Chakras and Shotguns

E114: Reconnecting with the Land and Indigenous Survival Skills feat. Jamani Ashé

• Mik & Jenn • Episode 114

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In this episode of Chakras and Shotguns, we’re joined by Jamani Ashé, an Afro-Indigenous earth-tender and community organizer, to discuss the deep importance of reconnecting with Mother Nature for ancestral healing. Jamani shares their insights on how nurturing a relationship with the land can help us heal generational trauma and cultivate resilience in the face of climate challenges. Together, we explore the intersection of ancestral remembrance, disaster preparedness, and re-indigenizing our connection to the Earth.

Be sure to support Sankofa Roots. Visit their website and follow their Instagram page. 

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Mik:

You are now listening to

Jenn:

Chakras and Shotguns. Welcome to Chakras and Shotguns, the podcast that guides you on a journey of spiritual development and personal preparedness. I'm Jen, a certified yapper, former lawyer and wellness entrepreneur.

Mik:

And I'm Mik, a great listener, a marketer, a Reiki master and prepper. So if you're like me and you start tracing back your lineage, you will find that at some point, You know, you had ancestors who were very agricultural. They spent time working the lands. They knew all about herbs and the best time to plant crops and how to have a positive relationship with the planet. Right. But as we've made this transition into a more industrial, Society where we're living in cities and we're spending more time on zooms than actually out in nature. Hey, you got to get on the zoom. We've lost touch with our ability to connect with the land. And so today we're actually welcoming a guest, Jamani Ashe. Who's going to talk to us about how she has an organization called Sankofa Roots, which is all about reconnecting folks with the land.

Jenn:

It's a phenomenal interview. I can't wait for you guys to hear it. But before we get into that, we want to remind you to join our mailing lists. We send out newsletters periodically, goodies, reading lists. Uh, what else?

Mik:

Event notifications, discounts on merch, specials on our readings.

Jenn:

Special announcements, et cetera, et cetera. And so forth. You don't want to be out of the loop. So go do that. You can find the link in the show notes and go to our website, shotguns and shotguns. com. So definitely make sure you're signed up if you aren't already.

Mik:

All right, well, let's begin the episode as we always do with a little breathwork meditation to put us into a mindful place.

Jenn:

Hmm. All right. What are we going to do today? This is a freestyle. I feel like I'm on one of six and part. Let's do it. Okay. So I think a big part of meditation is also opening up yourself outside of yourself to collective energy. And nature is a very big representation of that and not in a symbolic way. Like literally is, um, I'll have to tell that story another day, but connecting to mother earth and the energies and the frankly spirits that are part of nature and part of our world really helps you see outside of yourself. And. How, you know, cover letters are kind of pointless when everything's communicating together to work as one, to keep us on this planet and sustained and living this life. Right. So for this breathwork meditation, we're going to open ourselves to just receiving some more of that energy. It'll be a little bit grounding, a little bit receiving, but. You know, it'll be cute. All right. So find a comfortable seat. You can always lie down. You want to place your hands somewhere on your body face up to receive flicker your eyes closed if you haven't already. And let's begin. Inhale deeply through your nose, feeling your belly expand and exhale your breath back out through your mouth. Let's do that again. Inhale through your nose. And exhale your breath back out through your mouth. Let's do one more together. Inhale through your nose, seal your lips closed, and exhale your breath back out through your nose. Allow yourself to breathe normally, just noticing your inhales and your exhales. Let's do a brief body scan starting from our toes. Up to our ankles, our calves, our knees, our thighs, our hips, our navel, our ribcage, our chest, throat, all the way up to the space between your eyebrows, your third eye, and the crown of your head. Where can you adjust and get more comfortable? Where does your awareness maybe bring some sensation? Do you feel any tingling in your third eye or your crown? Just noticing the information. Visualize yourself standing in nature. Specifically, visualize your feet. Rooted in the earth, visualize roots growing out of your feet, anchoring you deep into the soil, keeping the energy and the frequency of connectedness. Do you feel the trees and the ground and the sky above you? Do you feel as a part of that whole? That we're all beings of a collective energy. And that separation doesn't really exist of nature and how nature works. Take a deep inhale in through your nose. Filling yourself up with gratitude for the connection that we all have to nature, to Mother Earth. Open your mouth. Exhale, let something go. One more. Inhale deeply through your nose. Exhale, let something go. Flip your palms back over. Face down somewhere on your body, maybe on your belly or in your heart. Start to wiggle your toes. Maybe rotate your ankles. Wiggle your fingers. You can even take a full body stretch. When you're ready, come back into the room, flickering your eyes open last. Welcome back.

Mik:

All right. That was dope. I almost forgot we were recording for a second. I was like really rooted in with the trees and stuff and I had to remind myself that I was actually on camera right now, so,

Jenn:

Oh,

Mik:

you had me out there.

Jenn:

Oh, goody. I'm glad. That's

Mik:

good. All right, so let's introduce our guest. Jemani Ashe is an Afro Indigenous, gender free, community organizer, earth tender, and time traveler living on unceded territory. Nissan land or Nissan. I don't know if I pronounced that correctly. Forgive me if I got that wrong, but that land is in the Sierra foothills of Northern California. She is a survivor and a survivalist and has committed her life's work to building critical skills for disaster preparedness. and climate resilience. She's the founder and steward of Sankofa Roots. Their work meets at the intersection of critical survival skills, ancestral remembrance, and re indigenizing our relationship to the land. In their free time, you can catch them foraging, making music, or swimming in the local Yuba River. So without any further ado, we go into our interview with Jemani Hasseh. All right, Jumaane. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're so excited to get into this conversation and talk with you about your organization and how folks can better connect with land.

Jenn:

Yes. Yes. So can you tell us about Sankofa Roots? Why you created it, you know, what was your thought process, your mission statement

Jamani:

for creating this organization? Yes. Thanks so much for having me all. It's a blessing to be here. Yeah. Sankofa Roots is a land based learning and healing organization. Um, and we connect Black, Indigenous, and queer communities with outdoor experiences that really build critical skills for outdoor preparedness, climate resilience, um, being able to live off the land, while also healing our relationship to land and lineage in the process. So we teach skills like wild plant identification, fire making from scratch, how to make cordage or rope, um, natural shelter building, water filtration, um, basic first aid skills. Um, and we also teach like cultural skills and cultural crafts like basket weaving, um, And while medicine making, we support people with internal skills, like nervous system regulation and various ways to engage in prayer and spiritual cleansing. Um, so our work really meets at the intersections of. you know, building critical survival skills while also embracing ancestral remembrance and really trying to re indigenize our relationship with the land, um, in there.

Mik:

Yeah. I remember, I guess it was two years ago when I first saw their Instagram account. I was like, Oh, this is, this is shotguns and shotguns all the way. I gotta be there. I gotta be there. So I love it.

Jenn:

Spirituality and preparedness.

Mik:

Exactly. I wanted to, uh, ask you a little bit more about the name. Sankofa roots and like kind of how you landed on that name and why it resonates with you.

Jamani:

Yeah. So I mean, Sankofa is an Ndrenka symbol in Ghana and Ndrenka symbols are like, you know, art or images or concepts that represent proverbs. The image for Sankofa is a bird reaching back, so the word Sankofa literally translates to, um, to go back and fetch, um, and I like to elaborate on that a little bit and say to go back and fetch what our ancestors left for us. Um, it was really a practice of remembrance, you know, and of radically resourcing the wisdom that lives inside of us. Through our lineage, you know, so we like to say these are not, you know, quote unquote, primitive skills that we're learning. These are ancestral practices and spiritual technologies that we're remembering, like, and all of this lives inside of us. Um, so that's where the name comes from. Initially there was some skepticism about using the name Sankofa. We were like, are people going to know what Sankofa means, you know, but You know, I think if you know, you know, and if you care to know, you'll do the work to find out. So

Mik:

Google is free as they say, right?

Jenn:

I love spiritual technology.

Mik:

I

Jenn:

love that. I, and I'm, I'm fresh off of a plant medicine journey on Friday where. It was outside. I was in nature and it was supposed to be a micro and it went to a macro and I was with mother earth and inside a tree. And so in a lot of indigenous things were shown to me. So it was. Very, very powerful. Like hearing what you're saying, it's like very powerful. It feels like very full circle for me that these connections, like, you know, you spoke to how we think of indigenous practices as primitive, right. Or even like the conditioning or how we learn about Native Americans in school, or like, this is what they did and this is how they did things and how we can be so arrogant to think that we've advanced past that, but there's so much here. connection loss to nature and what's around us and how intelligent nature is and all of the unseen things that we don't, that we're not connected to.

Mik:

Yeah. We talk about it all the time about how just even looking at our family tree, there was a point where we were all, Living off the land, and we thought it would provide provide some type of progress for our lineage to leave the land and come into the city and get a job and go to school and all that. And we've lost so much in that supposed progress that we made. Right idea. You know, I think you say healing our relationship to land and lineage, you know, and that language just really resonates with getting back to that. Right.

Jamani:

Yeah, that's right. I mean, I grew up in the city, you know, like my folks did not take us outdoors. The woods and the rivers, that's where dead bodies were found in the streets in Norfolk, New Jersey. Okay, so we stayed away from them as kids. I don't even think I knew what a hike was until I was in college, right? And my grandparents were sharecroppers in North Carolina and their grandparents were enslaved. You know, my grandma talks about having arthritis because she's been picking cotton since she was four or five years old. And as soon as they became of age, they went to the North and they left all that behind. Right. And we felt like camping, farming, going to the woods with slave shit, you know, and yeah, so I felt like in many ways. You know, and Sankofa Roots coming to me was the land calling me home. Um, because yeah, I just, I didn't grow up with those tools or those skills or that access to nature and knowing how regulating being in the outdoors could be for my nervous system.

Mik:

I love it. I love it. So I guess thinking about specifically some of these like outdoor preparedness skills and you talked a little bit about climate resilience, can you just talk a little bit about why you think that's important skill, particularly for for black and queer and indigenous folks

Jamani:

and what it is. Yeah.

Mik:

And what it is. Yeah.

Jamani:

Right. Yeah. So for me, climate resilience, um, you know, in so many ways is having the skills individually, but also in your family and in your community, having the skills and having the confidence, to be able to not just survive, but also thrive in the face of climate crisis. Not just climate crisis, but also housing instability, you know, political crisis, moments of state violence, you know, if, if we get another, 2020 like pandemic and all the grocery stores and pharmacies are empty, right? Our people feeling like they have the confidence and the skills to go forage food and medicine for our people, um, to be able to swim, you know, in the face of an enormous wave or hurricane. Um, oftentimes it's us who are the most vulnerable. Who are left behind when shit hits the fan. And we urgently need these skills, um, as governments, nonprofits, foundations, they won't be saving themselves, not us. So by doing this work, we're really trying to place our chances of survival in our own hands as black, indigenous, and queer people. Yeah. That speaks to a lot of the stuff

Jenn:

we've talked about over episodes, particularly like when we do episodes about water or electricity of just how Almost like complacent or even, I don't want to say childlike, but that we, you know, we expect to turn on the tap and clean water to come out. And there's a clean, we don't know, you know, we expect to flip the light switch as long as the bills are paid that the lights come on and that. The concept for like the vast majority of us of that not happening and people don't know what

Mik:

to do with the internet goes out. Right. Like just, just that like we've gotten so

Jamani:

Conditioned, you know? Yeah. And I feel, you know, there's a lot of outdoor preparedness off grid, you know, survival trainings out there. Um, but I feel they're often taught through this like settler colonial lens of it. extracting and dominating and taming the natural world, right? Yeah. And we just don't embrace that narrative at all. We know that our ancestors practice ways of being in right relationship with all of life. We know that our people had interdependence. We're all living beings. You know, we know that our cultures really teach us to nurture life. And to cultivate belonging and to share and build solidarity economies and that, you know, the spiritual and material worlds are intertwined. And so this is the lens that we really embrace and try to teach from in our outdoor preparedness and climate resilience training.

Mik:

I love that. I love that. I've been talking to Jen. I've been reading, creating Sweetgrass. Um, and that whole book just talks about like how you only supposed to take, you know, what you need and how you're meant to fish in a way that will allow for more fish to be there the next time you go fishing. Right? Like there's all these practices that were cultivated over generations to be able to

Jenn:

have

Mik:

a harmonious relationship with the earth. So yeah. Yeah, I love, I just love Sankofa roots and what they stand for. So,

Jenn:

so there are people who want, and myself included, I would love to know more about outdoor preparedness and like, because I admittedly, if you dropped me off, I'd be like, what's that? Do I have an app? Is it offline? Um, but I can feel, I often feel intimidated of like, okay, if I do a weekend here or a weekend there. Will I know enough? Will I be prepared enough? And maybe this is other people's perspective, but if I get overwhelmed, it's like, well, if I can't master it, then it's not, then it might not be worth doing. Or like, I don't know if I, if I can get enough out of it in one weekend and keep my skills up. And I feel like I have to really dedicate myself to just being prepared outdoors.

Mik:

You already feel like you don't have enough time for this stuff you got going on. So

Jenn:

it's like, So what do you say to people who may feel intimidated by that? They're like, well, I don't know if I'm ever going to be, you know, able to go on that show. Was it Naked and Afraid or Survivor? But I do want to learn something, you know, how can I, how can I get the most out of

Jamani:

it with Senko for Roots? Well, sidebar, I just want to say, I actually got invited to be on Naked and Afraid like a couple years ago, but I. respectfully declined because you know, it's just not the kind of show I'm trying to be on. Like, invite me on alone or something. Like, not naked at all. But yeah, back to your question. Yeah, what would I say to people who feel intimidated by the experience? One, just The land is calling you, you know, Mother Earth is always welcoming you home to be in a deeper relationship with her. And you can start in your backyard, you know, when our trips are beginner friendly, so people can just show up as they are. You don't have to bring any equipment, we'll provide all the equipment that you need. If you are feeling intimidated, I tell people try to go camping in your backyard, you know, like do that first before you come into the woods, just so you have the experience, um, or have like a sleepover with your friends in the tent and just build a tent in your living room. Right. But just to have break yourself in a little bit. Yeah. And I will also just ask, like, how liberating would it be to know how to keep yourself warm through building fires and not have to pay an electricity bill, you know, or to be able to filter your own water and not have to pay for filters or drink poison or yeah, just to have the skills and the confidence to support your family and your community in that way. And also thinking about intergenerational responsibility, right? So like what we learn today will stay in our cellular memory. For seven generations to come or beyond, right? And everything that's in us has been transferred down through cellular memory for many generations. The trauma, yes, but also the gifts. the skills, the brilliance. And so everything that we put inside ourselves, everything we know how to do with our hands matters because all of that is going to be passed down to the next generation and the next generation and the next generation. And so if you don't, if you're intimidated to do it for yourself, do it for future generations. Uh, because our people are gonna need these skills.

Mik:

I love it. I love it. I think this is probably a good, good time for me to kind of talk about my experience. So Uh, I think for me, I had not been in a tent camping situation and probably I think it's been 11 years since I had done a camping trip and I saw that the advertisement on Instagram about Sankofa Roots and the skill workshop that they were doing, and I was like, I got to make this happen. And so I worked it out with Jen. She was going to watch the girls. I drove up from LA, uh, all the way up to the Bay area. Uh, and, and had an amazing time learning so many different skills, making new friends. Uh, and learned how to put together a structure to sleep under naturally with sticks, uh, leaves. And it was, it was amazing. We even learned how to build a stretcher out of like hoodies and jackets. If you ever needed to get someone off a mountain or you know, and you're in the wilderness and you need to carry someone. Uh, we went down to the, to the river, uh, and I learned how to different types of filters and like understanding what they can filter out. Um, so it, it was an absolutely amazing time. Um, you know, I highly recommend it. Uh, I know this. A couple more this year. Uh, and hopefully there'll be a ton next year that you guys can can check out. So that's my plug for for Sankofa roots and going on one of their

Jamani:

much make. Yes, we're really blessed to have you in the Sankofa roots community.

Mik:

Awesome. Awesome. Tell me a little bit about some of the challenges, though, that you may have faced when kind of getting this off the ground and some of the experiences that you put together.

Jamani:

Yeah. Um, I would say, one, just finding safe places to host our trainings. Um, you know, right now we rent land backwoods. We don't go to campsites. We try to take people into the backwoods in a realistic situation. And yeah, you know, it's just, one, not a lot of Black or Indigenous people own land. Right? So a lot of the landowners, I think over 97 percent of landowners in the United States are white folks. Um, and so just finding spaces that are stewarded by us and for us that are safe for us to experiment and learn and heal together. where we don't have to see no white people all weekend, um, is important, right? And that has totally been a challenge. Um, and yeah, we have been on a journey towards fundraising so that we can, you know, potentially financially acquire some land and community and have a safe space to host our trainings. To share with community members so that they can have outdoor experiences of their own as well. So that's definitely been a challenge. Yeah. And I would say, I mean, honestly, I think people have high expectations of us, um, in the work, you know, just because I feel like we're doing something that is so urgently needed, um, and so deeply connected to. Um, healing justice and ancestral remembrance. Um, and sometimes we disappoint people cause we are human, you know, and we are a part of this worldly experience, but we've had challenges in the past with people like. Really wanting us to require masks at our trainings, right? And, you know, because we do outdoor programming and we really want to build connection and relationship, um, that's not something that we require, you know, but people have free will. Um, we also like to hire folks who have lived experience in either housing or, I mean, housing instability or, um, climate crisis. or political crisis. Like we would like to hire folks with lived experience who learned their skills and cultivated their skills through lived experience. Um, and oftentimes, um, those folks don't have a lot of experience with, you know, being woke quote unquote, right. Or like gender expansiveness, um, and, and understanding that. And so, yeah, I think that's a challenge too, you know, just some about my background, like before I did. You know, outdoor preparedness work. Um, I worked in abolitionist organizing. Um, and so I work with people who are in prison and people who are recently returning home from being in prison. And I did a lot of conflict transformation work, um, mediation, accountability processes, um, and part of my deep value system. is that, yeah, like, I just have a bigger tolerance for growth and forgiveness and transformation than most people. And so I think some people are like, no one should be able to work for Sankofa Roots unless they like, check all of these, you know, woke social boxes. Um, and that's just not a part of my values. Like, I believe that none of us should be left behind, you know, even people who are still learning to respect your pronouns, we're still going to bring them with us. Right. And they also have valuable things to add to the work too. So that's been like, you know, a challenge that some folks are. have a lot of skills, but not a lot of the social, you know, skills. Um, but they have the hands on skills. And some people have a lot of social skills, but not a lot of hands on skills. But how do we work together and bring our communities together, um, so that we can all feel like respectful and belonging in the space?

Mik:

So I remember at the training back in 2022, We did do some kind of reflective circles and we had even like an altar where we laid out some things. Um, so I wanted to just talk a little bit or have you address. the spiritual component of Sankofa Roots and why that's important to you and kind of some, even talk about maybe some of the experiences that you've had spiritually connecting with the outdoors.

Jamani:

Yeah, most definitely. Yeah. I mean, my work with Sankofa Roots feels like a deep spiritual practice, you know, of reconnecting to my ancestral practices, um, of awakening within my cellular memory. Um, my spirituality, it can't be like, defined in a word or a category, I feel, but, um, it's very intergenerational, you know, and I, we pray to the land and we pray to future generations and we understand that nature has the ability to regulate us and heal us. on a cellular and intergenerational level. Um, and that by deepening our relationship with her, with mother earth, we're able to heal spiritually and expand our spiritual capacity. Yeah. And so I think those are some of the, the spiritual skills that we try to cultivate through the work. Yeah. And just like some folks are on a ancestral journey, you know, so, so much of what people colonization does is sever relationship, you know, and for many of us, the relationship with the lands that we come from and live on have been severed and our relationship with our lineages and ancestral customs and spiritual practices have been severed. So yeah, part of our spiritual practice is to remember. Um, that we all exist in relationship to each other to deepen these relationships, you know, with our ancestors, with the land, and so that we can be in a heart space of, of remembrance.

Jenn:

I love that. Yeah. I love that so much. And just thinking about, you know, you ask, white people, like their knee jerk reaction to camping. It's like, that's what white people do. Um, and that we've let like these knee jerk concepts about what being outside looks like keep us from this really, really deep connection. So I just love all of this. I love all the work that you

Mik:

do. I think about my mom and my mom literally does not like being outside. Like at all, like even not even the front yard, not the backyard. She's like, I don't want to be outside. And so I just like thinking about how I want to change that narrative in my lineage. And I want my girls to, to experience being outdoors and have an appreciation from, from the, for the outdoors that. You know, even in our immediate lineage isn't there. Right. So I want to try to correct that and really, you know, get them to have a relationship with mother earth. That was not something that was taught to me. And so,

Jenn:

yeah. So with that, you know, this amazing work that you do, you're overcoming these challenges. You're finding new places to be, to, to be outside. How do you envision the future of St. Coco Roots? Like what's next? Yes.

Jamani:

Yeah, we definitely envision, you know, continuing programming, um, and having more offerings for folks, you know, through community. We want to steward land, you know, in community and possibly have multiple sites. around the country or even internationally and also having year round programs. You know, we want to have summer camps and after school programs. Um, and these are things that stewarding land makes possible, right? When we have a base camp or a home site, um, so that these programs become possible. We have our signature outdoor preparedness and survival training. Um, Um, but we're, we also want to build community in ways that allow other people to share their brilliance as well. Um, so we have one community member who's about to start offering an animal processing course, um, through St. Kofa Roots. You know, we have a community member, um, who offers mushroom foraging, um, with St. Kofa Roots. Um, and so I am not the, the keeper of all skills, um, and the goal is to, yeah, build community, um, so that we could teach and learn from each other. Awesome. Awesome.

Mik:

I'm sure you have inspired a lot of our listeners just from hearing the work that you're doing. Please let them know how they can get in contact with you, how they can connect and participate with Sankofa Roots.

Jamani:

Yes, you can find us on our website at SankofaRoots. org. Um, you can also find us on Instagram or Facebook, Sankofa Roots or at Sankofa Roots. Um, yeah, and if you're interested in collaborating, you can, there's a form, a contact form on our website, you can fill out, um, or you can email me at jamani. sankofaroots. org. Yeah, we have events that are open to all, and we also do private events, so if you would like us to host something just for your staff, um, or just for your after school program, um, you We're totally open to that. And we love that.

Jenn:

Well,

Jamani:

thank you so much.

Jenn:

This was such a pleasure. Yes. I can't do something with sand cover roots. I'm just pulling down the kiddos, but we're going to, we're going to get the family, we're going to get the family up there

Mik:

for sure.

Jenn:

For sure. Yes. We

Jamani:

would love that.

Jenn:

Thank you.

Jamani:

Thanks y'all so much. Yeah, this is awesome.

Mik:

All right. We like to thank Jumani again for sharing her story with us on Chakras and Shotguns. Be sure to give her a follow and consider supporting Senko for Roots.

Jenn:

Yes, for sure. All right. That's the show. Friendly reminder to join the mailing list. You know, if you want to know what's going on and I don't know, be in the know and be one of the cool kids, whatever. So you can use the link in the show description.

Mik:

And finally, guys, if you're loving the show, please remember to give us a five star rating on wherever you listen.

Jenn:

Namaste.