Indigenous knowledge to nourish, heal and restore

Photo luoman from canva 

ACCTING aims to understand the impact of Green Deal policies on vulnerable groups, prevent inequalities, and produce knowledge and innovations to advance behavioural change at individual and collective levels for an inclusive and equal European Green Deal. This bottom-up initiative was collected by Don Lee within ACCTING’s mapping of inspiring practice cases, within the Food Security Research Line. Read our report on all 693 mapped initiatives.

Deep Medicine Circle, USA

An alarming increase in women victims of domestic violence in Serbia created an urgent need to design and implement an innovative response to protect the survivors and the ones at risk of being exposed to this danger. 

Reawakening the Indigenous knowledge

Deep Medicine Circle (DMC) is a worker of a colour-led non-profit organisation that aims to “heal the wounds of colonialism through food, medicine, restoration, story and learning.” They emphasize the importance of healing and care for Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities and non-humans. DMC is formed by a collective of farmers, elders, physicians, healers, herbalists, lawyers, ecological designers, scholars, political ecologists, educators, youth, storytellers and artists. They pursue “earth-based, Indigenous ecofeminist principles of organising, with participatory governance structures and circles of decision-making.” In producing solutions to the climate crisis, they turn to indigenous knowledge to repair the broken relationships between people and nature.   

Food security as a lens into a deeper transformation of intersectional inequalities   

To achieve its mission, the activities below have been conducted:  

• Running urban farm sites and distributing nutritious food to those in need. They do this by partnering with Poor Magazine’ Sliding Scale Cafe, Moms for Housing, UCSF Pediatric Clinic, and Wahpepah’s Kitchen.   
• Carrying out the “Farming is Medicine” project that develops an ecological farming model bringing indigenous knowledge with agroecological care for soil and water.   
• Carrying out the “Heal the Healers” workshop programme to support the frontline healthcare workers   
• Opening spaces for mental health issues and grief, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic   
• Building partnerships with the indigenous peoples in their return to their ancestral lands and reconnecting to the land  
• Prioritising storytelling and arts in their work “We are bridging times and worlds together through story, art and imaginings” 
• Organising workshops on preparing food and medicine from crops and wild foods 
• Providing innovative job training module for farmers that bridges agroecology with Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge    

Along with that, in September 2021, the farm donated fresh greens and herbs to: “UCSF Pediatric Clinic’s Food Farmacy”, which gives free food to hospital patients and their families; POOR Magazine’s Sliding Scale Cafe, which distributes food and other resources throughout deep East Oakland; and Moms 4 Housing, a collective of houseless and marginally housed mothers”.    

Find out more here.

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