The Speakers.
Danica Boyce
Summer Songs of Northern Europe
Danica will introduce traditional songs of the summer and the sun from northern Europe, in the context of natural cycles, and pagan and animistic themes. Participants will be invited to sing along, with lyrics provided.
Bio: Danica Boyce is the creator of Fair Folk Podcast, where she shares accessible information about paganism, folklore, and folk song. She is a folklore researcher with a Master's in Medieval Studies and a Bachelor of Education with a focus on indigenous pedagogy. She has traveled to research folk singing in places like Iceland, Finland, Georgia, and Lithuania, and led folk song workshops and singalongs in Canada and the UK.
Theresa Buck
Womb of Mother Earth Drum Journey
We will be embarking upon a nourishing meditative journey, with the guide of a deerskin drum. The journey will take us deep within the warm caverns, the very womb of Mother Earth herself. The ethereal womb mirrors the fertile depths of ourselves from which we will be retrieving treasures of self love and protection. This meditation was created during the pandemic to infuse the body, mind, and spirit with a sense of safety, love, and nurturing. Feel free to bring if you wish a yoga mat, blanket, journal, and hydration vessel.
Bio: Theresa is a trained psychic medium, oracle, and spirit weaver. She has been practicing the arts of witchcraft, divination, intuition, mystery, healing, and ritual for 15 years. Among some of her eclectic spiritual background knowledge is shamanism, animism, Buddhism, and energetic medicines. She communes with deities from various different cultures such as Egyptian, Norse, Celtic, Aztec, Indigenous American — reflecting her colorful ancestral heritage. She is also a mother, dancer, ritualist, musician, tarot reader, and nature lover. Besides the magical healing arts, her interests consist of primal mothering, heavy metal, gardening, ancient civilizations, and crafting flower essences as well as DIY herbal home + body goods. She facilitates a monthly event called Metal Movement Temple in Portland, Oregon, where she was born and has lived her entire life. For work, she runs her own eco-friendly home cleaning business and holds sessions for spiritual services. Her spiritual offerings include tarot readings, past life explorations, spellwork, aiding connection with dearly departed and much more. Her passion in this life is to bring opportunities for people to experience the ancient, eternal, wild magic within and all around us.
Harmony Cronin
Heart's Blood: An Ancestrally Informed, Animistically Principled, Woman-Led Approach to DIY Hoof-to-Table Animal Slaughter
Many folks practice harvesting their own animals for food, but many of the Older ways of using every part of the animal have been intentionally destroyed by dominant culture. Every life given is an immense basket of gifts, and how we are with these gifts is how we honor the animal. How did our own ancestors use bladders, or hooves, or eyeballs? How can we connect with them, the animals, the plants, and the land, in a way that nourishes reciprocity and caregiving?
This workshop is a marriage of the practical, material skills of ethical animal slaughter, and the deeper, magickal explorations of how to be in service to those that die so that we can live.
Heart's Blood will be an ongoing, three-day workshop, with the slaughter itself taking place starting at noon on Friday, June 21st. Plan to arrive at the festival as early as possible if you want to take part in this portion of the workshop, and please note that a 3- to 4-hour time commitment is required to participate in the slaughter. Following this, all festival attendees are welcome to drop in throughout the day on Saturday and Sunday as Harmony leads a hands-on exploration of how to use all parts of the animal.
Bio: Harmony is an apocalyptic Viking Warrior Princess who likes living off grid in extreme environments, a MadMax cavewoman wild tending big game hunter, a braintanning butcher biker babe magician, a roadkill connoisseur truck-steader with your great grandma’s passion for food preservation. She is a founding member of the Buffalo Bridge Project, hosts a Magickal Women's Hunting Camp, has helped run a mobile slaughter, worked as a professional butcher and skinner, and now runs a small folkschool in Washington state.
Jessica Hahn
Turkey Wing Style Broom Workshop
A handmade broom is a special art — also, it is very old (connecting us with our ancestors and their living and breathing spaces), practical (cleaning debris from the floor or dust bunnies from the corners) and magical (for purification, opening and closing ritual circles, sweeping in good energy, or literally moving out unwanted influences).
This in-person workshop gives you the supplies and know-how to create a “turkey wing style” broom, a lovely flat broom with a fan-like shape. Not only is it absolutely functional for sweeping a hearth (perhaps its original use), but it is also a perfect broom for a spiritual practice. Class begins with guided meditation. There will be a short lecture and demonstration, then we’ll jump into broom making.
No prior experience is needed, but you will need to hold a tensioning device for 20-30 minutes, without stopping, once you begin the process of broom making (if you need accommodations, please email jericahahn@gmail.com), and you will need to bring a chair. The supplies cost $20 per person; give the cash directly to the instructor. Your broom will be made with natural, undyed, and unprocessed broomcorn and nylon twine. You can optionally bring charms to tie to a hanging cord on your broom. Participation is limited to 15 students.
Bio: Jessica Hahn started Three Witches Designs in 2018 after teaching special education for a decade. A local San Franciscan witch and a lifelong learner, Jessica is an eclectic solo practitioner, a former student at the Berkeley Herbal Center, and a current teacher at the Berkeley Adult School. She teaches DIY workshops in herbal crafting, broom making, and jewelry making to empower others to know enough that they can do it themselves, on their own, afterward.
Timm Kennedy
Recovery From Drug and Alcohol Addiction: Another Way to Live Is Possible
Through work on a program of recovery Timm has found that living in isolation is not the answer. Community is, accountability is. Letting go over control of people and outcomes and living in the present moment is the way forward. The plan is to have a nonspecific recovery meeting for all that wish to attend, with a speaker for each day followed by discussion.
Bio: Growing up on the west coast in punk and metal communities, Timm spent much of his youth riding freight trains, touring with bands and searching for a meaningful life. In the spring of 2017, a series of seemingly unfortunate events led to the beginning of his journey in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.
Megan Marini
Fundamentals of Ashtanga Yoga
Learn the basic principles of Ashtanga yoga, which translates to "eight limbs" yoga from Sanskrit, referring to the eightfold path that Patanjali put forth in the Yoga Sutras. We will be focusing on learning the basic postures (asana) of the practice as well as the basic breathing techniques (pranayama) as is traditionally prescribed learning yoga. This will be a gentle introduction to the postures with slow progressions and lots of opportunity for modifications, while still maintaining the traditional Sanskrit counting of the primary series and flowing, vinyasa format. If you have a mat you are invited to bring it and make it easier to access the full possibility of the asana!
Bio: Megan Marini has been practicing Ashtanga yoga every morning besides Sundays and the Full or New moon for 17 years with teachers Vivian Bedford and Aeryk Bjork at the Bandha Room in Olympia, WA. After many years of practice, Vivian took her under her wing as a teacher assistant/apprentice in 2016. She studied with Sharath Jois in Mysore, India in March 2018. There she studied the Primary series, along with Sanskrit, and yoga philosophy. She completed teacher training with David Garrigues in 2016. She was a student of Eddie Stern (certified Ashtanga teacher in NYC) throughout 2020/ 2021. During this time she was taught Third series asana, pranayama, and the Yoga sutras. She is now a graduate student at Naropa University in the Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Counseling program and plans to integrate yoga teachings into her counseling practice in the future. She also loves growing herbs and vegetables, ecstatic dance, being with her 9-year-old son and organic, raw chocolate!
Paris Weslyn Myers
On Wyrd and Unraveling a World of Wonder
Drawing from personal experiences, serendipitous wins, and creative breakthroughs, in this talk Myers shares how seemingly simple shifts in mindset and intentional wordwork can manifest extraordinary outcomes. This lecture will explore the concept of each thought we have and each word we speak as a potent spell, capable of weaving the fabric of our reality. From ancient wisdom to modern insights, the linguistic origins of words, the evolution of languages, and the dialects we speak help us to uncover the inherent power of our words.
Bio: Paris Weslyn Myers is a mother, poet, teacher, birth worker, grief alchemist, linguist and all around silly goose. Focusing on Sociolinguistics, Cultural Anthropology, and Anglo-Saxon scholarship, Myers is dedicated to exploring the ways in which the languages we speak and how we speak them impact our lives. She is blossoming into the "wise womanhood archetype" day by day while living on the occupied land of the Multnomah, Cathlamet, Clackamas, bands of the Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other Tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River, in so-called Portland, Oregon.
Kyle Pittman
American Indian Philosophies: Framing Shared Worlds
Philosophy itself is one of the most respected intellectual enterprises of Western civilization. The cornerstone of every academic discipline, school of thought, and scientific theory is based in philosophy. But are there challenges to the dominance of Western thought? In this lecture, we will seek to survey the philosophies and worldviews of the Indigenous Peoples of North America, focusing on a broad selection of paradigms. From creation stories (cosmologies) to knowledge systems (epistemologies), we will study the origins and cultural values underpinning such ideas as pragmatism and relationality to discuss how they might apply to contemporary circumstances and meaningful questions. We will briefly contrast these perspectives with dominant Western philosophies such as rationalism and individualism, seeking to understand how these philosophies impact our notions about how the world works.
Bio: Kyle Pittman is a Nez Perce descendant and was raised on the Puyallup Indian Reservation in Tacoma, Washington. Kyle is a Member of the Faculty at The Evergreen State College where he teaches in the Native Pathways Program (NPP). Kyle completed his Bachelor of Arts in Native American & Indigenous Studies and received a Master's in Public Administration with a concentration in Tribal Governance. His academic areas of study are in American Indian histories, federal Indian policy, Indigenous research methodologies, and digital humanities.
Kristinh Scavenger
Community Hide Tanning Workshop
Animal hides were humankind's first textile! Traditionally, the tanning of animal hides represents a community effort that harkens back to a time when the entire animal was utilized both for food and to create tools and clothing, activities still found in some cultures to this day.
In this workshop we will gather to transform a raw sheep skin — salvaged from the agricultural waste stream — into a beautiful textile with the use of natural fats, modern hand tools, and our human effort.
Bio: Kristnh Scavenger is a skilled hide tanner, jewelry maker, and fiber artist living in the forest of the PNW. Kristnh created Salvage Tannery and uses bones and hides scavenged from roadkill, the agricultural waste stream, and hunting discard to create unique, hand-made bone jewelry and fur adornments as Necessary Tools.
Arnold Schroder
Revolutionary Biology: The World Defending Itself
We will examine cases of social revolution in various species and the biology of rapid temperamental change that humans share with them. This will provide us with a framework for a novel understanding of why technology and social complexity are so reliably associated with extractive hierarchy — an account which emphasizes the fragmentation of our evolved potentials by social role specialization and developmental context — and what it might be like to exit the strangely inexorable nightmare logic which is devouring our world.
Bio: Arnold Schroder has spent three decades immersed in a wide range of projects intended to halt the omnicidal course of this civilization — from filing legal challenges against National Forest logging to shutting down coal trains, oil refineries, and pipelines — and his spirit isn't broken yet. As Seek the Light, he has performed many solstice and equinox rituals; with the World Tree Center, he is attempting to build an institutional framework for the integration of scientific and animistic worldviews; in the Fight Like an Animal podcast, he is synthesizing evolutionary theory and revolutionary politics; and in the parallel speculative fiction series A Saboteur's Moon Sheds No Light, he imagines the same podcast set in the future. His new video series Root Causes just began publishing, his old blog and zine Spring Speaks Truth is still online, his book Revolutionary Biology: Evolutionary Politics for a World on Fire is due sometime this year, and his writing has been featured in Dark Mountain, Seeds of Science, the Earth First! Journal, and It's Going Down.
Erica Skadsen of Cascadian Botany
Plant-Meeting: Becoming Acquainted with Red Hawk’s Botanic Residents and Local Ecology
We will gather to hear histories of how this land as we visit today came to be and nurture curiosity for the stories that lay here within and beyond the human timescale. Then we will take a stroll together to learn the identities of local flora. This is envisioned as a facilitated botanical skillshare where everyone is encouraged to share their knowledge. We will use our senses to witness various features of plants and what clues these give towards their identification. Who lives here? How do we know that? Let’s introduce ourselves to what is growing here.
Bio: Erica (MSc Ethnobotany, BS Biology/Botany) is a plant nerd and resident of the Native lands currently known as Portland, Oregon. She is a budding botanist and yard plant consultant focusing on local native and introduced species. Her research interests include native and potentially hazardous plants and how they are used in the Cascadian bioregion and Borneo, traditional body arts and adornment, food sovereignty, and plant identification. She practices low/no budget gardening, mutual aid, and is interested in food, health, and housing security and disparities.
Erica wants to be a catalyst to help folks see and notice plants, to form and maintain a relationship with plants, to discover what they're teaching about the land and us, and to learn how to care for them, ourselves, and each other. Learn more about Erica and her work at www.cascadianbotany.com.
Tiare Valouria
Elemental Yoga
Embrace the day by practicing presence and deepening the breath with a mindful morning flow session. Elemental Yoga is a gentle fusion of Hatha, Vinyasa, Tibetan Mudra Alchemy and Restorative techniques that Tiare has been fine-tuning for the past 20 years within her own studies, practice and public teachings. This session will feel great for all genders, body types and levels of experience on the yogic path. During this 50-minute guided class, we will realign the skeletal structure, recharge our internal battery, luxuriate in the breath, and anchor awareness within the elemental fields of consciousness. A rejuvenating tonic for the mind, body and spirit.
Please come prepared with comfortable clothes for stretching in, a yoga mat and hydration.
Bio: Tiare is an animist and multi-disciplinary artist based in Portland, OR. She is a certified Hatha and Vinyasa yoga instructor and Vajrayana/Chod Initiate and has been teaching yoga and dance regularly for the past 15 years. She currently offers ongoing Moon Yoga and Elemental Fusion Dance classes online at www.animara.life, in addition to the occasional in-person workshop immersion. You can learn more about her at www.tiarevalouria.com.
Leuc Winslow
Plant-Meeting: Becoming Acquainted with Red Hawk’s Botanic Residents and Local Ecology
We will gather to hear histories of how this land as we visit today came to be and nurture curiosity for the stories that lay here within and beyond the human timescale. Then we will take a stroll together to learn the identities of local flora. This is envisioned as a facilitated botanical skillshare where everyone is encouraged to share their knowledge. We will use our senses to witness various features of plants and what clues these give towards their identification. Who lives here? How do we know that? Let’s introduce ourselves to what is growing here.
Bio: Leuc has lived in the Duwamish Watershed of the Salish Sea for the last several years. After completing a master’s degree in cultural studies exploring the differences between indigenous and colonial relationships with land, Luke has devoted themself to the work of restoration ecology and decolonial solidarity. Participating with projects such as Tribal Canoe Journeys, Protectors of the Salish Sea, Duwamish Infrastructure Restoration Training, and other organizing has led Leuc to love sharing with others how we can learn our land — both that of our ancestors and where we may currently reside — as a pathway to healing local places, rekindling spiritual ways of knowing, and building community.
Paulé Wood
The Wheel of the End Times: How Navigating with the Wheel of the Year Helps Us Find Beginnings and Ways Forward
The Wheel of the Year, with its eight sabbats, marks the passing of time, the changing seasons, and traditional agricultural cycles. However, the framework of the Wheel can also be used for our own personal metaphoric cycles of planting and harvesting, for times of soul renewal and soul death. It can be used at many scales; for example, the Wheel of the Day might be Imbolc/dawn, Beltane/noon, Lughnasadh/sunset, and Samhain/midnight.
The end of a festival can feel like Samhain, or the Harvest of the Soul, and leaving the community and returning to regular life can feel like Winter when the fields lie fallow. But Winter is the Dreamtime, the time for integration and dreaming of what to plant in the next cycle of growth. The Wheel always turns through the darkness and back towards the light.
A profound discrepancy exists between how we evolved to live in communal face-to-face societies and how we live today in disconnection and fragmented time. In this time of climate collapse, polarity, and the grind of neoliberalism and inequality, the Wheel can provide a map for reorienting within the disillusionment of modernity and as a template for moving incrementally towards a better future.
Bio: Paulé Wood (they/them) has a background in Human Centered Design and has been professionally designing complex systems for two decades. They have coached and facilitated storytelling-based workshops to help people find new ways of navigating and hospicing modernity.
A practitioner of de-armouring and Northern European magic, they are a maker/repairer of clothing, tools, and community. They enjoy reading, listening, and discussing topics like resistance, mutual aid, human cultures, and the way things work. Paulé is on the board of Rewild Portland and are the co-initiator of Rewild Salish Sea, part of the Rewild Alliance. Their most recent talk was Rewilding Loneliness.
Alexandra Zavyalova
Baba Yaga and the Dragon: Chthonic Animism and Ancestral Medicine
Bio: Alexandra Zavyalova (Sasha) is a PNW resident. She is an artist, ritualist and musician originally from Saint Petersburg, Russia. Among her ancestors are Finno-Ugrs, Erzia, Yaik Cossacks, and the northern Rus. Her background spans the academic world and the animist somatic way of knowing. She holds a BA in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, a theory-heavy background that comes in sharp contrast to her practice of trance work, ancestral ritual and animist way of living. As a practicing animist, she works with plants, runes, ancestors and spirits of place to achieve transformation of consciousness, fate and health.
Her background involves a focus on the people's histories of women and the biopolitics of the witch hunts, as well as analysis of folk tales, texts, rituals and song, and the wisdom that they contain. Sasha carries an old world perspective which she is able to translate into contemporary language and reach realms of animist understanding that have been lost through colonization and migration.