***This event has been cancelled due to increasingly high rates of COVID-19. Please reach out to Katie Young if you have questions or would like to stay in the loop about future gatherings.***
Please join us for the first Wisdom Within gathering
As we notice the cooler mornings and the need to bundle up in this transition from summer to fall season, we will celebrate a cherished summer element - WATER! We are excited to have Chandrika Francis, founder of Oshun Swim School, facilitate a gathering for our circle around water and healing. Before we finally say goodbye to the end of the warm months, we invite you to join us in appreciating the gifts of waterways in our lives.
Monday, September 20th, 10:00am - 1:00pm (arrive at park by 9:45am)
Through Afro-Indigenous centered practices, this workshop offers a safer space to explore our relationship with water and land, ourselves, and each other. Community building, embodied mindfulness, self inquiry, and storytelling, support us into remembrance of our innate sacredness. Rest and play are centered!
North Santiam Recreational Area
Here are driving directions and descriptions of the park:
Lunch and honorariums will be provided. We acknowledge your time in taking the day to be together for this gathering. In respectful consideration, we will provide a $100 honorarium to cover your expenses and travel for the day. We also have funding to cover childcare costs, please let us know if you are interested.
Please submit your RSVP below by Sept 15th so there's enough time to prepare lunch orders and honorariums for your time with us.
RSVP Contact: Katie Young, katie@oregonlandtrusts.org 503-208-6153 (text messages ok too)
COVID Safety Procedures: We’ll be following CDC guidance as well as Oregon’s newest COVID protocols and mandates. We will also cap the attendance to 10 people maximum.
Due to the nature of this workshop, this event will unfortunately not have a virtual adaptation if forces beyond our control require us to cancel gathering in-person.
About Chandrika Francis
Chandrika is dedicated to supporting people of color to have a relationship to the earth grounded in remembrance, safety, connection, healing, and liberation! In 2018, she founded Oshun Swim School. Through Afro-Indigenous centered swim and water based workshops, Oshun Swim School offers BIPOC womxn and non-binary people a safer space to explore our relationship with water and grow into embodied, joyful swimmers. OSS supports students to gain swim skills, and also to heal personal and generational water trauma, build community, and practice embodiment.
Before 2018, Chandrika supported POC to reconnect with the earth for seven years in the form of environmental education, backpacking trips, camping trips, conservation work, classroom teaching, and youth development. She has a Masters in Education through the Islandwood Program at the University of Washington, with a focus in decolonizing environmental education. She is a bi-coastal baby at heart, having spent her life between Oakland, Seattle, and the east coast, and is excited to bring her work to the lands she loves!
About Wisdom Within
Wisdom Within is about the gathering of the Indigenous feminine spirit, the sharing of stories and experiences of nature, ancestry, and identity, and the building of a community that can help sustain the environment and also feel spiritually nourished by it.
Those of BIPOC identities inherently have a relationship to the earth and the land, and this budding community aims to create space for gathering, nurturing, and even rebuilding that relationship to the land. Not all BIPOC have had the privilege to establish a strong connection or relationship to land, earth, and the environment. In some instances, the land and environment has historically been used as a weapon against BIPOC communities. We’d like to see this change. Through gathering and communing, the Wisdom Within circle will be a place to gather and explore the Indigenous spirit, share stories and experiences of our relationship to the natural world, and understand how our ancestors and our identity shows up in the work we do with land and the environment.
Project Organizer Contact Information:
Dez Ramirez: Community Engagement Manager, Columbia Land Trust, DRamirez@columbialandtrust.org
Katie Young: Indigenous Peoples Collaboration Project Manager, Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts, katie@oregonlandtrusts.org