The Planetary Dance: Using Somatic-Centered Art to Heal Communities and the Earth

An Interview with Daria Halprin, somatic/expressive arts therapist, author, teacher, dancer, actress, and co-founding Director of Tamalpa Institute; conducted by Bioneers Arts Coordinator, Polina Smith.

POLINA SMITH: Daria, could you tell us a bit about the history of Planetary Dance?

DARIA HALPRIN: It is a story that has evolved over time. Here are the highlights:

From 1979 to 1981 six women were murdered on Mt Tamalpais in Marin County, California.  These tragedies threatened the sense of safety in our entire community.  Mt. Tamalpais is a beloved part of our landscape, a place where for generations families have hiked, picnicked, celebrated holidays and held special ceremonies together. The mountain is considered sacred by Indigenous peoples in this region and beyond. The park service finally had to close down the trails because people could no longer safely hike on the mountain.

My father, the environmental designer Lawrence Halprin, and my mother, the dancer Anna Halprin, often collaborated on various projects combining art, the environment and community activism.  During the time of the murders, they were collaborating on a series of workshops and performance rituals called A Search for Living Myths. They decided to include a participatory ritual to enact the reclaiming of the mountain. The ritual performance was carried out over several days, culminating in a community walk, and prayer offerings on the trails of the mountain.

 What was important about the ritual was that it was created in response to a collectively experienced trauma. It took feelings of helplessness and rage and brought the community together in an act of courage and resilience to collectively confront the tragedy and reaffirm life.

POLINA: So how did it evolve after that?

DARIA:  Anna and her work were well known and a magnet for artists, students and healers – people from around the world with diverse interests and backgrounds. Word of the Mt. Tamalpais ritual spread, and the renowned Huichol teacher, Don José Matsuwa, [it was said he was 109 years old} came to visit Anna at our family home and dance studio. He told Anna that her ritual had been successful, and that she needed to repeat it for five years.

Anna committed herself to holding the event yearly for five years, but she made some artistic changes to the original piece as she developed a more expansive vision. Those changes evolved into the Planetary Dance. She named the new ritual Circle the Earth, with a vision to expand beyond Mt. Tamalpais and Marin County, creating a peace dance that would travel to communities around the world. There would always be the underlying, universal theme of dancing for peace, but there would also be a particular theme that each group in each locale would choose, depending on what was happening in that community. It was designed to be a form of engaged art activism.

 The centerpiece of the dance is the Earth Run. It draws from Indigenous dance and ritual traditions. There are three concentric circles that move clockwise and counterclockwise around a group of drummers. The outer circles are the faster runners. The inner circle surrounds the drummers and is for slow walkers, elders and those with physical limitations. Drummers hold the center and drum for the entire run.

The ritual begins with words of welcome, reflections on the theme and the community challenge. There are artistic offerings in the form of song, poetry, and blessings. Participants each declare an intention with a shout, arms and hands shooting into the air. They each dedicate the run to a person or an issue that matters to them, for  example: I run for my granddaughter and for the equal rights of all women and girls.

As the ritual draws to a close, participants kneel to the ground to symbolically plant their dedications into the earth. They then sit back to back in silence and share their experiences. A group procession out of the space marks the conclusion of the ritual, and then the community celebrates and socializes.

The Planetary Dance has taken place in over forty countries every year since 1985. It has become one of the traditions of Tamalpa Institute and its student body. We celebrated our 40th Planetary Dance this year. This is also the year Anna turned 100 years old, and many Planetary Dances were performed in her honor.

With the onset of the pandemic, we were not able to hold our annual Planetary Dance in person on the mountain. I decided to take it online. With my son, Jahan Khalighi, and supported by Tamalpa Institute and the Planetary Dance committee, I facilitated our first online presentation of the ritual in July on Anna’s birthday in acknowledgement of Black Lives Matter.

POLINA: How did that work logistically?

DARIA: It was difficult to imagine how we would capture a sense of ritual and a genuine feeling of embodied community connection in a virtual format. I called in a group of Planetary Dance artists to film their offerings which transmitted the soul and spirit of the dance. In addition to extensive pre-production planning and technical maneuvering, what made the project possible was the shared passion and desire to be together in community around a global challenge that we all cared about deeply.

Close to one thousand people participated online. They did the ritual in pods, in families, and in partnerships. They did it solo in their backyards, in their bedrooms, and in their living rooms. We had a nursery school teacher participate with her class of little ones running around outdoors. It was a remarkable experience. I felt how blessed we are to have this extraordinary resource to connect to each other virtually through time and space. Everyone brought a sense of gratitude to the ritual – gratitude to have a way to be and to act together in the creative spirit of community during the COVID pandemic, and to run in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Movement.

POLINA: With your online workshops and trainings, and with the Planetary Dances, are you able to get people from different places, people who normally wouldn’t be able to attend?

DARIA: Yes, and that is exciting. Initially I was deeply concerned for the work of Tamalpa Institute and how we would sustain it. It seemed like an insurmountable loss not to be able to be in person in our studio, near to nature at the base of Mt Tamalpais. I could not begin to imagine how to engage in embodied movement work and expressive art therapy without the pivotal element of in person exchange and group interaction. I really wondered how we would find the depth, the mystery and magic that we experience when we move, when we make art and process together in our studio. The learning community and group life is central to our work. I worried that the life changing challenges, insights and resources we encounter when working together would be missing.

The change from in person to online hasn’t been easy and it certainly is a significant change, but it has yielded unexpected gifts. Accessibility and diversity have increased. People who had not been able to participate before because of time, distance, finances, etc. are now able to participate at different levels of engagement. We are reaching many more people in our workshops and training programs than previously, and we are learning how to translate and deliver our work in a new kind of studio space. I am surprised and touched witnessing how committed, focused, and expressive people are in our online offerings. It’s as if a wave of determination and commitment has brought us closer together with greater appreciation. I can see that our practice in somatic expressive arts makes us resilient. It’s a new kind of magic.

POLINA: Can you tell us a little bit about your upbringing, growing up in this extraordinary family with all this visionary work around you?

DARIA: My life was infused with an immense amount of creativity, art and cultural engagement. My father, Lawrence Halprin, was a landscape and environmental designer. His environmental philosophy, his thinking on culture, nature and social systems, his innovative workshop model and approach to collective creativity were profound influences on his field, and on my world view and my work. I was trained in integrative dance and performance by my mother, Anna Halprin. Both my parents worked internationally. Throughout my childhood I toured as a performance artist, and traveled with my father on his working trips in Europe and the Middle East. Raised in the creative work of both my parents, I was shaped and educated by their collaborations connecting environment, dance, performance and community workshopping. This legacy has informed my work as an artist, teacher and therapist. I have felt a great responsibility to carry it forward, and also to shape an approach and body of work that forges pathways bridging the expressive arts, education, somatic psychology and community healing. My interests and calling drew me to psychology, to research how we embody personal, cultural and family narratives. I wanted to explore and develop an approach using creative arts and group process as a form of individual, group and community therapy.

POLINA: You have had such a deep history in socially engaged arts. What role do you think art can play in social justice movements today, and how can it best do that?

DARIA: When we started in the 1960’s we were outliers. Today the work of healing artists is blossoming and I see that the impact and value of art as a healing force is much more widely appreciated, accepted and has joined many like minded fields.

When we’re in trouble as individuals and communities we lose connection with soul. Expressive art reconnects us to our soul and to the soul of the world.  Dance and the expressive arts are a universal language that crosses boundaries  and bridges differences. It inspires and teaches us how to express ourselves honestly and communicate nonviolently. In art we are able to symbolically and metaphorically dance with the shadow and the difficulty of being human. Art shines light on the darkness.

Since the beginning of time and in all cultures art, has been used for healing, to affirm community, and to navigate the great mysteries of nature and the universe. It has that power in our lives today. We need to find ways to translate that power to meet the challenges, the realities and the existential threats of the modern world and modern people.

I believe that art as a community participatory experience is a way for us to learn about what it means to be a human being in relation with other human beings, in relation to our environment.

POLINA: What does it mean to be a human being?

DARIA: Wow, well that is the perennial question. To lean into an artist’s perspective, I am reminded of the Leonard Cohen quote, “Don’t try to make the perfect offering, there are cracks in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” I think of being human in that way. We are cracked, and when we are able to dance artfully with our experience, we become more human. We need embodied ways to live with the cracks and in the cracks. Art can help us do that. This being human is painful and joyful. The expressive arts can provide us with a way to explore that question. It provides us with a healthy way, and a healing medicine that permits us to be with the full spectrum of what it means to be a human being.

POLINA: What is your perspective on what it means to be an ally and how we can do that well?

DARIA: I am asking myself that question, more than feeling that I have answers to it.  I’m learning to listen more carefully, to examine my own privilege, my concepts around helping and my implicit biases. I am learning more about the issues I need to understand, and what kind of meaningful ally-ship I can offer through the Tamalpa Institute.  As I searched for a way to create allyship,  I felt compelled to do something to reach out further beyond the walls of the Tamalpa studio and bring the work we had developed into more  diverse community settings and underserved populations.  I wanted to create an initiative that would actively engage and support students of our work in service around the globe.

I initiated a branch of the Institute called the Tamalpa Art Corps. The ArtCorps program supports scholarships for people of color and community activists to train at the Institute, and provides supervision mentorship to develop and implement fieldwork projects around a specific social issue. For example, we sponsor students from our training programs to take our work in dance and expressive arts therapy to India every year to work with child survivors of the sex trafficking industry.

I feel committed and excited about passing the torch of the work that Anna and I have developed to a next generation of socially engaged somatic educators and healing artists.

POLINA: What is your vision for the future of the Institute?

DARIA: I believe that it is important for the work at Tamalpa to continue to evolve and change with the times. While it is rich in legacy and has held a unique and pioneering place in the field of dance and expressive arts therapy, I would like to see it forge new paths, and build new bridges into diverse communities. I hope the next generation of leaders will use our work to ask relevant questions, and create embodied participatory rituals and art works that meet the challenges ahead.

POLINA: On an ending note, Daria, I’m wondering if you have any advice to young artists during this time?

DARIA:  Be careful of burnout. Very often in the process of being a working artist, we don’t carve out enough time for ourselves to do our own art and to keep growing as artists. Immerse yourself fully in your own art. What helps me find ways to be present with myself and to be present for others is to use my art for my own soul searching and healing. I encourage artists to practice their own soul searching art. That will teach them how to be with other people and serve in an authentic embodied way.

Collaborate. Find your community so that you’re not alone with the weighty responsibility of being a socially engaged artist. As elders, many of us are aware from our own life experiences that turning the kind of work you believe in and love into right livelihood is a challenge. Young artists need to figure out how to sustain themselves. There is strength and support in numbers. Find your colleagues in the mission.

POLINA: Thank you so much, Daria. Is there anything else you would like to share?

DARIA: Well, I would like to share a taste of the artistic offerings of our online Planetary Dance.  I want to keep expanding the community  circle and invite people to visit the Tamalpa Institute website, to see what our work is and what offerings we have.  Now that we are online, it is very easy to join and participate. 

Thank you Polina for inviting me to lead Planetary Dance at Bioneers last year, and to join again this year in this way.  Its an honor to join the Bioneers community.

POLINA: It was such a gift to be able to participate in the Planetary Dance last year at Bioneers.

DARIA: I’m glad. I look forward to the day when we will do it again in person.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PLANETARY DANCE AND TAMALPA INSTITUTE:

VIDEO: We Should Dance by Jahan Khalighi 

www.tamalpa.org

www.dancesforanna.org  {Planetary Dance 2020}

The Undocumented Community is Not a Resource to Extract: A Performance by Alejandro Fuentes-Mena of Motus Theater

“Paying an undocumented person half the value of their work, extracting all you can get from them to take care of your homes and families, and then deporting them is an American math story gone wrong.” -Alejandro Fuentes-Mena

In this moving performance from the 2020 Bioneers Conference, Alejandro Fuentes-Mena, Motus Theater’s Undocumented Autobiographical Monologist, offers a reflection on true value.

Motus Theater‘s mission is to create original theater to facilitate dialogue on the critical issues of our time. By telling “moving stories that move us forward,” Motus Theater uses the power of art to build alliances across diverse segments of our community. Its most recent work is: UndocuAmerica, an autobiographical storytelling project that aims to interrupt dehumanizing portrayals of immigrants by sharing the personal stories of undocumented leaders. The UndocuAmerica Monologues were created in a 17-week collaborative process between Motus Theater’s Artistic Director, Kirsten Wilson, and undocumented community leaders with D.A.C.A. (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).

Performance of “Beyond the Great Unraveling” by Naima Penniman

In this special performance for the 2020 Bioneers Conference, Naima Penniman offered her interpretation of the conference theme, “Beyond the Great Unraveling.”

Naima Penniman, an artist, activist, healer, grower and educator committed to planetary health and community resilience, is the co-founder of WILDSEED Community Farm and Healing Village, a Black and Brown-led intentional community focused on ecological collaboration, transformative justice, and intergenerational responsibility. She is also: Program Director at Soul Fire Farm, dedicated to supporting the next generation of B.I.P.O.C. (Black/Indigenous/people of color) farmers; the co-founder/co-artistic director of Climbing PoeTree, an internationally-acclaimed performance duo; a Thai Yoga Massage practitioner; and a member of Harriet’s Apothecary, a collective of Black women-identified healers.

Performance of “Resilient” by Rising Appalachia

Leah Song and Chloe Smith of Rising Appalachia perform their song “Resilient” at the 2020 Bioneers Conference.

Rising Appalachia, a renowned musical ensemble founded by Leah Song and Chloe Smith in 2006, and now grown to include David Brown on upright bass and baritone guitar, Biko Casini on world percussion, Arouna Diarra on ngoni and balafon, and Duncan Wickel on fiddle and cello, is rooted in various folk traditions, storytelling, and passionate grassroots activism. The band routinely provides a platform for local causes wherever it plays and frequently incites its fans to gather with it in converting vacant or underused lots into verdant urban orchards and gardens.

In a time of social unraveling, Rising Appalachia’s unique interweaving of music and social mission and old traditions with new interpretations exudes contagious hope and deep integrity.

Jamie Margolin – Burnout and Balance: Finding an Identity Outside Of Your Activism

Jamie Margolin, the 18-year old co-founder of one of the most dynamic and effective international youth climate justice organizations, Zero Hour, describes how coming of age in a climate catastrophe marked her so profoundly that she became solely defined by her climate justice work. Yet ultimately she succumbed to overwhelm and exhaustion—burnout. Only recently did she come to the realization that she had to be more than just a vessel for climate action; she had to start genuinely taking care of herself and pursuing passions outside her political work. By prioritizing her mental health, happiness, social life, and a variety of passions, she was able to approach her activism in a far healthier and more balanced way.

Jamie Margolin delivered this talk at the 2020 Bioneers Conference, introduced by Nina Simons.

LEARN MORE

Jamie Margolin, an 18-year-old Colombian-American organizer, author and public speaker, is one of the most effective and dynamic youth climate activists of our time. She co-founded the highly effective and dynamic international youth climate justice movement, Zero Hour, which has over 200+ chapters worldwide, has penned many op-ed pieces for a range of publications, and is the author of: Youth To Power: Your Voice and How To Use It.

Zero Hour is a youth-led movement creating entry points, training, and resources for new young activists and organizers (and adults who support our vision) wanting to take concrete action around climate change. Learn more.

In Youth to Power, Jamie Margolin presents the essential guide to changemaking, with advice on writing and pitching op-eds, organizing successful events and peaceful protests, time management as a student activist, utilizing social and traditional media to spread a message, and sustaining long-term action. She features interviews with prominent young activists including Tokata Iron Eyes of the #NoDAPL movement and Nupol Kiazolu of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, who give guidance on handling backlash, keeping your mental health a priority, and how to avoid getting taken advantage of.

Read Youth to Power‘s forward by Greta Thunberg.

Bakari Kitwana – Racial Justice and Democracy

Through the lens of the new book, Democracy Unchained: How We Rebuild Government For the People, co-editor Bakari Kitwana reflects on the question: What is the future for Black Americans in U.S. Democracy? In the last six months, we’ve witnessed: the coronavirus pandemic that has taken hundreds of thousands of lives and disproportionately affected Black Americans; ongoing police killings of Blacks around the country deemed “justifiable”; record unemployment filings also disproportionately affecting Blacks; open calls for violence against protesters; and dog whistles to white supremacists by a sitting president. On the flip side, one of the variables that distinguished the protests in over 2,000 US cities following the police killing George Floyd was that many of the protests demanding racial justice were multiracial and included significant numbers of white Americans. Likewise, the overwhelming unsolicited donations and support for racial justice organizations across the U.S., during and following the protests, also point towards a new day. Reflecting on these and other examples, as well as visionary aspects of the book, Bakari discusses sites of traction, hope and new possibilities. This presentation leans into the questions: How do we make democracy more inclusive? How do we build liberated Black communities? And what do they look like?

Bakari delivered this talk at the 2020 Bioneers Conference, introduced by Kenny Ausubel.

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Bakari Kitwana, an internationally known cultural critic, journalist, activist, and thought leader in the area of hip-hop and Black youth political engagement, is Executive Director of Rap Sessions, which conducts town hall meetings around the nation on difficult dialogues facing millennials. A Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard, Kitwana co-founded the 2004 National Hip-Hop Political Convention and is co-editor of the new book Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government For the People. To learn more about Bakari Kitwana, visit his website.

Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People

A stellar group of America’s leading political thinkers explore how to reboot our democracy

Democracy Unchained is about making American democracy work to solve problems that have long impaired our system of governance. The book is the collective work of thirty of the most perceptive writers, practitioners, scientists, educators, and journalists writing today, who are committed to moving the political conversation from the present anger and angst to the positive and constructive change necessary to achieve the full promise of a durable democracy that works for everyone and protects our common future.

Read an excerpt

Democracy Unchained: A Conversation Series

From the State of American Democracy Project

Watch “The Moral Foundations of Democracy,” episode one of a ten-part conversation series, where political thought leaders explore the moral foundations of democracy as the most certain way of defending the dignity of all citizens.

Dismantling Systemic Racism

Bioneers Media Collection

Explore videos, essays, audio and more, providing clarity and guidance from voices in our community.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson – The Feminist Climate Renaissance: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis

A Feminist Climate Renaissance is emerging in the movement for climate justice as women––specifically women of color––are transforming how we approach a life-giving future for all. Rebalancing decision-making and recentering community to understand climate change’s multifaceted nature is necessary to mobilize a mass movement for climate justice.

In this keynote address, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson talks about the emerging Feminist Climate Renaissance and draws on wisdom from a brand new anthology by women climate leaders she co-edited with Katharine Wilkinson, All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. Ayana is one of the nation’s most innovative thought leaders in ocean and coastal conservation and recent co-creator of the Blue New Deal, a roadmap for including the ocean in climate policy. 

This is an edited transcript of a keynote address delivered at the Bioneers 2020 conference.

Hello, Bioneers. It is truly an honor to be with you. I wanted to start by sharing just a bit of my background.

I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and the first time I had the chance to visit the ocean, I fell utterly in love and decided I was going to become a marine biologist. It is a pretty standard dream job for a 5-year-old, but I stuck with it that I realized that learning about ocean science was an opportunity to contribute to human welfare and the future of life on this planet.

I’m lucky that I’ve been able to develop a career deeply grounded in science, working on policy, and deeply passionate about the justice issues surrounding the ocean and climate. I refused to choose a narrow career, and I’ve fought to be a generalist and help build teams of profound expertise needed to do this work.

In my work, the people I’ve been inspired by the most have been women and women of color, but not enough other people follow their lead. As a result, the work I’ve undertaken in the past few years has been uplifting the voices of leaders that I think should have the resources to ensure their work’s impact. One of the forms that I have taken is All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, this anthology that I’ve had the honor of co-curating, co-editing with Dr. Katharine Wilkinson. This book is an anthology of 41 essays, 17 poems, and original illustrations.

All We Can Save symbolized the loss we’ve already experienced and the endurance to not give up on what is left. We must have the courage to face the truth of what science is saying we should expect to come to move forward. This book calls for and identifies what we call a “Feminist Climate Renaissance,” referring to the leadership that women are exhibiting in the climate space.

First, focus on making change rather than being in charge to move beyond ego, competition, and control. Second, commit to responding in ways that heal systemic injustices instead of deepening them. Third, learn to appreciate heart-centered leadership and not just head-centered leadership. Fourth, and most importantly, building community is a requisite foundation for building a better world. We see women and girls engaging in deeply relational, collaborative, and supportive ways, taking the necessary time to invest in the weft and weave between us.

In the book, we describe the climate crisis as a leadership crisis. To transform society, we need feminist climate leadership open to people of any gender. The possibility of moving toward a life-giving future for all depends on this new approach to leadership. This is not about women having all the answers or men getting out of the way. It’s about rebalancing decision-making. We need everybody, so we must figure out how to welcome the leadership of half of the planet who identifies as women. Leaving women out of the leadership will help determine our success in addressing the climate crisis. 

We divide the book into eight sections, starting with Root, these foundational principles of climate justice, biomimicry, Indigenous wisdom, atmospheric science, emergent strategy and community, and how we got into this mess.

We want this book to welcome everyone into climate work and show different ways people can contribute, regardless of professional or geographic background.

If this book does the most significant thing that it can do, it will change the gender balance in decision-making regarding climate justice; it will center the community to deepen the understanding of the many different aspects of the climate crisis. Fundamentally, the climate crisis is about the way we live on this planet and interact with each other, which either heals ecosystems and gives us a chance to thrive or continues to tear them apart. It feels ridiculous to say such grandiose things about one book. However, I think this is a moment going into a new decade in which we know how little time we have left, and we desperately need a shift in perspective about how we approach the problems we’re facing and then whom we look to guide us.

LEARN MORE

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist, policy expert, and Brooklyn, NY-based community-building activist, is one of the nation’s most innovative thought leaders in ocean and coastal conservation. She is founder and CEO of Ocean Collectiv, a consultancy dedicated to conservation solutions grounded in social justice; of Urban Ocean Lab, a think-tank for the future of coastal cities; and recent co-creator of the Blue New Deal, a roadmap for including the ocean in climate policy. She is also a passionate advocate for women’s leadership and is the co-editor of a groundbreaking new anthology of wisdom from a range of women climate leaders: All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. To learn more about Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, visit her website.

Ocean Collectiv designs, builds, and implements creative and practical solutions for a healthy ocean. Check out Ocean Collectiv’s resources to get informed and contribute to a healthy ocean for all.

All We Can Save

Provocative and illuminating essays from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward. Visit allwecansave.earth to purchase the book, join a reading circle, and learn about the All We Can Save Project, which aims to accelerate the success of the climate movement by providing focused support and community building for women climate leaders.

Seeding Sovereignty and Sowing Freedom: An Afro-Indigenous Approach to Agriculture and Food Security

Before being forced to board the Transatlantic slave ships, African people braided seeds into their hair in hopes their grandchildren would be able to sow their legacy. Today, farm and land ownership remains majority white, whereas farm labor is mostly comprised of Black and Brown workers. This reality starkly contrasts the amount of Black and Brown people who struggle with food insecurity. Honoring the legacy of cultural knowledge braided into the lineage of Black and Indigenous folks means confronting the systems of food insecurity, environmental racism, and climate change that disproportionately affects colonized people.

Leah Penniman is the Co-Director and Program Manager at Soul Fire Farm, a community organization that serves more than 10,000 people each year with food justice initiatives, farm training for Black and Brown growers, food deliveries for people affected by state violence, and more. In this keynote talk at the Bioneers 2020 Conference, Penniman traces the impact of colonialism in the development of the agricultural economy and shares how reconnecting with our roots can be a powerful form of healing.

Read an excerpt from Farming While Black here, and learn how to purchase a copy for 35% off!

Greetings. My name is Leah Penniman and I am the Co-Director and Farm Manager at Soul Fire Farm in occupied Mohican territory and I am the author of Farming While Black. My pronouns are li, she, and elle, and I am of Dahomey African, Indigenous, Taino, and European descent. I am honored to talk with the Bioneers community today about our troubled history with land and food, and what we are doing to make that relationship racially just and environmentally sustainable. 

My ancestral grandmothers in West Africa braided seeds of okra, molokhia, and levant cotton into their hair before being forced to board Transatlantic slave ships. They hid sesame, black-eyed peas, rice, and melon seeds in their locks. They stashed away amara kale, gourds, sorrel, basil, tamarind, and cola in their tresses. The seed was their most precious legacy, and they believed against odds in a future of tilling and reaping the earth; they believed that their descendants – us – would exist and that we would receive and honor the gift of the seed. With the seed, our grandmothers also braided their eco-systemic and cultural knowledge. They braided the wisdom of sharing the land and the wisdom of sharing labor and wealth. They braided the wisdom of caring for the sacred Earth, such as the dark earth compost of Ghana, the raised beds of the Ovambo people, and the polycultures of Nigeria.

But when our ancestors arrived on this continent, they tragically encountered a very different system of relating to land and food. Here, the land was not shared but stolen and privatized. Authored by the white Christian Doctrine of Discovery, settlers murdered millions of Indigenous people, displaced those who survived and stole their land. 

Our African ancestors learned that even when they tried to own land, they were punished. Despite the broken promise of 40 acres and a mule after emancipation, Black farmers purchased nearly 16 million acres of land. Almost all of the land they purchase is now gone in part because of white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the white caps murdered over 4,000 Black land owners.

Our ancestors learned that even the federal government did not want them to own, or be secure on, land. The US Department of Agriculture systematically discriminated against Black farmers, leading to foreclosures and evictions, which brings us to where we are today. With approximately 95% of the agricultural land in this country being white-owned. 

In this country, it was not just land but also labor that our ancestors found to be exploited. Millions of agricultural experts were kidnapped from their homes across Africa, forced into bondage to build the wealth of this nation. Even after chattel slavery officially ended, the exploitation of labor morphed into new forms, such as convict leasing. Southerners created new laws called the “Black Codes”, which criminalized loitering and unemployment and, as a result, filled prisons with Black people who were rented back to plantations, a system that continues to this day.

The Black people who were not forced onto the plantation through incarceration were trapped there as sharecroppers in a perpetual cycle of debt and poverty. Even today, farm workers are not protected by basic labor laws and do not have the right to a day off, overtime pay, collective bargaining and other protections. Approximately 85% of farm labor is performed by people of color, often undocumented. Today, being a farm owner is one of the whitest professions in the US, while being a farm laborer is among the brownest. 

Our ancestors learned that the food system here was not about honoring the earth, but rather about extracting her resources. Industrial agriculture had burned up 50% of the soil carbon, catalyzing climate change and devastating biodiversity. 

But despite the heartbreak and terror that they experienced, there were those in every generation who remembered the seeds they had inherited and the wisdom carried in those seeds. Cooperative land ownership and cooperative labor were remembered by Fannie Lou Hamer in creating Freedom Farm in Mississippi with other sharecroppers. And by the Sherrods in creating the first ever community land trust in Georgia.

Right relationship with land was remembered by Dr. George Washington Carver, one of the founders of the regenerative and organic agriculture movements, and Booker T. Whatley, one of the progenitors of the farm-to-table movement and diversified small farms. Carver spread the word about caring for soil and community through the first extension agency out of Tuskegee University, inspiring a whole generation of organic farmers in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Right relationship to our human communities was remembered by the Black Panther Party, who fed 20,000 children free breakfasts every morning, catalyzing the public school food programs. And by the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, the National Black Farmers Associated, Land Loss Prevention Project who fought for the rights of Black farmers and farm workers who were struggling to save their land.

When I started farming over 24 years ago, I began to wonder: how could I honor the legacy of the seeds braided into my ancestors’ hair? I wondered if I could help create a farm based on the wisdom carried in those seeds.

In 2010, Soul Fire Farm was born with a mission to reclaim our ancestral belonging to land and to end racism and exploitation in the food system. Once a small family farm and now a community organization committed to this systemic and ancestral change, we pray that the words of our mouths, the meditations of our hearts, and the work of our hands be acceptable to our grandmothers who passed us these seeds.

We got to work regenerating 80 acres of land through Afro-Indigenous farming and forestry practices, we began sharing the harvest of the land at no cost for people impacted by state violence, and we have been supporting families in building their own self-sufficiency gardens. We got to work equipping the next generation of Black and Brown farmers through training, mentorship, and connection to resources. We got to work using the land as a tool, to heal from the trauma of centuries of land-based oppression, recognizing that for many of us the land was the scene of the crime, even though she wasn’t the criminal. We got to work creating natural buildings using straw bale, solar, cob, cluster development and energy efficient design. We put the land into a cooperative, giving nature rights and a vote on the council, and returning land rights to the Mohican people through a cultural respect easement. 

We wondered if one small farm could help make a big change, and we are excited by the progress we’re already seeing in our movement. The regenerative farming practices that we inherited from Carver, Hamer and the Ovambo people.

We have restored the soil here on this mountainside to its pre-colonial levels of organic matter, and increased native biodiversity. We have witnessed neighbors across the capital region of New York pitching in to cover the cost of vegetable deliveries to those in need, allowing hundreds of people to receive a weekly share of fresh food, and seeing the power of localized small food systems that are able to adapt on a dime in COVID to keep people fed. We are seeing thousands of new Indigenous and Brown farmers and food justice activists being trained in 35 states, and the majority of them going on to make powerful waves in the food system. And for the first time since the early 1900s, we are seeing the slightest increase in the number of Indigenous farmers nationally in the Census.

Our alumni even catalyzed a new land trust to share the lands back with people who’ve been dispossessed, as well as a reparations map to return stolen wealth to Earth stewards for their crucial work. And we’re building powerful networks with Black Farmers United New York, Heal Food Alliance, the National Black Food Alliance to get at the root cause of exploitation of the Earth and those who tend and care for her. Together in these regional and national and international networks we’re changing the conversation about food and land.

And folks are finally listening, from presidential candidates to major media outlets, society is waking up to the fact that we cannot have a healthy food system if we ignore racial justice and if we ignore the health of the land. We are in an uprising and a portal to something ancient and new. 

But the question is: Are you willing to carry on the seeds of sovereignty and fight for the rights of all people to carry on those seeds? Or will you let them die out? Beyond the great unraveling, what will you do to weave a world anew?

My daughter, Nashima, talks about the food system as everything it takes to get sunshine onto your plate. Every aspect of the food system – land, labor, capital, ecology, food itself – needs to be infused with justice. And the good news with such a wide arc of possibility is that there are so many right answers about what to do. For some of us, the right answer is reparations; it’s giving back resources to those who’ve been dispossessed. For others it might be renaturation of land to Indigenous people, handing deeds over to tribal governments and Native organizations. For others of us, we might advocate for policy, like the Justice for Black Farmers Act or the Fairness for Farm Workers Act. For others, with purchasing power in our institutions, maybe we’re sourcing from Black, Indigenous, people of color producers, or transferring our institutional resources, power, and dignity to Black, Indigenous, and people of color leadership.

A powerful story illustrates this from the Haudenosaunee community. The people of the Long House were dropping from hunger in the long winter months. Three sisters arrived at their door. One of them was dressed in green, another yellow, another orange. Disguised as beggars, they asked the people for food. And because they were generous of heart, they handed over the last scrapings of their baskets and their bowls to feed these strangers. Touched by that generosity, the sisters revealed themselves as corn, beans, and squash, the basis of the three sisters milpa garden with the corn growing tall and providing starch and niacin for the people, the bean sister winding around her older sister and providing nitrogen for the soil and protein for the people, and squash, laying low on the grounds, shading out weeds and providing vitamins and fats in the seeds so the people would never go hungry again.

The powerful thing is that Indigenous folks of Turtle Island shared this bundle of seed, these three sisters, widely, with settlers who did not have their interests at heart, and did not understand the covenant with these sisters. And we look at corn now, we look at maize, how it’s been pulled apart from squash and beans to be grown in monocultures and monocrops, how this 8,700-year-old synergy of teosinte and Mayan hands has been weaponized, turned into soil-sucking fields, GMO genetic drift, corn syrup, fueling diabetes in our communities, animal feed driving climate change. They appropriated and scandalized our seed heritage, commodified our sacred, violated the law of sharing, and ripped her away from her sisters.

My belief is that the work of this moment is to return maize, both literally and metaphorically, to her sisters, to restore the covenance, to restore the polyculture, the carbon sequestration, the agroecology, and the honoring of our ancient and powerful ways.

I want to close with the words from Pablo Neruda: “Pardon me if when I want to tell the story of my life, it’s the land I talk about. This is the land. It grows in your blood, and you grow. If it dies in your blood, you die out.”

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Leah Penniman is a Black Kreyol farmer, mother, Vodun Manye (Queen Mother), and award-winning 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 toward food and land justice, which she co-founded in 2010. She is the author of: Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land.

Soul Fire Farm is an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm committed to uprooting racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system. Their food sovereignty programs reach over 10,000 people each year, including farmer training for Black and Brown growers, reparations and land return initiatives for northeast farmers, food justice workshops for urban youth, home gardens for city-dwellers living under food apartheid, doorstep harvest delivery for food insecure households, and systems and policy education for public decision-makers.

Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land

In Farming While Black, Leah Penniman offers the first comprehensive manual for African-heritage people ready to reclaim their rightful place of dignified agency in the food system. This one-of-a-kind guide provides readers with a concise “how-to” for all aspects of small-scale farming. 100% of the profits from this book will be donated to Black Farmers.

Thom Hartmann – All Life Is Organized Around Democracy

Have you ever watched a flock of birds fly overhead and wondered how they all know when to turn and where to go? Or a school of fish, or a swarm of gnats? It turns out that with each wingbeat, each swimming motion, each movement, they’re all voting, and the majority decides. Thom Hartmann, the nation’s leading progressive radio talk show host, bestselling author and among our most penetrating socio-political thinkers, shares his passionate conviction that democracy is the organizing principle of all life, as most Indigenous cultures have been trying to tell us for millennia. He explains how understanding the essence of democracy can give us insight into how we to reinvent our society, from the local to the national level, in ways that uphold the values of life and sustainability, and that can lead to a brighter, profoundly more meaningful future.

Thom Hartmann delivered this talk at the 2020 Bioneers Conference, introduced by Kenny Ausubel.

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Thom Hartmann, the top progressive talk show host in America for over a decade and a four-time Project Censored Award-winning journalist, is the author of some 30 books, including the international bestseller, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight (about the end of the age of oil), used as a textbook in many schools and colleges. Thom, a former psychotherapist and entrepreneur, has also co-written and been featured in 6 documentaries with Leonardo DiCaprio.

To learn more about Thom Hartmann, visit his website.

The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class

In this upcoming book, Thom Hartmann traces the history of the struggle between oligarchy and democracy, from America’s founding revolt against British aristocracy to the United States’ war with the feudal Confederacy to President Franklin Roosevelt’s struggle against “economic royalists,” who wanted to block the New Deal. In each of those cases the oligarchs lost the battle. But with increasing right-wing control of the media, unlimited campaign contributions, and a conservative takeover of the judicial system, we’re at a crisis point as real and critical as those we hit in 1776, 1861, and 1932. Thankfully, Hartmann lays out practical measures we can take to break up media monopolies, limit the influence of money in politics, and return control of America to We the People.

The Thom Hartman Program

Airing live nationwide daily (M-F) from 12-3pm ET for over 15 years, Thom’s program explores a diverse variety of topics from a progressive perspective.

Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy – Indigenous Voices for Decolonized Futures

Indigenous peoples, deeply rooted in place-based knowledge, are leading the way in developing strategies on how best to approach climate justice and climate resilience. What does climate and environmental justice look like when Indigenous voices are brought to the forefront? How can we move beyond “land acknowledgements” toward meaningful courses of action for our shared futures? In California, climate action plans are drawing from time-tested Indigenous fire and land management approaches; Governor Newsom is launching a Truth and Healing Commission; and across the state, communities are participating in land return to Indigenous nations. Leading Indigenous educator Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy provides a three-step approach to re-imagining climate and environmental justice in California and beyond, focusing on concrete actions that challenge us to dream better futures together.

Dr. Risling Baldy delivered this talk at the 2020 Bioneers Conference, introduced by Nina Simons.

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Cutcha Risling Baldy, Ph.D. (Hupa, Yurok, Karuk), Associate Professor and Department Chair of Native American Studies at Humboldt State and co-founder of the Native Women’s Collective, a nonprofit supporting the revitalization of Native American arts and culture, researches Indigenous feminisms, California Indians and decolonization. She is the author of: We Are Dancing For You: Native feminisms and the Revitalization of Women’s Coming-of-Age Ceremonies.

To learn more about Dr. Risling Baldy, visit her website.

The California Truth & Healing Council bears witness to, records, examines existing documentation of, and receives California Native American narratives regarding the historical relationship between the State of California and California Native Americans in order to clarify the historical record of such relationship in the spirit of truth and healing.

LANDBACK is a movement that has existed for generations with a long legacy of organizing and sacrifice to get Indigenous Lands back into Indigenous hands. NDN Collective is stepping into this legacy with the launch of the LANDBACK Campaign as a mechanism to connect, coordinate, resource and amplify this movement and the communities that are fighting for LANDBACK.

The Sacred Land Film Project uses film, journalism and education to rekindle reverence for land, increase respect for cultural diversity, stimulate dialogue about connections between nature and culture, and help protect sacred lands and diverse spiritual practices.

Women’s Climate and Energy Leadership: A Conversation with Dr. Leah Stokes

Dr. Leah Stokes is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and an affiliated faculty member at the Bren School for Environmental Science and Management at UC-Santa Barbara, where she works at the intersection of climate and energy policy. Dr. Stokes is a contributor to the recently published essay collection, All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, which features dozens of prominent and impactful women leaders who are transforming the climate movement. Dr. Stokes has also teamed up with the other of the book’s two co-editors, Katherine Wilkinson, to launch a new podcast called A Matter of Degrees.

Teo Grossman, Bioneers Senior Director of Programs and Research, spoke with Leah Stokes about gender disparity in the climate movement, the role of corporate fraud in perpetuating the myth of individual responsibility around climate change and the importance of detailed understanding of energy policy.

TEO: We’re talking today at the recommendation of Ayana Johnson, the co-editor of the newly released book, All We Can Save, in which you have an essay. Would you describe the book, the project, and how you got involved?

LEAH: The climate movement has been dominated by older, white male voices. Those voices have made up a lot of the experts who end up in books or TV or print media, talking about climate change. This doesn’t reflect the climate movement or even people who are concerned about climate change. Overwhelmingly, it’s women who are very involved in climate activism and who are very worried about climate change. 

All We Can Save is an effort to diversify climate media and reflect the diversity that exists in the climate movement. It’s a collection of roughly 60 women who are poets, essayists, academics, activists, writers, artists, all kinds of people from all walks of life. It’s a really beautiful book, including poetry and art. 

Ayana Johnson and Katherine Wilkinson, who co-edited the book, have also launched a nonprofit called All We Can Save, which, among other activities, will give out an award in honor of Eunice Foote, the pioneering climate scientist, which is going to go to women climate leaders to help catalyze their careers. It’s really a whole effort to try to diversify the voices that we hear.

I have actually launched a new podcast, A Matter of Degrees, hosted with Katherine Wilkinson, which also reflects that effort. Sixty percent of our guests are women, and it’s a documentary-style podcast, so there’s a lot of guests. Forty percent of guests are people of color. When we have women telling the climate story, they tell a much more diverse, solutions-oriented and truthful climate story than the kinds of narratives that we often see in the media.

TEO: Your research focus is energy policy. All We Can Save explores on the increasingly central role that women are playing across the climate movement as well as the need for feminine and feminist approaches to leadership within the movement. I’m curious how you see this playing out in your specific niche in the energy policy world.

LEAH: The energy policy space is extremely male dominated. It’s very technical. There are a lot of economists, lawyers, and engineers, and these are not the most gender diverse disciplines or jobs. I often find myself to be one of a few or sometimes the only woman working on these topics or showing up, particularly in the electric utility industry. When you look at the CEOs who run these very polluting, monopoly corporations that we all have to buy our electricity from, they’re overwhelmingly older, white men who take home massive salaries and don’t really act in the public interest. 

There is a need to diversify the energy space because our energy system as it exists now is really toxic. It kills black, brown, and indigenous people by exporting pollution into their backyards. There has not been enough critical thinking around those issues.

TEO: In the essay that you contributed to All We Can Save, you describe your journey into energy activism and then later into research and academia. As I was reading it, I was really struck by your focus on identifying levers of change that can really make an impact.  One of the ways that you illuminate this is by identifying the choices that are actually not available to be made at the personal level. You can’t choose to take a train when the train isn’t there; you can’t choose to purchase renewable energy when your monopoly utility is not offering that option; you can’t sell rooftop solar energy back to the grid unless net metering is legal in your location. 

LEAH: Exactly.

TEO: I think in some ways this is one of the biggest hurdles that the environmental movement has to jump right now. This movement has been historically pigeonholed by some of these same big companies into making this all about individual responsibility. If you look at the history of plastic pollution, that’s the exact story, big companies literally creating the idea of litter.

LEAH: Plastics. Ugh. 

TEO: How does this message resonate with audiences and students when you describe it, because I think a lot of people who care are conditioned to think, “What can I really do?”

LEAH: Yes. Corporations like BP have popularized the idea of a carbon footprint. They made calculators and got us all to think about this as our own problem rather than asking, “How big is your carbon footprint, BP, and what’s your plan to offset it?” Where’s the answer to that question? 

The media has told a very consistent story, which is that climate action is about sacrifice. If you look at the CNN Climate Town Hall earlier this year, which was seven hours of TV mainstream reporting on climate change (amazing and unprecedented), they asked almost every single candidate about hamburgers. Okay? First of all, agricultural emissions are a small slice of this problem. I’m not saying we shouldn’t deal with agriculture, but that’s not even empirically a big slice of the problem. Secondly, that is such a focus on sacrifice and individual behavior change, and it is not the crux of the climate problem. 

If we allow other people to define the climate crisis in this way, we will not be able to build the big tent that is necessary to push through transformative climate action, because shaming people and making them feel guilty is not a great strategy to create an inclusive, giant social movement.

Focusing on polluters, on the lying that they have done, the billions of dollars that they spent on climate denial, is a far more empowering message for people. It helps bring them into the movement, and it helps them focus on the really big levers, which are things like our energy system. 

If we clean up our electricity system and we electrify our cars and our buildings, and half of heavy industry, that’s 80 percent of the climate problem, right there. This is an issue of our energy system, and it’s an issue of what electric utilities are doing, what car makers are doing, what fossil fuel companies are doing, not an issue of whether or not you ate beef last night for dinner.

TEO: I was in a national meeting on climate education where attendees were questioning whether they had collectively done a good enough job teaching climate change. Someone pointed out that we have all been assuming that there is a level playing field to teach on. In reality, climate education has been blowing into the wind, and it’s been a really stiff corporate-funded wind, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. There’s a reason why climate educators feel like they’re not doing a good enough job and it’s not because they’re not working hard enough.

LEAH: We don’t even know how much money fossil fuel companies and electric utilities have spent on climate denial, but it’s enormous. It’s billions of dollars. And the climate movement does not have billions of dollars to spend on our own response PR campaign. We just have people power. We need to be telling the stories about the way that they have been profiting off of climate denial and delay, and imperiling all of our present and future lives, and poisoning Black and Indigenous bodies along the way. 

We have to expose the dark money campaigns and the unfairness, just like Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway have done so beautifully, not just for climate denial but also for the tobacco industry, how they lied about the link between cigarettes and cancer, and eventually they were held legally accountable. That is the same message that we need to be talking about for the climate issue, because it’s true. Fossil fuel companies and electric utilities have lied about climate change, and they have profited off of that denial.

TEO: Your own book, Short Circuiting Policy, was published by Oxford Press this April. It could be because I’m just a super nerd, but I’ve been hearing a lot about the book, which is an academic volume focusing on in-depth analysis of a particular corner of energy policy.

LEAH: Yes. [LAUGHTER] 

TEO: I find it fascinating, but then that’s the world I come out of. But I don’t think it’s just me. It feels like the book has actually broken out of that academic realm in a lot of ways. 

LEAH: The book has sold very well for an academic book, which means I’ve made zero dollars, but people have read it. 

TEO: What do you ascribe that to? I don’t know the history of academic policy books, but I have to assume that there aren’t that many that have “broken out,” so to speak.  

LEAH: I labored away on this book for seven years by myself. I did a lot of field work, interviewed more than 100 people. In the last couple of years as the climate crisis was getting worse and I saw it in my own community, I just felt useless, “Why am I doing this? No one will ever read this.” We have this urgent crisis and I’m writing this detailed book that will be read by like five people. But it didn’t turn out that way, which is really exciting. It turns out it’s been read by thousands of people, including policymakers, their staff, journalists, students of course, and other academics. We did a book club and hundreds of people came. It’s had a really broad reach. It’s been sold out of its printing many times, which doesn’t say much because it’s an academic book, but it’s been really outperforming any and all expectations. 

I think it’s because I tried to write it in a way that was accessible. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that people feel that it worked, that I communicated the urgency and the stakes, but that it was also understandable to people. 

Also, climate change more broadly is having a breakthrough moment right now, and people are starting to understand that their electricity system needs to be working for them, that we have to put pressure on our politicians to enact something like a 100% clean electricity standard by 2035. 

I feel like the moment is ripe. I’m riding the coattails of people like Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They have really opened up space for so many other women. It’s been really exciting to see these ideas resonating with people.

Orange County, FL, Voters Overwhelmingly Approve ‘Rights of Nature’ Initiative

Originally published as a press release by the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights.

ORANGE COUNTY, FL: Orange County, Florida, has become the largest municipality in the United States to adopt a ‘rights of nature’ law. Voters overwhelmingly approved the measure, recognizing rights of Orange County rivers and streams, along with a right to clean water for the residents. With nearly 1.4 million people, it is the thirtieth largest county in the U.S., and the fifth largest in Florida.

The measure, known as the “Right to Clean Water Initiative,” is the first in Florida to recognize the rights of nature, and empowers any resident to enforce the rights of waterways and the rights of people to clean water. The measure was endorsed by the Orlando Sentinel and other newspapers, and many organizations, including the League of Women Voters and the county Democratic Party.

Although the first initiative of its kind in Florida, over three dozen cities, townships, and counties across the U.S. have adopted laws which recognize the rights of nature – creating legally enforceable rights of waterways and other ecosystems. In addition, tribal nations have established rights of nature laws and policies. National rights of nature laws have been enacted in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Uganda, and courts in India, Colombia, and Bangladesh have recognized the rights of nature in court rulings.

Chuck O’Neal, the Chairman of the Florida Rights of Nature Network (FRONN) and leader of the Orange County effort, declared, “The people of Orange County have spoken. Our citizens have been empowered with a new right – the right to clean water. Our waters also have new legal rights: to exist, flow, be protected against pollution, and to maintain healthy ecosystems. This vote heralds a new day in Florida in which our waterways are accorded the highest protections available under law.”

Thomas Linzey, Senior Legal Counsel at the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, which assisted with the measure, stated, “This is an important step forward in Florida, with the adoption of the first rights of nature law in the state. We look forward to assisting the people of Orange County to enforce and defend this measure, and to helping people across Florida to adopt similar measures to protect Florida’s threatened rivers, streams, bays, and watersheds.”

Contact:

Chuck O’Neal, Chairman
Florida Rights of Nature Network
chuckforflorida@gmail.com
407-399-3228

Thomas Linzey, Senior Legal Counsel
Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights
tal@pa.net
509-474-9761

The Florida Rights of Nature Network guides, supports, and encourages local efforts in Florida to recognize and legally enforce the rights of nature and the right of communities to a healthy environment, through self-government at the city, county, and state level.

The Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights partners with communities, tribal nations, governments, and people around the world to secure democratic rights and the rights of nature in law, including in the Philippines, Australia, Ecuador, Sweden, the United States, and other countries.