E186 Elspeth Hay - Feeding ourselves with trees + singing our way to a new culture

Futuresteading

"Living as modern humans we are disconnected, out of place and don't belong in the same way as other species"

"If you're feeling called to do something larger than you - you should follow that"

Summary

Todays guest Elspeth Hay experienced a rewriting of all she had known when when one day she was grappling with the frustration that the area she calls home didn't have the ability to create more small scale, localised food systems because they were landlocked by the ocean and surrounded by established Oak forests. Until one day her belief and her story was challenged when she learned that we can eat acorns. From there stories she’d believed her whole life began to unravel. Not just about acorns but about the way humans have pattered ourselves to our current day reality.

This process led her to write a book titled feed us with trees. The journey of the book creation took her on an ancestral tour from New England USA to the UK, introduced her to indigenous wisdom keepers, gave her the courage to challenge the system we know to be true and hold empathy for the courageous wisdom knowledge holders that have kept nature based skills and interaction alive.

Elspeth is a is a wonderful story teller and with this skill alone I'm sure she is one of those humans who we need as the bridge to wherever it is we are headed.

"Our story is totally made up & doesn't follow any natural laws so we can look to other influences to rewrite it'

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Pod ep: Osprey Oriel Lake - the story is in our bones

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Pod Partners Rock: Australian Medicinal Herbs code: future5

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We talked about:

• Her birdwatching childhood that laid the groundwork for her landscape connection
• How chronic pain was a catalyst for change
• Why changing our story can reframe our patterning and behaviour
• Finding connection in the "common lands"
• Challenging the 'no farms no food story'
• Sidestepping the productivity story
• Why our colonisation story began with the desire to control labour
• Colonial expansion & the beginning of capitalism
• Letting go of the idea that we have ALL the answers
• Right story/wrong story
• Why this needs to be the work of an entire culture
• Basket weaving as her gateway to creating a new story
• The magic of song to rebuild a culture
• finding ways to connect you to place

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