Monday, October 21, 2013

Hearth Tidings Issue 3 is here. 

A newsletter from Tipi Village, have a read for a glimpse of the reality here.  Better would be to come have a feel for yourself, bring a bed roll and stay in the Big Lodge.

Kids!  This is a Special Issue with not only a Crossword but also a dice game.  Check it out!



             http://www.scribd.com/doc/177984256/Hearth-Tidings-Issue-3-Autumn-2013


If you would like to join our snail mailing list to receive Hearth Tidings in your mail box, send us an email with your name and address. 

LandLiberationFund@gmail.com

And feel free to make a contribution through PayPal (click on MAKE A CONTRIBUTION above) if you enjoy reading!





Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Hearth Tidings Issue Three

Issue 3 of Hearth Tidings is being edited now. Deadline for submissions is 9am on Friday 11th of October. Send submissions to hearthtidings@gmail.com.
Cheers!

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Raffle Draw

Thanks for all who joined in with the raffle. You not only contributed to and empowered the Land Liberation Project, (which is still a new introduction to a much older way of understanding human place within the world), you also helped someone get a prize!
The draw took place earlier this evening on October 1st 2013. Video of the drawing will be posted. The winners are as follows:
Rogue Dwellings Tipi: Monica Roxburgh
Adult Tricycle: Patti Browning
1hr professional massage by Jimmy Nacey: Rachel Rose
Artwork by Lindy Kehoe: (no name; only phone number provided)
Hooded scarf by Fair Ophelia Designs: Leslie Lanes
Feldenkrais session: Joshua Young
Antler handled knife: Lindsay
West African drum lesson: Celia Peel
Congratulations winners, we'll be in touch about how to collect your prizes!

Watch the draw in two parts (the battery died so we had to switch cameras).....
                                             Part One:

               

                                              Part Two:

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Let's talk about subtexts: prejudice and bigotry?

 
This is a thread of comments on the recent article in the Mail Tribune.
 
Darryl-
Sorry, your lifestyle is illegal. Get on the consumption/destruction bandwagon like everyone else. Don't you want that big expensive house and the tax bill that comes with it? Don't you want to buy a house and see it's value drop in a few years to half of what you paid? Sure you do. Welcome to the new America.
 
Commentsviewer-
No Darryl they want others to provide for them. Donate to buy them land. I have heard about how they have totally trashed the land they are on. Take a drive up to their camp. They have no respect for the land. They just want to live off the grid. That's fine. Just don't expect the tax payers to provide. Let them set up in your yard Darryl. I'm sure you won't mind cleaning up their mess.
Ed Keller-
I have visited the Tipi village on several occasions over the years and I can say they are immaculate in their Care for the Land. The above hearsay about the Tipi Villagers "trashing the Land" is absolutely ridiculous. Completely unmerited. That is why the previous landowners were happy to have them there, for YEARS, taking very good care of the land and actively managing the forest surrounding them.
I am curious where Mr/Mrs Commentsviewer got these false reports and the idea that somehow tax dollors are to support their project. Again..inaccurate.
A non-profit trust collecting donations for a land based project is as "Normal" and respectable as any mainstream project. These folks seem to have a different outlook (as is satirized in darryl.edingtons comment) that they have no desire to buy into the mainstream debt-based lifestyle. That is commendable in my opinion.
Land Liberation Project-
Thanks for extending the invitation to come visit; Tipi Village is open to all! We are happy to provide for ourselves and we ask for the basic human right to subsist and access to the land and means to sustain ourselves. We are happy to help anyone who wishes to learn how to make themselves a home and grow themselves food.
We have not trashed the land. Over the years hundreds of people have experienced first hand, deeply, for more than a few minutes of prejudiced perception, the powerful beauty of living together with our planet, through the place held open by Tipi Village. The people who have complained have never addressed complaints directly (to me, anyway) and seem to have had some personal agenda as to their entitlement for giving a public review of my home and life. It would be mean spirited and uncaring if I were to go to your home, 'commentsviewer' and decide to trash you, publicly, about how you live.
I, personally, have taken truckloads of trash out to the transfer station, most of which arrives at hunting season and also a lot that was here when we first came to live here. I have also taken trash away from others, not accountable to Tipi Village, who have decided to camp (usually in a 'nylon nightmare' tent) nearby or out of season.
Furthermore, the other parties interested in buying the land upon which we live intend to sell it to the BLM, thereby restricting access to all of us whilst giving us, the taxpayers, no choice in having to buy it.
Feel welcome to bring up any other pretexts, once we've addressed them all we can begin to talk about subtexts: prejudice and bigotry?
-Ande
 
 
  

 

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Ideas brewing to include you....

Ideas are brewing for the Hearth Tidings, Autumn Issue 3.  There is an idea to include words from the greater community, meaning you.  We are looking for engagement.  Maybe through a 'letter to the editor' or 'ask a villager'.  Are there any curiosities or questions you have about year round nomadic tipi life?  Send them in!  Even if it is challenging or contentious, please, engage us!  Perhaps you have spent time here and may feel inspired to write something about it, a poem, an essay, an art piece.....Send us entries by October 20, 2013.  Looking forward to hearing from you.
Kayla

landliberationfund@gmail.com

Win this Trike!

 
People of Ashland!  This trike is a stylin', fun and practical way to get around town. 
 Enter our raffle with a chance to win it!  Condition is new. 
 Names will be called on October 1st, 2013 in the Big Lodge at Tipi Village. 
 
Tickets are $3 for 1 or $10 for 3 (coyote pricing.  Hey, it goes to a good cause!)
100% of funds raised go to the liberation of land
for you, me, our children and future generations! 
 
 
 
                                              

Please include your name, phone number, email, and the words Raffle Entry with your payment.
Thanks and good luck!





 

Another article in the local Sunday paper

Yet another article in the Sunday Mail Tribune.  When the author, Mark Freeman called on Friday, we didn't give him much.  We have had a surprising amount of prejudice come our way. There was a hesitancy in speaking with him.
 

Is it possible to fall back off the
radar?

It's an alright article, but it in no way paints the beautiful picture of this life or this time of migration (and its uniqueness in not knowing where we are going) or the process we are involved in with this land beneath our feet and homes, or the way the weather is our 'boss', or the changing of the seasons and it goes on...... 

I think Mark did alright considering he had so little from the brief phone interview. 

Have a read.  And feel free to help with the moral support and leave a comment there, maybe even reply to the prejudices if you are inspired....







Monday, September 23, 2013

There's still time! Make your donation.

The PayPal button is now fixed!  There is still time to contribute in any amount!

The Land Liberation Project extends far beyond the current summer lands with its October 1st deadline.  Since the launching of The Project, much momentum has been gained.  It is a start with a powerful intention to, basically, make it possible within the industrialized world to subsist and to re-introduce humans into the wild. 

100% of funds raised will go to the liberation of land wherever the possibilities present themselves.

Join the raffle.  It's one way to contribute!  Tickets are 1 for $3 or 3 for $10 (special coyote price.  Hey, it goes to a good cause!).


                                                


If you are buying raffle tickets, please include your name, phone number, email, and the words Raffle Entry with your payment.

Some prizes have the option to be shipped, others not.  It's best if they can be picked up.  Good luck and thanks!







 

Finding Place


With regards to the liberation of the summer and winter ranges of Tipi Village, the situation would appear - especially to the left brain- dire.
For this land that we love as the places on earth to which we can point out and show our children the exact spot where some of them were born, it would be inappropriate and disrespectful to squabble over it like immature, placeless adults.
Because what we have found is a sense of place in the order of All That Is. That is the gift of this land and the process unleashed by it and that is our debt to this place.
There are connections within that understanding of place which are difficult to accommodate; whether praise, admiration or criticism, admonition. Both extremes require being met with equanimity.
There was the 'hunter' from the town of Rogue River, perhaps sixty miles away, who was so appalled by our presence in the wilderness that he wrote to the editor of the Mail Tribune. He claimed his family have hunted where we now live for over a hundred years. Although he didn't say what they hunted, in that time when bands of families still roamed these mountains not only hunting but gathering, tending the wild, living, subsisting for millenea before the arrival of a people also displaced. I don't know if those displaced people asked if it was alright if they could stay and hunt and  be entitled to replace. By all accounts they didn't ask and they perceived godless savages scrabbling in squalour.
This was before the land needed liberation, because it wasn't claimed yet.
There are those who tell us we're pioneers; we're at the leading edge of a movement beyond politics into the realm of the physical, blazing a way forward for humanity to begin to integrate and re-integrate with the whole.
There was the reserved man one day when we were tabling outside the Ashland Food Co-op , troubled because, he said, for thirty years he's swallowed what the banks have forced on him so that he can own his place. If the Land Liberation Project catches on then his land will be worthless, he said, he'll have spent most of his life in vein. His one precious life.
Then there are the 'deep ecologists', some of whom project that humans are alien to Mother Earth, we have no place here, we're just messing things up for every other form of life on earth.
It's easy to get hung up on structures of complicated political thought and the state of the status quo. What's real for Tipi Village is the weather is changing, the rain has come, the geese are flying calling their longing for winter place and here we are, a tiny culture of new old beginnings, like a rabbit in the headlights of the juggernaut of mainstream industrialised America. Surrounded by thousands, tens of thousands of uninhabited acres of world. We don't know where we're going for winter range and the left brain is freaking out a bit so the process requires a constant letting-go to intuition, feeling, always deeper to a place where unfolding happens.
So we're stuck because, politically, a few people are bothered by how we are inspired to live. It appears to challenge the sensibilities of the camo-clad weekend hunter from town, perhaps expecting to see manicured lawns and white-picket fences, buildings or perhaps, more to the point to see nothing so he can have the place to himself a couple of weekends a year. Or the deep ecologist, given up on life, alienated from an integral and intimate process of humanity and world, perhaps afraid of death; the feeling of the safety of soft earth falling on our spent bodies, her reclamation of matter borrowed by spirit. There is also the fear of 'property' losing value, individual monetary value, which has only ever been an illusion since the Land Enclosures in Europe. There is a greater value in land that is culture and place within that web of  myriad interconnectedness, the relationship with money being only one strand in that web. Remember this. The inherent value of everything in reality is diminished when we ascribe  to it only monetary value.
The primary value of land is culture and we can grow great and powerfull when we integrate the true richness of culture, of relationship, relations, of working out and becoming conscious of the names of those relationships and honouring them for what they actually are. When we find place then we cease to be displaced. Few people, especially in America, are not displaced culturally or physically. Those who know your place, you are the richest people on the planet and you have more to share than anyone.
Sinking deeper into understanding the forces of displacement, it is beneficial  for the greater good if we can understand the individuals with personal agendas. The value of their 'property' and the fear of it being diminished. Their desire to be 'alone' in the 'wilderness'; alienated and disconnected from a confrontation with their own prejudices and inadequacies in the face of a life-way with an intention and practice of integrity, directness and open honesty.
America will truly be the 'Land of the Free' when the basic human right to subsist is, at least, not blocked and at best, encouraged as a way of respectfull, accountable living. When, culturally, an aspiration towards sustainable relationships -physically, socially, spiritually- is allowed, encouraged and accepted. When we can move away from patterns of life which displace us into becoming dis-connected fragments of the machine of industry.
"It is easier to contemplate the end of the world than it is to consider the end of capitalism"
And here we still are at an elevation of five thousand feet and already the days are shorter than the nights. And as I write this I don't know where we'll be migrating to for the winter. Happy equinox!
Ande
   




Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The Morning After the Benefit Gig (an audio clip)

The Benefit for the Land Liberation Project was a success on many levels.  It began with delicious food and drink (despite the fact that much of it was forgotten at Tipi Village, only to become a feast for the squirrels).  A panel discussion came next, which had it's awkward moments.  The stage, microphones and bright lights are unfamiliar territory (to many of us), but that was slowly overcome.  What was more difficult I think was keeping a focused discussion between the villagers and the audience.  Good beginnings of a public discourse around 'place' for so many displaced people right now and bringing it home, close and personal.  Much was learned about the art and craft of presentation/discussion and we are looking forward to organizing a proper, solid, focused presentation and panel.  Folk stayed late while musicians brought a wonderful life to the event.  Thank you all who participated.

Click the link below to listen to a piece of conversation between some villagers the morning after (Helena, Kayla and Ande).  It begins with the question 'why is there an inspiration to share about Tipi Village and the Land Liberation Project?"
   

http://archive.org/details/LandLiberationProjectBenefitDe-brief


And stay tuned for details of the upcoming Land Liberation Project presentation and discussion by co-founders Ande and Kayla Blanchflower.

An edited Open Letter, re-posted.

Following is an edited open letter to one of our neighbors, re-posted.  It was respectfully and regretfully taken down by Ande following a request and threat of a defamation lawsuit. I feel that some of the words have a wider relevance and powerful message to the industrialized world.  It may be a beneficial public conversation. 
Kayla 
 
 
Dear (names removed),
I am a participant and founder, though not a representative, of Tipi Village. The intention of this letter is to facilitate and foster open dialogue between the families and individuals currently striving (in the face of great attrition) to maintain and honour our connection with our homeland over the past six summers, and you.
Recent attempts by us to communicate with you, through email and phone calls have had no response. Now the only avenue for communication appears to be publicly, which is slightly regretful because out of respect to you and the process in which we are involved together, we have striven to keep your names out of the newspapers and off the airwaves. For the love of all that is dear to us, and following recent interactions with the county, who are only complaint driven, this has now changed as we have a whole culture and way of life, to which our children were born, to defend.
Following will be some questions. If any of them are assumptive, please let me know; I'm trying to make sense of the information coming in and work out why such prejudice is being leveled at my community.
Why are you harassing Tipi Village? This harassment, through the channels of county protocol might be 'legal' but it is incredibly distressful for the people and children who live here and whose home and life-way is under threat.
Circumstantially and most recently, following a visit from a county representative, it has come to our attention that the complainant about Tipi Village had hired a lawyer to have the county code 're-interpreted' to, basically, make it illegal to live in tipis in Jackson county.
We have also heard, from members of the Mosby family, the current land owners who are in deep financial difficulty especially since the death of John Mosby, that you have threatened to delay the sale of this land until they have had us removed. We migrate in the autumn anyway and you are fully aware of this. It's unnecessary.
What is your agenda with this place on Soda Mountain, widely known as the summer lands of Tipi Village? Why are you putting so much effort into displacing a peoples and a culture? Are you trying to make us homeless?
Do you care for this place, this piece of Mother Earth and wish to see it thrive, to hear the songs, cries and laughter of the children echo through the mountains. Do you care for this place to maintain and even increase it's current bio-diversity to how it was before settler consciousness arrived? The touch of millenia of human interaction still resonates through this land, in spite of exploitative logging, over-grazing and over-preservation. Preserving is what we do with fruit when we put it in jars. As people we have always been an integral part of our environment, even since the onset of industrialization, when we seem to have become blind to our impact. The land and the people thrive together.
Many times I have invited you to my home for tea, even for dinner. You have been invited to find out what is actually going on here. The only time I have seen you here on Soda Mountain was one late spring a few years ago in your little golf buggy. We were bringing a first load up for the summer migration, you said you were hunting for morels. We caught you! You are still welcome to come and see, feel, smell, hear and taste the reality of life here. As is anyone.
If you care for and love this land and recognise the potential that is unfolding here as much as we do then we can work together.
If, however, you care only for your selves, for the glory of being praised as great, magnanimous people, as preservers of wilderness, although at the expense of the people.
If you care only for your own quiet retirement, to live your unsustainable ways in the midst of the wilderness, all to yourselves, fishing your imported trout from 'your' lake.
If you care only to disregard and discriminate against the handful of lodges of men, women and children who all put together would still have a lower impact and smaller physical and carbon footprint that you only two people in your little mansion, that is only there next to (name removed)Lake because it's 'grandfathered' in. If these are your cares, then we are in opposition. And you are opposed to all and any other with a bright mind who doesn't have the decadence of money to throw at anything with which they don't agree. We have culture. We are happy just simply getting along with our lives. We are not the aggressors . We don't have a private plane to fly to LA and spend half of our time there. We are here and we always have been and we always will be. We practice and ask for the basic human right to subsist and to continue to subsist without aspirations towards extractive, unsustainable consumerist ways of living; to practice and cultivate humane, human ways of being, respectfully to all, even our adversaries!
 (Names removed), please stop indirectly harassing us! Be accountable and responsible with your complaints and concerns and bring them directly to those whom they concern, honestly and openly, so that they can be addressed and inspected and we can find out if they are valid. Stop fabricating bogus reasons for whining at the county like spoilt children and getting them, with your political and financial influence, to do your dirty work.
Furthermore, join in, participate with the Land Liberation Project, be remembered as a major part of the sea-change that is occurring now. The Project has a really good idea and a lot of experience of a viable way of sustainable living for all with the inspiration, to truly begin to re-member our wild and powerful places.
As Yosemite burns right now, consider why that fire is so catastrophic. And in that consideration, feel the millions of individuals making up families, bands, tribes, who were and still are being removed, displaced and even killed in the name of preservation and conservation. People, humans just like you, today, now, being forced economically, physically violently or otherwise from the place of their birth and tradition and culture and into unsustainable lifeless fragments of the machine of industry. This is a moment in the story of humankind where our actions will resonate through the ages, and long after our flesh and bones have returned to the dust from which they came, future generations will remember. Which way will it go? Our actions and intentions are defining us. This is where a few can make a difference for the benefit of countless many.
For the love of our world, all of our children, and our future.
Thanks for reading.
Ande Blanchflower
 
 
 

Conversation With a Passer-by

 
The Ashland Food Cooperative has kindly hosted the Land Liberation Project many times now.  The hours spent outside our local food coop have led to some great connections and ideas, money in the magic hat, and most enjoyable, many interesting conversations.  Here is a brief snippet of a conversation with a passer-by (click on the link and then press play).
 
 
 
 
 
  

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Benefit Agenda, simple and lively!


6pm- Open hearth dinner.  Dance by Child of the Wild.
7pm- Panel discussion on the basic right of subsistence, human displacement and inhabiting the wild.
8pm- Folk music and dancing till late!!




Saturday, September 7, 2013

Land Liberation Benefit Gig


With The Land Liberation Project receiving plenty of press these days, there is much public interest in land based living, nomadism, un-owned land, conservation vs. human inhabitancy in wilderness, communal living, the right to subsist etc.  This benefit is an opportunity to discuss and exchange ideas regarding these matters with some of the time being focused on an open panel of villagers and other guest speakers.  May this be a benefit for all.



Friday, August 30, 2013

Front Page of the Mail Tribune Again

Tipi Village front page news again today. A neighbour, we suspect Bob and Suzi Given (the people who want to displace us for the BLM National Monument), paid a lawyer to have the county code 're-interpreted' to make our way of life illegal. We are asking for subsitance to be a basic human right. Stand in solidarity for the benefit of all:

http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130830/NEWS/308300325


Sunset circle at the end

 
 

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Participate



   This is more than a story, as the end is yet unwritten. This is the moment of possibility. A dandelion through the concrete, it is alive. We are Tipi Village, a collective of families and single people, young and old dedicated to living on the ground, around the fire, migrating seasonally in dwellings we manifest with our hands and feet.  Established since 2008, the village moves in spring and autumn from the high mountains of the Cascade-Siskiyous of Southern Oregon, to the valley below.  Fetching wood and carrying water are daily practices.  Children are born here, our blood and tears are in this soil, the echoes of our laughter are in these mountains, we hope to die here.  Our priorities and inspiration are maintaining and cultivating a way of living which is spiritually and physically harmonious with the land, flora and fauna. Fauna including ourselves and our relationships and their names.

   After a five year relationship with the private “owner” of the land on which we reside, we have been offered an opportunity to purchase this land.  There is a wealthy neighbour who intends to buy it, have us removed and then sell the land to the national monument for preservation in exclusion of living, human relationship.  We feel strongly that re-introducing humanity and wild, inside and outside, is of great importance at this time.  Wildness is a neglected aspect of much of our species, especially in the industrialized world.  Humans can live symbiotically with mother earth.

   We have no interest in 'owning property' (how can we own that which holds us?) so we have come up with the Land Liberation Project.  Land that is part of The Project will never again be sold, will belong to no 'one' and shall maintain an open place for all who have the inspiration to live in harmony, low-impact, movable.

   This message is a call for help, guidance, ideas, money.  We have until the 1st of October, 2013 to raise $300,000. We have fiscal sponsorship from The Way Foundation (EarthTeach) which has non-profit status.  We're reaching out in all directions.

   This is where we call upon you to become we and participate in this project of unprecedented movement. Together, we can free this land. Free ourselves.

Financial Contributions are tax deductible and can be sent to:
   
                                                               
Tipi Village Land Liberation Fund
c/o The Way Foundation (EarthTeach)
10025 Dead Indian Memorial Road
Ashland, OR 97520


The Village maintains an open place for all who have the inspiration and intention to participate. The Big Lodge is our central community space, a 27' tipi used for musical gatherings, talking circles, ceremonies, shared meals and as a place for guests, visitors and all newcomer. For more information regarding visiting Tipi Village, click here.

              Ways In Which To Participate!! 

 

1: Spend some time in the Big Lodge, bring a bed roll

2: Buy a 'Coyote Share'. Shares are $1000 each. A share is an ongoing connection to The Project. It's a way of stating a clear intention of support and it's a stake in the future. It all     ows for continuation. The term 'Coyote Share' comes from the new paradigm thinking of 'owning' 'free' land. It subverts the notion that land can ever actually be 'owned' and it empowers the relationship between one and Mother Earth.

3: Buy a raffle ticket. Tickets are $3 each. Prizes include a 13' Rogue Dwellings tipi, with poles. An obsidian, horn handled knife. A tricycle. A 1hr massage from a licensed therapist. Lindy Kehoe artwork. More prizes are being contributed all the time (another way to participate). The draw will be on the 1st of October and winners will be announced here. To buy tickets online use the paypal donate button above and include your name and phone number in the note; we'll fill out a ticket and put it in the hat. You can also send money to The Way Foundation (address above). Be sure to make a note that the contribution is for Land Liberation Project (LLP).

4: Make a straight, simple donation of any amount, by the same above methods.

5: Spread the word about the cause, pass this blog address on to everyone you know even if you think they might not be interested. Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/landliberationproject 
Striking sparks in dry tinder can make a big fire.

6: Watch, like and share our short video at

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/land-liberation-project/x/4291885

Contribute there and receive a gift.

All contributions will go towards the Land Liberation Project for purchasing land. Large or small, all are most welcome and necessary. The Land Liberation Project extends beyond the current deadline of the sale of the Summer Lands.

Go on, do it! Join in! But be careful, you might not get out! Big love and hugs from us all.

Dear friends and family

Dear friends and family,
This is solidarity, not charity. 
This is more than a possibility, as we know it works. 
A harmonious way forward that is inclusive to all.
Our birthright here on the great earth mother.
I sit here now, on the ground, next to the hearth in my home of canvas and pole,
writing to you and praying to something bigger.
There must be a place for us to live as one with wildness. 
For years I have cultivated this internally and with my family. 
And now, the law is needing to be integrated. 
I suppose we as a village could walk away, and hide in the woods elsewhere.
My inspiration whispers to me.....
It may be time to share this now....
Where are you?  People who love the land, who value a deep relationship with it, who recognize that we can not own the earth?  Come forth.  We need you now.  For real.  Right now.

Donate.  Nothing is too small.  33 days left and tens of thousands more to raise.

            
                                                                  

 
-Kayla

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Another KSKQ interview

Ellen Hufft interviews Kayla and Ande in the KSKQ studio.  Click the link and listen to them discuss village life, roles, raising kids, and the Land Liberation Project.
 
http://www.kskq.org/index.php/schedule/current-shows/129-b-battery-show/2044-b-battery-show-8-24-2013-guests-kayla-and-ande-of-tipi-village-and-the-land-liberation-project

A birds eye view of village

 
We soared like birds,
catching the wind in upward spirals,
again and again,
until we dived into the next current,
only to be lifted higher.





 


A flight over the Cascade-Siskiyous and Tipi Village on a hand-made two-seater plane.

-Kayla 

Monday, August 26, 2013

The Resonance of Chief Sealth (Seattle)








Chief Sealth's intention has resonated through generations and across cultures. What's all the more remarkable is that his original oration in the mid nineteenth century is obscured. It was spoken in Lushootseed and translated into Chinook, and then various English versions have transpired. It illustrates how authenticity is an internal understanding. Here is the most recent version. This long dead man walks still...







"The President in Washington sends word that
he wishes to buy our land. But how can you                
buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is                      
strange to us. If we do not own the freshness
of the air and the sparkle of the water, how
can you buy them?
Every part of the earth is sacred to my people.
Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore,
every mist in the dark woods, every meadow,
every humming insect. All are holy in the
memory and experience of my people.
We know the sap which courses through the
trees as we know the blood that courses
through our veins. We are part of the earth
and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are
our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle,
these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the
dew in the meadow, the body heat of the
pony, and man all belong to the same family.
The shining water that moves in the streams
and rivers is not just water, but the blood of
our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you
must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy
reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells
of events and memories in the life of my
people. The water's murmur is the voice of my
father's father.
The rivers are our brothers. They quench our
thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our
children. So you must give the rivers the
kindness that you would give any brother.
If we sell you our land, remember that the air
is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit
with all the life that it supports. The wind that
gave our grandfather his first breath also
received his last sigh. The wind also gives our
children the spirit of life. So if we sell our
land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a
place where man can go to taste the wind that
is sweetened by the meadow flowers.
Will you teach your children what we have
taught our children? That the earth is our
mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the
sons of the earth.
This we know: the earth does not belong to
man, man belongs to the earth. All things are
connected like the blood that unites us all.
Man did not weave the web of life, he is
merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the
web, he does to himself.
One thing we know: our God is also your God.
The earth is precious to him and to harm the
earth is to heap contempt on its creator.
Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will
happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered?
The wild horses tamed? What will happen when
the secret corners of the forest are heavy with
the scent of many men and the view of the
ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where
will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle
be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the
swift pony and then hunt? The end of living
and the beginning of survival.
When the last red man has vanished with this
wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow
of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these
shores and forests still be here? Will there be
any of the spirit of my people left?
We love this earth as a newborn loves its
mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land,
love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we
have cared for it. Hold in your mind the
memory of the land as it is when you receive
it. Preserve the land for all children, and love
it, as God loves us.
As we are part of the land, you too are part of
the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also
precious to you.
One thing we know - there is only one God. No
man, be he Red man or White man, can be
apart. We are all brothers after all."

Sunday, August 25, 2013

To the sociopaths with political power (you know who you are). An answer of love.

Tipi Village in the Mail Tribune!

Awoke this morning to raindrops, a small but cozy fire and a lovely article on the front page of the Mail Tribune.  Thank you Mark Freeman and Jamie Lusch for your interpretation of this place through words and photos.  Well done. 
Check it out.


http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130825/NEWS/308250314

-Kayla

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Did you get your raffle ticket yet?


Support The Project and join the raffle!  Some awesome prizes include a Rogue Dwellings tipi, a new adult tricycle, an hour massage by an LMT, Lindy Kehoe artwork, Fair Ophelia Designs hooded scarf, an obsidian antler-handled knife and more being donated all the time!!

Tickets are $3 or 3 for $10  ;)

Be sure to include your email, phone and the words RAFFLE ENTRY with your payment! We will put this info on your ticket(s), draw names on the 1st of October and contact you then.  Thanks!

            
                                                                  


Contact us if you would like to donate a prize to the raffle.
541-864-9250
LandLiberationFund@gmail.com


Sunday, August 18, 2013

Video launched out to the World!

Yes! Our Project video was released into the world for the first time at The Peace Village Festival last night. Thank you everyone who helped make that happen. Please watch it, feel it, like it and share it wide and far. It's all about getting the word out now. And that means we need your help to do that. Much love and gratitude.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Mail Tribune, Video Editing

Today the Mail Tribune came. We had some good conversation 'round the hearth. We'll see if we can post the audio.
And then we did some video editing with stalwart Uncle Ed for the indiegogo movie...

Monday, August 12, 2013

Interview on KSKQ

Tune in to KSKQ tomorrow, Tuesday 13th August, 3-4 PDT to hear people (not sure exactly who yet) from Tipi Village speak about the Land Liberation Project!

http://www.kskq.org/

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Hearth Tidings Issue 2

Here's a link to the second edition of Hearth Tidings, newsletter of Tipi Village, literally cut and pasted and typed on a proper typewriter (then taken to the print shop and turned into a .pdf ;^):

http://www.scribd.com/doc/158683640/
Hearth-Tidings-Issue-2

Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael...

Thanks to Daniel for giving his support to the project. His work has been a big inspiration to many with aspirations towards turning to the ancient future:

http://www.ishmael.org/Interaction/NewsAndInfo/detail.cfm?record=350

Ande's Version Of How He Came To Be At Tipi Village

To fill out some history of Tipi Village in Southern Oregon, here's my version of how here came to be now- Ande

This story is true.
It does not begin with the man who tasted Mother Earth and her moist, green, Cymreig hills. Nor with the legend of an Irishman who showed him how to shelter himself from the horizontal sleet of that place, or the many who dreamed with that dream or lived with that life of that valley tucked between those moors.
It does not start with his journey West across the ocean to the back of the Great Turtle. Or with the lodge he made and his bamboo poles and his Rainbow trail and his lodge-pole pine.
Not, too, his arrival in the North-West, or even when he met, and loved for the first time, his wife and took her to the aftermath of Ms. Katrina to shelter the people.
We can begin this story after their first child was born and their second was due. Longing for a place where they could simply pitch their lodge, surrounded by Cascades and Siskiyou's, they gazed towards the horizon and said,"Look at all that Mother Earth, let's just go there and see what happens."
So they faced some fear and they went and they found a place of iridescent splendour, by the creek. And their baby arrived.
Then a man in a uniform with a gun arrived and said,"Well, this place is beyond my jurisdiction, have a nice day." And he left in his white truck.
Then a woman came and said,"Yup, this is our land, you're welcome." That was five and a half years ago from the telling of this tale.
Many more and different things have happened since and this small valley has continued to open in welcome abandon to this family now of six. And families and non-families have come and gone and stayed and children have been caught again and again in the arms of the Great Mother and her connection and their connection has grown and strengthened and deepened through their blood and water, breath and fire, bone and stone.
They are re-learning life and balance and harmony and how to walk that walk in honest love. Not to teach or educate, or even to be an example but because it feels good to walk in inspiration with Great Mother in a wholesome way.
The process continues to unfold and the people become more whole. They de-fragment in the sweat lodge. They see the land flourish and thrive as they flourish and thrive.
The strength of their connection is supported by precepts such as moving twice a year, Autumn and Spring dropping 2500' in elevation and moving 5-6 miles in distance. Maintaining an open community through the openness of the Big Lodge. Living away from the road and maintaining living place free from the oppression and inherent damage of fossil fueled machinery. Carrying wood, fetching water. Living around the fire and sleeping with their love, on the ground

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Letter to a tipi enthusiasts newsgroup

The following is a response to the Lodge Owners newsgroup to which I am subscribed:

Thanks the feedback. Yes, landowners have more 'rights' than the people who dwell in a place. That seems to have been the history of settlement in this Turtle Island. The current landowners have left us, largely, to our own governance and, of course, it's not been without difficulty (but also a massive dose of harmony). The group proposing to buy and evict the community are intending to sell the land back to the federal government, as a part of the Soda Mountain National Monument. Which is not compatible with nomadic human use, apparently. We can see the touch of millennia of human interaction in this land. The land thrives as people thrive and interact symbiotically. Preserving land is as detrimental as logging and fire suppression. Many species are disappearing through the lack of regular burning and then through the catastrophic effects of huge fires when there's been too much fuel build up. The land lives as we do We have 501(c)3 status under The Way Foundation (Earth Teach Forest Park).The land will be owned by the trust and will never be sold. We know that Mother Earth is always there, stopping us from hurtling towards the Sun and we know how to move swiftly, pitch and strike our lodges and roll out our beds, stay in a place for a night, couple of weeks or, in this case, a few years. A big part of the inspiration of The Project is to be an example, or maintain an option within western industrialization, of how to live with Earth. No other structure, to my knowledge, facilitates this like a tipi does. When it comes to income we are autonomous within the collective. I have a tipi making business, completely off grid, off road, treadle powered. Others widcraft, tan hides, make bows. The Village is an ongoing workshop, in some senses. It's of paramount importance to maintain openness to anyone, while we acknowledge that this way is not for everyone, extractivist exploitation is recognised as completely unsustainable. Please don't hesitate to join in. Through my kids born here I can see that we're talking about the healthy future of humanity, tipping the long overdue paradigm shift that is really close... Thanks All! Ande landliberationproject.blogspot.com

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Re-introducing Humans to the Wild; Restoring Balance with Mother Earth

"We are living today only because the generations before us - our ancestors - provided for us by the manner of their responsible living."    ~Simon Ortiz

   In a time and place where the culture of the industrialized world is dominant, humans seem to be neglecting their relationship and forgetting their responsibility towards earth and how to live directly with her.  Mainstream society has a dualistic relationship with the land; either exploiting it or preserving and leaving it alone, both of these extremes being destructive.  At one end of a spectrum there is conserving wild places, keeping human interaction with them minimal (a day hike, camping, etc.).  Inherently, when these places are visited or preserved, there is a separation from them.  People come from the outside for a short time and then leave.  To preserve a place and treat it as though humans would harm it if they touch it is an indicator of a fractured culture.  If there is an attitude of 'leave no trace' then how can we feel a belonging here?  The trace we leave isn't inherently detrimental, just as a bird, snake or ants is not.  Of course a trace will be left, and hopefully, in the sense of the words definition 'a small amount or barely noticeable indication'.  At the other end of this spectrum there is exploitation (which created the need to protect the land in the first place).  There is an extractivist mentality of relating with the Earth.  This leads to a monoculture with harmful farming practices, clear cutting, strip mining and water poisoning.  Wildness disappears and culture ends up finding its place rooted in something unsustainable and disconnected.

   If humans are to continue here on Earth, we must begin again to live sustainably.  Not sustainably in the sense of electric cars, solar panels, radiant flooring and biodegradable eating utensils, but in a deeper sense (although, sure, these things may be a small step in a more considerate direction).  This deeper sense of sustainability comes from having an intimate relationship with the natural world.

   There is a way beyond this paradigm, a life way where humans live together, physically, on the ground, rooted in a place with nature.  Daily practices involve engaging directly with this place and a wholesome relationship with it thus developed.  This direct relationship demands greater awareness and reverent responsibility which inherently cultivates a healthy basis for deep, sustainable living.  This is where we can begin to weave and mend the fragments of a fragmented world.  This is where we can remember our deepest relationship with all.   

-Kayla