BIODIVERSITIES OF GENDER (BOG)

Biodiversities of Gender (BOG) is a multi-year research partnership between Dr. Astrida Neimanis and her FEELed Lab, Michael V. Smith, Dr. Cole Mash (IWC Executive Director) and Erin Scott, where Inspired Word Cafe and the artist-research team explored the interrelationship between gender, climate crisis, and land relations on syilx territories. Through a series of artistic workshops, IWC collective members and the research team participated in exploratory learning about gender and plant relationality, sound as genderless or gender resistant, syilx concepts of gender and land, and land as teacher. 

To quote Astrida on her FEELed Lab’s blog post: “This project sought to bring together ideas of gender abundance, Land relations (including being in good relations with syilx people on whose Land we work), and climate justice. All of these directions can support anticolonial ways of being and knowing, so we wanted to see what threads we could weave between them.”

During this process, we have been inquiring about how these intersections of gender abundance, land relations, and syilx sovereignty could help guide or shape our values at IWC. The final outcome of the many workshops, meetings, and teachings is a value document that will guide Inspired Word Cafe’s decision making, processes, and actions in hopes of continuing our goals of contributing meaningfully to the sense of inclusion and belonging within the Okanagan Valley.

A quirky and creative zine was made during the Nature is Weird Zinemaking Workshop during the New Leaves Festival, and we will be distributing it during season 17!

This new value document will be added here once it is completed.

We thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their support with this project.