Tracking as Resistance

Program Description

During this 5-hour workshop we will learn how to track animals, plants, and different spaces of heart and mind through various forms of education and engagement. We will begin with a 2- hour indoor introduction to tracking and learn why it is so closely tied to the lives of marginalized folks and our ancestral relationships with the land. We will introduce a few species commonly found in the county and provide a basic background for how to identify them. We will focus on learning more from these beings than about them. The remaining 3-hours of the workshop will be spent out in the field where we will work with different mindfulness and movement exercises to encourage an arrival into our parasympathetic nervous system. While we engage in wildlife observation we will come into connection with the land in ways that remind us of what it's like to be a being in the natural world, and through this we will learn how to consciously steward it’s delicate systems and reshape our social systems in collaboration with them. Participants will leave this workshop feeling equipped with a basic knowledge of wildlife tracking and introductory ecology, a sense of pride in their identity, and will form a better understanding of their inner and outer landscapes. 

Accessibility 

The nature of this workshop will include time spent sitting indoors followed by active crouching, walking, sitting, and hiking through the landscape. Depending on the weather there may be snow or ice that will require the use of snowshoes and/or microspikes. Always be prepared for wet weather with waterproof boots and clothing. Dto the nature of this workshop it is inaccessible to those who identify with a disability in relation to mobility. We are working on ways to make this workshop accessible to all who wish to attend. Please reach out if you have suggestions on how we can achieve this. (Raei@the-rusty-anvil.land)

Context

Throughout history oppressed communities have been alienated from environmental discourse and practice and excluded from environmental culture. Through various forms of oppression we have been pushed away from an intimate relationship with nature, and placed into positions where negative experiences with the landscape are prevalent. We have been told that our biology is unnatural and that there is no place for us in the environment and through this, marginalized communities have formed an identity (both conscious and subconscious) separated from the natural world. Now we are working to re-member that we have always held a unique relationship with the land in a way that offers healing to both ourselves and our more-than-human siblings. Our ancestors were master trackers and naturalists. They tracked wildlife and plant sources for food, they tracked the sun and the stars to navigate, and they tracked experiences of oppression and injustice in ways that has allowed marginalized folks today to have space to fight for future generations. Now we are tapping into our ancestral skill of tracking to track not just wildlife, but the parts of ourselves that have been suppressed and/or lost to marginalization as a tool to resist oppression

This learning space is intended to uplift people of color and folks within the LGBTQ+ community. All who understand this need are welcome.