In this episode, podcast producer Jackson Kroopf interviews Kimberly Ann Johnson and Stephen Jenkinson about their upcoming live audio series Never Land / Sever Land – Dirt, Place, Ancestry, and The Making of Culture From The New World. They discuss the impact of their recent trip to Ireland on their ongoing collaboration around culture-making in the wake of a global pandemic. They reveal details about Stephen’s work-in-progress manuscript and how it relates to orphan wisdom. They consider the implications of the “New World” in contemporary circumstances, the sticky territory of ancestry, and how dirt fits into all of this. A glimpse into a very special offering to come, this conversation gives you a preview into what happens when these two come together to consider the topics and work they’ve devoted so much of their respective writings and teachings to: how to consider (your) place when history is never far past.
Bio
Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW is a worker, author, storyteller, musician and culture activist. In 2010, he founded Orphan Wisdom, a house for learning skills of deep living and making human culture that are mandatory in endangered, endangering times. It is a redemptive project that comes from where he comes from. It is rooted in knowing history, being claimed by ancestry, working for a time he won’t live to see. When not on the road, he makes books, succumbs to interviews, tends to labours on a small farm, mends broken handles and fences, and bends towards lifeways dictated by the seasons of the boreal borderlands.
What you’ll hear wonderings about:
- What it means for North Americans to visit their ancestral homeland
- The consequences of being cultural orphans
- Native culture and its relationship to whiteness
- What ancestry means to your travel plans
- The difference between making culture from and making culture for…
- Peter Behrens’ book “The Law of Dream”
- Stephen’s musings on Tobe Hooper and Stephen Spielberg’s film Poltergeist
- Back to the land / farming fantasies
- Dirt and its layered wisdom
- Shifts in Stephen’s teachings from warnings to descriptors
- The Unauthorized history of North America
- What it means to always feel like you’re running
- Why its different to listen to this series live…
- What wellness has to do with all this…
You can learn more and sign up for their upcoming class “Never Land / Sever Land: Dirt, Place, Ancestry, and The Makings of Culture From the New World” from October 20th-November 17th at:
https://kimberlyannjohnson.com/never-land/
photo by Mattias Olsson