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PermaQueer - Guy Ritani & Toad Dell
31 Plays3 years ago
PermaQueer is a collaborative effort to share ecological sustainability methods through the lens of Permaculture and focussing accessibility to traditionally marginalised communities. Our goal is to spread knowledge of living within ecological boundaries. Join Host Mykal Hoare as he chats with PermaQueer founders Guy Ritani and Toad Dell about how to make tomorrow a better world by deconstructing our existing systems and recreating them through the lens of permaculture's defining principals.
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Transcript
Introduction to Independent Podcasting
00:00:03
Speaker
Growing Media is a proudly independent podcast produced by me, Michael Hall, with zero corporate or network interference in our content. But this means we are running on the smell of an oily rag over here. So if you like the show and would like to make a small contribution, you could head over to our Patreon. You can find the link in our show notes.
Shifting Mindsets: Beyond Gardening
00:00:28
Speaker
The producers of growing media recognise the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is recorded and pay respects to Aboriginal elders past, present and those emerging.
00:00:45
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Growing Media podcast. I am your host, Michael Haw, and today's episode is a little bit less about gardening, but I think it's an important conversation that we need to start having more and more. It's about cultivating the right mindset for the
LGBT Inclusivity in Horticulture
00:01:01
Speaker
future.
00:01:01
Speaker
I wanted to speak to my guests today because I myself am a part of the LGBT community. And at times in my own horticultural career I have felt sort of out of place. Now don't worry, I am not falling to pieces over it, but it is something I think we can all be aware of. Our systems and society are not set up equally for all of us.
00:01:24
Speaker
And I by no means want to say that I have this bad. There are people out there within our industry and other industries who face prejudice for who they are every single time they go to work. And all I want to do by having this conversation is start our brains thinking about how we can make this better for the future.
00:01:45
Speaker
How can we change our workplaces? How can we change our mentalities and our mindsets around people that are different from us? Now, there's no way to do this right and there's no way that you, the listener, can be perfect at this as I'm not perfect at this.
00:02:03
Speaker
I think it's just important that we learn and listen from our diverse friends and family and understand that everyone is different and to speak up when you see someone acting in a certain way that demeans another person. We are all on this journey of learning and discovery together. Though this episode may not speak to you directly, I'd love it if you could stick around and perhaps learn some things. I sure learnt a hell of a lot from it.
PermaQueer's Origin and Mission
00:02:32
Speaker
PermaQueer founders Guy Ratani and Toad Dell started their social enterprise with the vision of sharing ecological sustainability methods through permaculture. When COVID-19 hit the world last year, Guy and Toad realised the resilience that they had created for themselves in their own home wasn't being seen in the homes of their LGBTQIA+, and BIPOC friends.
00:02:56
Speaker
they set out to make permaculture accessible to their much-loved community. Thus, Permacuire was born. They run free and pay-as-you-feel courses teaching ecological foundations, permaculture, social justice, decolonisation, trauma and neurodivergent information systems, with the aim to create community resilience worldwide.
00:03:22
Speaker
Since recording this episode, PermaQueer has won the Lush Spring Prize 2021 International Project Award. Congratulations team! I'm very excited to see where this can take you. It's also worth mentioning that Guy and Toad are gender non-binary. Toad's pronouns are they, them and it. Guy's pronouns are ear, they and them.
00:03:48
Speaker
Hi Guy. Hi Toad. How are you doing? Good.
Teaching Permaculture Post-COVID
00:03:51
Speaker
Thanks. Hi Michael. How are you? Good. Thank you. You've been very busy teaching, I believe. Yes. Yes. We've been, we're midway through a permaculture design course at the moment. So that's an in-person one up here and there. Oh, where you can actually, where you can actually still meet together. Yeah. So we're very, very privileged to be out of lockdown and
00:04:15
Speaker
I've just had my second round of Pfizer and so is Toad and we're feeling grateful to have access and also to not be in lockdown. So. Yeah. Yeah. I am still awaiting my second AstraZeneca down here. I'm in Sydney, so well, Blue Mountains. So we're in lockdown at the moment, but that's all good. I suppose. So if I am correct, you guys are partners. Oh, yes. Yes.
00:04:45
Speaker
And where did you both meet? I want to say something really cute, but we're the cliche grinder couple. Yes. Like I had a fleeting interest in permaculture because I'd previously dated a really lovely human who was a permaculture designer and teacher.
Living Permaculture
00:05:05
Speaker
So I had an understanding of what it was, but didn't take too much of a deep dive.
00:05:10
Speaker
I didn't know about permaculture when we got together. And we kind of just hopped into a permaculture share house being run by Del Dent Fleming, who's an incredible, incredible woman. And then the rest is kind of history. So you both moved into the same home? Yes. And that's how you met?
00:05:32
Speaker
Oh, God, no, no, we've been dating for a little bit first and then we. We've been dating for just under a year. And then it was funny because I was living this weird corporate art, Melbourne life. I mean, it was a lot of fun, but in hindsight, you know, there weren't a whole heap of ethics in that space. And then I decided to leave that that life. And then I moved in with Toad and I thought,
00:06:01
Speaker
that this house we were moving into was very bizarre for a lot of very weird people. And they were all really lovely. And I didn't really get it for a while. So we started learning permaculture.
00:06:17
Speaker
And the whole house was structured within permaculture design. And so, you know, that was a really transformative space for us. And then once we'd done our first course, we both helped out as teacher aides. And then from there we did our teacher training and then now we're teachers. And so, you know, permaculture and that house really changed
00:06:46
Speaker
a lot of my life, frankly, because of how it structured our resources and systems.
00:06:57
Speaker
I think the idea of a permaculture share house is super interesting. How do you think that would differ from either a regular household that are kind of running their lives in accordance to permaculture principles or just a general share house? How is that different? That's a really good question actually. I really like that.
00:07:22
Speaker
Well, I think a lot of it is like this was a, I think it's a quarter acre block in kind of suburban Blackburn in so-called Melbourne in Eastern suburbs. And like just in that actual infrastructure, we had chickens, we had bees, we had rabbits that we used for a stroll for the garden. We set up a little local economy in a barter economy, in a share economy.
00:07:47
Speaker
how it like we lived with our landlady who was who was dealt in and how she modeled some of the permaculture ethics was a lot of the rent she paid we paid she actually invested back into us so I was funded to go to a mushroom growing workshop someone else was funded to go to a fermentation workshop and then we kind of brought those skills back to the community and shared them
00:08:08
Speaker
And as part of the actual moving in, we were actually, I managed to exchange labor for a low cost slash pretty much free PDC. So that was made accessible to me when I was really struggling financially.
00:08:24
Speaker
And I'd probably say, you know, the difference between permaculture transition houses or permaculture houses and other ones is the systems and ethics that underpin them, you know, Daldin who'd set up this house, set it up in alignment to those ethics with the design principles, as opposed to, you know, your generic body corporate or housing body who frankly has a lot of capitalist ethics. And I found that, you know,
00:08:54
Speaker
I was living in such a predatory housing space for so long, and not only did the landowners not care at all about me as a person, they actually frankly didn't care about the land that their house was on. They cared about it if the value of it meant that they could get more money out of people. They cared about it if it looked enough to hike the rent by X amount of money each week.
00:09:22
Speaker
but they actually had no care whatsoever about the land that it was on. And so, you know, we see this structural approach to housing in a systemic way is very damaging and predatory. And so that's why for me, it was so transformative to be in this house because I didn't realize there were
Community Gardening on Tambourine Mountain
00:09:44
Speaker
other ways of being and doing because for so long I had been, you know,
00:09:49
Speaker
dredged in this predatory scarcity mindset model of housing, which is incredibly damaging to the environment.
00:09:58
Speaker
You know, that kind of, that reminds me when I was a little bit younger and I was living in Melbourne as well at the time, I was in just a general share house and my mates and I started just a veggie patch in the back garden. When we moved in, it was dirt. We just started a little veggie patch and then by the time we moved out, they came, the real estate came for their final inspection and told us that all the work that we had done needed to be ripped out and it needed to be like it was when we moved in, which was bare soil.
00:10:26
Speaker
Yeah, so depressing. Exactly. So ridiculous. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about your gardening practices then. It's really interesting as when I was living in Melbourne, I was doing a bit of gardening, but a lot of my permaculture was actually, a lot of my designs weren't always super land-based. And now that we've moved to Tambourine Mountain or Jamboreen, it's a little bit more, we're currently kind of
00:10:56
Speaker
been working with a woman who has a little three acre farm up here and it's just old sheep kind of compacted country. We've just been like putting in swales, kind of building up the soil, building up the community and the communal soil as well. Yeah. And also having figuring out the water water paths because there's this, the council has created this absolute water rocket out there.
00:11:21
Speaker
drainage system that just flies out onto a property and strips all the soil and all the plants. So we've, you know, we've come into spaces that are quite damaged landscapes. And we understand that the topography and the lay of the land needs to have a lot of work done to it until we get to the very end of, you know, beautiful fruiting crops and everything. So we planted out a few centropic
00:11:51
Speaker
agroforestry swales that are very young at the moment. And then we've planted out some sort of picking beds here in the house that we're on. And we're kind of fortunate up here because there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of growing that's happening on the mountain. So there's a lot of, like, you go for a walk around the neighborhood and everyone has a sort of veggie stall or a fruit stall or a plant stall out the front of their house.
00:12:19
Speaker
And so access to homegrown quality organic food is actually in abundance, which is a huge privilege for us. Whereas where we were previously living, it wasn't. And so there was a lot of emphasis on making sure that we were growing that.
00:12:34
Speaker
so that we weren't buying, you know, those sad plastic wraps from Kohl's. Yeah, for $5 or something. Yeah, and they just, and they're sad when they arrive and then like it takes them about four hours to get, you know, sludgy. Yeah. Yeah. They're sad when they arrive. They're sad when they land in your mouth. Yeah. And so now we're surrounded by beautiful, happy and vital fresh herbs. So we're quite grateful for that.
00:13:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's good. Um, I guess let's step back a little bit to last year, 2020 was a very, very grim year, I think for a lot of people on earth. Um, but you both seem to have taken it by the reins and we started Permicre.
Addressing Resilience Gaps in Marginalized Communities
00:13:18
Speaker
Yes. What was the resilience that you were seeing in your own home that you weren't seeing in the homes of your friends?
00:13:26
Speaker
Well, frankly for me, I'm from Aotearoa. I'm not an Australian citizen. I lost my job and I had no access to government support. So I had no financial stability whatsoever. And because of the share food trade that we had established and because of the bartering economic system, I was still able to pay my rent in exchange for
00:13:57
Speaker
I also work as a massage therapist. So for massage and for work around the house and for, you know, work on different projects and illustration stuff. And that's to name a few of the systems, but a lot of my friends were evicted. A lot of my friends, you know, essentially became homeless because they were in the same situation and they couldn't, they didn't have food. They didn't have, um,
00:14:25
Speaker
housing. They didn't have money. They were, you know, thrown out completely. And there was a point where I was talking to one of them and I was genuinely so amazed that I had wasn't experiencing any of that. And the sole reason was because of the privilege that I had because of the systems we live within. And so that really sort of
00:14:54
Speaker
stunned me because we've been working in permaculture spaces and we understood the theory of it. We're like, yeah, this is really fantastic. Um, but it wasn't until a, you know, global crisis. Yeah. And we were like, wow. Okay. You know, the proof is in the pudding. I'm, I'm safe. I'm happy. You know, and because of that, I believe that my nervous system, you know, the amount of anxiety and depression that went through
00:15:21
Speaker
and still goes through people stuck in lockdown is immense. But because I didn't, you know, I had all of these systems, I didn't really have to worry about anything. That's why we had the power and energy to start PromoQueer and start spreading this information and teaching. And so I feel very, very lucky. We kind of plucked PromoQueer out of the air, but I know that other people have used that language as well. And I think that's also been a really interesting iteration.
00:15:51
Speaker
We're perma-queer over here, but there's like a perma-queer UK. There's a perma-queer that emerged out of the international permaculture convergence in India. Yeah, I think it's just something that's been popping up here and there. Sort of clearly kind of a need for it in that sense then. Yeah. Let's talk about that. Where did you come up with the idea for perma-queer?
00:16:18
Speaker
Well, we kind of came up with it together and it kind of, it really was because we saw how valuable permaculture was and we saw how much it could actually benefit our kind of queer community. And so we initially started off from that approach of like teaching permaculture to the queers. And then we kind of realized how very quickly how beneficial queer culture could actually be to permaculture.
00:16:45
Speaker
So it's like a really nice symbiotic relationship that we often work with them. Yeah, it kind of like inside out of itself. Yeah, we first started wanting to teach the queer community. But because a lot of the ways that permaculture was structured was not necessarily culturally informed, it wasn't, you know, queer friendly, it wasn't neurodivergent friendly, it was very much, you know, a white cishet world.
00:17:15
Speaker
very middle class as well. Yeah. And so we wanted to sort of change the approach to make it something that everyone could could all include being included within. And then after a while, this weird back and forth dialogue started happening. So it was like us teaching permacultures for queer community and then us going into permacultures communities and teaching them about
00:17:40
Speaker
queer theory and about, you know, the monocultures of thinking that we exist within all of the binaries that we have. And it's quite powerful because, you know, through permaculture, we understand the nuance of ecology, we understand the value of diversity, we understand the age and the marginal. And it's almost like, you know, using the frameworks that permaculture established to actually put value
00:18:08
Speaker
back onto queer and marginal people because, you know, there's a lot of principles and ethics that permaculture is run by and we've just applied them to queer theory and all of a sudden people are like, huh.
Queer Theory and Social Norms
00:18:22
Speaker
So for our listeners, could you just define queer theory? Yeah, sure. For us and how we use the language of queer theory, it's kind of the study of social norms, how cultures establish social norms and then use violence to maintain them, and who exists on the fringe, and what kind of innovation and delicious, weird queerness emerges at the fringes.
00:18:45
Speaker
Very little do you find innovation and culture emerging from kind of the center. It's usually at the edges, in the markets, in the places where people in different areas meet. And as soon as something sort of becomes a social norm, it kind of isn't necessary, it may have once been queer, but it's not.
00:19:07
Speaker
necessarily queer anymore. I don't know, the way I kind of view queer theory, it's, you know, when you have those weird little like filaments in your eye and you can see them, but if you look at them, they're like move away. Like that's how I view queer theory. Oh my God, what a good analogy actually. How great. So just before you mentioned a symbiotic relationship between queer communities and permaculture communities and how they can enrich each other.
00:19:37
Speaker
What can each community specifically take from each other? I really like that question. Thank you. I like I was kind of saying, I think permaculture designers are kind of, you know, we're taught to look outside and see the green world as not just a collection of trees, but this really rich, diverse ecosystem that everything has its purpose, its relationship. You can't just strip one thing. And if you create monocultures, everything kind of collapses.
00:20:05
Speaker
So we have this really complex relationship of green spaces and growing spaces. But when we look to human communities who are often stewards of these places, we fall into these very black and white categories.
00:20:18
Speaker
So I think on that kind of social lens bringing queer theory into that really helps because there's no actual permaculture without people as well People care is one of and fair share are like, you know, the main ethics of permaculture Yeah, and recently queer theory and particularly queer folk
00:20:36
Speaker
often have a very nuanced and complex understanding of social relations, power, privilege, dynamics, all the things that exist in our social ecosystem, but often don't have access or understanding to a lot of the natural systems and ways to support ourselves outside of systems of violence.
Food Security and Systemic Change
00:20:53
Speaker
And I want to say that one of the reasons that permaculture, I think,
00:20:58
Speaker
has such a heavy focus on gardening a lot while farming or food production. And this is how we frame it, because you can't actually change any systems of violence if you can't feed yourself first. True. You need to have food security and food safety and then community sufficiency before you can even start to change any of the other big scary stuff in the world. Yeah. And I think as well, you know, in terms of the dialogue between permaculture and queer communities,
00:21:27
Speaker
Permaculture is all about systems design. So it's about understanding all of the nuanced ecology and resource flow. And our imperative is to make good systems. And so the reason we really value queer theory, queer perspectives and queer knowledge in these spaces is because, you know, inherently queer people are those on
00:21:51
Speaker
on the other side of social norms, those on the other side of how systems are structured, those who don't necessarily have privilege in current systems. And so if we apply that permaculture imperative of wanting to design good systems, we need to have feedback from these people who the systems don't work for. And so this is why we're seeing incredible innovation
00:22:12
Speaker
in terms of, you know, community sufficiency or housing or healthcare by people for their own needs. It's very much that nothing about us without us, you know, understanding that we need to include these people because that's, you know,
00:22:29
Speaker
sovereign understanders of what they need and how to approach that. And then there's the flip of permaculture back to queer communities. We really need to have our own sovereign equity when it comes to where we get our food from so that we don't rely on violent power over structures that a lot of employment and housing and
00:22:58
Speaker
food systems tend to put people in and they all cultivate this sort of scarcity mindset that unfolds into more and more harm. And so basically there's a really fantastic exchange of knowledge from queer communities to permaculture spaces and then also permaculture offering very real systemic resources and restructuring.
00:23:25
Speaker
So we know permaculture is for everyone and it's a very welcoming movement, but I think in society, a lot of our systems are made by people who unknowingly pass their biases on.
Access to Permaculture for Queer and BIPOC Communities
00:23:39
Speaker
And obviously that kind of comes through and it's shown by their own realities of their existence.
00:23:48
Speaker
What are some of the missing links in the framework of permaculture that would allow it to be easier accessed by queer and BIPOC people? Like, is it just visibility? I mean, you know, it's the same with everyism. We live in a world that's here in so-called Australia that's been colonised and the colonising force is driven by capitalism and patriarchy and, you know,
00:24:17
Speaker
those power structures are prevalent everywhere. And so really, you know,
00:24:25
Speaker
There's nothing sort of unique to permaculture in terms of how we need to address social progress. Like permaculture is not this sort of thing that exists on its own. It's still in the context of Australia. And Australia tends to be quite racist, quite sexist, quite homophobic and transphobic. And all of these issues culminate to being access issues for queer and bi-hoc communities. And so, you know,
00:24:53
Speaker
Our intent with PermaQueer was to really have a trauma-informed approach to decolonizing it. So these spaces were safe, culturally responsive, and respectful. Also, you know, neurodivergently informed.
00:25:10
Speaker
and combated patriarchal power norms at every point because all of these micro manifestations exist as barriers to queer communities and people of colour feeling safe in these spaces and especially when it's around land management and land tenure
00:25:29
Speaker
There's a huge amount of trauma in that very subject. And so we have to treat incredibly lightly and we have to come from a very, very trauma-informed perspective so that we don't continue to do harm. And I think that's a nuanced conversation that hasn't been had in permaculture spaces. And I think, you know,
00:25:51
Speaker
our version of perma-queer is one iteration of that conversation and there are many others and I think the more conversations that we have about these things and not only just conversations but the more we unpack nodes of food delivery, nodes of economic sovereignty or points of connection in
00:26:18
Speaker
Housing which are you know, those are three things that are very much structurally Structural needs for all of our communities. We're not going to really change that the accessibility to to these communities Yes, right. It's a very nebulous answer. But no, no, I did want to clarify what you meant by decolonization That's a really good
Decolonization and Equity in Land Management
00:26:42
Speaker
one. Um, do you want to speak to that guy? Yeah Um, I think you know
00:26:48
Speaker
There's a...
00:26:50
Speaker
By decolonization, it's an understanding of our history. So understanding all of the power systems that exist currently, they exist because of actions that happened in the past. And whether or not we feel responsible for them, we are here because of them. And when we actually take a critical lens at how these things happened, we recognize that there's some very, very inequitable
00:27:20
Speaker
Power balance is going on here that you know lash out just proportionately at First Nations people at people of color you know people who were deemed slaves others and animals in this colonial project and you know we like to think that that was in the past but actually it's deepened into more insidious ways in the modern day.
00:27:42
Speaker
And so unpacking really what our history is and really where our biases sit and where our social structures are policed, even by ourselves, by our internal cop, that's the process of decolonizing. And it's an ongoing process. You don't ever get to the end of it.
00:28:05
Speaker
But at the core of it, there's a real value for Indigenous ways of being and pre-colonial and potentially post-colonial ways of knowing. And I think, you know, we're all on our journey. We're all on this anti-racism, decolonial journey.
00:28:25
Speaker
But we're not going to understand what an equitable world is until we continue this process of dismantling these damaging colonial power structures. And I think I just wanted to throw one last thing in there. And this has been a really solid critique of people using deep colonial language in that land back needs to be really centered strongly.
00:28:46
Speaker
And that's a complex conversation that's emerging in permaculture. How do we actually get land back? And particularly we often, if you are queer or have less resources, how do we make this happen? Like we ourselves can access land, but still needing to center and somehow find a way to get land back to First Nations people.
00:29:07
Speaker
And what are some of the ideas being tossed around there? How is this actually looking? Oh, there's some really, really beautiful initiatives that are happening all around the world. A lot of it is unfortunately like...
00:29:19
Speaker
crowned funding of land back, which on one hand is good, because land goes back, but it still goes back in a colonial format. So it's like, cool, okay, you've paid for this, you paid for this land that was essentially stolen in the first place. So it's really, and, you know, a majority of efforts will, will occur once we have, you know, First Nations governance, and we actually have some kind of equitable understanding of
00:29:44
Speaker
of how the process is going to unfold. But at the moment, we've seen some really fantastic new models of land tenure. So in the Retina agriculture space that are changing the structure of how land is
00:30:01
Speaker
privatized in that it's not privatized, it's sovereign onto itself. Now, this doesn't necessarily equate to land back, but the whole litigation process in colonization is really, really difficult when it comes to the issue of privatization of land. So that's definitely a step towards changing how we view land legally. But then in terms of literally giving land back,
00:30:31
Speaker
pay the rent, which contributes money towards First Nations people for them to either purchase land back or be funded. There's also, I've seen small land back initiatives where people contact the council and get the council to cordoned off some land so that it's given back to First Nations people, or even back in Aotearoa, my homeland,
00:30:57
Speaker
I'm not sure which river it is, but a lot of the rivers are starting to be given their own sovereign identity, so legally about people. So you cannot abuse them, you cannot take from them, you cannot do all of these things.
00:31:17
Speaker
And that's changed how we value the world. It's not just humans who own everything. That being said, a really insidious and sinister response has happened in that now that river can be sued. So, you know, that's when, and we have seen some people sue this river, which is incredibly problematic. What? Over what? Over, you know, them trying to
00:31:44
Speaker
their businesses not getting profits that they perceived because of that it's sovereignty. It's really, really infuriatingly stupid. Well, thank you so much for that.
Influencing Local Systems in Queensland
00:31:58
Speaker
You mentioned before that you both moved from Melbourne to Mount Tambourine, which is from Victoria to Queensland. What's the experience been like?
00:32:09
Speaker
I've been pretty delightful, actually. Like, I'm not going to lie, the weather here is outrageously beautiful. I think you've had 30 degree days lately, right? My mum lives in Brisbane and she's been touting about 30 degree days. We live in like Tambourine Mountain. It's kind of this little bit of a cooler climate as well. So it's like, if all kind of region is subtropical, we almost become
00:32:38
Speaker
a little bit temperate, which is lovely. It's been really beautiful, actually, it's a different speed here. Things move a little bit slower, which is not always a terrible thing as well. It feels like we've gone back in time, probably maybe five to 10 years.
00:32:56
Speaker
But we're also stepping into the time that people are just starting to value and understand and queerness and permaculture, not permaculture, permaculture has been around for a while. But people are starting to really value culture in the arts and Brisbane's really popping up. So it's like we got to catch the beginning of Melbourne. That's what it feels like a little bit.
00:33:18
Speaker
Yeah, we always had this intention of coming up here and sort of it being definitely a blank canvas. And, you know, I've got involved with Arts Council up here and we're getting involved with the waste management and a whole bunch of different things at a point where this, you know, council and town in the area isn't as complex, whereas down in Melbourne, it was really, you know, Melbourne's a giant city.
00:33:47
Speaker
Melbourne's a very, very complex flow of resources. And it's all established on colonialism and capitalism. And whilst I love Melbourne, it's a beautiful place for my heart. It's really, really hard to overthrow and change and overgrow those systems. So coming up here, you know, we've definitely had our struggles trying to get these things up and running, but, you know,
00:34:13
Speaker
when we're able to just talk to people about what it is that we're doing, everyone's recognizing the value in this regenerative design and systemic community resilience and our wanting to do that. And so being up here has been really wonderful because it's given me a lot of hope for transformation that is hard to see in the city. It's hard to see in the urban concrete sprawl.
00:34:41
Speaker
But it has been a little bit lonely in terms of queer community. There's only a handful of queers up here on the mountain, which will change because we're coming. We're calling the queers. We've bought our agenda with us.
00:34:58
Speaker
You know, indoctrinate everyone, eh? Yeah, that's it. So how then has that moved, shaped your vision of Permicre then?
00:35:13
Speaker
Has that changed at all? That's a really good prompt. I think for us in NAM, so-called Melbourne, it was very on the ground and very cross-roots. Whereas now, because like we said, the areas that we're in are still in this state of expansion. They haven't kind of reached their borders and kind of over full like Melbourne is. We can kind of shape on a more structural and
00:35:38
Speaker
kind of council level where things are going to go and think, you know, like people are interested in the whole like clean green tambourine.
00:35:45
Speaker
a very green suburb, very eco-friendly, and people want to financially benefit from that and actually make that more of a reality. So we've actually come at a time where we can actually influence larger systems and structures than what we could have down in Melbourne. It was very kind of like punky grassroots. Here we're kind of like, I feel like we put on a, not a suit and tie, but we're like in a bit
00:36:10
Speaker
different spaces. And I think that it's really fun taking permaculture into spaces that, like Trojan horsing permaculture principles and ethics into spaces that wouldn't otherwise have them. And I think being up here, we've sort of adjusted, like, like, because it's a mountain, you know, there's only a handful of ways on and off and it's a very clearly delineated bioregion.
00:36:33
Speaker
So, you know, in a lot of ways, it's very easy to order what comes on and off the mountain. It's very easy to separate what this community is versus the surrounding areas. Whereas when you live in a suburb, it's kind of like we just one suburb end and the next one begin. It's just an endless expanse of houses. And so there's a much stronger sense of community because of the geography up here. And so we've really started to build, you know, a lot of person to person initiatives
00:37:03
Speaker
and approach how we're going to sort of galvanise the community up here. But coming from NAM or so-called Melbourne, you know, we still have a lot of roots down there and we're still engaged with a lot of organisations, specifically ones to do with trans and gender neighbours individuals. And so it's kind of fantastic because we've been still planning and running
00:37:27
Speaker
Regeneration programs down in in melton so these are because everyone said you know in lockdown we have to figure out how to still spread this information and so we have come up with this twenty week regenerative capacity community building program which we were kind of a bit.
00:37:47
Speaker
frustrated that we couldn't do it in person, but then we realize actually community building is about people building community for themselves. It's not about us coming in and being like, okay, we'll do this. And then when we leave, other people don't have the skills to do it. So in a way, it's actually been better that we've been, we can only liaise with these programs online, because it means that all of the accountability and also all of the reward goes to the individuals on their,
00:38:15
Speaker
on the projects that they build. And so, you know, whilst we've got, you know, funding and stuff to help them purchase, you know, garden supplies or tools or, you know, mushroom kits or whatever it is that they need that sort of in sovereign control of that. And so that sort of extended another level of permaculture at the moment where we've been working on
00:38:37
Speaker
different programs of community regeneration. And one that we're really excited to be working on is with a proposal with the justice system. So this is creating a village where people that come out of incarceration come in, not straight into capitalist colonial systems, but into a village that's established as a transition permaculture
Permaculture in the Justice System
00:39:02
Speaker
village. So we're really excited about that. And that's focused specifically on
00:39:07
Speaker
Pacific Islanders that come out of incarceration. That's wonderful. Is that in Queensland or in Melbourne? So that's in Victoria, but that hasn't gone ahead yet, but we are in the process of developing that program. So hopefully it's a model that we can use to show
00:39:29
Speaker
how when permacultures apply to community context, it can help re-resource and rehabilitate these spaces. So we're very excited to have our hands in the dirt with the community up here, but also to be able to offer systemic guidance and support and even financial support to people in the states away in lockdown.
00:39:54
Speaker
one of the things that we're really noticing about perma-queer particular and, and other people will call themselves perma-queer and do different things. And I think that's actually part of the diversity of an ecosystem, a social ecosystem, but how we as Guy and I, and maybe more in the future are really, we're kind of
00:40:11
Speaker
Other people are doing this work as well, but we're pushing the edge in our region of what permaculture can look like. Our beautiful mentor, Rosemary Morrow, I listened to her in a podcast a while ago. I think it was the Making Permaculture Stronger podcast. And she was saying about how the tragedy of if permaculture only ever remained in middle-class white spaces
00:40:37
Speaker
And for a lot of us, it's like, and that's been the narrative of permaculture. It's, you know, you have your husband and wife and 2.5 kids and then you buy a lifestyle block and then you become quote unquote self-sufficient.
00:40:51
Speaker
Whereas a lot of what we're seeing is that this really juicy, delicious permaculture spaces are emerging in the fringes and being pushed in really unique, novel, weird, queer ways. And we really are so excited to be involved in that work. And people are doing it everywhere, of course. But we're really excited about how we're able to apply it to our communities in particular.
00:41:13
Speaker
That's amazing. No, that's really great, actually. So I actually listened to your episode on For the Wild podcast.
Māori Heritage and Land Connection
00:41:24
Speaker
And Guy, which I loved, it was really good. Thank you. Guy, one thing that you mentioned was that you were speaking about the importance of connection to one's own culture, and which you mentioned a bit earlier as well. You said that it has been profound connecting with your own.
00:41:42
Speaker
Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah, sure. So, as I said before, I'm from Aotearoa. I'm Tangatafinawa, which means person of the land, and I'm Māori. So, First Nations in New Zealand. My iwi, so my tribes, the Nāti Toa Rangatira, which is down on the
00:42:06
Speaker
in the south end of the North Island, Nati Kahanganu, which is also in the North Island, and Nati Koata, which is just on the top north end of the South Island. And they also have Irish heritage as well. So I have, fortunately, a lot of connection to a living First Nations culture. And there's
00:42:36
Speaker
a huge amount of knowledge embedded into, I mean, all cultures. But what's been most valuable for me is the perspective that it's given me on the current cultures that I exist within now. And, you know, a lot of New Zealand is, you know, New Zealand's colony as well.
00:43:02
Speaker
they have the Treaty of Waitangi over there, which is an iteration of understanding how relations to First Nations work. I'm not saying it's perfect. And basically, having access to my culture and those ways of knowing and being,
00:43:24
Speaker
We have understandings of how the world works and how people work that sort of hit differently to how people behave in Western cultures. So, for example, we have this concept that we share with most of the Pacific.
00:43:41
Speaker
called mana and mana is everything in the universe has mana and we we work to uphold and protect and look after and uplift everyone everything in a way that builds both of our mana and and so with that framework you we don't ever want to
00:44:07
Speaker
do harm. We don't ever want to behave in a way that damages an object or a person or an animal or a plant. And a concept just as simple as that, you know, in theory it sounds wonderful, but when you have
00:44:28
Speaker
family members or you know elders or aunts or uncles or a culture around you that constantly continues to tell you you know you must uphold the manner of all things um you actually do that you actually live you're ingrained to do that and i i don't see that happening in colonial cultures i don't see people valuing the manner of all things i see a very consumeristic you know
00:44:55
Speaker
pay and throw away an incredibly wasteful world that doesn't actually value the world around us. And, you know, we have Adoha, which is kind of like love.
00:45:07
Speaker
We have Manaki Tonga, which is a principle we live by, which is care and love for others. So hospitality. There's a lot of these things I don't necessarily see that much in colonial cultures. And I believe that's so because of the impacts of colonization. It's not only damaging for, you know, people of color in First Nations, and this is the real clincher.
00:45:32
Speaker
white supremacy actually damages white people in an incredibly insidious ways. And it's not only people of color and First Nations people that are impacted by that. And so, you know, for me and like everyone, we all have history. There was a point that even the colonizers were colonized. And so when we're able to look back at our history, at our roots, at our cultural heritage, at some point we're able to get perspective on what was right relationship.
00:46:02
Speaker
What was right relationship to my family, my whanau, my tipuna, which is my ancestry? What was right relationship to my whakapapa, which is my genealogy? And what is right relationship to the finua, which is the land? And I'm incredibly grateful because I have access to a living culture that I can speak to elders or cousins or, you know,
00:46:29
Speaker
people who know a lot about that. Now, unfortunately, through colonisation, a lot of the pre-colonial European cultures that are not as strong as to our Māori, they're not as strong as my living culture, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. There's still a lot of beautiful pre-colonial practices and knowledge keepers around the world.
00:46:55
Speaker
And I think what a lot of white people don't know is they actually, they had a culture before they were colonized. A lot of Australians have Celtic or Italian or Irish or Scottish or Welsh European cultures. And there's deep wells of beautiful, beautiful perspective that you can get from those spaces.
00:47:21
Speaker
Would you like to say anything about European folklore? No. A guy teases me because I grew up in Florida and I jokingly called it the, what is it, the belt, little belt loop of the Bible belt. So it's very far in brimstone. It was very, very, very, very that, very, you know, Jesus is coming for you. You better not say him, you know, keep your Jesus on your lips kind of culture.
00:47:52
Speaker
It was, and I'm not saying that I've seen beautiful emanations of Christianity, but the spaces that I was around, it was this constant threat of existential fear and the land itself is anchored as this like great punishment upon us. So it just geared everyone towards extraction and kind of exploitation and competition.
00:48:15
Speaker
So that was a weird time. So I've always been interested in kind of my pre-colonial ancestry. What actually were the land-based practices of my ancestors, of the Irish? How did they connect to land, to country in ways that was generative and beneficial? Yeah, and that's one of my great areas of interest.
00:48:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's actually really fascinating. This one I suppose is for both of you then. Those land-based practices, have you been able to trace back and implement any of those?
00:48:49
Speaker
This is always a complex thing because I am on stolen country.
Respecting Indigenous Knowledge and Collaboration
00:48:54
Speaker
What might be appropriate here might not be there. Permaculture allows me to create a framework to harshly judge whether that's appropriate or not. And by applying the principles, being able to do it slowly and softly is a much better way to do it than just do broad scale. I'm gonna try to see if this works, see if it doesn't. So some things,
00:49:18
Speaker
Like, well, just in my backyard, I'm using a variety of herb species that are very European, and that in itself is a part of my ancestral practice. I haven't gone too, like, apart from using introduced species in a controlled way.
00:49:33
Speaker
Um, you know, like very simple things like using, uh, lavender isn't Irish exactly, but, um, all the different kinds of local European food and common herbs and spices that we use as a part of cooking in the West, uh, can be kind of drawn back to that a little bit. And, you know, for me, we have, um, the mara mataka, which is our lunar cycle. It's how the motor calendar it's run off of.
00:49:58
Speaker
And that calendar sort of dictates when is the time to plant, when is the time to harvest. Again, you know, I'm not on the finua that is relevant to my culture. That being said, when I look around and I see, you know, essentially white people clear cutting native forest and, you know, back planting lawns and put, you know,
00:50:25
Speaker
I know that my practice isn't inherent to this space, but my practice is also in reciprocity to the environment that it's from. Whereas when I see people practicing in a way that's not in reciprocity, that's damaging the ecosystem, I know that despite the fact that this may not be my land, I know how to take care of land in the way that I know.
00:50:51
Speaker
And what I see is not care for the land. What I see is, frankly, destruction of habitat, destruction of ecosystems and degradation of the lands and soils. And so, you know, on the back of that, it's really difficult to know what is right relationship when you're not the traditional custodian. So then it comes back to always A, acknowledging and B,
00:51:20
Speaker
being in collaboration and communication so that you can ask about what you're sharing. Talk to the local elders, talk to the knowledge keepers and figure out what is appropriate. Try and see if you can seek guidance or permission or instruction and then you can see if there's a way that you can integrate with the local, your local mob and see if there is a combination that you can come to.
00:51:48
Speaker
I think that's so important because we're going through a huge climate crisis at the moment and seasons are changing. It's hotter for longer. It's drier in different times of the year. And I saw online someone asking, what do we do? How do we work out?
00:52:06
Speaker
when we should be planting things. And I had thought that to take your cues from indigenous species that are flowering and through that, obviously, local mob knows exactly what that means for that particular climate and that particular area. And I think like a closer connection to that will inherently make us more resilient into the future. Yeah, completely, completely, you know,
00:52:34
Speaker
There's a reason First Nations Australia existed here for 65,000 plus years. They knew the land, they know the cycles and it is so
00:52:47
Speaker
It's so colonial to know that knowledge and still not give them sovereign control of the land. When in, you know, less than 300 years, not even a blip of the time that they've been here, we've managed to destroy so much of it. And it's crucial that, you know, clearly our governance, clearly our authorities do not know how to communicate.
00:53:14
Speaker
with First Nations people and then do not value them enough. And that doesn't mean they're not valuable. It means we need to. Where our authorities fail, we must pick up the chart. And you know, that's difficult. It leads to a lot of fragility and it potentially may lead to harm. But I believe showing up and trying to figure out how to make this work is better than just ignoring it and perpetuating this horrible system of degradation.
00:53:41
Speaker
Amazing. I'm tempted to leave it there to be honest, because I think that's like a really kind of poignant point. It has been absolutely amazing. My hat is off to you. I think you're both doing, you know, the work of the Lord, if I believed in the Lord. But yeah, thank you very much.
00:54:04
Speaker
You're so welcome. And thank you for having us. And thank you so much for raising this platform for us. We're really passionate about the work that we do. And I'm really, really grateful that you have held space for this conversation and all of the other conversations that you have. No, it is. It's completely my pleasure. And, um, I really do thank you for spending almost an hour chatting with me. And thank you for you to talk about what we'd love for an hour. Oh no. Oh no.
00:54:35
Speaker
You can keep up with PermaQueer on Facebook and Instagram simply at PermaQueer. And always links to the organisations mentioned in today's show will be below in our show notes.
00:54:48
Speaker
Thanks so much for catching up with me today, guys. You can follow the pod at, at Growing Media Oz. And I'm at Michael Haw, M-Y-K-A-L-H-O-A-R-E. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the show. And if you could tell two of your best friends about the show, I would be eternally grateful. I just want to get the word out, really. Hooroo, see you in a fortnight.