Visiting Where Bioregions were Born: The Planet Drum Foundation in San Francisco

We’ve been very excited to be visiting with Judy Goldhaft at the Planet Drum foundation in San Francisco. Planet Drum Foundation was founded in San Francisco, CA in 1973, and with an association of community activists and ecologists worked to develop the concept of a bioregion, from which the Cascadia movement grew out of in the 1980's. Planet Drum works to research, promote and disseminate information about bioregionalism, a grassroots approach to ecology that emphasizes sustainability, community self-determination and regional self-reliance. 

Peter Berg was a social revolutionary thinker, writer, ecologist, environmental activist and founder of Planet Drum Foundation who passed away at died on July 28, 2011 

It's been an absolute treat to talk with Judy about the history of Planet Drum, and to be able to read and learn about the more than 45 years that they have been active. She's loaded us up with a huge stack of early Raise the Stakes newsletters and other wonderful proceedings. We are excited to bring back some of this knowledge and to scan, share and incorporate this more strongly into our organizing work in Seattle and elsewhere.

Diplomat Newsletter December 2019

Diplomatic Corps Newsletter

December 2019

Towards 2020

Fulfilling our Vision

As our first year of work with the Department of Bioregion comes to a close, a time to reflect and focus arises. Our weekly meetings in Seattle have grown in attendance and scope. From them, many activities and projects have taken place around the bioregion. This year we've hosted a fun run, presented at Cascadia Convergence, made a splash in the Seattle Pride parade anchored by the Cascadia Bus, had a handicraft focused Cascadia Day, hosted Camp Cascadia in the Willapa Hills and had our Cascadian Passport Station pop up around the bioregion. All of this has only been possible because of the dedicated work and enthusiastic volunteerism of you our Diplomats. Cascadian visibility has certainly increased due to all of your efforts, and for this, the sincerest of Thank Yous!

Looking forward, we're optimistic about continuing to grow the Department of Bioregion and the Diplomatic Corps. A meet up the first week of this month in Eugene mobilised a local group of Cascadians there, while contacts in Corvallis and Everett indicate meetings there are forthcoming. We've created some wonderful foundational documents and systems that will help us remain organized as we grow. Perhaps most importantly, our group projects have become more focused around the question "If 10,000 people wished to join our movement tomorrow, how can we be ready?"

It is with that question in our minds that we go into the coming decade. While we can't predict what the coming year and future will bring, we know some of the challenges facing Cascadia, and can prepare to face them with confidence. A general election in the U.S. will doubtlessly have profound effects on public sentiment and offers us an opportunity to highlight how, regardless of the outcome, Cascadia offers a pathway forward with greater democracy, decentralized power structures and a decolonizing spirit. Meanwhile, the advancing threat of a pipeline across British Cascadia threatening our waterways, ecosystem and overrunning indigenous sovereignty creates a rallying cry to protect all of the principles that define Cascadia and all of the life here.

Facing these adversities and opportunities, is what the Department of Bioregion is all about. With a positive message rooted in our love of place, unity through community and a desire to ensure a better future for all life in Cascadia, I look forward to continue building this movement with all of you.

Tolo tillikum, and Rise Cascadia Rise!

“Rise, Cascadia, rise. Protect our waters and skies. Rise, Cascadia, rise. Salmon and orca, cedar and fir. Rise, Cascadia, rise. Crows and otters, sons and daughters. Rise, Cascadia, rise.”

New Diplomat

Claudia Esplugas Masvidal

Catalonian native and recent University of Washington graduate Claudia Esplugas Masvidal has joined the Cascadian Diplomatic Corps bringingextensive experience as a writer, organizer and activist. With a focus on magnifying marginalized voices and innovative organizing methods, we are excited to see her contributions to the Cascadia Movement. Acting as a Diplomat at Large, Claudia's plans for 2020 include international outreach as she traverses the globe conducting interviews with other movement organizers and explores ways to connect them to bioregional principles. Welcome Claudia!

Passport Pop-Up

Last Sunday, Department of Bioregion founders Brandon Letsinger and Trevor Owen took the Cascadia Passport Station to the Seattle Freemont Sunday Market. While there, they issued Cascadian Passports, stickers and patches to the community. Many curious onlookers learned a thing or two about Cascadia and bioregionalism, while other stalwert Cascadians were elated to get their hands on our first issue, first printing Passports. They will be there again this week if you'd like to come by or join in spreading the Cascadian word. Market Info.

Thank you for all that you do diplomats!

Bioregionally yours,

Trevor Owen

Dean of Diplomacy

Your Chinook Wawa Word of the Day: Burdash

BURDASH

[BUR-dash] or [BAR-dash] — noun.

Meaning: Hermaphrodite; intersex; neuter; genderless.

Origin: Canadian French berdache > Italian bardassa > entering European languages via Moorish Spain from Arabic bardaj, “slave” > Persian bardah, “prisoner”.

In Chinook Wawa, the word burdash was commonly used to refer to accidental or incidental hermaphroditism or lack of gender, such as by castration, “burdash cayoosh” (gelding), and “burdash moos-moos” (steer), or unusual birth, as seen in “burdash kiuatan” (mule).

The word also saw extensive use as a sociological term for those that assumed the gender identity of the opposite sex. Alternative gender roles were widely shared feature of many native cultures, with documented examples in over 155 First Nations in the US and Canada. In about a third of these groups, a formal status also existed for females who undertook a man’s lifestyle, becoming hunters, warriors, and chiefs. They were sometimes referred to with the same term for male berdaches and sometimes with a distinct term—making them, therefore, a fourth gender. (Thus, “third gender” generally refers to male berdaches and sometimes male and female berdaches, while “fourth gender” always refers to female berdaches.)

Because so many First Nation cultures were disrupted, or had disappeared before they were studied by anthropologists, it is not possible to know the absolute frequency of these roles. Those alternative gender roles that have been documented, however, occur in every region of the continent, in every kind of society, and among speakers of every major language group.

“Berdache” had become the accepted anthropological term for these roles despite a rather unlikely etymology; it can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European root *wela- “to strike, wound,” from which the Old Iranian *varta-, “seized, prisoner,” is derived. In Persia, it referred to a young captive or slave (male or female). The word entered western European languages perhaps from Muslim Spain or as a result of contact with Muslims. By the Renaissance it was current in Italian as bardascia and bardasso, in Spanish as bardaje (or bardaxe), in French as berdache, and in English as “bardash” with the meaning of “catamite”— the younger partner in an age-differentiated homosexual relationship. Over time its meaning began to shift, losing its reference to age and active/passive roles and becoming a general term for male homosexual. In some places, it lost its sexual connotations altogether. By the mid-nineteenth century, its use in Europe lapsed almost completely.

In North America, however, “berdache” continued to be used, but for a quite different purpose. Its first written occurrence in reference to third and fourth gender North American natives is in the 1704 memoir of Deliette. Eventually, its use spread to every part of North America the French entered, becoming a pidgin term used by Euro-Americans and native people alike.

Although there are important variations in berdache roles, they all shared a core set of traits:

Specialized work roles. Male and female berdaches were typically described in terms of their preference and achievements in the work of the “opposite” sex and/or unique activities specific to their identities.

Gender difference. In addition to work preferences, berdaches were distinguished from men and women in terms of temperament, dress, lifestyle, and social roles.

Spiritual sanction. Berdache identity was widely believed to be the result of supernatural intervention in the form of visions or dreams, and/or it was sanctioned by tribal mythology.

Same-sex relations. Berdaches most often formed sexual and emotional relationships with non-berdache members of their own sex.

The first use of the term in an anthropological publication was by Washington Matthews in 1877. In describing Hidatsa miáti he wrote, “Such are called by the French Canadians ‘berdaches.’” The next anthropological use was in J. Owen Dorsey’s 1890 study of Siouan cults. Like Matthews, he described “berdache” as a French Canadian frontier term, and following Alfred Kroeber’s use of the word in his 1902 ethnography of the Arapaho, it became part of standard anthropological terminology when discussing or referencing a person who identifies with any of a variety of gender identities which are not exclusively those of their biological sex.

In recent years the term has come to be considered offensive by many First Nations communities because of its pejorative and non-native etymology. In 1993, a group of anthropologists and natives issued guidelines that formalized these preferences. “Berdache,” they argued, is a term “that has its origins in Western thought and languages.” Scholars were encouraged to drop its use altogether, and instead use the word  “two-spirit”, a modern word coined from the Ojibwa niizh manidoowag, or use tribal specific terms for multiple genders. Today the term “two-spirit” is identified as the preferred label of contemporary gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender native peoples.