Classes & Teachers

Showcasing the brilliance and expertise of the teachers, practitioners, and medicine makers of the Western Mass region & beyond!

We have over 30 teachers and classes for a packed, educational and connective day! Check them out below.

Click on the + sign to drop down more information about each teacher.

Jade Alicandro

  • The northeast is about 75% forested and contains numerous medicinal tree species, both native and non-native, making this a category of medicinals well worth getting to know. In this class we'll cover sustainable harvesting methods and ecological considerations to keep in mind when wildcrafting, learn when different tree medicines are in season and highlight the medical uses of a tree species from each season- with a special focus on the spring and summer- and cover its medicinal uses in depth. Handouts and resources for further study will be provided as well!

  • Jade Alicandro weaves a love of bioregionally abundant herbs and kitchen medicine into her work as a community and clinical herbalist. She makes her home in the rolling hills of western Massachustts where she runs a small herb school with both in-person and online learning opportunities and offers heartfelt herbal consultations. Forever in love with the weeds, her current favorite plants are Wild Rose (Rosa multiflora), Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica) and Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale). Learn more about her work at @milkandhoneyherbs or www.milkandhoneyherbs.com

Taína Vargas-Sosa

  • Explore herbs that nourish and support the nervous system through a multisensory tea meditation and make your own tea blend to take home. Herbs explored: Chamomile, Lemon Balm, Motherwort, Rose, and Tulsi.

  • Taína Vargas-Sosa is a mother, artist, educator, wellness entrepreneur, urban gardener & budding forager. She is the founder of Sankofa Anacaona Botanicals, a woman-of-color-owned traveling apothecary that specializes in plant-based holistic wellness. Taína aims to educate & empower our communities to reclaim & expand cultural traditions of plant medicine. Her work is grounded in her in Afro-Indigenous Caribbean roots from Ayiti-Kiskeya (Dominican Republic). Currently, Taína splits her time between Boston & Western Mass (Indigenous land of the Massachusetts, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag).

Brooke Bridges

  • Foraging and Medicine Making from the Inside Out: In this interactive workshop, learn about nourishing herbs that can be foraged in our region and are abundant in our backyards and forests. Learn about internal and external remedies that can be made with these plants such as glycerites, oxymels, tinctures, infused oils, hydrosols, and vinegars. Make a customized Simple (an herbal medicine utilizing one herb) to take home with you.

  • Brooke Bridges, Owner / Head Herbalist and Formulator of her all natural skin, hair, and self-care business Brooke's Botanicals, and CSA Assistant Manager at Soul Fire Farm, brings a unique journey from a childhood in Los Angeles as a child actress to her current life in Grafton, NY. Through mental health challenges; a cross-country move; and a deep connection with regenerative agriculture, farm-to-table cooking, and plant medicine, Bridges has transformed into an advocate for using plant medicine and looking to spiritual plant connections and nature immersion for healing.

Chris Marano

  • Chris Marano draws from his 30-plus years as an herbalist and 45-plus years as a student, practitioner and teacher of Eastern and Indigenous spiritual sciences to help shed light on our collective concern and stored trauma stemming from personal, cultural, environmental and global challenges and crises, and offering some guidance from the plant world and timeless wisdom traditions.

  • Chris Marano is a clinical and community herbalist living in the Pioneer Valley with over thirty years experience and training in Western, Chinese, and Native American healing traditions. He is founder of Clearpath Herbals, which provides high-quality herbal preparations, and of Clearpath School of Herbal Medicine, dedicated to the teaching of herbalism, holistic health, and Earth-based wisdom and sustainability. Chris is also a Registered Herbalist with the American Herbalist Guild. For more information, visit Clearpath Herbals website (www.clearpathherbals.com) and/or contact Chris at chris@clearpathherbals.com

Bonnie Bloom

  • For thousands of years plants have given us medicine, as well as food, shelter, clothing, and tools. How can we use plants most effectively to achieve our healing goals? We can choose the right plants and still not get the effect we are looking for. How can we support them well enough for their power to work in the system? The difference that dosage, frequency, and duration of a single plant or a formula or entire protocol can make. How we can design a protocol that makes compliance easy? And make changes when needed. What part do mindset, lifestyle, and diet play? We will go over all this in general and in real cases.

  • Bonnie is a clinical herbalist, grower and wild harvester of medicinal plants. She is the founder of Blue Crow Botanicals, a local extract company in South Deerfield. Plants have had a profound influence in her life and she finds joy in sharing them in whatever way she can.

Sophie Cassel

  • Working with "invasive" plant medicine. Barberry, Knotweed, Multiflora Rose, Purple Loosestrife... how can we expand our relationship to these non-native, overabundant, and highly medicinal plant species? In this class, we'll expand our understanding of these maligned plant allies and learn how they can be harvested to help heal our wild landscapes, our bodies, and our own sense of belonging to the land. Identification, harvest, preparation, and use will all be covered.

  • Sophie Cassel (she/her) is a community and clinical herbalist based in the Winooski River watershed of northern Vermont. She believes in weaving webs of care, and the transformative process of connecting one’s own body and experience to the living world around us.

Julia Demillones Moore

  • Learn about the global, traditional practice of vaginal steaming: a gentle and non-invasive healing practice that brings together the magic of herbs and warm steam for womb wellness and connection. Learn about the historical and present day cultural implications, the benefits, contraindications, and highlight a selection of herbs utilized for a variety of pelvic steaming applications.

  • Julia Demillones Moore is a pelvic steam practitioner, home herbalist, and mother. Julia utilizes pelvic steaming as a measure to support her body’s natural cycles, to connect with her Filipino ancestral medicinal practices, and as another way to relate to the plants and elements. It is a joy for her to offer guidance for and bring awareness to the practice of vaginal steaming.

    moonbeamsteams.com

Hannah Jacobson-Hardy

  • Our region is home to many medicinal and edible mushrooms. Learn to ID and responsibly harvest a few key mushrooms for making tinctures, broths, and teas. We will make a double extraction of chaga mushroom in this workshop so you can feed confident at home with this method. Handouts provided.

  • Hannah Morano (formerly Jacobson-Hardy), founder of Sweet Birch Herbals and Full Moon Ghee, is a holistic health coach, ghee producer, and community herbalist devoted to providing the region with high-quality plant-based medicines that are locally grown and sustainably wildcrafted. Check out her natural product line and learn more about Hannah’s services at www.sweetbirchherbals.com or contact sweetbirchherbals@gmail.com.

Jordann Funk

  • From etymology to Celtic mythology, this tree of the hedgerow holds a treasure trove of story, which we will dive into in this class. How do all of these myths tie into the herbal medicine of this tree? With the heart as our portal, we will address this question from a therapeutic perspective that centers Hawthorn as a key remedy in the age of anxiety and overwhelm.

  • Growing up in the Appalachian foothills of Southwestern Pennsylvania, Jordann has immersed herself in the language of plants from an early age. Since 2013, she has devoted herself to herbalism, spending hundreds of hours in class and field learning from teachers and plants alike. She practices in Vitalist framework with a focus on bioregional herbs. Her teachings blend the perspectives of Plant Spirit Medicine and Clinical Herbalism— at once relying on the power of our intuitions as well as the traditional, scientific wisdom of herbalism. A skilled medicine maker and gardener, she runs her apothecary Sensitive Earth and tends a community herb garden in Kingston, New York, where she currently resides as a writer, musician, and mother.

Suzanne O'Gara

  • In this workshop we will discuss the medicinal and magickal properties of a few of my favorite "Priestess Plants", exploring their connection to ancient spiritual paths and priestess lineages, as well as how they align with the Sacred Sites of modern-day Glastonbury UK - commonly believed to be the real-life location of Avalon, Celtic Otherworld, home of the priestesses, and resting place of the dying King Arthur. With time permitting, we will end the class with a short meditation and tea ceremony to connect with Morgan LeFay.

  • Suzanne O'Gara, owner of Alchemy of Avalon LLC and known by many as "The Tea Witch", has been a Certified Herbalist since 2011, having trained under Joann Sanchez at the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts in Tempe, AZ. Like so many Herbalists, this path is more than just a career, as Suzanne has been an Avalonian Priestess, Witch, and devotee of Morgan LeFay since 2003 - thus drawing inspiration heavily from the concept of Avalon, Celtic Otherworld and Isle of Healing Wisdom. She teaches her own 9-month online class series in Herbalism, "Herbs of Avalon: Morgana's Materia Medica", and has served as the Herbcraft Professor for “Morgan LeFay Mystery School”, under the direction of Demelza Fox, since 2018. Most recently, you may have seen her presenting online workshops for Ninefold Festival, Bewitching the Waters Symposium, and the Water Priestess Confluence. When not running her shop, Suzanne can be found in the woods of Western MA being a proud mama, wife, and professional Fusion Bellydancer who is constantly dreaming about running away to Glastonbury, Ireland, and just about any ancient sacred sites! She is also a member of United Plant Savers, and has been a member of the Sisterhood of Avalon since 2017.

Hannah Schiller

  • This is a class-plant walk fusion where we discuss the basic principles of botany and plant identification while admiring and examining the plants growing all around us. We'll talk about all the different plant parts and what first basic questions to ask ourselves when meeting a plant and even delve a little bit into how to read and use a botanical identification key.

  • Hannah Schiller is an herbalist & ecologist, writer & educator living on unceded Shekomeko/Mahican land in the Hudson valley of New York. Hannah's business, Foliage Botanics, centers around herbal and ecological education, and offers regular plant walks and classes and bioregional-based herbal medicine to the local community and beyond.

kyana ferro

  • This class is part materia medica for herbs used by black folk both historically and currently and part historical storytelling of black herbalism on Turtle Island.

  • kyana (ky/they/she) is an earth worker, community herbalist, and birth worker born and raised on Nipmuc land, where they currently reside. kyana organizes and facilitates spaces for qtbipoc to intentionally connect with the land to heal and grow awareness of their connection to nature. kyana is committed to building a future where black and indigenous communities have access to healing on the land, in community and decentralized from current oppressive systems. they enjoy spending time by rivers and creeks with their puppy, shitty reality tv, sitting by the fire with friends, baking & reading scifi (rereading octavia).

Paul Lagrèze

  • In this class, participants will learn how to build an inoculated log "wedding cake totem", to produce shiitake, oyster and lions mane mushrooms. We will also be inoculating shiitake logs. This is a hands on class where students will learn 2 unique mushroom inoculation methods.

  • Paul is a mushroom enthusiast who's been growing, foraging and teaching about wild edibles, wild mushrooms and cultivated mushrooms to farmers markets restaurants and groceries stores throughout the pioneer valley for more than 25 years. He teaches mushroom foraging and cultivation at Greenfield Community College, with a keen interest in forest farming which he fosters and teaches at Five Spring Shiitake Farm in Heath, Massachusetts.

Tony(a) Lemos

  • As Herbalists we have long discussed lifestyle as part of the holistic herbal protocol (nutrition, exercise, spiritual practice and even home environment) but we've not yet addressed creativity. The need for a creative practice has been missing from this discussion. During this class we will explore all the ways in which a creative arts practice promotes wellbeing on physical, mental and spiritual health. In addition to a basic creative practice working with plants in an art practice is another way in which one can deepen ones understanding of and partnership with plants and the natural world which ultimately leads to a more rooted sense of place and a deep inner understanding of interconnectedness.

  • A lifelong environmentalist and plant person, Tony(a) Lemos works at the intersection of herbalism and art. She believes art and creativity to be an integral part of the healing process. Her work centers around well-being, creativity, connection, and co-existence. As a Creative entrepreneur, Community Herbalist, and Artist she is inspired by all aspects of the green world (plants, lichen, moss, and fungi). Tony(a) has worked as a community herbalist and educator for over 25 years, helping people connect with plants as allies for physical, mental, and spiritual healing. She currently teaches an annual year-long herbal apprenticeship, which is now in its 24th year which begins in April, as well as a botanical art studio program at Blazing Star Herbal School in Conway, MA Tony(a) is a well-known lecturer on current herbal medicine topics, Botanical Art, alternative photography methods. She is a published writer, community herbalist, ecological activist, artist and beloved mentor. She has studied with some of the most influential herbal practitioners of our times and, in turn, has trained many gifted and entrepreneurial practitioners.

Mimi Budnick

  • In this workshop we will examine ways that herbalist can provide support to marginalized communities, people that are most experiencing the impacts of systemic oppression, and those on the frontlines of resistance movements. We will highlight a few specific projects and models for distributing and sharing remedies, discuss the practical elements of coordinating herbal donations, and the ways we can do this that minimize harm and elevate collective and community healing.

  • Mimi Budnick is a queer yoga teacher and community herbalist based in Providence, RI that draws from many years of work as a Community Organizer and Adult Educator to ground her offerings in an anti-oppression framework.

    Over the years, Mimi has used herbal medicine as a way to engage with the wisdom of elders and immigrants in her community, as a catalyst for connection and relationship building, and as a vehicle for helping people take control of their healing and build resilience.

    She does this both through her business, Wellspring Apothecary, and as part of an herbal mutual aid collective that she co-founded called RI Herbal Allies.

Gina Shvartsman

  • What is a weed? So often perceived with annoyance and disdain, these resilient and abundant plants are food, medicine, companions, organic matter, cover crops, and living mulch. What a gift growing all around us, if only we know how to properly witness the abundance! This class will be a mix of plant walk and medicine making/ food preparation inspiration. Plants may include (based on who’s around): nettles, chickweed, plantain, dandelion, yellow dock, burdock, comfrey, lambs quarter, purslane, knotweed, etc.

  • Gina is an Earth lover, often covered in dirt or plant matter. Passionate about living in rhythm with the seasons, she has a strong curiosity for how people lived in pre-industrial-technological times. She is a farmer, community herbalist, shiatsu practitioner, wild crafter and the herbal-artist of Radical Rose Botanicals, a compilation of herbal remedies with a focus on practical daily plant supports. www.radicalrosebotanicals.com

Daniela Rivero

  • Flower essences are a potent and minimally extractive form of plant medicine that can accompany us through deep transformation and align us with the earth. They are present throughout many earth based cultures, and are traditionally used as spiritual medicine in ceremonies and limpias. This workshop will give an overview of the traditional roots and healing properties of flower essences as we go through the process of making an essence together.

    Participants should bring jars, an offering, and maybe a journal if they would like.

  • Daniela Rivero is an artist, educator, and student of plant medicine. Originally from Mexico City, they currently reside on Nipmuc land, where they tend to their lineage through art, food, plant medicine, prayer, presence, study, and memory. They are moved by a desire to regrow belonging with the land and are anchored by the wisdom of their ancestors, loved ones, and plant teachers. They are a 2022 Alumni of The People's Medicine School.

Stillwater

  • In this hands on workshop, we will be learning about the medicinal and magical properties of honey and how to use it as a medium for herbal medicine as well as making our own herbal infused honey or electuary (powered herb in honey). We will be sampling herbal infused honey, brainstorming combinations, and choosing to make an infused honey or an electuary to bring home.


    Jars and honey will be provided in a 4oz size, if you desire to make more honeys or play with different combos, please bring your own jars and honey.

  • Stillwater is a devotee to beauty and delight, striving to weave magic and healing to all areas of life through a lens of love - she has been immersed in the world of plants for many years now, and loves blending the medicinal properties of herbs into the sweet heart-joys of baked goods, raw treats, teas, and honeys. She is also an active artisan, delving into many handcrafts such as hide tanning, felting, leather work, block-printing, as well as a poet and baker. She is ever in awe and inspired by the shimmer of the land, the stars, and the old ways we have lived in harmony with each other and the earth.

Kaitlyn Cronin

  • A guided somatic meditation and movement exploration that brings us through the life cycle of fungi. A alchemical dance journey that guides us through the many layers of growth and decomposition.

  • Kaitlyn’s work lives in the intersection of mycology, creativity and the integration of Death in the sacred cycle of Life. The more she dives into each of these avenues the more she recognizes they are all languages describing the same phenomenon.

    With the mycelial web as her greatest teacher and creation as her devotional practice, Kaitlyn weaves stories through visual art and immersive experience; embedding us into our ecosystems and sparking a remembrance of our interstitial and unique place in the expansive web of life.

vanessa serotta

  • Grief is as much a part of life as breathing, but we are living in a cultural context that suppresses our expressions of grief, both systematically and interpersonally. Actively tending to both our own grief and that of others is a reclamation of our most basic nature. The skills required to do so are inherent in all of us, and become stronger the more we use them. In the same way that by listening to our growling stomachs, we know what to cook for dinner, so too can we guide ourselves towards the grief rituals and practices we need. In this class we will share stories, tools and useful skills, including discussion of some herbs that are particularly well suited to grief work, and how to incorporate them.

  • Vanessa Serotta (she/they) is an herbalist, grief worker and plant person living in Western Massachusetts. For more information contact vanessazypporah@gmail.com.

Catherine Tween

  • How can we forage for our food and wildcraft our medicine with respect and reciprocity? In this workshop, we'll explore how to ask permission before harvesting a living being, and how to listen for the answer; how to know when there is enough, and how much is ours to take; how to ensure we take only what we need, without waste; and how to give thanks, by leaving an offering or an act of reciprocal care.

    We’ll be drawing on the indigenous wisdom tradition of the Honorable Harvest, an approach practiced by many First Nations communities for countless generations, and passed to us through the writings of Robin Wall Kimmerer. We’ll also be open to our own inner, intuitive sources of knowledge as well.

    We’ll take a mindful, sensory-expansive walk through the forest, interacting with and learning the names of the plant and fungal beings who call our attention. On our walk, we’ll discuss the principles of the Honorable Harvest, and at one point we’ll practice integrating those principles with a hands-on example, by harvesting a plant or fungus in an honorable way.

    My intention for this workshop is that it helps us de-condition the internalized consumerist orientation we tend to carry as a result of living under a capitalist system. My hope is that together we may relearn and remember how to relate to the land, not merely as a resource to be extracted, but as a web of living beings who are our kin.

  • Cat is an artist, a yoga teacher, a wilderness therapist, a practicing pagan, and a self-taught mycologist and herbalist, among myriad other identities. She lives on ancestral Pocumtuck land in Western Massachusetts, beside the (allegedly) biggest tree on the east coast. Cat's spirituality is rooted in cycles: cycles of nature, the moon, the seasons, and the spiraling rhythms of plants, animals, fungi, celestial bodies, and human bodies as well. She enjoys depicting time in cyclical mandalas, and many of her paintings are circular "calendars" of one sort or another. She has been studying wild mushroom and plant identification, foraging, and medicine-making for about seven years now, and she loves sharing what she has learned, while always continuing to learn from others and from the land itself.

rowan walker

  • Colonization, empire and white supremacy has severed many peoples from their healing traditions. This has contributed to the disruption of ancestral lineages, both from the lands settler peoples originated from, as well as from here on Turtle Island/N America through the present day. We see these dynamics play out in all things, including ‘traditional Western herbalism’ as it is currently taught and practiced.

    This space is for visioning what another way forward might look like.

    Part presentation, part community conversation, together we will process the impacts of being disconnected from ancestral lineages of healing. We will look at the severance and rupture in our own lineages, as well as the ways we contributed personally and collectively to rupture for peoples of the global majority (Black, Brown and Indigenous people of color).

    Throughout this workshop, folks will be invited to reflect on their current practices, and where they are aligned (or not) with their values. There will be invitations to consider what healing is possible under ongoing systemic oppression if our field of practice replicates these oppressions. And we will sit with the potent transformative power that reconnecting to ancestral herbalism holds for personal and collective healing.

    There will be many questions without easy answers. 


    There will be frank conversation about how to take up our responsibility as white-bodied practitioners to unpick the threads of TWH and reweave culturally connected herbalisms.

    There will be visioning about what more might be possible, for us as herbalists as well as our clients and students, if we move forward differently.

    Participants will leave having been challenged to rethink how they are practicing, to take on necessary work, and play their part in redressing the ongoing harms that modern TWH perpetuates.

    Please come if you are ready to be honest with yourself and others, and converse with compassion & thoughtfulness, grounded firmly in your integrity.

    Note: The conversation in this space will be specifically geared towards white-bodied practitioners, although all are welcome.

  • rowan walker (they/them) is a qt herbalist, researcher, community facilitator and anarchist. they are a third gen settler raised in the north east US from Irish, Lithuanian, Scottish and Sicilian trancestry. They believe that TWH as it is currently practiced perpetuates colonialism, severance and disconnection (for white bodied practitioners as well as people of the global majority). Through their practice of hawthorn and yew, rowan teaches, writes, and supports queer community through 1:1 herbal care. They are passionate about facilitating spaces for folks of Celtic Isles’ descent here on Turtle Island/N America to reconnect to ancestral lineage, reweave plant kin connection and deepen into relations with the holy wild.

Bear Crevier

  • Bear Crevier has been eating wild plants and mushrooms for more than 40 years and leading plant and mushroom walks for several years now. If you have ever wondered about the edible and medicinal plants and mushrooms that grow all around us come join Bear for his walk so you can learn about them in a fun, tasty, and interactive way. The Earth is home to many plant and mushroom allies who want to share their food, wisdom, and medicine with us. Join Bear for a walk that will change the way you see and interact with the world around you.

  • Bear Crevier is an educator, public speaker, nonprofit worker, community leader, and military veteran. Bear has been teaching for more than 20 years in a variety of formats. Bear runs a nonprofit called Ancient Healing Paths with his wife and partner Aidale. You can regularly find Bear teaching plant and mushroom walks all throughout New England from April to November.

Jesse Muzzy & Lauren Rose

  • This workshop is a starting point for anyone wanting to learn more about supporting & understanding their menstrual cycle. We will cover the basics of cycle health, what is considered "normal" vs. "optimal", and how to use nutrition and herbs to support balanced hormones, cycle health & symptoms, contraception, fertility, postpartum-healing, and the entire child bearing continuum.

  • Jesse (she/her) is a certified Fertility Awareness & Sexual Reproductive Health Educator and Full Spectrum Doula. She specializes in teaching a method of charting the menstrual cycle that can be used for hormone-free contraception, support with conception, and a tool to achieve optimal hormone balance for healthier and pain-free periods. She supports clients in being autonomous in their reproductive health and utilizing all the tools and knowledge available to cultivate a life of wellness and balance. Jesse is also currently studying to become an herbalist specializing in women's health with Aviva Romm.

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    Lauren Rosa as a Physician Assistant (PA-C) who practices Integrative Medicine and specializes in Integrative Women’s Health. She weaves together lifestyle and environmental medicine, herbalism, nutrition, mindfulness and other modalities to best support her patients. She believes the body has an innate intelligence that is always moving towards healing. She helps to uncover root causes of symptoms while giving the body what it needs, from a mind-body-spirit perspective, to find it’s way back to balance. After her own journey into motherhood, she developed a strong passion to support other women throughout pregnancy and into the postpartum period. She is currently in training to be an INNATE Postpartum Provider & Doula. In addition to her medical training, she has completed additional trainings in holistic nutrition, lyme and tick borne diseases, lifestyle medicine, and aromatherapy. She completed an herbal apprenticeship studying with Sweet Birch Herbals and considers herself an ongoing student of life and our human physiology.

Melodie Fallon

  • How to define pleasure and where do we find more of it within our daily lives? The class will open up to the foundations of experiencing pleasure in our daily lives. We will be broadening the definition of pleasure which allows us to experience more of it and recognize when we do. With these expanded realms of pleasure we will bring in which plant allies can support each realm and how to use them. This class will be sensory, sensual, and stimulating with the intention of leaving feeling grounded yet delighted with deeper access to pleasure.

  • Melodie is deeply devoted to supporting others in deepening their connection to themselves, spirit and nature. In her travels she has studied with beloved teachers, guiding her through the realms of herbal healing, bodywork, womb healing, and the liminal space during birth. The gifts of these teachings support her serving the community as a bodyworker, herbalist, yoga instructor, and women’s reproductive health guide. She walks the path of embodied learning and sharing from an integrated place in her own life. Melodie initially studied with Sage at the Gaia school of healing which was a homecoming to the world of plant allies. Her focus in the world of herbalism is building relationships with plants as the healers. Remembering the beauty of the flora and the deep nourishment we can find weaving them into our lives. She continued to study with Rosita Arvigo in Belize focusing on plants for women's health. Her time spent at an eco village in Costa Rica Melodie self studied plants of central america and learned the way of a diverse ecosystem. She is devoted to earth centric living & weaving the web of interconnectedness between all beings.

Pampi, Ankana, & Hanan

  • An exploration of food medicine complicated by the diasporic experience of displacement + settler legacies. Together we name and celebrate ancestral plants we lean on that our ancestors grew in companionship that frequently make the delicious and medicinal foundation of our every day meals. We explore how food medicine facilitates pleasure. Additionally, as diasporic peoples we are ace adapters. We ask how might we lessen the burden on Native peoples and lands they steward (including our own homelands) + support the rematriation of Native medicine?

    This version of Diasporic Herbal Transmission's "We Come Together" has been in the works since Fall 2021 and have in loving and dynamic conversation food Iran/Persia, Congo/Angola, Sichuan/China and Bengal delta region/India/Bangladesh. The focus of this workshop is how food medicine - specifically S Asian food medicine - travels during migrations: a conversations of a friendship of S Asian diasporic femmes that took many decades to find right conditions.

    Note: this workshop will be 1.5 hours long. the last 30 minutes will bleed into lunch. participants are encouraged to stay for the entire class to complete the group discussion and cooking demo.

  • A 25+year newcomer-settler of lands stewarded by Wompanoag, Mattakeesett, Pennacook, Sokoki and Nipmuc peoples, PAMPI is a darker-skinned nonbinary second-genx casteD-Bengali culture worker who plays at the intersection of healing and popular education: in community they develop community-centered art that releases creative potential and drives change-making. They lean on poetry, dance theater and gardening to help message the intersectional shifts in thinking we must embrace to center liberation. Current projects include Neighborhood Grow Plan, Diasporic Herbal Transmission and We Are Forests

    ANKANA, The Harami Artist, a self-taught multimedia artist, is originally from Assam, India. Her earliest exposure to art came from seeing her grandmother's creations and watching her father paint. Although creativity ran in the family she was never encouraged to pursue art as a profession. Being surrounded by nature in her childhood heavily influenced her, and that influence permeates her work today. She experiments with ink, acrylic paint, watercolor, fiber, collage and digital photography, creating surreal imagery with elements of fantasy, grounded in reality as she experiences it. Using detailed patterns and bright colors, her work centers on and celebrates nature and women. Ankana also makes food that makes hearts feel nourished. It's as nutritious as eating karela and lau and dal bhat with lanka aar ghee. She embodies comrade love: just showing up right alongside, rolling up sleeves and making everything just a bit more wondrous. Current projects include Just Plant and Grow and We Are Forests, and Survivor Theatre Project Cohort and Leadership Team

    HANAN was born in Jeddah, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She is a mixed media artist who works primarily in assemblage, using a variety of objects to reckon with her multicultural identity. She uses googly eyes, dried mushrooms, hair, steel, and moss; broken mirrors, yarn, glass beads, and gauze. Hanan has got big cooking down. A labor of tremendous love just grocery shopping alone. Current projects include We Are Forests.

    Many S Asian femmes socialized to hold down big cooking for our families and communities. We have no fear of making a giant vat of stew or tea and we do so swapping jokes and howling laughing the whole time.