Milkweed Strategy: A Constellation of Ideas about Belonging

Guest: Aurora Levins Morales
Moderator: melanie

I’m a Caribbean Jew, child of indigenous and colonizer, enslavers and enslaved, yiddishkeit and inquisition, daughter of an ecologist who taught me that the truth is the whole, thinking about the politics/ethics of belonging.

What would it mean for those of us no longer indigenous to stop yearning and embrace migration, a way of life just as ancient as nativeness, to stop seeking our “real” selves in genetic tests or deep time ancestries? If we are no longer groves of thousand year old trees, can we rejoice that we are wind-borne milkweed?

The destruction of the Temple breathed new life into Jewishness. What if all our exiles are as rich with the exact gifts we need for these times? What if settlers on other people’s land knew we will never be native species, don’t have to be invasive, but can learn to be naturalized? Complexity, not purity is the ground of authenticity and change.

Bio:

Aurora Levins Morales (she/her/ella) is a Puerto Rican Ashkenazi writer and liberationist, recently returned to her birthplace in the mountains of Western Boriken where she writes and stewards 34 acres of subtropical rain forest.

She is the author of eight books, including Medicine Stories: Essays for Radicals and Kindling: Writings on the Body.

She embraces the work of prophecy, which is to describe truthfully what is, expand what we imagine is possible ,and joyfully do the work of making justice.

Camille Barton (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and embodiment researcher, who uses afrofuturism to imagine creative interventions towards systems change. They are invested in breaking down the mind body separation that is dominant in Western paradigms in order to create more space for flexible thinking, holistic healing and bridging across differences. Camille’s art practice weaves dance, clowning, DJing, facilitation, film and cultural production.