Gayle “Asali” Dickson describes how the discrimination she faced as an Afro-American girl and young woman in Oakland (California, United States) awakened within her the spirit of activism that led her to later join the Black Panther Party in 1969.
Bill Weber talks about the history of the family of his maternal great-grandmother, whose great-grandfather was Luis Maria Peralta, a sergeant in the Spanish Empire’s army, who was granted almost 45,000 acres of land in the San Francisco East Bay.
Kim Shuck talks about her identity as a Euro-Native woman living in San Francisco, in the context of the history of the Cherokee Nation, the settler colonization of the United States, and her paternal Cherokee side’s proclivity for mathematics.
As a European-American woman, Mary Curtis Ratcliff describes her evolving understanding of the Indigenous peoples of the United States and how her meeting Chief Leonard Crow Dog in the 1970s transformed her own way of living and being.
In Huchiun, the Indigenous Lisjan Ohlone lived symbiotically with their ecology. However, less than 260 years later, European colonization, industrialization, and subsequent abandonment have decimated what is now known as West Oakland, leaving the land and its people in urgent need of regeneration.
Bharat Mansata talks about his journey in natural farming. He describes what inspired him and his wife to open their ecology-focused independent bookstore (Earthcare Books), his mentor, Bhaskar Save, the natural farming movement, Vanvadi, and the ecologically disastrous ‘Green’ revolution.
In this four-part interview, Satish Kumar shares his views on peace, our relationship with nature, and what led him to found Schumacher College in 1991. Among those who inspire him are Vinoba Bhave, Mahatma Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, and E.F. Schumacher.
