Filtering by: The Land in Our Bones
Plantcestral Roadmaps // 2 part series with Design Justice Network
Jul
9
to Jul 27
The Land in Our Bones

Plantcestral Roadmaps // 2 part series with Design Justice Network

This 2 part series is being hosted by the Design Justice Network’s Care Pod. You can learn more about them at https://designjustice.org/djn-care-pod 

In this moment, as we witness multiple genocides around the world— in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Kashmir, and elsewhere— it can feel easy to surrender to defeat and despair, and to sever ourselves from taking the risks that resistance truly demands. What if we turn to land, and our relationships with plantcestral beings, as a source of strategy, a source of support through feelings of fear and inertia and defeat, an anchor for deepening into movement-building, a compass towards new possibilities? How have generations of violence and colonization ruptured our relationships with land, and how do these ruptures impact our sense of collaboration and capacity for community-building?

Join us for our July Care Pod series, where Guest Practitioner Layla K. Feghali will guide us through an exploration of land, lineage, plantcestors, and resistance to colonialism, in relation to design justice. 

Participation in both gatherings is not mandatory, though we encourage you to join both if possible, as they build on each other. These experiences are virtual, free, and open to people practicing (or curious about) Design Justice and Design Justice Principles. DJN Membership and previous attendance are not required. Design Justice Principles will be woven into each gathering and we will invite discussions that connect us back to creative, collaborative ways of working and being.

CARE CIRCLE

Tuesday July 9, 2024 / 11AM - 1:30PM EDT

How to prepare for this gathering: 

  • Please bring some form of rose and/or olive, which will support the experiential learning process shared during the session. This can be any form which is accessible to you, such as: rosewater, olive oil, a branch or flower from either of these plants (dry or fresh), a flower essence, tincture, infused oil, tea, food, etc. Tangible forms of the plant may be helpful, but if this is not accessible for any reason, a video, image, drawing or other representation of the plant can also be used.

In this Care Circle, we will gently enter into an exploration of our relationships with plantcestors, ancestral remembrance, land, and the language of our own bodies. What is “Plantcestral Re-membrance”? What is the memory that our bodies, lineages, and the land hold? How does the land communicate with and through us, despite the ruptures and losses our lineages and landscapes have endured?

Through sharing some foundational concepts and tools, guided meditation, reflection spaces, and collectively working with rose and olive, we will begin attuning to the ways that our bodies and inner landscapes illuminate and deepen our capacity to build relationships with plants. And, in turn, we will learn about the ways that the earth and our plant lineages are communicating with us, and through us, via our inner landscapes. We welcome you to show up as your full self, with all your emotions and lived experiences, and to participate in whatever ways feel accessible for you. There will be multiple options for engaging with plant beings; more details will be sent in advance to registrants. 

PRACTICE SPACE

Saturday, July 27, 2024 / 11AM - 1:30PM EDT

How to prepare for this gathering: 

  • Please bring some form of a plant from your ancestral lands or cultures. (Spices from your cultural foods, or garden plants you associate with your grandparents or elders are a good place for inspiration). This can be any form which is accessible to you, such as: a hydrosol, a fresh or dried branch or flower of the plant, a flower essence, tincture, infused oil, tea, food, etc. Tangible forms of the plant may be helpful, but if this is not accessible for any reason, a video, image, drawing or other representation of the plant can also be used.

  • More detailed prompts for choosing a plant will be shared in advance with registrants.

In this Practice Space, we will continue our Care Circle explorations of land, sovereignty, plant lineages, and movement-building. How does plantcestral connection relate to resistance? What does land teach us about colonialism and our defiance in the face of it?  How might our inner ecologies trap us in states of despair and stagnation that keep us from being part of collective liberation movements? And how might the land and our lineages hold and support us through growth, steadfastness, and action?

Through collective reflection, plant meditations, and writing practices, we will deepen into relationship with an ancestral plant of your own choosing. We welcome you to show up as your full self, with all your emotions and lived experiences, and to participate in whatever ways feel comfortable for you. 

Practitioner Bio

Layla K. Feghali is an ethnobotanist, cultural worker, and author who lives between her ancestral village in Lebanon and her diasporic home in California, where she was born and raised. Her dedication is the stewardship of eco-cultural re-membrance and decolonization movements, and the many layers of relational restoration, systemic reckoning, and healing that entails. Feghali offers a line of plantcestral medicine, education, and other culturally-rooted offerings and mutual aid efforts, with an emphasis on land-based ancestral practices from the Crossroads (southwest Asia + northern Africa) and its diasporas. Her recent book, The Land in Our Bones, documents cultural herbal and healing knowledge from Syria to the Sinai, while interrogating colonialism and its lingering wounds on the culture of our displaced world.

https://www.riverroseremembrance.com/

Access Supports

  • ASL interpretation

  • Auto-captioning via Zoom Recording, with options for asynchronous participation

  • Visual descriptions by speakers

  • Emotional Support available during the gathering

  • Tech support

  • Scheduled breaks throughout the two and a half hours

  • Show up as you are: feel free to take additional breaks, have camera on or off, move around your space, etc.

General Gathering Flow

  • Opening & Landing

  • Check-In Conversations

  • Topic Explorations with Guest Practitioner

  • Break

  • Group Discussions

  • Announcements & Closing

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Reading Session with Apexart
May
25
10:00 AM10:00
The Land in Our Bones

Reading Session with Apexart

In conjunction with As we move away from the sun

A reading session with Layla Feghali and Asmaa Al-issa (Intima2 group). Together with participants Layla and Asmaa will discuss Layla’s recent book “The Land in Our Bones” followed by Q&A.

Participants are encouraged to read the book and come to the session with selected passages to read together. There will be only 5 free copies of the book available for those who need it and can’t afford getting the book.

 
LAYLA K. FEGHALI is an ethnobotanist, cultural worker, and author who lives between her ancestral village in Lebanon, and California, where she was born and raised. Feghali’s work is about restoring relationships to earth-based ancestral wisdom as an avenue towards eco-cultural stewardship, collective healing, and liberation. Feghali hosts a line of plantcestral medicine, community education, mutual aid efforts, and other culturally-rooted offerings, with an emphasis on land-based lifeways from the Crossroads (Southwest Asia + North Africa) and its diasporas. Her recent book, The Land in Our Bones, documents cultural herbal and healing knowledge from Syria to the Sinai, while interrogating colonialism and its lingering wounds on the culture of our displaced world.

Asmaa Al-issa (b. Baghdad, Iraq) cultivates an artistic practice that responds to her lived experiences and interactions with the land, materials, and people around her. Her recent works explore regenerating and reviving ancestral lands and cultures, and focus on the power and potential of imagination within these processes. Asmaa’s projects are sometimes developed alongside workshops and gatherings as a way of nurturing creativity, while building relationships and cross-cultural alliances.

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The Land in Our Bones | with Taya Ma Shere
Apr
26
12:00 PM12:00
The Land in Our Bones

The Land in Our Bones | with Taya Ma Shere

Join us in the House of Dates for the third annual Center for Multi-Religious Studies Lecture. We will be joined by ethnobotanist and cultural worker Layla Feghali as we explore themes of her new book The Land In Our Bones: Plantcestral Herbalism and Healing Cultures from Syria to Sinai, exploring earth-based pathways to ancestral stewardship and belonging in diaspora. We’ll also learn about the Gaza Mutual Aid Network which Layla’ co-founded.

Layla’s work documents cultural herbal and healing knowledge from Syria to the Sinai while interrogating colonialism and its lingering wounds on the culture of our displaced world.

Hosted by Starr King Ministry, interviewed by Taya Ma Shere.

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Apr
23
1:00 PM13:00
The Land in Our Bones

Diaspora Medicine: an Interview with The Herbal Highway

Diaspora Medicine with Layla K Feghali

Join Renée Camila and her guest Layla K Feghali for a conversation about embodied connection to ancestral medicine from the diaspora. Their discussion explores how colonial displacement relates to herbal traditions around birthwork, language, and belonging. Layla is a gifted plant storyteller and the author of The Land in Our Bones, which documents cultural herbal and healing knowledge from Syria to Sinai while interrogating colonialism and its lingering wounds on the cultures of our displaced world.

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Stewardship, Remembrance, & Sovereignty | with Iman Labanieh
Apr
17
6:00 PM18:00
The Land in Our Bones

Stewardship, Remembrance, & Sovereignty | with Iman Labanieh

This will be a hybrid (in-person & online) book talk taking place in Portland, Oregon (& virtually via Zoom).

Join us for a timely conversation about Layla K. Feghali’s newly released book, The Land in Our Bones. Highlighting lineages of herbal resilience, diasporic stewardship, and unraveling the rippling impacts of colonial violence on our earth and communities, this book about people and traditions of the Levant offers relevant fodder to grapple with the dire times we are in. Join us in a conversation hosted by Iman Labanieh of Baylasan Botanicals, for a brief reading, interview, and a chance to ask your own questions, plus receive a signed book!

Questions inspiring our conversation include:

- What is the relationship between herbal healing practices, land-based stewardship, and global sovereignty movements?

- How can our relationships with land and culture support, inspire, and guide the cultivation of more liberated and dignified worlds?

- What is the role and responsibility of diasporic land-tenders in confronting empire, genocides, and climate collapse in a rapidly deteriorating world?

- How can the earth and our traditions feed our steadfastness, capacity, and skills to support movements on the ground?

As organizers and herbalists with roots in Lebanon & Syria, the ongoing genocide in Gaza has been particularly heavy on our hearts and minds. Many of us have shifted our practices to respond to the needs of this moment including organizing, fundraising, and providing political education. It is our hope that this conversation will provide generative insight into more practical wisdom for action in our local and care-taking communities — for Palestine and beyond.

This is a masked event. Extra masks will be available if needed.

Exact location TBA to ticket holders.

Limited capacity, so get your tickets now!

IMPORTANT: *Please select "allow River Rose to contact me" upon purchase so you receive email updates about the event only, including location updates and more.*

** If you have the means, please consider offering an "additional donation" upon ticket purchase to support the organizers of this event to sustain their community work. **


ABOUT US

LAYLA K. FEGHALI is an ethnobotanist, cultural worker, and author who lives between her ancestral village in Lebanon, and California, where she was born and raised. Feghali’s work is about restoring relationships to earth-based ancestral wisdom as an avenue towards eco-cultural stewardship, collective healing, and liberation. Feghali hosts a line of plantcestral medicine, community education, mutual aid efforts, and other culturally-rooted offerings, with an emphasis on land-based lifeways from the Crossroads (Southwest Asia + North Africa) and its diasporas. Her recent book, The Land in Our Bones, documents cultural herbal and healing knowledge from Syria to the Sinai, while interrogating colonialism and its lingering wounds on the culture of our displaced world.

IMAN LABANIEH is a farmer, herbalist, cultural worker, and educator based in Portland, OR. Her ancestors are rooted in Damascus and Aleppo, Syria, but she was raised in Southern California before making her way to the Bay Area where she studied Ethnic Studies and Psychology at UC Berkeley. She comes to land-based work because she sees ecological stewardship as our roadmap to liberating our lands and our selves. Iman loves to exchange knowledge about plants, their medicine, and ethnobotany and is currently an educator at Zenger Farm where she teaches earth-based programming to young people. Additionally, Iman tends a small medicinal herb farm called Baylasan Botanicals where she grows an abundance of medicine to distribute to her community.

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On the Land in Our Bones | CIIS Book Talk with Maryam Hasnaa
Apr
4
6:00 PM18:00
The Land in Our Bones

On the Land in Our Bones | CIIS Book Talk with Maryam Hasnaa

This book talk will feature Layla in conversation with Maryam Hasnaa.

Join us for a profound conversation that is a vital invitation to re-member our roots, to deepen our relationship with the lands where we live in diaspora, and a beckoning call towards belonging, healing, and freedom through tending the land in your own bones. 

It is open to the public. Register via the link below.

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Return to the Source | Talks with Kali Akuno
Mar
13
to Apr 3
The Land in Our Bones

Return to the Source | Talks with Kali Akuno

I am particularly keen on this conversation as Kali is amongst my closest and longest friends and comrades, and someone I consider to be my primary political mentor in foundational ways. We have been discussing these subjects for years and building towards materialized action in their light, so I am very excited to build on some of these conversations more publicly. Make sure to check out his recent book.

Return to the Source

A Discussion about decolonization, indigenization, and the need for ancestral knowledge to survive the present and build a regenerative future

Join Kali Akuno in discussion with Layla K. Feghali in a conversation about why in a time of genocide we need urgently need to recenter indigenous knowledge(s) and practices and challenge the dominant narratives of nationhood, nation-states, nationality, empire, international law and human rights.

This will be a 2 part discussion.

They will be live-streamed.

[Part 1 recording below]

Part 2 will take place on Wednesday, April 3rd at 5 pm est/4 pm cst/3 pm mst/2 pm pst

part 1 of our conversation.

Kali is co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson and the Institute for Social Ecology’s racial and environmental justice program coordinator.

Kali served as the Director of Special Projects and External Funding in the Mayoral Administration of the late Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, MS. His focus in this role was supporting cooperative development, the introduction of eco-friendly and carbon reduction methods of operation, and the promotion of human rights and international relations for the city.

He is co-editor of Jackson Rising: the Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, MS and Jackson Rising Redux: Lessons on Building the Future in the Present and the author of numerous articles and pamphlets including “The Jackson-Kush Plan: The Struggle for Black Self-Determination and Economic Democracy,” “Until We Win: Black Labor and Liberation in the Disposable Era,” “Operation Ghetto Storm: Every 28 Hours report,” and “Let Your Motto Be Resistance: A Handbook on Organizing New Afrikan and Oppressed Communities for Self-Defense”.

He has served as the Co-Director of the US Human Rights Network and the Executive Director of the Peoples’ Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) based in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He was a co-founder of the School of Social Justice and Community Development (SSJCD), a public school serving the academic needs of low-income African American and Latino communities in Oakland, California.

Layla K. Feghali is an ethnobotanist, cultural worker, and author who lives between her ancestral village in Lebanon and her diasporic home in California, where she was born and raised. Her dedication is the stewardship of eco-cultural re-membrance and decolonization movements (not as a metaphor), and the many layers of relational restoration, systemic reckoning, and healing that entails. Feghali offers a line of plantcestral medicine, education, and other culturally-rooted offerings and mutual aid efforts, with an emphasis on the land-based ancestral practices from the Crossroads (southwest Asia + northern Africa) and its diasporas. Her recent book, The Land in Our Bones, documents cultural herbal and healing knowledge from Syria to the Sinai, while interrogating colonialism and its lingering wounds on the culture of our displaced world.

Feghali asks: How do we embody what binds us together while holding the ways we’ve been wrested apart? What does it mean to be of a place when extraction and empire destroy its geographies? How do we disentangle ourselves from exploitive paradigms to create more liberatory worlds? What can we re-member when we reach beyond what’s been lost and tend to what remains? How do we cultivate regenerative kinships with the lands where we live, especially when displacement has led us to other peoples' unceded territories?

Hosted by the Institute of Social Ecology.

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Love is Our Lifeline | Book Launch + Mutual Aid event!!!
Feb
16
6:30 PM18:30
The Land in Our Bones

Love is Our Lifeline | Book Launch + Mutual Aid event!!!

Will you be my Palentine?

Join us for an evening of cultural healing and remembrance.

Since its inception, The Land in Our Bones has been a devotion of stewardship and care for and from my own ancestors and the Levant’s liberatory relationships to land, love, and life. The book’s culmination is both in resistance to our erasure, and the ongoing cultivation of pathways that can fortify sovereign futures. As genocidal assaults on our people continue, please help me birth this offering in a spirit of collective healing, the cultivation of sumud (steadfastness), communal generosity, and ancestral nourishment as we plant seeds of our liberatory futures together and re-member the roots which fortify us to do so.

Reem’s California will be cooking delicious food featured in the book, including a special Gazan dish in connection towards our kindred relatives on the ground. There will be live folk music, a brief book reading, signing, and q+a with some thoughtful words and invitations for this time. We will have an altar to uplift the spirits of our martyrs - please bring symbolic items to contribute in their honor if you feel called, and a special place to plant native seeds of love and vision towards liberated futures together - from our diasporic homes to our ancestral ones.

While all these generous things are being offered without cost and registration is technically free, I invite folks to purchase tickets with as much generosity is possible for you. ALL fees from the tickets will go directly to our mutual aid efforts to provide basic needs to Gazan civilians enduring genocide: relocation costs, prenatal and postnatal care supplies, tents to protect displaced families, and other such daily living needs. There will be items for sale to collect more funds for our relatives in Gaza on the day of the event as well.

If you would like to donate a customized amount that is not included in the fixed registration tickets, please feel free to register for "free" and then repeat the process by clicking "DONATE + TICKETS" and following the link at the bottom that says "no thanks. I just want to make a donation" to make the contribution in whatever amount you would like to.

* Please wear a mask to increase safety and access for as much of our community as possible.

* RSVP to register your spot, as there is limited capacity and this will help us prepare for adequate amounts of food. Can’t wait to see you!

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Reconnecting to ancestral healing practices - with the Radical Therapists Network
Feb
5
11:00 AM11:00
The Land in Our Bones

Reconnecting to ancestral healing practices - with the Radical Therapists Network

Feghali's upcoming book The Land in Our Bones, documents cultural herbal and healing knowledge from Syria to the Sinai, while interrogating colonialism and its lingering wounds on the culture of our displaced world. The book features her Plantcestral Re-Membrance methodology as an emergent pathway towards cultural repair within herbalism, while engaging nuanced conversations about identity, loss, and exile, and the critical importance of tending the land and life where we are to restore the fundamental integrity of our communities.

The founder of the Radical Therapist Network, Sage M Stephanou, will be in conversation with Layla drawing on key themes within the book, particularly the links between ecological destruction, displacement, and consequences of colonisation on our capacity to heal. We will be holding particular care and attention to these themes in light of the current genocide in Palestine.

A percentage of the fees will be going to the Gaza Mutual Aid Support Network

No-one will be turned away for lack of funds - please contact the Radical Therapists Network.

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