Welcome Dearest Readers to Our New Moon
Message From the Elders Series.

We are honoring ONE ELDER on each NEW MOON
in order to bring more light to this world!

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Each New Moon we have a chance to connect with our
Elders and Medicine People in our broader communities.
These beings are inviting us to step in, step up,
spiral down, spiral up, move into and move from our centeredness. 
Thank you for your wisdom! Thank you for your words. Thank you for your work.
So much gratitude. Thank you dear elders.

Write me with any comments, ideas or suggestions for Elders we should feature at mikulenentine@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you dear ones.

With Love & Aloha,
For all of our Relations,
Miku

 

“My advice is to learn to go camping. It can be gracious. There are ways to do it. And now, we have this wonderful syncretic development through hoop culture. Which is a queer culture that has found bridges to remnant indigenous land stewardship, found Coyote crazy elders and the patience to learn from them.”

 

By Tomi Hazel, Edited by Miku Lenentine

We don’t know what’s going to happen next. The best we can do is to be easy on ourselves by understanding that some of what we are all doing now is going to be useful in the future, but we don’t know what those things are exactly. We can’t force the future. Time will have its way with us.

To a real degree we are leading with our hearts. With our intentions, our best intentions. That’s the best we can do. That has to be okay. We shouldn’t be stressing about this. We should be paying attention.

By systems theory, we are about to, as a species, and as a planet go through a phase change. By definition, the complex chaos at the edge of change does not give us any clear idea of what is on the other side of change. Some of what we are doing now will be very valuable on the other side, we just don’t know what for sure those parts are. On top of having the humility of moving forward bravely into an unknown future we are living in a time where the vast herd of us has been distracted by a sense of personal empowerment that verges on hyper-individuality. This is very dangerous.

In my tradition, no one person, no matter how powerful their spiritual experiences may be, can declare what is true. A person in corporate meditation sitting together in the meeting house, may have a leading…a sense of fullness in their heart, of insight..of motivation. Thus, we call it a leading.

That leading, in my tradition, is understood to be tentative..only through social and cultural processing can we come together as a community with a better idea of what might be true. Even this is tentative because we are merely human, but like many other species.. our merely human individuality, has a field of growth available to it.
 

Which is relationship.
Which is culture.
Which is language.
Which is social process.

I believe only as a people of place, on a storied landscape, in groups of less than 30 who have known each other through generations, is it possible for us to arrive at truth. These are the known shapes of successful wisdom traditions. I know this might sound daunting for modern people who travel a lot, but we do have access to this wisdom, more than ever before. In fact, some of the positive aspects of global communications, are making this possible for us to come together in the old way, even as we do this using modern technology.

We are also getting bits and pieces of tantalizing clues from wisdoms from other cultures. This is new. It used to be that a culture arrived at these things by being in a place for a long time, having the land teach them and then stayed there, unable to share that wisdom with others. Not so anymore.

My favorite example of this is what I call Ecotopia. It is an imaginary country. However, it has been gaining wisdom for 3 or 4 generations in the Pacific Northwest, and elsewhere. It exists as an idea. Ecotopians are borrowing massively from other cultures in what I call that a syncretic culture mash.
 
And it is pretty good. Check out the music. Check out the art. Lots of interesting regional institutions have networked with each other to create an alternative vision and a counter-culture. Let’s have some gratitude, blessings and praises. Yes, there are a lot of criticisms, errors and problems. But lets back up a little and try to look at the bigger picture. There is a lot to build on.
 
Where then do we find these wise cultures of place and modern Ecotopian communities so they can teach us how we can live in our integrity, in an honoring way, in balance with the land and each-other?

First, stay in place, right where you are and look around, get to know the land, get to know your neighbors. Also, learn the history of the land and the original tenders of this land. Young people today might find this challenging. But you really can start right where you are.

Secondly, there is one thing that is missing…that is interesting to me; the radical culture change fringe of my generation has never actually reported in an effective way. I am not sure why, but I do have my theories. First, it is possible they were forced underground a long time ago and have learned to think like oppressed people have some culture and individual characteristics of having been colonized. Not enough anthropology has been done on Ecotopia…we conduct anthropology research on the jungle and on the reservations…but how about culture building that has been going for decades? Some of the conclusions of the Back to the Land Movement, if not all of them, are anti-capitalist. This means that the cultural creatives have not found academic positions, and have not found support in a way that makes their work visible and accessible for others to learn from. There is a big gap here.  So, the way to find the useful Ecotopian wisdom is the Coyote Path.
 

“To a real degree we are leading with our hearts; with our intentions, our best intentions. That’s the best we can do. That has to be okay. We shouldn’t be stressing about this. We should be paying attention.”

My favorite alternative lifestyle is known as hoop culture. Everyone should learn basic survival skills. People should know these things. It is the best preparation for the decarbonized future. It is the best survival tactic in an uncertain gig economy. You should know how to go camping when there is unpaid work. One harsh thing we are dealing with right now is rent. Property has been colonized and appropriated and wielded by late dystopic capitalism. It is killing the planet.  My advice is to learn to go camping. It can be gracious. There are ways to do it. And now, we have this wonderful syncretic development through hoop culture. Which is a queer culture that has found bridges to remnant indigenous land stewardship, found Coyote crazy elders and the patience to learn from them.

Hoop culture conceives of place on the proper scale which is collections of drainage basins, basins that are connected by low passages, that run into each other, that run to the sea… that the salmon run back up. Those basins end in sinks but are connected by low passes and outline a practical biogeographical region for human flow and connectivity.  

On our journey through the hoop, we need to be able to get along well enough with others to be able to “clump up” in affordable shared housing, along the way. This means we need culture and tools for getting along, and rituals for connecting with each other and the land. Then we need to support local food stores and farmers markets and make direct connections with farms through local markets. Building up this network of the basics. This is what we need to be doing. It is exactly what we did in the late 60s. This is the back to the land idea. I think it is still a good idea, the details have changed, but the general pathways have remained the same. This includes access to the commons (aka go camping), collectivism that develops social connectivity, and practical collectivism around actual needs.
 

“I am dressing up for fun at the end of empire,
but still I am recommending that moving toward simplicity is ecologically appropriate, spiritually appropriate, and can be fun.”
 

A lot of collectivism that is online today is political, it doesn’t have short term pragmatic benefits. Compare this with health clinics, food stores, community gardens, cooperative housing, collective repair cooperatives, etc. I’m a happy shopper at Good Will, even though it is a corporation, but I am recycling, I am finding treasures… and I also know this is a flash. I am dressing up for fun at the end of empire, but still, I am recommending that moving toward simplicity is ecologically appropriate, spiritually appropriate, and can be fun.

So, hoop culture is composed of queer urban refugees who didn’t fit in the city and they have found a way to barely survive on a little bit of government assistance, with an old car, a network of rural friends, and some safe spaces…known places. And some skills.

How do we bring back culture of place, and friendship? The empire does not want us to form true culture. Because it doesn’t play into their fragmentation and alienation game. Let’s start by being true friends to each other. Living at the highest honest, integrity, vulnerability and open-heartedness that we possibly can. With a group of friends. Join the practical collectives, create rural connections, find shared housing, build and create family, volunteer and meet people.

For my own journey, and like many others reading this here, for various reasons we have to leave our homes, and our places of origin.  I had to leave my place of origin and go on hoop. I am a political refugee, I had to leave my ancestral place. My life was in danger, my culture was imploding and could not support me. So, I went west. And learned to build new culture. I am a Bridger. I am taking what I learned in my traditional culture and am adding it to the syncretic stew.
 
And as we do this, we should have compassion for each other to make sure it is done in an honoring way. It is not a zero-sum game. Yes, we should be very careful with traditional place-based peoples, we should back off. We have great indirect resources, we don’t have to go and bother traditional people. Sometimes when a deracinated modern is accused of expropriation, that’s false, because the same thing has been expropriated from several different cultures including this deracinated modern. So, what is being misappropriated from whom?

So, instead…let’s value wisdom for it’s intrinsic worth. Sharing, but not for profit. Stepping out of modern space through ritual, and remembering. And hold it in the light. And be easy with it.

About Auntie Hazel

Auntie Hazel was raised in a small village in South Glens Falls in upstate New York, in the remnants of Plain-Clothes Plain-Speech farmer culture. Hazel’s people had lost their farms, and became factory workers. Hazel’s Mother was a birth-right Friend, the Quakers on her side go back at least 15 generations. Hazel’s Father comes from Old Colonizer stock in upstate New York, that side of the family has roots back to the Dutch colonies and has many connections to militarism, and the settlement of the West. Auntie Hazel was also raised in traditional Algonquin ways through influences in her family’s line that is untraceable.

Hazel participated in the Quaker Medical relief efforts sending supplies and aid to Vietnam and was forced to leave her traditional Adirondacks and flee as a political refugee to the Bay Area in 1969. Auntie Hazel was an Agriculture Instructor at DQ University in the Mid 80’s which was at the time the only multi-tribal institution of higher learning on the planet. She is a graduate of the New York College of Forestry and holds 2 bachelors of science degrees, one in forestry and one in systematic botany. Hazel is also the Author of Greenward Ho, and a forthcoming book on Social Forestry. She was also invited to help Bill Mollison teach the first Permaculture Design Course on the West Coast in 1982 at Evergreen State College. Hazel helped create the foundation for the permaculture curriculum now used in the United States. Some of Hazel’s students include Toby Hemmingway, Diane Leaf Christian, and Penny Livingston.

Auntie Hazel is currently the cottager forester at Wolf Gulch Ranch, in the Little Applegate Canyon of the Siskiyou Mountains, Dakubutede Territory, working to restore the Pine Oak Savana, via traditional wild-tending and reducing excessive fuel hazards, to return fire to the land, to support the return of salmon to the river and beaver to the headwaters.

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A Note About Auntie Hazel’s Gender in Her Own Words

“It took a long time for me to realize how queer I was. I thought the way people were treating me had to do with my traditional status as a Quaker, I didn’t realize until later in life I was physiologically an intersexual. Looking back, this is very clear. I was with a shrink from 6-12^th grade for them to try and fix me. I now embrace the intersectionality that has allowed me to bridge between cultures. I now identify as 5^th gender. I identify with woman, and I have learned women’s cultural ways being embedded in them through childhood, and all my intimate partners have been women. Although, I am often seen as a woman, I can pass and have been able to pass as a man. I have a degree of male privilege that has been essential to my survival. At the beginning of the new millennium, I began to transition to Hazel, being comfortable as passing as often as possible as a woman. I always feel honored to be refereed to by the feminine pronouns, however, I have been called everything you can image in my life.”

How to Support Our Amazing Elder?

Every year Auntie Hazel teaches a number of courses in indigenous wild tending and how to bring fire back to the forest. She also teaches a course on optical surveying and occasionally still offers full permaculture design courses through Siskiyou Permaculture. She loves questions! and loves visitors. Email her at siskiyoupermaculture@gmail.com if you would like to follow up with her about a visit, ask a question, or to sign up for one of her upcoming courses.

You can also learn more by visiting the website http://siskiyoupermaculture.com/.

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Auntie Hazel is interested in sharing her message via podcasts, online video or through any medium you might have. Write to her today to invite her to share her wisdom with your community!