Join Kali Akuno in discussion with Layla K. Feghali in a conversation about why in a time of genocide we urgently need to recenter indigenous knowledge(s) and practices and challenge the dominant narratives of nationhood, nation-states, nationality, empire, international law and human rights.

This will be a 2 part discussion.

Part 1 will take place on Wednesday, March 13th at 5 pm est/4 pm cst/3 pm mst/2 pm pst

Part 2 will take place on Wednesday, April 3rd at 5 pm est/4 pm cst/3 pm mst/2 pm pst

Layla K. Feghali is an ethnobotanist, cultural worker, and author who lives between her ancestral village in Lebanon and her diasporic home in California, where she was born and raised. Her dedication is the stewardship of our earth's eco-cultural integrity aka decolonization (not as a metaphor)-- and the many layers of relational restoration, systemic reckoning, and healing that entails. Feghali offers a line of plantcestral medicine, education, and other culturally-rooted offerings and mutual aid efforts, with an emphasis on the land-based ancestral practices from the Crossroads (southwest Asia + northern Africa) and its diasporas.

Her recent book, The Land in Our Bones, documents cultural herbal and healing knowledge from Syria to the Sinai, while interrogating colonialism and its lingering wounds on the culture of our displaced world. Feghali asks: How do we embody what binds us together while holding the ways we’ve been wrested apart? What does it mean to be of a place when extraction and empire destroy its geographies? How do we disentangle ourselves from exploitive paradigms to create more liberatory worlds? What can we re-member when we reach beyond what’s been lost and tend to what remains? How do we cultivate regenerative kinships with the lands where we live, especially when displacement has led us to other peoples' unceded territories?

Return to the Source

A Discussion about Decolonization, Indigenization, and the Need for Ancestral Knowledge to Survive the Present and Build a Regenerative Future