WRFF 2012 POC Fish-Bowl Report-Back

Thoughts in Race, Identity & Solidarity

By Sabitaj Mahal, Earth First! Journal

Wild Roots Feral Futures (WRFF) is a re-wilding, skill-share, and eco-defense camp annually held in the woods of Colorado. WRFF calls for folks who can share basic skills to survive in the wild— fire making, shelter building, plant identification—but also people oriented to anarchist praxis, unpacking privilege, and decolonization. When I went to WRFF last summer, I found that the camp more focused in hands-on skills—exactly what I was looking for. As for anarchist theory and unpacking privilege, discussions were difficult, and as a woman of color, I found myself facilitating one of the most tense discussions of race with white people that I’ve ever experienced.

Updates, final call for workshops, etc.

Once again, the time for Wild Roots Feral Futures is almost here! We just wanted to throw out a few updates & reminders, so here goes...

Important posts:

• Ride share!
• Street Medic/ine Training
• Street Medic/ine Training Registration
• Decolonizing Wild Roots Feral Futures
• Initial WRFF 2013 call/announcement

Site location, seed camp, etc.

The site location for Wild Roots Feral Futures will be announced on the coming New Moon, on Saturday June 8th at the latest, so stay tuned! At that point, seed camp (set-up) technically begins, and folks are welcome to head out to the site and start setting up. Wanna dig latrines? There's lots of work to be done! Local organizers will be on site to help facilitate. There is minimal support housing in Durango, as well as many local camping spots, so please email us if you are arriving early and need assistance.

Accessibility

The WRFF organizers' collective recognizes the dynamics of accessibility and ableism as a form of societal oppression in our culture, and strive to select sites with maximum accessibility, considering the context of an event located in forest and wilderness areas. Due to natural circumstances and the lay of the land (rocky trails on steep hills, etc.), ableism and “disability” may hinder accessibility for some to the inner reaches of the gathering. This is a reality of the natural world that is beyond our ability or desire to alter or control. We will, however, make very effort to help folks of differing abilities get their gear and themselves into the woods. Please contact us or ask an event organizers if you or someone in your group needs assistance hauling gear, etc. Together as a community we're able to do anything!


Workshops, skill shares, activities, etc.

We would like to issue one final call for workshops, skill shares, presentations, discussions, etc. If you have a workshop you would like listed ahead of time, please email us or post on our forums. We are particularly requesting trainings in direct action, blockades, etc. Other planned activities include tree climb trainings, discussions on patriarchy & consent, blacksmithing, plant walks, wild food & medicine foraging, tactical war games (capture the flag, etc.) star gazing, direct action trainings, earth skills trainings, a street/action medic/ine training, a reading group on critiques of anarchist accountability processes, writing letters to political prisoners, a radical puppet show, hiking, swimming, yoga, and much more!

Musicians, bands, etc.

WRFF 2013 is seeking acoustic musicians, performing artists, storytellers, etc., to join us and share your muse! If you have an act, band, or musical performance you would like listed ahead of time, please email us or post on our forums.

Kitchen

Once again, Durango Food Not Bombs will be facilitating WRFF's free communal kitchen. We are requesting support from other FNB chapters & revolutionary food networks, and are asking WRFF participants to bring any donations of food, herbs, spices, coffee, tea, sweeteners, etc., as well as kitchen gear (large pots & pans, spatulas, ladles, etc.). Got something you'd like to see served at the kitchen in the woods? Let's make it happen! We'll be collecting monetary donations throughout the event for food runs to town. Please dumpster on your way here, and contact us for local dumpster diving tips! Also, please let the kitchen know about any food restrictions, allergies, etc.

Medical

We have an amazing medic team forming, and are requesting WRFF participants bring first aid supplies, to be donated to the medic clinic/team. Please also check in with the medic team about any medical conditions we should be aware of.

Welcoming & Guard/Security 

For everyone's safety, we will be forming stationary and roving voluntary guard details, working in 3 or 4 hour shifts (which we'll decide together on the ground, in the woods), 24 hours a day. The entrance guard/security station near the parking area will also serve as a welcoming center for incoming participants. Please bring radios, scanners, batteries, flashlights, etc. to be utilized by the security team.

Distro Center, Really Really Free Market, etc.

Although WRFF is completely free and non-commercial, we encourage folks to bring along their distros, as a means of internal movement fundraising and mutual aid. We will also be creating a zine library (stuff to take) and lending library (stuff to borrow & return), so please bring along relevant literature & books (and be sure to mark lending library items for later reclaiming). In addition, we will be creating a Really Really Free Market ("free box" or "free store" area) with extra clothing, gear, and other items for free exchange. These will likely be located in close proximity of one another, near the entrance welcoming center.

Gear & Supplies

Other than first aid & kitchen supplies, we're seeking donations of infrastructural supplies such as extra ropes, tarps, tents, easy-ups, water jugs, water filtration systems, stoves, etc. For an expanded supplies list, see this year's initial announcement.

More information regarding safer space & accountability, conflict resolution and management, consent, security culture, etc. can be found in the initial call-out.

Well, that's it for now. We don't know about you, but we're getting really excited! It's time to get off the computer, and into the wildwood!

If you have any other questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us or post on our forums. We can also be found on fedbook.

May the Forest Bewitch You,

The Wild Roots Feral Futures organizers' collective

(PS - Don't forget the post-WRFF caravan to the Earth First! Round River Rendezvous!)

Decolonizing Wild Roots Feral Futures

Wild Roots Feral Futures, as an event, takes place on stolen indigenous land. In recognition of this truth, we would like to build relationships with those whose occupied land Wild Roots Feral Futures 2013 occurs on. In this spirit, we would like to reach out to indigenous communities in our area to establish direct lines of communication and extend an invitation to join us at the event in June. We recognize that protocol varies from community to community and Nation to Nation, and we feel that a good first step on our part is to simply reach out and establish contact, as we are doing now. Although we do not expect to have our hands held for us, any contacts and/or guidance regarding specific appropriate protocol would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! Feel free to contact us at feralfutures@riseup.net

For background reading on decolonization, please visit Unsettling America, particularly the Allyship & Solidarity Guidelines, as well as critical texts regarding cultural appropriation, including Wanting To Be Indian and Cultural Appreciation or Cultural Appropriation?

Wild Roots Feral Futures would also like to invite folks, indigenous & settler alike, to join us at WRFF 2013 to host and/or facilitate workshops, discussions, etc. regarding the theory & praxis of decolonization, and to work towards the formation of relationships of solidarity and allyship against all forms of domination. Settlers must not expect to have their status and privilege as settlers deconstructed for them, but we believe mutual dialogue to be foundational to true decolonization, which must listen to indigenous voices.

Here is one decolonization workshop scheduled thus-far: 


Batzarre: Decolonization and Awakening the Indigenous Self
 
Tentative Date: Begins evening of Tuesday June 18th. Picks up again in the morning of Wed. June 19th until supper. (open to suggestions to increase participation)

Beyond decolonization work in anti-oppression and academic settings lies “oiher” – the dangerous, crooked, but rewarding path of reawakening our selves and reclaiming our Indigenous cultures – particularly for people of European heritage. You are invited to join this day long mini-gathering that will explore finding our ancestors and our lost sense of place, how to know our relatives and lifeway again, and most critically – the liberating process of healing our hearts and spirits so that we may find our way back to our Indigenous selves. These are powerful understandings taught using story, discussion, experiential learning, and other tools, that has the power to disturb and change your life.

Nire izena Ana Oian Amets da, esan english Naomi Archer. I’ve been decolonizing for over 13 years– reawakening connection to my proto-Basque ancestors of the area we call southwest France. I’ve been invited to share my experiences of decolonization with people from all Four Directions, including Indigenous people of Turtle Island, as well as in Europe. I’m fully immersed in Indigenous resistance struggles as an adopted and active member of the traditional Cante Tenza Okolakiciye or Lakota Strong Heart Warrior Society, coordinator for the Lakota Solidarity Project, and former co-founder of the Four Directions Solidarity Network. You can see some of my current work at LakotaGrandmothers.org. I can be reached at tzorihou@gmail.com or 828-230-1404

Street Medic/ine Training Registration

Ride Share!

Car culture: it's killing the planet. Amongst other things. Alas, few will find other viable, less ecocidal options for accelerated, long-distance travel. We of course encourage anyone who's able to walk, ride a bicycle, etc., but in acknowledging the inevitability of motorized travel to Wild Roots Feral Futures, we have a ride share board on our community forum site. Please use it! (Note post dates, as some may have yet to be cleaned out from years past.)

Until we're "driving through the wilderness across over­ grown freeways on our species' last tank of gas"...

Street Medic/ine Training at Wild Roots Feral Futures 2013

Note: If you have workshops, skill shares, teach-ins, etc. that you would like us to list ahead of time, please post them on the workshop forum and/or contact us at feralfutures@riseup.net 

Register for the Street Medic/ine Training now!


Wild Roots Feral Futures is very excited to announce a 2.5-day Street Medic training at this year's WRFF, taught by members of Chicago Action Medical (CAM), Mutual Aid Street Medics (MASM), and Finger Lakes Action Medics (FLAME).

National first aid systems in most of the world came out of the medical corps of popular and liberation movements in the 1950s and 1960s. This was also true in the United States, where street medics were operating and training in Mississippi and New York City at least four years before Maryland established the first statewide EMS program.

Street medics are an international informal community who have provided medical support during the last half-century of protests, direct actions, uprisings, and militarized natural disaster aftermaths. Becoming a member of the street medic community involves completing a 20-28 hour training, working at an action as the buddy of an experienced street medic, and maintaining relationships with the street medic community.

Students who attend this training are expected to attend all of it. The training covers (1) street medic field operations and prevention, (2) emergency response, (3) patient assessment and first aid, (4) community health work, and (5) operating in unsafe scenes. Scenarios, skills stations, and critical thinking exercises are based on recent experiences of street medics in backcountry and urban situations.

All students will get non-latex gloves and a 70pp street medic handbook, and may purchase a basic first aid kit.

Itinerary:

• June 19-21: 20-hour street medic training.

• June 23: 3-hour Intro to herbal remedies for base camp and blockade.

• June 23: 2-hour Wildcrafting high-desert medicine for common camp maladies.

Trainer bios:

GRACE KELLER is an internationally-recognized street medic trainer and a member of Chicago Action Medical. She trained as a street medic in 2001 and apprenticed as a street clinician in 2002-2003. She has spent the years since volunteering as a front-line health worker, clinician, educator, and health systems designer in urban, rural, and backwoods environments.

Ms. Keller grew up among pokeweeds, corn fields, and ramps in a parsonage beside a country church in the south. She began formal study of clinical herbalism in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As a survivor of psychiatric abuse and former assistant director of a peer-run, recovery-based state mental health agency, she takes a strong interest in how complex social situations and trauma can be addressed by lay health workers.

BECCA PISER works as a registered nurse. She was trained as a street medic in 2002 and is active in Mutual Aid Street Medics and Philly Street Medic Collective as a medic and trainer. Becca is a founding member of Peoples Medical Relief, providing medical relief and recovery work with survivors of hurricane Sandy in New York.

Becca has challenged medic trainers across the Eastern and Central US to update their trainings to meet current realities, and helped develop new curricula for training street medics, affinity group medics, and community first-aiders. Becca started two prison arts programs and is working on starting a third.

GREG is a street medic, herbalist, Wilderness EMT, bicycle mechanic, farmworker, Reiki practitioner, and community builder. When he is not summit hopping he spends his time in Ithaca, NY, where he organizes with FLAME (Finger Lakes Action Medics and Educators) and the Ithaca freeskool.

Greg offered ongoing herbal support at Occupy Wall Street and other protests, has helped maintain campaign health at longer forest actions and encampments. Most recently, he organized medical care for the 50,000 person Forward on Climate rally in Washington, DC and the Earth First! Climbers Guild's week-long climb training which took place in the snow-covered Finger Lakes National Forest.

Help fund Wild Roots Feral Futures 2013!

 
Wild Roots Feral Futures is an informal, completely free and non-commercial, and loosely organized event operating on (less than a) shoe-string budget, formed entirely off of donated, scavenged, or liberated supplies and sustained through 100% volunteer effort. 

This year, we are once again reaching out to the greater community in an appeal for funding donations. All proceeds go directly to acquiring essential collective supplies and food, as well as reimbursing trainers, speakers, teachers, performers, medics, and others who are traveling long distances to provide us with their services, knowledge, skills, and expertise.

Donation records & expense reports will be openly reviewed on the ground at Wild Roots Feral Futures by the organizers' collective and any other attendees/participants interested in such transparency and accountability.

Every dollar helps. Thank you in advance!

Click here for donation page...