“Healing the Earth with Traditional Ecological Knowledge”

with Cristina Eisenberg

Thursday,  March 24, 2022 at 3 PM Eastern Standard Time 

REGISTER HERE

Ecologist Cristina Eisenberg, author of The Carnivore Way: Coexisting with and Conserving North America’s Predators, says of her work, “Mother Earth holds powerful lessons about healing. As a Native American ecologist of mixed heritage, for me these lessons have to do with braiding together Western Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) to find solutions to our most pressing conservation and social justice problems. TEK is based on ancient Indigenous wisdom, which is matriarchal. Today the Western scientific world is learning that this ancient wisdom is the best way to heal the damage we’ve done to the natural world. In this presentation I will share insights from my 25-year journey as an ecologist who has directed a citizen-science global research program. I will share stories about my teachers, the plants, animals, and forces of nature I study as an ecologist, and the lessons they’ve taught me, to illustrate the progress made and the work that remains as we work together to heal the Earth and ourselves.”

Dr. Cristina Eisenberg is graduate faculty at Oregon State University in the College of Forestry. An Indigenous woman scientist, she is the principal investigator on two major on-the-ground projects with First Nations (Alberta, Canada) and Native American (Montana, USA) communities to integrate Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) into plant and wildlife conservation in Western North America. The former Chief Scientist at Earthwatch Institute, she oversaw a global research program focusing on ecological restoration, social justice for Indigenous peoples, and sustainable production of natural resources. Cristina serves on the board of Society for Ecological Restoration, where she chairs the TEK Working Group. She has written two books, The Carnivore Way and The Wolf’s Tooth: Keystone Predators, Trophic Cascades and Biodiversity,  and is at work on two more under contract, one about climate change and wildlife and another about bison conservation.  

Save the dates for upcoming ASWM Salons this summer:

June 17 2022  3PM Eastern Standard Time
Title TBA
Lisa Levart and Vicki Noble

July 15 2022  12 NOON Eastern Standard Time
“Sacred Midwifery: Woman as the First Home”
Katsi Cook

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event. 

“Religions of the Hearth or Religions of Empire: Desiring Mercy Not Sacrifice”

with Mary Condren

Thursday,  March 10, 2022 at 12 NOON  Eastern Standard Time 

REGISTER HERE

“In my research of the figure of Brigit, saint or goddess, I have found it remarkable that scholars refer to her traditions as those of the lower orders or the common people. In contrast, the word religion often refers to those worldviews promoting and sustaining the sacrificial social contract, and strategies of colonization. With a view to challenging the violent and radical splitting that pervades Western cultures, this presentation outlines some distinctions between Religions of the Hearth and Religions of Empire.  The aim is to reflect on and elaborate the pre-conditions for responding to the call of the prophets of the major religions who cried out, in no uncertain terms: I desire mercy not sacrifice.”

Dr. Mary Condren was born and currently lives in Ireland. With initial degrees in theology, sociology, social anthropology and religion and society, she was the first graduate of the doctoral program at Harvard University, Religion Gender and Culture. Her thesis was on The Role of Sacrifice in the Construction of the Gendered Social Order and Gendered System of Legitimation. She has taught at Harvard University, University College Dublin, and by invitation, at several other international universities. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, where she teaches on the topic: Gender and the Culture of Violence. She is co-founder and director of Woman Spirit Ireland, (1994 –) .

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Save the dates for upcoming spring and summer ASWM Salons:

March 24 2022 3 PM  Eastern Daylight Time
“Healing the Earth with Traditional Ecological Knowledge”
Cristina Eisenberg

June 17 2022 3 PM  Eastern Daylight Time
Title TBA: Art, Archetypes and the Tarot
Lisa Levart and Vicki Noble

July  15 2022 3 PM  Eastern Daylight Time
Sacred Midwifery: Woman as the First Home“
Katsi Cook

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event. 

“The Gift Economy of Mothers and Mother Earth”

with Genevieve Vaughan

Thursday,  February 24, 2022 at 12 NOON  Eastern Standard Time 

REGISTER HERE

Patriarchal Capitalism/Capitalist Patriarchy is an artificial and pernicious system that is destroying Mother Earth and her children. We need to return to the deep economy of the human mother, based on the model of unilateral giving to needs, a model that every child has to experience in order to survive. Receiving a unilateral gift is not passive but creative in that the receiver has to use the gift appropriately, learning from this the sensuous reality of the world around her, refining her needs to the gifts that satisfy them. The reception of the gift grounds the mother’s giving initiative in the body of  the child who responds with knowledge and pleasure, so that the trajectory of the gift forms a structure of meaning that continues throughout life and is altered in many ways, a theme with many variations. While many believe that the unilateral gift does not create a positive human relation, the opposite is true. Exchange, quid pro quo is an ego oriented variation on the theme of the gift, which creates adversarial relations and competition that are hallmarks also of patriarchy.

Gen says of the gift model, “Recognizing and validating it puts us in alignment with the Earth and allows the creation of community on that basis. Unilateral gifting has not been seen as structural but  recognizing it in the structure of language as well as of the economy, can restore it to the central place in our lives as the source of shared meaning and reveal a newly understood sense of who we are as an eminently maternal species. In fact, we are ‘homo donans,’ the giving being, not just ‘homo sapiens.’ This is the new/ancient understanding of ourselves and others that we need to counter the  destruction Patriarchal Capitalism has brought and to create healing and peace on a Matricentric Mother Earth.”

Genevieve Vaughan (b.1939) has lived between Texas and Italy most of her life. She has three daughters and two grandchildren. Genevieve founded the all-women multicultural Foundation for a Compassionate Society 1988 – 2005 in Austin, Texas, the International Feminists for a Gift Economy network 2001-ongoing and the Temple of Sekhmet in Cactus Springs Nevada (1992-ongoing). She is the author of For-Giving(1997), Homo Donans (2008), The Gift in the Heart of Language(2015) and the editor of Il Dono/the Gift (2004), Women and the Gift Economy(2007), and The Maternal Roots of the Gift Economy (2018). An Issue of the Canadian Women’s Studies Journal: Vol. 34, Feminist Gift Economy: A Maternalist Alternative to Patriarchy and Capitalism appeared in 2020 and a festschrift – a book of articles by her colleagues Mothering, Gift and Revolution: Honoring Genevieve Vaughan’s Life Work was published in 2021. 

Throughout 2021 and ongoing the International Feminists for a Gift Economy have been holding free biweekly salons presenting various aspects of the maternal gift economy in daily life, in activism and in conscious practice. Register for these and see the archive at The Maternal Gift Economy-Movement.   And learn more about the work at Gift Economy.

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Save the dates for upcoming ASWM Salons:

March 10 2022  12 NOON Eastern Standard Time
Title TBA
Mary Condren

March 24 2022 3 PM  Eastern Daylight Time
“Healing the Earth with Traditional Ecological Knowledge”
Cristina Eisenberg

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event.