12.6.25

Evidence of laying fallow ground! Wrote this back in September but haven't found time and space to post till now :) The week that I attended this event was really significant and it's been a space I have kept going back to since. It was an influence for a big paper I wrote for one of my classes just now. More thoughts and reflections emerging soon ~~

A few weeks ago I got to attend a workshop around community land rights and ownership within Scotland. People and organizations from different parts of Scotland gathered to share visions and knowledge of ways of living with/on the land. The conversations were beautiful and many central themes that resonated and reminded me of spaces I have felt hope and belonging within. It was a visceral reminder of the interconnectedness of our lives and struggles, and of a deep desire to cultivate belonging and community with the earth/people.

Belonging felt like a central theme that continued to be brought forth, how we cultivate attachments to place and how we give back to those places. A poem by Alastair McIntosh that he read during one of the talks really stuck with me around this concept

“A person belongs in as much as they are willing to cherish and be cherished by a place and its peoples”

These themes are complex and nuanced, and situated within multiple contexts, where peoples relationship to place and land are also of violence, displacement and erasure. Questions of how to honor traditional land practices while bringing in people who have lost connection to ancestral land/place, and how to build community within these multiple realities.

GalGael—one of the groups that helped host this event is a community space aiming to practice ways of re-connection to place + craft, meeting each others needs, and learning with/from one another. More about them: GalGael The documentary “Birdman of Pollok” shares some of the origin story of the space as well and is also a beautiful story of community trying to fight for, build and nourish more just ways of living with each other: Birdman of Pollok

Being in the space was beautiful and re-energizing and also brought up sadness and grief about the violences that have separated us from each other and the land. That grief has been showing up as I started classes this week and my own internal grief about searching for belonging gets reflected back to me through these texts and spaces. I am grateful for the privileged ways I am able to engage with this and want to keep allowing the grief move me into care, action and commitment to build more just worlds.