(Don’t miss the
coverage of WRFF 2015 from Unicorn Riot!)
“The whole earth is in jail and we’re plotting this incredible jailbreak.”
Update: Online fundraiser live!
We are very happy to announce that, for the 9th year running, the Wild Roots Feral Futures (WRFF) eco-defense, direct action, and rewilding encampment will take place in the forests of Southwest Colorado this coming June 17-25, 2017 (exact location to be announced). WRFF is an informal, completely free and non-commercial, and loosely organized camp operating on (less than a) shoe-string budget, formed entirely off of donated, scavenged, or liberated supplies and sustained through 100% volunteer effort.
We would like to begin by acknowledging that Wild Roots Feral Futures takes place on occupied/stolen indigenous territory, primarily of the Nuutsiu (occasionally spelled Nuciu or Nuchu, aka “Ute”) people, as well as Diné [“Navajo”], Apache, and others. In recognition of this reality and as a first step in confronting it, we seek to establish proactive working relationships with those whose stolen land we gather upon, and open the space we temporarily gather in to the centering and amplification of indigenous voices and struggles. Our understanding is that any community of resistance that doesn’t center the voices of indigenous people and put their leadership in the forefront is a movement that is part of the problem. [Read more here…]
We would like to invite groups and individuals engaged in struggles against the destruction of the Earth (and indeed all interconnected forms of oppression) to join us and share your stories, lessons, skills, and whatever else you may have to offer. In this spirit we would like to reach out to frontline community members, local environmental groups, coalitions, and alliances everywhere, as well as more readily recognizable groups like Earth First!, Rising Tide North America, and others to come collaborate on the future of radical environmentalism and eco-defense in our bio-regions and beyond.
We would also like to reach out to groups like EF!, RTNA, and the Ruckus Society (as well as other groups and individuals) in search of trainers and workshop facilitators who are willing to dedicate themselves to attending Wild Roots Feral Futures and sharing their skills and knowledge (in a setting that lacks the financial infrastructure to compensate them as they may have come to expect from other, more well-funded groups and events). We are specifically seeking direct action, blockade, tri-pod, and tree climbing/sitting trainers (as well as gear/supplies).
Regarding the rewilding and ancestral earth skills component of WRFF, we would like to extend a similar invitation to folks with skills, knowledge, talent, or specialization in these areas to join us in the facilitation of workshops and skill shares such as fire making, shelter building, edible and medicinal plants, stalking awareness, tool & implement making, etc. We are also seeking folks with less “ancestral” outdoor survival skills such as orienteering and navigation, etc.
Daily camp life, along with workshops, skill shares, great food, friends, and music, will also include the volunteer labor necessary to camp maintenance. Please come prepared to pitch in and contribute to the workload, according to your abilities. We encourage folks who would like to plug in further to show up a few days before the official start of the event to begin set-up and stay a few days after the official end to help clean up.
Site scouting will continue until early June, at which point scouts and other organizers will rendezvous, report-back their scouting recon, and come to a consensus regarding a site location. We are also planning on choosing a secondary, back-up site location as a contingency plan for various potential scenarios. Email us for more info on getting involved with scouting and site selection processes.
WRFF is timed to take place before the Earth First! Round River Rendezvous, allowing eco-defenders to travel from one to the other. Thus we encourage the formation of a caravan from WRFF to the EF! RRR (caravans and ride shares can be coordinated through our message board at feralfutures.proboards.com.
We are currently accepting donations in the form of supplies and/or monetary contributions. Please email us for details.
Please forward this call widely, spread the word, and stay tuned for more updates!
For The Wild,
~The Wild Roots Feral Futures organizers’ collective
Email: feralfutures(at)riseup(dot)net
For the sake of comprehensiveness, we are including below our original call-out as used in years past, which is a living document, changing and evolving as we ourselves learn and grow:
We are looking for folks of all sorts to join us and help facilitate workshops, talks, discussions, skill shares, direct action and medic trainings, wild food walks, conflict transformation, and much more! We will be focusing on many things, including but by no means limited to anarchist theory and praxis, unpacking privilege, decolonization, rewilding, ancestral skills, indigenous solidarity, direct action, forest defense, earth liberation, animal liberation, security culture, civil disobedience, hand to hand combat, survival skills, evasion tactics, green anarchism, anti-civ, post-civ, star watching and navigation, maps and orienteering, shelter building, permaculture, and whatever YOU care to bring and provide. But we need everyone’s help to make this as safe, positive, and productive a space as it can be. Our own knowledge, skills, and capacities are limited. We need YOUR help!
Roles we REALLY need filled:
• Kitchen! (last year’s informal kitchen was supported by Durango Food Not Bombs and upheld communally by event participants, but this year we are once again reaching out to the likes of Seeds of Peace and Everybody’s Kitchen in hopes they’ll provide kitchen support this time around)
• Conflict transformation team (we need people of diverse gender/sexual orientations who know how to give support to survivors of sexual assault and to people with PTSD)*
• Medics! (especially WFRs, WEMTs, & EMTs of diverse gender/sexual orientations)
• Child care! (We will have a kids space and support parents in participating in communal child care)
*There is a need for both womyn (cis and trans), queer, genderqueer, gender-variant, gender-nonconforming and trans folk (etc.) on both the Conflict Transformation and Medic teams because many people in our communities aren’t going to trust men, cis people, or heteros with their health or to help with conflicts. We do not expect womyn (cis and trans), queer, genderqueer, gender-variant, gender-nonconforming and trans folk (etc.) to do the support work, but seek to create and maintain a safe and welcoming space that allows for plenty of room for it.
We at the Wild Roots Feral Futures organizers collective feel that white dominated spaces & racism within our communities are a significant problem, & feel the need to confront that. Due to the legacy of racism within our communities of resistance we will be holding workshops on white privilege, settler privilege, & cultural appropriation.
We also feel that cis-hetero, male dominated spaces and hetropatriarchy within our communities are equally problematic, and will also be holding workshops on patriarchy and (anti)sexism.
We would like to put out a request for workshops on white privilege, hetero privilege, cis privilege, and male privilege. We recognize that it’s not the job of those of us oppressed by white supremacy and heteropatriarchy to facilitate those workshops. We don’t expect oppressed people to attend, but you are welcome to. While it is not the responsibility or duty of queers, POC (People of Color), and other oppressed and marginalized people to assist white, cis-hetero, and privileged people unpack, deconstruct, and confront their own privilege, these processes will be open to all.
**(Note: These are complex processes of unlearning social behavior that will likely be intergenerational in healing, as was the wounding. No one workshop, or series of workshops, should be thought adequate in deconstructing, unpacking, and ultimately destroying such systems of social privilege & oppression. This is a process, not a product.)**
We intend to create clinic space with some privacy provided for patient care so that the bodies of trans people (and also cis womyn) aren’t on display during vulnerable moments. We will also be implementing a safe(r) space policy to keep perpetrators of sexual/physical assault out of our community and support survivors by respecting any processes of accountability they initiate.
Women, queer & trans folk have full support of the Wild Roots Feral Futures organizers collective to establish “safer spaces” for themselves, including spaces that are only for people who are oppressed by sexism and cis-hetero patriarchy, people who are queer, and people who are trans. We recognize the need for those spaces because no matter how much we work on our privilege, as recovering cis-hetero-patriarchists still in the process of mental and psychological decolonization and recovery, we’re still going to be bringing heteropatriarchy into the space. We support the formation of such spaces on the terms of those forming them.
We also intend to create family/child friendly space that includes multigenerational workshops and activities appropriate (and fun!) for kids.
Camp guidelines (in progress):
We seek to create safe(r), accountable space for all, including families and children, the sober, and those who identify as GLBTQI (etc.).
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Wild Roots Feral Futures 