What is Land Healing?
The Land Healing Circle at PEC is a multi-generational gathering of community members who are involved in or would like to be involved in work around land restoration (inclusive of all beings and forms) in the Okanagan. The circle includes a variety of folks, such as plant Knowledge Keepers, plant professionals, plant advocates, plant researchers, plant lovers, and plant eaters. Everyone is welcome.
Inspired by Jennifer Grenz’s book, Medicine Wheel for the Plant, the circle is named after healing rather than restoration to account for the ongoing reciprocal relationships that, “move beyond the limits of objectifying the components of generalized transactions [and] embrace the boundless potential of relationality” (Grenz, 2024, p.140). Grenz asks readers, “How can I get my hands and the hands of others upon the lands and waters?” (p. 178)which we aim to answer in the Land Healing Circle.
Land Healing brings humans back into relationship with the land. We are not just restoring something ‘out there’ that is separate from us – trees in a park, riparian shrubs for erosion control, or a ground cover to suppress invasive grasses. This work is viewed through Grenz’s metaphor of glasses of relationality. Once we heal those trees, shrubs, and ground covers, they will, in turn, heal us too as all living things are interconnected. “Heal the people, heal the land. Heal the land, heal the people” (Grenz, 2024, p. 178). In the circle, we are learning to hold the complexity and nuance that comes with unlearning harmful ways of interacting with the land and learning the transformative shift towards healing, which is necessary to address the widescale harm to the Land that has come with 150+ years of extraction.
The Beginning
The Land Healing Circle began when six middle school girls in 2022started the Better World Club to address the local biodiversity crisis. This crew put in the effort to develop Project Miniforest, their plan to begin rewilding the Okanagan. Their project presentation won the first place prize of $5,000 at the 2023 Kelowna Sustainable Development Challenge. They also presented to the Kelowna City Council, which allocated another $5,000 to the project. They gave those funds to community partners to plant 1000s of native Okanagan plants in local parks, on public school grounds, and on UBCO and Okanagan College campuses. Learn more about their journey here.
Through their public awareness work, it became clear that if we are going to create the world that the youth are asking for, the adults need to stop accepting business as usual and rethink how to engage with the land. The Land Healing Circle is an attempt to focus on the adults in the community to bring about the desired flourishing futures for the youth.
The Work
The work of the circle comes from the people in it. As it is volunteer run and non-hierarchical, people can bring their ideas to the group and invite others to collaborate. Examples of past hands in the ground work includes spring and fall collaborative planting with Okanagan Similkameen Stewardship Society, Okanagan Fruit Tree Project Farm, the na’ʔk’ʷulamən garden at Okanagan College – Vernon and Kelowna Campuses, and the FEELed Lab. Past advocacy work includes giving out free native wildflower seeds at the Okanagan Master Gardener’s annual Seedy Sunday, tabling at events, giving native spruce trees as Christmas trees to 50+ classrooms, and raising awareness about the local biodiversity crisis and water crisis in the Okanagan.
The work moves at the speed of relationships, in the rhythm of the land. As people connect, ideas emerge. As the land moves through the spring, sometimes we gather to harvest berries. As the land moves into the fall, we dig native plants into the ground, so they have a better chance in light of the droughts and heat of current summers. As development planning looms over endangered grasslands, we dig into the research and mobilize at the grassroots.
Monthly Plant People Gatherings
Once a month, we take the time to gather to eat together, recharge, and scheme. These gatherings were inspired by the visiting method work of Dr. Shawn Wilson, in which gatherings are about slowing down to hold space for relationships, and to trust that the work that is needed will emerge. The monthly gatherings take the time to take care of the people doing the work, in order to sustain the long-term tending that Land Healing requires. In the feminist academic words of the FEELed Lab, where the circle meets regularly, this might be named social infrastructures of care. This also echoes the term, kin-relations, that syilx Okanagan apprentice Knowledge Keeper, friend and mentor to the Land Healing Circle, invited the circle to engage in as it formed.
Interested in joining?
Email us at team@ponderosaeducation.ca for updated times and locations.