Tamara Sheen, a Berkshires Community Member, shares her story…
“My friend Lev Natan gave me his book Climate Leadership, How we can Build a Viable Future, in 2022 and as I read and answered the questions he posed, I asked myself, what was I doing in my community for the environment or awareness of it?
Eating as local as possible, composting, growing a garden and making herbal medicine and living simply has been my life for decades, but there was more being asked of me than that. And I felt called by Lev’s challenge.
Soon after, I attended IPD in my local town of Great Barrington sponsored by AVF and heard the call from powerful Indigenous speakers toward intergenerational healing and how their forbearers’ lives were completely intertwined with The Great Mother Earth and Father Sky, rivers, oceans and all the four/two legged and winged relatives.
I dreamt that night about our Housatonic River which is polluted and felt that she was asking me to help her! Later in the day I came across a documentary film trailer for Vananda Shiva’s “Seeds” and was so moved that I decided I must get a group together to buy a screening as that was the only way to see the film.
Later that week, I went to help my Friend Sunder Ashni at her Farm in Sheffield and shared my vision for a film screening of that film and possibly birthing a Series! Ashni responded with great enthusiasm and her own similar vision, as a huge Red tail Hawk listened in from a nearby tree we birthed our Environmental Film series. We found a perfect venue at Random Harvest food Market in Craryville, NY and with our Sister Hillary Hawk who co-owns Random Harvest, we showed our first film Invisible Hand about the Rights of Water.
We have shown a total of 8 short films ranging from The Rights of Water, Indigenous Food ways as Education Seed Saving and Honey Bees to more Socio Political films in our 2nd series, which was titled ‘Liberation Teach-ins , tackling many important yet volatile subjects during the early days after October 7th, the Opioid epidemic, Cobolt mining in the DRC, and more.
We created these events as a community learning space and created agreements for our discussions after the films which were more often than not around troubling and difficult topics and moving human stories!
We shared food, tea, and song as we tackled these issues together!
Many people who came said they found it comforting to watch and witness these sometimes difficult stories together, instead of watching the films alone, at home; and in these times of global unrest and technological isolation sharing a heart-provoking film with others was welcome and a relief… and there was popcorn!
Alliance For A Viable Future and Indigenous Peoples Day are directly responsible in inspiring this Film Series / Teach -ins which have given rise to raising awareness for the Environment both natural and social; and hopefully ongoing opportunity for learning together in person and coming together as a community.”
Thank you to Tamara for sharing your inspiring story!
Now it’s your turn…
SHARE YOUR STORY:
If our annual Indigenous Peoples’ Day weekend program has made a difference for your and/or your work in the community, and world, we would love to hear your story!!!
Please reach out to AVF Co-Director, Lev Natan at lev@allianceforaviablefuture.org to begin the process of sharing your story. It really makes a difference to us, and the whole community, when we hear inspiring stories like this!