Season 1, Episode 11: Emergent Strategy Podcast
“Earth as a Primary Source and Relative with Leah Penniman”
*Please note: these transcripts are intended to increase the accessibility of the podcast; there should be no reprinting or distribution without permission.
Leah: So to me, leaning into spirituality is leaning into the truest belief that, like, the earth is actually a relative and not an environment or a natural resource here for us to use up, but a sovereign being deserving of respect, consent, relational engagement.
Music Break: Theme Music plays (“Wage Love” instrumental).
Mia: Hello, and welcome to the Emergent Strategy Podcast, hosted by the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute. We are a collective of facilitators, mediators, trainers, and curious human beings interested in how we get in right relationship with change. Today, I'll be guiding our interview. My name's Mia. I'm the mason of abundance and facilitator with ESII. Emergent strategy is the way we generate and reshape complex systems and patterns with relatively simple interactions. And today I have the great fortune of interviewing Leah Penniman. Leah is a Black creole farmer, author, mother, and food justice activist who has been tending the soil and organizing for an anti-racist food system for over 20 years. She currently serves as founding co-executive director of Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York; a people of color led project that works towards food and land justice. Her book is Farming While Black: Soulfire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land. Find out more about Leah's work at www.soulfirefarm.org, and follow her at Soul Fire Farm on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Hi Leah, how are you right now, today, in this moment? And welcome.
Leah: (02:08) I am really happy to be with you, Mia, as with the emergent strategy community. It is a deep honor. So, thank you for having me.
Mia: Oh, thank you for agreeing. So, actually before we get into, like, just really checking in, I asked right before we began, if you wouldn't mind opening the space. I have had the incredible joy and pleasure of being in space that you've opened in prayer, song, story, all the different ways. And so, I was wondering if you would mind sharing with us one of your favorite ways to open the space with intention and care, so that we may be fully present for the work of this conversation?
Leah: Thank you for that. And thank you for helping us sink immediately into vulnerability and truth. I will open the space with a prayer of gratitude that comes through my maternal lineage. It's my Haitian lineage and calls us to honor the benevolent forces of nature. So we begin by facing the East. We give honor and respect to the creator's spirit and all beings who dwell in the East and whose goodness spreads over the universe. We call you by many names. Nana Buruku, Mawu-Lisa, Bondye, Oludumare, Ayida-Weddo, Damballa. Those who create and those who witness creation. We, the children of the earth, are grateful for our existence. We turn and face the west. We give honor and respect to all who dwell in the west, the spirit of water. We call you by many names, Ezili Frida, Ezili Dantó, La Sirene, Olokun, Yemaya, Oshun, Simbi, Agwé. (04:09) You are the ocean, the waterfall, the womb of our mothers, the tears of our grief, the water that quenches our thirst and nourishes our crops. We give thanks for love, for connection, for family, for nourishment, and for the power you have to wash away strain and frustration. We turn and face the North. We give honor and respect to the spirits of earth and all who dwell in the North. We call you by many names. Grand Bois, Azaka, Ayizan, Loko, Moniley [PHONETIC], Osain, Ochosi, Orisha Oko, Obalúayé. You are the farm, the soil, the medicine, the habitat, the trees, the compost. We thank you for all that sustains us. For the firm ground beneath our feet, for your capacity to compost our trauma into joy. And for our health and our protection. We turn and face the South. We honor and give respect to the spirit of fire and all who dwell in the South. We call you by many names. Ogu badagri, Ogu batala, Ogu Sain (PHONETIC), Changó. We thank you for our creativity, our passion, the courage to get up each day in the face of oppression. For our creativity, our art making our purpose. We thank you for prosperity and joy. We turn our attention skyward. We give honor and respect to the spirit of air and all who dwell in the sky. We call you by many names. Oyá, Agawú [PHONETIC], Sobo, Bade, Osumare. You are change, you are the one who removes stagnancy. You are the powerful storm. You are the breath of goodness. You are the breath of life. We thank you for making necessary change possible. We turn our attention to the earth. We give honor and respect to the ancestors, those who dwell in the earth. Those whose names we know, those whose names were lost to the seas of time. And especially those grandmothers who had the audacious courage to braid seeds of okra, molokhia, cowpea, black rice, into their hair before being forced onto transatlantic slave ships, believing against odds in a future on soil, and believing that we, the descendants, would exist to inherit the seed. Give thanks to you, our ancestors. Egungun, Gran Brigitte, Gede Nibo, Baron Samedi, Gine (PHONETIC). (06:52) You are the story keepers. You are the ones who know and love us often better than we know our--, and love ourselves. We survive and thrive because of your sacrifice and example. You remind us that we are not alone. Your love fills and overflows from us, touching all those around us, making us a blessing. And finally, we turn inward. We give honor and respect to our Ori, the spark of divinity inside of each of us. The sacred yes and the sacred no. Our intuition, our wisdom, our teacher. We pray that we're able to be still enough to hear the clear, decisive voice that directs us in alignment with our destiny. Ashé.
Mia: Ashé, thank you so very much. Mm.
Leah: Thank you for inviting that. I don't think that's ever happened before in a podcast. I'm very grateful. <laugh>
Mia: <laugh>. So are we. Yeah, I just feel like that is the absolute perfect way to open this moment. And I'm, you know, sure--. I know I will, and I'm sure others may, just come back. May, may, may, may return to that moment again and again--<Leah laugh> --as a way to begin a day or a moment. it just feels really rich with all that we need to remember, what is our fortification, and, and where is our wisdom held, and what is the sacred purpose that we're here for. So, I really appreciate you for that, and the lineage that you've moved through in order to bring us that. So, how are you, how are you, how are you today?
Leah: Well, today I am really grateful for the abundant snowfall and the way that nature takes charge and interrupts human made plans for fast movement. And I'm also grateful today for this incredible bard owl that has made a home perching on a, a sunflower stalk left over from the summer that's right outside of my window, and is hunting voles from that perch, which is both stunning to watch, but also extremely helpful because we have quite a vole problem here on the farm. And the last thing I'm grateful for today—well, many things. But the last thing I'll mention is that my oldest child just turned 18, and she's a really cool adult. Like, really, really cool adult. And I could not be happier for the honor that it's been to raise her <laugh>. So that's how I'm doing today. How are you doing today?
Mia: (09:44) Wow, congratulations. Happy birthing day to you. Happy earth rotation to her. That's amazing. Yeah. I--I'm deeply grateful that you said yes; that this moment was a part of your sacred yes. I'm also really appreciating the snow and just the way the sky and the light are reflecting in this moment. I am--. I've been healing from some respiratory stuff. And so, yeah, so I'm still, like, kind of getting myself together and pulling all the different parts present to function effectively in this time. You know like, I really wanna be in hibernation mode. <laugh> I really wanna reflect what's happening at the ground. But, you know, there's also that, like, starting that, that, that motion of wood and that motion of, like, coming spring is also starting. So, I can feel also that rising energy in me that's, like, Oh, it's time to prepare. It's time to, like, keep moving with that. So, I feel all of that within me: the desire for rest and also the, like, need to move <laugh>. So yeah. So that's where I am. Thank you for asking. I mean, I'd love to hear a little bit about what sparked your interest in farming. How did you come to become a farmer?
Leah: (11:19) Well, there are three origin stories, right? The first is working in Grandma Mae's strawberry patch outside of Boston. My grandmother, Brown Lee McCullough is a daughter of the Great Migration who grew up on a farm near Rock Hill, South Carolina, and found herself, like so many Black Americans, in an urban environment after childhood, but held on to little bits of those agrarian ways by tending to strawberries and crab apples and making jams. So, as a small child, I would help her in her garden and help her to can preserves. And those are my earliest memories of pulling joy from the earth, so to speak. Second beginning was when I turned 16 and needed a summer job to start saving for college and fixing my bike and things like that. And I had a deep and passionate reverence for the earth, so was yearning to do something connected to the land, to the sky, and saw a poster, a flyer in church, for The Food Project in Boston, and was fortunate enough to be hired as field crew. So I grew food, I helped to run a farmer's market, worked in soup kitchens, and found this elegant simplicity and elegant goodness in the cycle of seed to harvest and nourishing community. It was just undeniably necessary, and with so much tumble and confusion of adolescences, doing something undeniably necessary felt really good and important. And then the third and final beginning would be for a Soul Fire Farm itself. My partner, Jonah, and I had both over a decade of experience working on other people's farms and had been yearning also in some ways to, to start our own farm, but didn't know when or where or how that would be. And when we were living in the South End of Albany, New York, which is a neighborhood where people survive food apartheid, we struggled to get fresh food for our own two very young children. (13:23) I mean, there was no supermarket, there was no farmer's market, there was no available community garden plots. The bus lines didn't even go to the supermarket. So if you didn't have a car or some money, it was very difficult to get anything outside of what was at the corner store or fast food places. We ended up purchasing a CSA share, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture, it's like a subscription, that was super expensive for our budget, and the pickup was over two miles away. Again, no bus lines. So we would walk with the children in tow, like 2.2 miles to this church where you could pick up the food, and then pile the food onto the kids in the stroller, you know, and walk all the way down. So when our neighbors, who similarly struggled, found out that we knew how to farm, they started half teasing us, chiding us to start a farm for the people. And we took that really seriously, and that became the impetus for looking for land outside of Albany and starting a farm that was specifically dedicated to doorstep delivery of fresh food in the South End, and later, you know, to other neighborhoods in Albany and Troy.
Mia: That's amazing. So, one, I mean, you literally, in our time, have the "we walked miles" story <laugh>, which <both laugh>, you know, some people will joke about, but that is actually true for you and deeply appreciate you sharing that and, and what it led to in terms--
Leah: Yeah, I didn't tell you it was up hill both ways in the snow, like my daddy would say. <both laugh>
Mia: Look. Right there, right there in the--. So, you know. <both laugh>
Leah: It was only uphill one way, and it was on the way there. <laugh>
Mia: But wow, you know, I mean, that kind of resilience and clarity of purpose and also following the nudging that comes, both from your neighbors, but also, I'm sure from the universe, to really be present and serve in that way.
Music Break: “DNA” Instrumental plays.
Mia: (15:48) I would like to kind of get into this conversation of, you know, what do you think is--. I mean, it may feel obvious, but what do you think is the relationship between Black folks' liberation, land stewardship, and food justice.
Leah: Black folks' liberation, land stewardship, and food justice connection. The answer to that is: yes, connected <laugh>. Well, let's see. I mean, there's so many, so many things. There's a psycho-spiritual aspect, right? And then there's a material aspect. So I'll start with the material aspect. So, as folks probably know, the way a lot of us got here was in chains. 12 and a half million Black agricultural experts survived that journey to the Turtle Island. And we built the multi-trillion dollar agricultural industry in this country. White folks didn't know how to do rice farming. The Mende and the Wolof knew how to do rice farming. That's why they were stolen and kidnapped and brought to the Carolinas to build that industry, right? And so, our connection to land--
Mia: Mm-hmm.
Leah: (16:49)--is not circumscribed by that experience of chattel slavery. It extends many, many thousands of years before and after and beyond. Like, we as Black people are some of the originators of some of the technologies that we most cherish in terms of regenerative and sustainable ag. Things like raised beds, which come from the Ovambo people; compost, which comes from Cleopatra originally with vermicomposting, and later from the women of Ghana and Liberia with their African dark earth polycultures; rotational grazing, food preservation, credit unions, like, so many of these technologies. So we bring these, this wisdom; we build this agricultural industry. And even after the Emancipation Proclamation and the so-called end of slavery, there's many, many cycles of oppression: sharecropping, tenant farming, convict leasing, the outright racist violence of the Klan and the White Citizens' Council, you know, driving Black farmers off the land that they did manage to get, despite the broken promise of 40 acres and a mule. So, I'm condensing this history. But long story short, you know, Black people at this point own and manage just over 1% of the nation's agricultural lands, which is abysmal. It's really abysmal.
Mia: Mm.
Leah: (18:05) The peak of that was 14% at 16 million acres in 1910. And so many of our great thinkers have pointed out that, like, without lands, we can't really have sovereignty. Mama Fannie Lou Hamer, she says, If you have 400 quarts of greens and gumbo soup canned for the winter, nobody can push you around or tell you what to say or do. By extension, if you have nothing canned for the winter and don't have any means of production, as soon as they chain up that grocery store or clear off the shelves, you'll go begging on your hands and knees for a loaf of bread to feed your children. You cannot have sovereignty without land and food. Malcolm X talks about land as the basis of all revolution, freedom and justice and equality. Federation of Southern Cooperatives talks about land as the only real wealth in this country, and if we don't have any, we're out of the picture. Our ancestors all the way back in 1865, when they met with General Sherman of the Union Army to try to design Reconstruction, they said, All we need are homes and the ground beneath them so that we can plant fruit trees and say to our children, these are yours. So this is part of, of what it is to be a human. And Black people are no exception to what it means to be a human, to be able to produce for ourselves. So there's that piece. And then I think, also, there's a psychospiritual piece. My, my dear friend Chris Bolden Newsome of Sankofa Farms in Philadelphia, Black farmer: he says, You know, the land was the scene of the crime. It's where all this hard stuff took place. But I would add, she was never the criminal. And in fact, the land was probably in many ways the source of our resilience.
Mia: Mm-hmm.
Leah: Because in our cosmology, not only are the ancestors beneath the earth fortifying us, but the Orisha, you know, are in the earth fortifying us. So they got us through. And so a big part of our work as Black people today is to figure out how to disentangle the oppression that took place on the land from the land herself. And not to think that if we get dirty or smell pine needles or grow peanuts, that somehow that reverts us to bondage. But actually that is part--, reclaiming that is part of our liberation, part of our wholeness, that we can't really be whole when we have layers of concrete and steel between us and the earth. Like we're earth people, we are the skin, the color of soil people, as Mama Karen Washington would say. So I, I really believe that yeah, that freeing the land and freeing ourselves as a people are inexorably interconnected.
Mia: (20:34) Mmm. Thank you for that. I feel that deeply, and it rings so true. And I appreciate the condensed, but incredibly powerful and succinct, recap. <laugh>
Leah: It's a lot of history. I can dive into more.
Mia: I love it. That was, I love it. That was good. We may--. I'm like, yes. Super, super helpful to have a lineage, a sense, and a place and time, and over time how we have worked to build and increase our liberation through our relationship with land. And I'm wondering if you feel like we would get to a liberated future sooner if we all redistributed our radical energy to farming.
Leah: Well, I'm a firm believer that we don't all need to be doing the same thing. So, so--. My philosophy of change is really beautifully illustrated in, I'm sure you've seen this image, but the butterfly of transformative social justice? So my daughter does a nice graphic version of this, but the butterfly of transformative social justice identifies these four winglets of change, right? One of them is resist. So that's the, the boycotts, the protest, the walkout, the blockade, right? The second winglet after resist is reform. So with reform, we're talking about working from inside the system. You know, changing public education, running for office, transforming organizations to have less white supremacy culture, right? So there's that winglet. Another winglet is build. That's where I kind of live, creating alternative institutions that model as best we can the world we wanna see. So that's our freedom schools and our farms, our co-ops. And then the final is heal, because there's no way we can been through all this and not have a lot of trauma <laugh>. So we need our ceremony, you know, our therapy, our dance, art, music, ritual, all that. And a butterfly cannot fly--
Mia: Mm-hmm.
Leah: (22:31) --with one, two, or three of these winglets. It needs all four. So yes, of course we need more farmers. Yes, yes, yes. And even people who are not farming, I do think that the more of us who are connected to the earth--
Mia: Mm-hmm.
Leah : --who is the primary source of wisdom, and I'll get into that in a minute, the better we're gonna be. But we need all our strategies, and I think we need to stop casting shade at people for choosing one of the winglets over another. Because fundamentally, you know, we ain't, if we're all chaining ourselves to trees, that's not gonna be enough, cause then we don't have anyone in elected office. But if we're all in elected office, and no one is pushing the envelope, chaining ourselves to trees, then there's nothing to scare those suits into making change. So I, I really think we need all of us. And, and it's really about finding that intersection between, you know, our passion and skills and what the world needs.
Mia: Mm-hmm.
Leah: And, and to live at that intersection.
Mia: I love that. Yes. And I--. Yeah, I fully feel you on that and--. Right. I do believe that it's dist--, to have a relationship to the land is distinct from farming the land, right. That it's no small venture, that what you do <laugh>. So I heard you say you wanna pick up something in a mi--, you wanted to pick back up on something. So I wanna give you space to do that, if you already know what that is. But I, I definitely have another question for you.
Leah: I would, would be happy to. So this actually came out of a, a conversation with a wonderful elder Audrey Peterman, who's widely known for advocacy for national parks and Black people's place in wilderness. So, we were talking a couple weeks ago and came to this common understanding that, that one of the fundamental problems of modern times, right? Is that we have gotten away from reading primary sources. And by primary sources, I don't mean the national archives. I mean the earth. Right, because for millennia, for most of human history, the way that we got our information, we read the stars, we read the weather, we read the directionality of the migration of the birds, right? We read when is something blooming, to know when to plant. There was a way that we're very versed in the primary source of the earth. And in modernity, we have started to rely on secondary, tertiary, quarternary sources. (24:36) So we're getting our information through a dangerous game of telephone, through human ears and human mouths. And the people, you know, we mess it up along the way, which is why fake news has proliferated. It's why we have these strifes and divisions. And so, Mama Audrey was feeling like, if we could all start to learn to read the earth again, we wouldn't have so much confusion. And, and that really resonated with me. So I, I just wanna share that bit of wisdom--
Mia: Mm-hmm.
Leah: --from one of our wonderful Black elders who spends a lot of time with the primary source of the earth.
Mia: Oh, thank you so much for that. I absolutely, fundamentally feel that and love that as an encouragement for this time and a necessity for--. We, you know, we've been sitting a little bit with, like, what's been the uptick in astrology for folks? And, like, one of the conversations I've been in, in one of my close circles, and, you know, it's like, well is it that people don't feel as connected to spirituality and or religion in the same way? Or it's, like, needing a way to have some kind of direct communication, some other line, some other resource for how to understand what's happening. And so, that being said, you know, because we don't look at the stars as much anymore, and most of us, you know, don't necessarily have that way of charting outside of what maybe Chani tells us, then <laugh> I, I think that it's also true in terms of the land, in terms of, like, the, the earth beneath us and our relationship to water. I think we've lost the--, some of the skills of listening, some of the skills of what it means to understand the cycles. And so I'm wondering, you know, what does it mean to you to be in right relationship with the land? And what are some of the, what are some of the ways that you began your relationship of listening and really being able to access the wisdom that comes from that way of being?
Leah: (26:38) I mean, I don't have the audacity to think that I could define that, but I will tell you a little bit about my own journey. When my womb sister, Naima, and I were quite small children, we thought we invented a religion <laugh>, it was called Mother Nature <laugh>. And we went out into the forest, and we made shrines, and we made offerings. We invented songs that are so cheesy and beautiful; I will not share them with you until we know each other very well. But we were all in, we were all in for the Mother Nature religion. And something very powerful is that in my young adulthood, when I had the opportunity to go live for some time in Ghana, West Africa and visit the lands of, of part of my lineage, I learned that we weren't inventing, but remembering, that we're in many ways channeling our ancestral practices of Vodun, of Yoruba, of these Indigenous ways of, of knowing the earth. So, when I think about right relationship, of course there's the physical plane, you know, so, making sure that we are making pollinator habitat and fat boxes and sequestering carbon from the atmosphere into the soil and not tilling too much. And we use solar and renewable energy, and all--, this house that I'm in right now, you know, is built of cob and adobe and local sustainably harvest lumber. So there's that. And I don't want to underemphasize the importance of doing the real in the real world physical plane. But also--
Mia: Mm-hmm.
Leah: (28:11) Right relationship with land has meant trying to learn, revive, get connected to these ancestral Indigenous ways of, of knowing. So, examples. One is that we don't harvest without making an offering and asking permission. So we'll be putting down some corn meal or putting down some oti, some gin, or honey to thank the lands before we take. Another example related to asking for permission is we have divination systems using a more simple tool called obi abata, or going to Ifá, or going to the Erindinlogun to actually ask permission to do bigger things. So if we want to clear a bunch of lands to build a program center or a classroom where we wanna dig out a pond, we'll have ritual, and we will actually ask, and we'll defer. I mean, we did not dig out our pond. We didn't get permission from the land to dig out the pond for 10 years, because there was some relationship building and some trust building that had to happen with the spirits that dwell on the forest waters. The third and final example that I'll, I'll bring in is the spiritual bath. So there's a custom in Vodun that when you've been near the veil between life and death--so, whether that is childbirth, whether that is being with someone who passes, whether that's killing a chicken, right?--when you've been near that veil, there's a ritual washing to do of setting down the knife, of removing the blood, right? Before you go to dinner or before you make love or before you do other things. And so, on the farm, when we have been close to that veil, we offer that bath to whoever has participated, say, in transitioning animals. And that is a way to honor the power and sanctity of transition. It's a way of making sure that we don't carry with us energies that, that will weigh us down or make us who we're not. So. And I'm learning, you know, I'm still learning so much. And we also are a space that is welcoming and inclusive of all kinds of spiritual traditions and none at all <laugh>. So it's interesting your comment about astrology. So we have members of our community who lead us in Buddhist rituals or Jewish rituals and all of that. So this is a little bit of my, my personal thing, but I will say that over time it's been pretty profound to see how many folks of Afro--, African descent are yearning and curious about reclamation of our own indigenous traditions, which has been very motivating to me to get my act together and make sure I know what I'm talking about.
Music Break: (30:47) “Wage Love” plays. Lyrics: “Wage love, wage love, wage love. Wage love, wage love, wage love. This is for Sheddy R., dedicate this with a heavy heart.”
Mia: Mm-hmm. Actually, it's--. I so appreciate you saying that because that was, you know, a question I have is, what do you, you know, if you can share more about the role that spirituality and religious practice have played for you in terms of your life and work. And you just gave an example, or a couple of examples, of ritual that you've gone into in order to ensure that your relationship is right and ways of listening, right? Even if you wanted to build that pond or dig that pond, you had to wait. So yeah, so I'd love to hear more about, if you wouldn't mind sharing, what do you feel is, like, the role that spirituality or religious practice have played in your life and work, and particularly in your relationship with land?
Leah: (31:45) Well, I'm what they call a double PK. So, PK stands for Preacher's Kid. My mom was among the first Black women to be ordained as a minister in the Unitarian Universalist denomination. My dad is a lay preacher, but a serious and dedicated one. And does itinerant preaching around with his guitar, singing songs, making powerful sermons, doing lots of selfless charitable work on behalf of people and the earth. So, growing up, religion and spirituality was very integrated. I was always a nerd for it. I was that kid who read the Bible through several times. Like, as a young person, with nobody tell me I had to. I ran the children's Sunday school programs at my mom's church, starting when I was in my early teens and, and up through the end of high school. And I've always been just deeply fascinated by how humans try to make sense of the unknowable. And my perspective on religion and even spirituality is that, you know, the finger that points to the moon is not the moon, right? So if the moon is this universal truth, this understanding, this mystery, all of these religions and ways of knowing, including astrology, are our fingers that we point towards the moon. And sometimes we get real confused and, and think the finger is the thing. I try not to get confused about that. I imagine that the capital T truth is somewhere at the intersection of, of the direction all those fingers are pointing. So, I try to learn about, as much I can about Islam and Judaism, and Indigenous religions across the world, and Hinduism, and so forth. And I get very fascinated by the overlap. And I'm not gonna impose that on anyone, but I will say that for myself, a life devoid of spirituality would be a life devoid of meaning.
Mia: Mm.
Leah: (33:36) Because to me, the material world is the proverbial golden calf. There's--. It's part illusion. It's part attachment. And while it's all very real, it's only, like, one part of this great mystery and reality, that if we allow ourselves to dissolve into the possibility of something bigger, there's, there's so much more, right, that can be experienced, so much more about our purpose and our destiny and how we're connected to, you know, the greatness of all things. So, I'm here for it. And I think that, as far as our relationship to land, well, I'll tell you quick story. So when I was living in Ghana the Queen Mothers who were my teachers and are my teachers-- shout out to Manye Nartiki (PHONETIC) and Manye Maku (PHONETIC), who are my, like, godparents. These, these women are so incredible. They, they care for the orphans in the community. They do the conflict mediation, they keep the stories alive, they run the ceremonies, they protect the sacred groves--so these trees and, and the associated watersheds, they run whole soap and batik businesses to fund the community development projects they do. They're like the OG spiritual activist, and they think we’re really hilarious in the us. So one of the things that they asked me about one day, cause I would go every day over to the compounds to help. And they said, you know, Leah, is it true that in the United States, a farmer will put a seed in the ground, and they don't pray or dance or sing or pour libation or even say thank you to the earth, and then they expect the seed to grow? <Mia laugh> And so I ashamedly, like, nodded my head and they said, well, that's why you're all sick. You're all sick cause you treat the earth like a commodity and not like a relative.
Mia: Mmm.
Leah: (35:23) So to me, leaning into spirituality is leaning into the truest belief that, like, the earth is actually a relative and not an environment or a natural resource here for us to use up, but a sovereign being deserving of respect, consent, relational engagement.
Mia: Mmm. Thank you for that story and this teaching around the relationship, the kinship between land and people is a through line in many Indigenous traditions. And I remember in visiting Soul Fire, that you had different spaces on the farm that were kind of an honoring of different indigenous traditions that you have either had the opportunity to learn from or be in relationship to. And so, I don't know if you would mind sharing a little bit about how you came to that place of, you know--. Or even just sharing a little bit with folks about some of the layout of what exists in the different kind of places that you have on the farm that are honoring the wisdom and traditions of Indigenous folks from the land that you're on.
Leah: (36:43) Absolutely. I know, I'm trying to think of how to, like, bring to life this farm over a podcast. So, <Mia laughs> we'll--, first we'll walk down <laugh>, we'll walk down in the west field to the bottom of the hill to visit our milpa. And this is our three sisters garden, which is planted the way that our friends at the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation taught us, especially Warren Miller, wonderful brother. And so, we're on Mohican lands, and we've been doing our humble best over the past several years to build an authentic non-performative friendship with members of the Mohican Nation to figure out what solidarity looks like, to--. So we've gotten involved in some pipeline struggles. We've gotten involved in some, you know, resisting some development, seed exchange, which I'll get to in a minute, as well as a cultural respect easement, which we're very excited about and is a legal tool to return some shared sovereignty to Mohican people for this land. But Warren was sweet enough to give us seed. And so we grew these wonderful mounds that have black and white Mohican maize with some turtle beans growing up and squash along, along the bottom of the mounds. And these three sisters work really beautifully together where the corn provides the support and also starch and niacin rich food for people. And the beans provide protein, and they're nitrogen fixing, so they feed the soil. And the squash prevents weeds and has some very mild pest deterrents in it, and then provides vitamins and minerals for the people. So these, these foods work really beautifully together and, you know, western scientists have measured the output of the three sister's garden and find that per acre, you know, it gives 40% more food than if you grew these things alone. So that's one beautiful part of the land. (38:41) And there's all these powerful creation stories about how maize and beans and squash came to the people. And then one other piece on the land that I'll mention is from my own ancestry is called the Jardin Lakou. And the Jardin Lakou, which means house garden, is very simply a perennial polyculture of multipurpose plants. So you have trees, in our case mostly apples and plums and peaches, but in Haiti it would be moringa, mango, lime. And then around the trees, over 20 kinds of shrubs and medicinal herbs that also support one another. You have plants like comfrey that mine the sub-soil for nutrients and you can make into a compost layer. You have plants like chives, which are insect and rodent repellent, the chamomile which calls the pollinators forward, and so forth. And so these are all planted in on a hillside that's terraced. And terracing arose both in what is now Central Mexico, las terrazas, and also arose in East Africa in what is now Kenya as Fanya juu. So these are indigenous technologies, too, of creating these staircases on the hillside to prevent erosion.
Mia: That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing. And I'm sure folks have some version of picture in their mind and were able to go with you in that. <both laugh> So thank you for leading us <laugh>. But yeah, I'd love to hear a little bit, I mean, I think two parts: like you said, you'd like to talk a little bit about the seed exchange and sovereignty. So I wanna pick that up. And then also just what it means to, I think as--. You know, in encouraging folks to be in right relationship with land, or to be in--, to care for and love the land, you know, what does it also mean to be in right relationship with original people of this land? And so, you know, as you talked about building a non performative relationship, I'd be really--, I'd really appreciate to hear, how do we go about, kind of, building those relationships that--, and strengthening relationships?
Leah: (40:56) Oh, it's so complex, right? So I think first of all, it's important to me that as many folks as have the heart to do it, just stand unequivocally in solidarity with Indigenous struggles on Turtle Island and on their own terms. So that means supporting the Land Back movement, transferring title, it means interrupting pipelines, it means getting involved with policy, returning seeds, committing to non appropriation. Like I, I think that's really, really important, and especially for, for white people, but for all of us. And I think there's complexity when we talk about Black Indigenous relationships, and first wanna acknowledge that a lot of Black people are Indigenous, and Indigenous people are Black. So that's a, a false divide there. But the, the project of settler colonialism has done its, its royal best to try to divide us. You know, everything from the Buffalo soldiers, you know, pitting Black folks saying here, you can get your freedom if you go kill Native folks on the frontier, to encouraging Cherokee and other nations to own African people. And, and that struggle is not over. You know, my own ancestors are freedmen, and, and have been denied their Cherokee citizenship for being Black. And more. You know, the, the history is really thick with these examples of, of ways that the ruling class has tried to divide us. And so, that mistrust will endure until we really do the hard work of healing it. And there's no shortcut to building trust. It takes relationships, it takes sitting down together over tea or tobacco, bringing gifts, showing up for one another's children's milestones. You know. And I was encouraged when I started out on this journey, you know, embarrassingly late. It was only about five or six years ago that we started to take really seriously this obligation. I was advised by some Indigenous comrades to really focus on, like, whose land I'm on and stop trying to think about this whole big picture thing. (42:51) And I was lucky enough, we were lucky enough to be welcomed out to the reservation in Wisconsin to get to know some folks. I went in a snowstorm and sat in the museum and talked to Molly and, and others. Got invited to language classes, tried to learn a few words, and it was bit by bit over years and really being willing to not assume what solidarity looks like, but to ask and follow the lead. You know, in the case of the Mohican Nation, it looked different than I expected. I didn't necessarily--. I expected maybe that folks would want title to land, but at least the people I talked to in Wisconsin don't want title in the homelands because it's too far away to manage. But they were interested in shared sovereignty, they were interested in us keeping some seeds going in the homelands, making sure that we participate in some of the struggles here to not have artifacts desecrated. So I had to be willing and we had to be willing to really listen. Which I think is, you know, is gonna be the foundation of any real solidarity is, like, to close your mouth and hear what folks have to say about how you can show up.
Music Break: “Apple Orchards” plays. Lyrics: “Behind the barbed wire fence, electrified gate…”
Mia: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Can't act like you know when you don't <laugh>.
Leah: Exactly.
Mia: So will you talk a little bit more about the seed sovereignty?
Leah: (44:36) Sure. Yeah, so I'm definitely no seed expert. I have a really wonderful friend. So I mentioned Chris already, but Owen Taylor is Chris's husband, and the two of them have a seed company called Truelove, all one word, definitely check it out, get some seeds. But they're the ones who taught me how to keep seed. I was not trying to add any more projects, and they just slowly wore me down. Like, you can't, you can't be a farmer and not save some seeds. Mama Ira Wallace, too, a Black elder. She's another one who will get you to save seeds. So, all that to say, this was the backdrop. So when Warren of the Mohican Nation reached out to say that, you know, in the Wisconsin, in the Rez in Wisconsin is higher latitude than the original homeland, so there's shorter day length and shorter season. So some of these varieties don't thrive as well on the Rez as they would here. And so, Warren sent us some seed so that we could keep these varieties going in the homeland. So we have just a few things. We have some bee balm, we have a couple of varieties of maize and a couple varieties of beans. And hopefully we can be adding to that as we're able to find seeds wherever they may be hidden. Because I think that, you know, it's not just the people who were displaced, it was also these plants--
Mia: Mm-hmm.
Leah: --that were displaced with the people. And so, there is--. A part of justice is rematriating and returning those seeds to the place where they originated, so they can grow and thrive and have their children and feel the sun shine the way they remember it. So that's really it. We don't sell those seeds or commercialize them in any way. We give them away for free as part of our solidarity share, the food part, and then we save a bunch to regrow, send some back to the Rez, you know, save some more to regrow. That's how--
Mia: Mm.
Leah: How, that's how we do.
Mia: That's beautiful. Thank you so much.
Leah: (46:22) Oh, I should say we also, we also save seed from Black heritage. So the Plate de Haiti tomato, scotch bonnet peppers, fish peppers, I'm blanking--but a bunch of other plants. And those we sell through the Truelove catalog. So you can check, check that out and see some of the heritage crops that we've saved.
Mia: Aww, excellent. Thank you. I think that feels <laugh> and one, I can appreciate being like, not another project, but also this feels like a really critical project and--
Leah: Aren't they all?
Mia: I know <both laugh>. Ooh yes. Mm-hmm. <Leah laughs>. So, that being said, you know, but, you know, I'm remembering what you said at the top, and it's like, we know, we know what the sacred no's are so we can make way for our sacred yes. And this feels like it's clearly in alignment. So I, I--and, and the initial invitation to you when I was asking you, you were like, We use emergent strategy in our work all the time. And I was like, this is so great <laugh>. You know, sometimes we invite folks, and they're like, We love emergent strategy, what do, you know, what? How do you understand me as an emergent strategist? And it's like, it feels clear, but I love you were already like, yes, absolutely. This feels in alignment with what we do. And so I would--, I mean, I feel like we've had almost an hour of examples, and I would love for you to elucidate, if you wouldn't mind, how you feel like emergent strategy shows up in your work.
Leah: Oh my goodness. I mean, I think probably the biggest way that it shows up is, is through this overall theme of cultural biomimicry. So this is something that I hadn't really defined using that term until recently, but has been so much a part of the way we do things. So for example, when we go out and prune tomatoes, it can be so painful, because you're literally cutting off these suckers that have fruits coming on them. And you think, I should just let that grow cause it's fruit; I'm gonna get more food. But if you don't actually prune off all these suckers and let there be one directional purpose for the plant, it is gonna get diseased; it's gonna break; and you're gonna get overall lower yields, right? So that metaphor is very thinly veiled, but we're always talking about, literally, how do we prune the tomato? (48:40) How do we get rid of these side sheets and suckers and focus. In a similar way, the powerful metaphor of, of compost, of how it--, you can take all this crap, these eggshells and some nasty leftovers that are stinking and, you know, ash from the fire and even guts from a animal. Like, you can throw that all in a heap, and the earth is gonna give it back to you as this blessing. And, and what, what can we learn from that, that ability to transform the yuck, like, into grace and beauty. So what, what struck me about Emergent Strategy was that, at least in my read, it was all about mirroring and mimicking the earth <laugh> and like, the fractals in the ferns and the, you know, scaling up, and the large mirrors the small, how do we be like water? Like, all of these lessons were really powerful to me and thematically gave me permission to keep looking at the earth as teacher. What else? I don't even remember. So this was a little minute ago that I read it, but I remember feeling like adrienne maree brown had peered into my journal <Mia laughs> and was reading my whole life out loud. And I was a little embarrassed. And I can't remember what the particular things, but I think like so many motivated leaders, you know, moving too fast, burning out, trying to go solo, you know, whatever, whatever she was calling me out for, she did it effectively <laugh> in the book without naming my name, and I probably wasn't the only one. <laugh>
Mia: Right? It, it, it's real. I've definitely had that feeling. I think many have had that feeling, like, huh? What? You talking about me? How you, how you know? <laugh>, How do you even know me? You don't know. You don't actually know. <laugh> You absolutely do. No, I really appreciate that. And I think that's also why it's been so relevant and resonant is because, in many ways, it does reflect so many of our stories, and I think intentionally was--
Leah: Mm-hmm.
Mia: (50:47)--brought to be a way of sharing the multitude of stories and across generations, so that we can learn from each other in our practice. So, thank you for sharing how you've learned.
Leah: Absolutely. So I, I, I will say I'm waiting for sibling adrienne to write the extra chapter on, what about us introverts? Like for real, for real. What's our place in all this? So hopefully there'll be an addendum--
Mia: All right, well, we'll lift that up, cause that's real. Well, speaking of. <Leah laughs> So I have felt that, in relationship to what has been a really hard time about the pandemic and all the, the grief and the loss and the shifts that have been required in this time, that my introvert self has actually appreciated the shift in the rhythm and the contact of it. You know, I feel bad to say that as I listen, you know, both as I am closely connected to extroverts who are struggling in a, you know, a real way; and also just recognize that when we aren't able to be in relationship in the ways that we have, that it has had really deep implications for a lot of folks. But yeah, I've appreciated the, a little bit of the quiet and the solitude that's come in this time. And I'm wondering for you, you know, what are, what have you learned? What, what are things about--, in this pandemic that have been, kind of like, surprises? Surprises that have, you know, been blessings, but also, kind of, what have you learned about adaptation in this moment?
Leah: (52:32) Well, I'll say two things. One, as far as adaptation, is the Soul Fire team is freaking bomb, amazing. Because one, in some ways we were set up for this. I mean, we're essential workers. We stayed open anyway. We were already planning this online series just cause why not, but doesn't mean it wasn't a lot of change. For example, our Soul Fire in the city program, where we build home gardens for people who are surviving food apartheid and provide the plants and the soil and the mentorship, that program grew five fold, because people were freaking out cause there's no food, right? And so, our team was like, we, we got this. You know, same thing with folks calling, wanting to learn how to grow food. We had to start a, a talk show called, Ask a Sister Farmer--it's First Fridays at four pm Eastern on our Facebook Live--to just answer the gardening questions. We had to pivot--, you know, we do a lot of on-farm training, and so we had to pivot some of that online. So change. Yes. And grief, too, because a lot of things we were planning, we had to let go of. And people put their heart and soul into it. I mean, as far as what I learned per--, personally, which is a little facetious, is be careful what you pray for. Because I was beyond burnout at the end of last year. I didn't mention this in the interview, but our personal family home has been the program center for thousands of people for 10 years. And it's a blessing, but the implications of that on our sense of, like, privacy, work life balance--there is none, you know, all, so many impacts. And I had had this kind of breakdown with our board of directors, like, I am not having one more program in my house. Like, we need to do something about this. I'm at the end, and I was praying like, God, just let me have, you know, some privacy in my home. I don't want nobody coming over. Let me just be on the land. I'm, I'm done with going on planes, flying all across the country. I just wanna be here farming. And, like, all these things I prayed for <laugh> we got them to the t. It was like no, nobody can come over, and you can't go anywhere. So, be careful what you pray for. But I will say that even with, as you mentioned, the indescribable loss of life and livelihood and freedom that's come with a pandemic, I do think that the earth has, has put us all in a timeout--
Mia: Mm-hmm.
Leah: (54:52) --to think about what we've done. And I'm doing my best to take that opportunity to listen and reflect and think about how I and we can, can do better at taking care of her and taking care of all of our human and non-human siblings.
Mia: Mmm, thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah. That feels really profound and true and important to be in this place of listening and taking better care. And reminds me again of that part of the butterfly wing, the heal part that was so necessary in this time, and that we have hopefully been able to center more, because often we only did it when we were in crisis or at the edge of burnout or--
Leah: Exactly.
Mia: --and so, yeah. I, I'm appreciating the way in which we get to be recentered and that really important intention and--
Leah: Mm-hmm.
Mia: --practice. So, thank you for that. We're gonna, you know, move towards a close. So I don't know if there's anything else you wanna make sure the listeners, community of folks practicing emergent strategy, learning emergent strategy, you know, wanna, you wanna impart before we wrap up?
Leah: Well, sometimes folks can be interested in how to engage or how to support the work of Black and brown liberation on lands.
Mia: Mm-hmm.
Leah: (56:20) So, my super wonderful team has put together, together a whole lot of resources about the four wings of the butterfly, and what we can do in each of them. So what are the policies that need to change? Like what are the things we need to be protesting? What are the institutions we need to support? What are the ways we can heal? So if you go to Soulfirefarm.org, and go to the "take action" page, there's just a plethora of really beautiful information. It's my personal belief that everybody who eats food and lives on any piece of this great, beautiful earth, which is pretty much all of us, has some responsibility around healing the food system. And it doesn't have to be a huge lift. It can just be, you know, a couple hours out of your year that you contribute. But I think we, we're responsible for making sure that farm workers are treated with respect and dignity, for making sure that Earth doesn't get trash, for make--, trashed, for making sure that, you know, Indigenous people and other folks have access to land. And so, I appreciate anyone and everyone's willingness to, to lend a hand in that regard.
Sage: This podcast is produced by Natalie Peart. Music for the Emergence Strategy Podcast is provided by Complex Movements, a Detroit based artist collective. The music provided is from the soundtrack of the performance installation. Beware of the Dandelions. To support the ongoing work of ESII, make a donation at www.alliedmedia.org/esii.
Leah: (58:20) Thank you.