding your question, because that just feels like there's so much richness and in your question that we can delve so deep into.
So Yeah. And just to add on that, Pinar pretty much said, like most of what I would have said and answer to this question. And then one, one thing that I feel could be added, is just in terms of what we need to dismantle in these mainstream notions of survival skills, and, and that's just an this is going back to threads previously, but just the notion that that environment or that, or that wilderness is hostile, not to say it's not ever hostile, but and, you know, that's, that's kind of this polar opposite of this sort of romantic notion that things are always harmonious and, you know in natural spaces, or in the wilderness, but yeah, this idea, there's almost like this, I feel like, especially in colonial culture, there's like this strange phenomenon where it seems like there's almost this collective trauma, around surviving in a hostile place. But that trauma was, ironically, like, caused by these people, these people's ancestors, or our ancestors engaging in colonial settlements and imperial expansion in the first place. So I yeah, so I'm not trying to, like, center that trauma as being like, oh, like that, like, we need to really focus on that, but but just merely acknowledging it, like, there is something there where, like, in these notions that you see in pop culture, like on the show, Naked and Afraid, for example, is a really great stark example, literally stark naked, and like in the dark and afraid, and, you know, just scraping by basically, is that and there's something there that does remind me of like, the conceptions of the wilderness as hostile and of, you know, and First Nations for, like, encounters with First Nations folks, and how those folks were, were framed, and and seen by, by colonists and, and so I feel like there's just a thread of that that's unfortunately, continuing in these mainstream notions of survival skills.
And, like with Naked and Afraid, I mean, there's this aspect where people are dropped in a plate in a bioregion in a place they don't know at all, they literally haven't been allowed to research or to know where they're going. And they're dropped there, they don't even have clothes on and they have to, you know, figure it out and survive. And one thing that we talk about a lot is that we often point out, like, there's pretty much no context in which that would have ever happened to most of our ancient and also pretty recent ancestors. That's not to say that learning about emergency sort of crap hitting the fan skills, there's no place for it, and I feel like there really is a place for it. I mean, I'm a wilderness EMT, and I'm really interested in disaster response and those sorts of skills. But I also feel like we have to be careful with how we're imposing that rhetoric on like, all of what we're calling survival skills, you know, and kind of reminds me to of our, the Iceman, I think Ötzi is his name, you know, this 1000s of 5000 ish year old fellow who was discovered in the ice with basically this full kit of gear like this literally full kit of what, what we might now call like, ultralight backpacking gear, and it was all you know, hand crafted, and you know, he had firestarters and arrows and a flint knapping kit in order to make new arrowheads. And so just kind of this, bringing in this awareness of that we don't have to have this fear, like or at least organize this, this, this learning journey around this fear that we're going to like be dropped somewhere without anything and without knowing anything and that there are things that we can do like engaging in relationship building with our non human and nonliving world that that can really lead to helping us in those moments. So yeah, I just wanted to add that.
Ayana Young Gosh, there's so many amazing points brought up by both of you from this whole idea of who, “gets to survive”, you know, who, who is survivability for and the romanticization of what surviving was, and just the erasure of entire histories and, or this whole idea of Naked and Afraid and how the mainstream media even talks about the apocalypse and survival and, you know, the movies, billion dollar movies, probably that had the special effects with everything going down and the anxiety that it produces in people and then the scarcity that it produces in people and then how that allows people to hurt each other even more and steal, steal resources, so on and so forth. I mean, we really live in that world where we're constantly being injected with this type of anxiety that we have to steal from others just so that we can somehow survive and because it's really it's deep, I mean, it's a whole vortex and and how that plays out into the ancestral skills community, which is getting more and more trendy. And, you know, how do we, if we do want to be involved, you know, we have to ask ourselves, how do we get involved with integrity? How do we actually start for some of us? How do we start to relearn these skills in a way that is decolonial in nature, rather than just perpetuating this white supremacist resource stealing scarcity, afraid anxiety, mindset? I mean, it's, it's really it's really deep.
And I know we've been on this, this conversation for a while. I have two more questions, if you both are open to that.
Pinar and So Yeah. Okay, great.
Ayana Young Okay, so this question I know is going to definitely speak to a lot of our urban relatives. And I know that one of Queer Natures focuses is the development of place based skills through nature based workshops and immersions specifically for LGBTQ2+ people and queer people of color…I’m thinking about the function of space, and specifically urban space. In doing the research for this interview, I came across a reflection on how, so often, queer community grows, and finds refuge in urban areas…can you share more about the dynamics between urban refuge versus the healing work and rights of passages Queer Nature facilitates in say, the mountains and forests of the Arapaho, Ute, and Cheyenne territories that you are currently located in?
Pinar Yeah, I can answer that question. That's a really great question. And I really appreciate it. So often, So and I, we notice, you know, that there is this like, kind of, yeah, historical story around how at least in like, in the colonial context, how queer folks have found refuge in urban spaces and that you know, rural spaces or like, yeah, rural places are close to like the more than human world, which they probably wouldn't call it that in that context, but like in spaces that are close to wilderness as not safe because queerphobic and transphobic violence is that have occurred in those regions like specifically in the rural contexts. And I think you know, that's something we we we do discuss because like, we often are, either like within like a within like our more than human community in a park, or like, that's like kind of close to urban areas, or we're even further away, and people don't often think like, “Oh, queer community, let's go be outside”.
But most of the time, there's like, again, going back to like our collective trauma as queer folks within a colonial context, that, you know, there is a lot of trauma in which we've, like, historically speaking, have congregated at like, gay bars or bars, like around alcohol or around different substances. And, and I think there's so much intelligence to that, because of the collective trauma that we've been through. And my hope is that we will continue moving towards healing and not congregate just within like those spaces, and you know, Queer Nature, our spaces are sober. And that's really important to us.
And so I think, yeah, I feel like creating and facilitating queer spaces outside that acknowledge, that collective trauma and also acknowledge again, that the colonial context of like, having to like, essentially find, yeah, like you said, refuge within urban spaces to, you know, be ourselves is really important to you know, voice, and also, you know, to tend to relationship to place, and interspecies solidarity, you know, through ancestral skills, place based skills, rites of passage and nature connection is such a amazing potential to like, really tend to that healing and that resilience within our communities.
So yeah, and I think in terms of Rites of Passage work, that feels really potent in terms of, you know, like with the rites of passage work, that we do facilitate it, it is structured in a sense that there's like a space, a timeframe that you're outside, immersed with a more than human community by yourself as a human, because you're not by yourself, you know, obviously, with more than human kin around for a certain amount of time fasting. And what's beautiful within those queer specific spaces is how, because of the queer framing, and the container and the people who are drawn, there's actually this like, incredible possibility and potential to have like mirroring happen from the natural world of our own queerness and our own gender, as well as again, not just to like, to me, I'm kind of cautious around saying that sometimes because I think the rite of passage community can inadvertently be extracted in the sense that it's like, “Oh, we're going out to the more than human community to extract meaning for ourselves”, versus being like, “Oh, actually, maybe this isn't just one way, but maybe it's actually reciprocal that it is like this co creation of meaning and co creation of relationship that's happening. I feel like that's also important to say, and like to clarify, as I'm talking about this, I think that there's just so much again, potential with creating spaces for queer, trans, non-binary, and Two Spirit folks to be within a container where they can engage in these more than human conversations through, you know, self generated ceremonies, that potentially will mirror back across species, our resilience to one another. And sometimes that shows up as reflecting back our queerness to ourselves and being affirmed in that way, in particular, and what is our gift that we're bringing back to our communities that also include our more than human communities that are potentially really tied and like bound and amplified by our gender expression or sexuality, but not necessarily always have to be bound to that but are informed by, so that's something I would add to that question.
So Yeah, I'm just like, probably, to echo some of the stuff that's been said. But like, it might be helpful to just give, like a personal anecdote for some of this stuff. Because when I was in eighth grade, I believe that's when, you know, Matthew Shepard was murdered. And I feel like as you know, I'm I guess I'm sort of on the older end of millennials, but I do feel like there's such a legit fear of rural spaces. I mean, it just there just is, you know, in our consciousness, and that's like a trauma. Like, I definitely feel traumatized by that. And so yeah, I think that I grew up in a world where to find belonging as a queer person, you moved to cities and you know, met other humans who were queer. And I think that there's still and will always be so much intelligence and beauty to that.
And I also feel like I felt inspired over the years to just not like reverse that at all, like not say, like, “Oh, we shouldn't gather in urban areas” or like this is wrong, but rather question how we can build tools of resilience for being in like rural, and I don't like using the word wilderness, but remote, let's just say remote settings. And it just seems like, yeah, the more we get to know our nonhuman and other than human kin, even if we just have a few touchstones of how to relate to non human beings in like reciprocal ways or in ways that can help us ground when we're in these spaces, yu know, that builds resilience, which I feel like and one aspect of resilience, psychologically is just feeling kind of feeling competent. And I am hesitant to use that word because I feel like the concept of resilience has been really, really like, focused on the individual in mainstream psychology. And I don't agree with that. But like, just this, yeah, this notion of like, sometimes, you know, for a lot of people being out in the woods can feel like, intimidating partially, because there's not, we haven't been provided with the ability to see things with granularity, because we grew up in a context where, like, I, at least me where I, I, as a kid loved like counting license plates and counting different like, logos, you know what I mean? But I wasn't necessarily taught how to identify different plants and trees. And so it's totally natural that if I, as that person, initially, I'm going into the woods, and everything just looks like this big brown and green wall of indecipherability.
And so I think there's something in us where we really, really crave taxonomy, and I don't just mean that in sort of a purely sort of Western science sense. But I also I just mean, like, yeah, we crave pattern recognition, we're so like, thirsty for that. And children display that all the time, just as I did when I was a kid. And so if we, you know, can turn some of those beautiful capacities and skills, and then compound that with like, our, like additional survival skills as queer people and as, and as folks of color that Pinaar already spoke to how much resilience can we have in rural and remote settings?
Like, it kind of seems like, I don't even know the answer. It just sounds really awesome. And I want to keep moving towards that, because just building this familiarity, and also using, you know, the Queer Nature spaces as kind of a lab for practicing these skills of resilience, because it's, in some ways right now, it's really hard to, to feel safe in the human world for me and in the social and political climate. And so yeah, like, we also try to create spaces where we can sort of practice being in situations or scenarios that might be more stressful if they were really happening to us. But we have this privilege and opportunity to, to practice these skills, like with each other in a space that's safe and fun, and like kind of emergent. And I think that can really transfer over and, and I hope it can really help folks, when they're in settings that are socially unfamiliar, but maybe they recognize the songbirds there and they're like, “Oh, yeah, they're the chickadees doing, they're doing their thing and like squabbling with each other”. And that for Nervous System regulation, I think that can go so far.
Ayana Young I'm just looking at my notes. And I, I honestly probably have another three hours of questions. So I'm going to reel myself back in. And really how I'd love to close this conversation is just by giving you both the space to mention anything that you feel passionate about mentioning in this moment. Also, it'd be helpful to know how people can support queer nature and where they can find you and how they can get involved. So I'll just leave you both the space to fill in the blanks, however you see fit, and then hopefully, sometime soon have a follow up conversation.
So Yeah, um, I just wanted to say there's something that I want to bring in that I feel like we touched upon, but I also have, like, kind of this concern that some of the things they said about naturalist studies are about categorizing things or knowing the names of things could be slightly misleading and I guess this also is a segue into like an invitation for folks who want to get more into nature connection or tracking or naturalist studies, but don't really know where to start. And I guess what I want to say is like, all of the things that Pinar and I hold space for and I guess, teach and mentor, you know, whether it's wildlife tracking or observing bird behavior, or you know, carving something out of wood, it's all grounded and listening. And I feel like if we can look at naturalistic studies and and also just science in general, as being grounded in listening, and witnessing, which I feel like we think of as a pretty passive act and it doesn't have to, I think it's perhaps subtle and kind of unassuming. But it's not totally passive. It's definitely active. And I mean, this is something that's so brought in through Indigenous science. And I really want to acknowledge that the work of Robin Wall Kimmerer is so integral and she says something where she's like, you know, Western science asks us to learn about organisms, where Indigenous science asks us to learn from them. And I think that's actually from actually a podcast interview with her maybe on, On Being, I forget exactly where but, and that's something that that we always return to.
And I think it can be helpful, because I think in naturalist studies, there's this focus on naming things, not knowing the name, and it's like, “Oh, if I don't know the name, or if I don't remember the Latin name, I'm not good at not a good naturalist” and I just want to sort of dispel that as well. Because, you know, this newer, and also Indigenous, which is a very old view of ecology is that, you know, it's made up of not just elements, but relationships and relationships are actually the core. And so one of my, like, biggest advices, that I feel like I give folks who want to get more into nature connection, including in cities, is like just just pick a spot and go there regularly and just observe and listen. And it doesn't matter if you don't know who those beings are called by Western science, and even encouraging curiosity about what could be the original names of those beings, which is something I've been trying to work on discovering as, like a white settler.
So yeah, just kind of emphasizing that. And there's so much where that influences trauma work and trauma studies because I feel like healing trauma is so much about listening and witnessing and being witnessed, and, and being listened to. And so I just wonder with our gifts as marginalized folks and queer folks with our gifts of tracking and listening, that were born out of adversity and you know, often trauma, what gifts can we offer to our non human can have listening and holding space for them just as were listened to by them? And I don't pretend to have the answer to that, or that it's going to be a magic bullet. But I just, I just wanted to leave that as the last as my last word there.
Pinar Yeah, thank you so much for this rich dialogue. I feel like yeah, I feel like we could talk to you for four hours. And we really appreciate the space. Yeah, I feel like, one of the ways that you can get a hold of us, just to bring that in a bit is, you know, we're pretty active on Instagram. So @QueerNature is the way to find us or our website, QueerNature.org, our Facebook page, we're not as active on that. But you can just find us on Queer Nature, if you search that on Facebook.
Ayana Young Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You both have so much to share. And I'm so appreciative that you've spent the last, you know, over an hour with us being able to share these thoughts. So, so much gratitude and thank you again.
So Yeah, and thank you so much for your commitment to being accountable across species and across deep time. I'm just really yeah, just very moved to see your work and, and be in conversation.