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\title{Conversations with Peter Michael Bauer on Anarchy Radio}
\date{2007, 2015 \& 2019}
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\section{2007-08-07}


\textbf{Zerzan:} Let’s see, there have been some rewilding camps going on.


There’s one in Pittsburgh coming up the 25\textsuperscript{th} to the 27\textsuperscript{th} of this month and meanwhile, there’s one going on right now up in Portland and I think we will be hearing from Scout about that.


Okay, Scout, are you there?


\textbf{Peter:} Yes.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Good, What’s going on up there?


\textbf{Peter:} Not much.


We’re sitting around a campfire right now.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Okay, this camp is going to end Sunday, is that right? When did it start?


\textbf{Peter:} It started on Saturday and it ends on Friday.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Okay.


\textbf{Peter:} Kind of a weird deal.


I don’t remember why we chose those days, but\dots{}


\textbf{Zerzan:} Good.


It’s going well?


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, it’s going great.


We’ve done all kinds of stuff.


It’s kind of weird because it’s roaming.


It’s similar to the post-apocalyptic camp we did last year, but a little less organized and a little more open for other people to kind of come in and out.


It’s more like a swinging door as opposed to a troop of people moving around the city, which we’re going to do that too.


But we just we decided to make that one sort of an invite only camp and make this one the kind of open camp that we can, you know, tap people.


It’s pretty exciting.


Yeah, it’s cool because we’re utilizing the whole the site that I created, the rewild info.


You sort of create these open camps around the country.


There’s another one happening in Pittsburgh in September, I believe.


I haven’t they just put it up there on the website today.


So it’s like.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Late August.


It’s later this month.


I just mentioned that a few minutes ago.


Yeah, these are springing up all around, it seems like.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, it’s fantastic.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Really.


\textbf{Peter:} We actually, we had a bunch of refugees from the Feral Visions that that came up here and were like, there were just too many feds down there that, they came down and broke it up and scared a lot of people.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Oh yeah.


We had a report from John who was there and Amused is on the show with me tonight and he was there when they busted it down and threatened everybody with arrest.


Did these people leave before that showdown part or did they experience the threat of arrest and all that?


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, they were actually, they were four kids and they said that they had gotten pulled over on their way to Feral Visions and had been taken out of the car and photographed and all kinds of stuff.


This is before they even got there.


You know, I mean, I don’t know, maybe they might have been shining me on, but then we had another guy today who was also from Feral Visions and said that he had a great time.


There were these kids that were kind of running away, and then another person who said that despite the fact that there was a government presence, he still had a good time.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Good, Last year in Arizona, but up on Mount Graham at Faro Visions, they definitely were stopping people on the way.


Various jurisdictions, hassling people, trying to search their cars, and all kinds of stuff.


\textbf{Amused:} Did you hear about anything that happened after it was kind of shut down?


\textbf{Peter:} No, I haven’t heard anything aside from the people who came up afterward or, you know, during it.


\textbf{Amused:} Okay.


\textbf{Zerzan:} I’m glad it’s going well up there.


You’re trying different styles of camps and exploration, I guess.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, it’s pretty, we haven’t really had any, presence that we know of any sort of thing.


I mean, the way that we’re kind of marketing it is different, it’s more, it’s, we’re not, we’re kind of disguising it, I guess, not really outright saying, you know, anarcho-primitivism or anything.


We’re\dots{}


We’re just kind of keeping it a blanket of primitive skills, permaculture, and those kinds of things, and conversations about collapse.


So, I don’t know.


We have wondered about a few unmarked vehicles that seem to surveil us, but we can’t tell if they’re just bugging the homeless people in the parks or watching out for us.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Well, it seems like, I mean, I know y’all were thinking of going to Feral Visions, and I know people here.


who ended up not going.


It seems like there’s more of an emphasis on local, on the local.


Makes sense to me.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah.


\textbf{Zerzan:} You know, there was the Echoes in Time, you know, near Salem.


Yeah, And then just people just doing it without, you know, with no particular structure or, you know what I mean? Yeah.


It’s really interesting to me how much this is kind of catching on and what it says, I think.


Of course, it means different things to people, to different people.


A couple of people in the show last week were talking about that sometimes you see kind of just a hobbyist thing where, you know, some sort of yuppie person is out there and then they go right back to their thing and it doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t carry a whole big implication or, you know, necessarily much, but that’s, but then there are a lot of different people.


Apparently.


Do you see quite a mix of folks interested in what you’re doing up there?


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, I mean, the thing is, we see, I mean, there’s people who are like, homeowners to people that are homeless.


there’s people who rent, I mean, it’s just like, all class, really.


I mean, I don’t know, about really high up, but, it’s like different classes.


I mean, Portland is pretty white, so it’s not really diverse as far as like, you know race or anything like that but it was cool because we because of the location of our camp we ended up like meeting a bunch of homeless people that were like kind of became part of it and became like teachers and things you know I mean it was like it’s interesting what did you say something?


\textbf{Zerzan:} What?


\textbf{Peter:} Sorry I thought you said something.


\textbf{Zerzan:} No no go ahead.


\textbf{Peter:} I see it.


I definitely see a huge mix of people and I mean, that’s a really good sign to me, Definitely, yeah.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Certainly seems to be that way.


There’s an appeal there.


There’s a sense of something is in danger here, you know.


Well, I was thinking about the, I don’t know why this was such a fantastically big media event, just looking at it from that way.


You know, I’m talking about the collapse of the bridge and in Minneapolis.


I mean, and five or six people died.


That’s not, that’s not nothing, but it’s not the catastrophe of all time and yet I think it was kind of, it was kind of freighted, if you will, with the idea of, there’s a lot of infrastructural or what is going to fall down next.


Totally.


Katrina, they couldn’t, you know, that’s still a total catastrophe.


And, you know, can the system even repair itself, or what’s next? I think people love that sense, do you think?


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, I mean, it’s really weird.


We were having, this was one of the conversations we were having, because in Portland, there’s so much development going on right now.


I’ve lived here my whole life, and in the last 10 years, it’s gone <verbatim>***<\Slash{}verbatim> <verbatim>****<\Slash{}verbatim> and one of the interesting things I was thinking about was that, what kind of industry are people going to invest in as as collapse happens, it’s probably what they believe, what they perceive as sustainable industry, which is the biggest part of Portland, even though obviously it’s not sustainable at all, part of civilization.


So it’s kind of weird because I think like they’re using up their last dollars to invest in this hope of sustainability that’s not even going to exist.


So the world’s falling apart in these other places, but they continue to build, you know, they continue to stack bricks on top as they’re falling out from below.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Gee, well put, yeah.


Yeah, I’ve noticed that.


They’re building all kinds of stuff by the river.


As you drive up there, you can see it.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, they just passed a lot, actually, or a bill, I guess.


This business guy was telling me that they’re going to build 20 more condos twice the size of the ones that are already in the Northwest area.


It didn’t exist five years ago, you know? It’s funny, there’s this area in there that they call the Pearl District.


It’s like full of art galleries and <verbatim>****<\Slash{}verbatim>.


\textbf{Zerzan:} It used to be just warehouses and old breweries and stuff, industrial stuff.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, my grandpa used to hang out in the warehouses there.


It used to be low-income housing and stuff, I mean, literally five years ago and there was no such thing as the pearl and so\dots{}


Growing up here, it just irritates the hell out of me when I hear people say, oh, the pearl, blah, blah, blah.


I’m like, did you realize that didn’t exist five years ago? Like, no, it’s always been here.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Right.


For the hip and trendy, it’s just for them and it was always there.


Right.


\textbf{Peter:} It’s funny, my friend and I both saw the newspaper.


We call each other and we’re like, he’s like, did you see the newspaper today? Because on the Oregonian, it just said collapse in big, bold letters all the way across.


No kidding.


it’s just a bridge.


\textbf{Zerzan:} It’s not civilization.


\textbf{Peter:} I think it was a sign, I think it was one of those things where\dots{}


\textbf{Zerzan:} Yeah, there’s something going on besides just that and I noticed, by the way, a freeway overpass in Oroville collapsed.


I think it was the same day as the one in Minnesota.


It’s all coming down.


It’s all coming down.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Awesome, I will.


Thanks for calling.


\textbf{Peter:} Thanks for having me on.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Yeah, keep us posted about it.


I try to keep up with it, but any time you want to weigh in, please do.


\textbf{Peter:} Awesome.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Great.


\textbf{Peter:} All right, take care.


\textbf{Zerzan:} You too.


\textbf{Peter:} Bye-bye.


\textbf{Zerzan:} All right, Urban Scout.


Up in PDX.


Pretty cool.

\section{2015-10-06}


\textbf{Zerzan:} Tonight’s mainly going to be a conversation between Kevin Tucker, Peter Bauer, and myself, and while Peter is in the studio, Kevin is in Pennsylvania.


Peter Bauer is also known as Urban Scout and that’s, we’re going to talk about his project and the connection between the thinking of the three of us and just have a conversation about rewilding and I’m going to introduce him and Kevin in a minute.


Anyway, do we have Kevin?


\textbf{Co-Host:} Why, yes, we do.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Oh, I thought so. Joy.


\textbf{Kevin:} Glad to be connected with you.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Okay, let’s before we start, I just wanted to give just a real brief intro.


I mean, you’re a well-known, well, you’re a well-known pain in the ass, let’s face it, but well-known anarcho-primitivist writer, speaker, experimenter, publisher.


Yes, you are, Kevin and you’ve been around a while.


He did Species Trader, 4 issues of Species Trader.


Now he’s the editor and founder of Black and Green Review.


Issue \#2 is almost impending and Peter Bauer has been doing the nonprofit Rewild Portland since 2009 and before that, since 2002, you were doing more of a media educational thing oriented that way and now this is more hands-on with a lot of classes where people can get their hands dirty working with kids. He is a self-described hunter-gatherer wannabe. I love that. Yeah. Born and raised in Portland.


So I just want to say, Peter, I’m really impressed that you reached out to us because there were some conflicts in the past, disputes, which we may not go there. I don’t know. Maybe Kevin will want to. But no, seriously, I mean, that’s really cool. I appreciate your trying to get this going and more communication and dialogue among us.


\textbf{Peter:} Thank you. I appreciate you guys having me on here.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Well, maybe I could just kick this off by Just putting it this way, throwing out one question, why was it that you wanted to have this kind of opportunity with us and with you and whoever else?


\textbf{Peter:} Well, you know, I think there was a few months ago, there was a Facebook post about something that caused me to sort of freak out on Kevin and vice versa and Obviously, it ended in a terrible way.


Around the same time, I was starting to become aware of these people that are out there that are co-opting, rewilding, and sort of, you know, commercializing it in this way and it made me really upset and it made me rethink, you know, our past in a way that I could understand where Kevin was coming from, I think, and it just changed my perspective and it made me want to connect with you guys and more or less apologize for some of the things that happened and work together, and be allies instead of having this kind of thing.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Outstanding. Thank you. Yeah, people, this is cliche about anarchists are always squabbling, inventing reasons to hate on each other and stuff like that.


I mean, I think there are really some serious disagreements and you can’t paper them over, but I agree with you.


There’s no, let’s move past stuff if we can and work together.


\textbf{Peter:} I also think it’s I’m one of those passionate people that responds in a way that sometimes people think that I’m angry or something like that when I’m just being super passionate and maybe I am angry, but I think that that’s okay.


I think it’s okay for people to express their emotions, especially with topics like these that are emotionally charged, you know, or witnessing the destruction of the planet and we’re trying to change things and if you see somebody who’s kind of co-opting what you’re doing or you think that they are, I understand how it, you know, it becomes emotionally charged and you want to defend that thing and that’s totally fine.


But I also think that it’s okay to have passionate, angry discussions or maybe not, you know, whatever, just with friends.


Like you don’t have to hate each other just because you don’t agree on things and another thing that happened, you know, recently that made me think particularly about you guys and all of this is my falling out with Derek Jensen where I disagreed with the DGR stance on gender.


Not even, I didn’t necessarily even like disagree wholeheartedly.


I believe that there is space to have what they believe and other points of view overlapping.


I don’t think that they’re mutually exclusive.


But, you know, I reposted a thing, I shared a link on Facebook to a debate about, or, you know, to a criticism of it, and boom, got blocked by Derek Jensen.


You know, so That upset me.


We even had like a, before he blocked me, we had a discussion and I was like, is it okay for us to disagree and still be friends? And he was like, yes, good night and I was like, okay, great and then in the morning I saw that he blocked me.


So I mean, and then it, so anyway, it made me think of you guys and that kind of, the stuff that you’ve had with him in the past as well and just that like, you know, there’s this.


There’s this desire in me not like we all need to get along, but we all need to like recognize that maybe we don’t have all the answers and that we can overlap in our ideas and we can honor other people’s perspectives as well because we’re all trying to stop the world from being destroyed.


So, you know, maybe my answer isn’t the actual one that’s going to work, but you know, everybody working together doing things, maybe that’s what’s going to happen. I don’t know.


\textbf{Kevin:} The machine hasn’t been too cooperative with allowing me to fully hear and take part in everything, and I think it sounds like it’s getting a little better now.


But yeah, I think John, I might have messed it, but just reiterating what John said as far as I was pretty shocked that you reached out, and like I said to John, I think at the time, was like, is this like a ruse? I mean, I wasn’t sure where it was going, but I’ve seen, you know, where things ran, and I think that there’s There’s a lot of history there, a lot of things that happened that are probably not going to go away.


But at the same time, I do agree and I mean, I think that’s that’s kind of where it is and I know that, you know, talking about anger and aggressiveness, I definitely attack pretty aggressively pretty, pretty often.


But I mean, like, you know, at the same time, I mean, there’s, you know, I am passionate about these things and I know that you are and I know John as well.


And, you know, at the same time, there is that one.


I mean, you know, like with Black Green Review and things like that, these projects we’ve been doing, the idea is to kind of like to try and reach out and expand this and I mean, you know, attacking fiercely is just part of the anarchist tradition, I would like to think.


So, I mean, there’s, you know, it doesn’t mean that every answer is always right or every time is always justified or anything like that.


Not backing up on any of them, but I mean, as John and I have been attacking or going to things with Jensen now since 2008, both John and I reached out to him as a friend first, as you’ve seen.


So I mean, I want to say that there’s definitely an opening and there’s typically one, and I think that’s something John and I say to each other all the time.


When we see people going down these paths and things like that, I was like, man, I hope we’re wrong.


We hope that there is a chance things can turn around here.


There could be some discussion or not, but just time and time again, we’ve seen with various people, they’re more likely just to go Derek route than to go your route and say, okay, all those things that, that there might be some truth to the things that I was saying.


Not nicely sure and I mean that that takes a lot and I mean that’s that’s kind of a big thing and I mean I you know I think there’s definitely something there and I guess maybe there is a degree of just seeing seeing the directions things have gone and frankly I mean even in terms of just talking about co-opting while rewilding I mean Jesse Wolfharden might look at even what we’re doing and said like you guys got it all wrong sure So I mean there’s always a degree of that but at the same time it’s like you know we could see and I think there was an instance and I wanted to point out and that’s really what I was getting at all the time was to say it’s like you know this personification of what is this huge awesome thing is ultimately what’s going to be or hopefully isn’t but would ultimately could be its downfall and then obviously that’s played out you know in in two or three thousand dollar ninja rewilding classes absolutely absolutely absurd things yeah so yeah I mean it’s it’s a little more obvious than somebody having a blog and you’ve.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Been doing amazing stuff up there Peter for years for very consistently and that’s another thing that’s impressive and you know when and people come and go and that’s fine you know that’s you know for various reasons, but you’ve really been hanging in there and so I think there’s kind of a mutual body of work, if you will.


\textbf{Peter:} Absolutely.


\textbf{Zerzan:} And I think we’re all drawing on that and as we’re trying to figure out what is rewilding, we talk about domestication a lot, de-domesticating, rewilding, you know, that sort of thing and so, and always is the question, the obvious and important, obvious question, what How do you do that? What the heck does that mean? Let’s have some practical stuff here.


You wouldn’t get away.


I mean, and it’s a good thing you don’t get away.


Interesting ideas, but no application.


So what? You know what I mean? So these connections have to be made in various ways as we try to figure out how it works, how people are domesticated, and it’s hyper-technical age now.


we’re seeing the leaps and bounds of it and it always, it still, I mean, it baffles me.


Can people be that enthralled by some of this stuff? I mean, that’s only perhaps just part of it, you know, but I, and I do think it’s, it ain’t gonna last, but we’re in the dark, you know, with a lot of this stuff.


We’re trying to throw this out and go somewhere with it, and what is going on in reality is just fantastic.


But there are more, I think we would agree here, there are more voices that see through it.


There’s a lot of critique in various media.


You know, there really is.


That’s one thing that encourages the hell out of me.


You know, just scathing stuff and the people that want to have it both ways, like Sherry Turkle, that’s disgraceful and I think more people see that.


Oh yes, it’s doing all these horrible, horrible things.


But we can correct it.


We can fine tune it.


In other words, the answer to the technology is more technology.


\textbf{Peter:} Right.


\textbf{Zerzan:} It’s kind of unbelievable and you know people are getting it.


They’re seeing through that.


Do you have, oh, please mention your book and where are you now in terms of how you’re proceeding with the classes and the whole Rewild Portland thing?


\textbf{Peter:} So I I decided, one of my friends was, I don’t know why, he convinced me to put Rewild or Die back out in the world and I have a friend who’s a copy editor who copy edited it for me.


That was sort of the, one of the criticisms of the book was that, you know, I’m not really, I’m not really that great at grammar and spelling and things like that.


So I had a friend copy-edited it, and another friend did the typeset, and so I’m gonna put that back out in the world.


I don’t agree with a lot of the stuff that I wrote in it, but like I said, you know, I feel like it’s okay to have dissenting ideas out there, even if they’re in the same sort of subculture or culture or whatever.


In fact, there’s some things I wrote that I strongly disagree with.


But I feel like the ideas are still important, even if I don’t agree with them now, just because there’s other people out there who do agree with it and maybe I can write a rebuttal to myself or something, or other people can write a rebuttal.


So that’s where that is.


It’ll be like probably put out in a couple of months or something here.


But with Rewild Portland, it’s going well.


We’re still doing our free Skillshare.


That’s how it started.


We do a free class on the last Saturday of every month in a park in Portland and now we’re sponsored by Portland Parks and Recreation.


So we don’t, they give us a free permit basically.


Because we used to just fly under the radar and then they found out what we were doing and really liked it and so yeah, things are going really well up there.


Just trying to build more programs and get more people involved and shifting gears now.


We’ve been doing basically ancestral skills for a long time.


just doing like the craft-oriented part of rewilding and now we really want to push to do more restoration stuff and be planting back the oak savanna, which was the historic or, you know, pre-contact habitat here in the Willamette Valley was oak savanna that was managed by Kalapuya and Chinook Indians and so we want to get more into restoration and work with the different tribes and different organizations that are doing that kind of restoration around.


Part of what we do anyway with the skills stuff is to remove invasive species and then use those species to do ancestral skills.


So that way we’re kind of already tied into restoration in the ancestral skills.


But now we need to like start planting back those trees, basically oak trees, you know, and all of their coexisting plants and animals.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Wonderful.


\textbf{Kevin:} And you have a good bit of stuff that I like teaching kids, right?


\textbf{Peter:} Say that again.


\textbf{Kevin:} You have a good bit of stuff that’s aimed at like teaching kids and everything too.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, we have summer camps and a homeschool program.


We go into schools sometimes.


I have a difficult time doing that, so I try to avoid it.


But yeah, we have adult classes and kids camps and kind of we run the gamut as far as trying to bring in people from all different angles.


The main challenge is like trying to maintain integrity while playing or being a part of the system as far as, we’re an official non-profit.


I have to play into that game to do that and this is sort of, I guess, kind of what I wanted to talk with you guys about is like, where, how can we go about rewilding? What’s sort of the, if we’re trying to be the most effective in creating a culture of rewilding, what avenues are there that we can take and what are the downfalls and the bad things about those and what are the good things? And what of this sort of paleo lifestyle co-option of rewilding? Is that going to be good in the end or bad? Or are they going to like balance out and not do anything? Is it just going to be neutral and nothing will happen? So I don’t know.


I don’t have, I’m on the fence on all of it because I just don’t know.


I can kind of see good and bad in that only because I see the good and the bad in what I do.


\textbf{Kevin:} And I think that’s a good place to start that discussion and as John was saying, and I apologize, like I said, it’s kind of the volume goes in and out a little bit.


It’s hard to tell where everything’s at.


But what John was saying in terms of rewilding and saying like, you know, what we don’t know and what we you know, kind of where the questions are in the sense that’s where it’s a parallel of anarcho-primivism and green anarchy and the things we’re trying to do and say, asking questions.


But at the same time, you know there are knowns, and there are a lot of things that we know as far as how hunter-gatherers lived, the consequence of domestication, horticulture, and obviously this was trying to push aside, but in terms of practical application, I think that there is a lot of room in terms of applying these critiques and also applying the same kind of direction that we have with these critiques in terms of saying that there’s a mix of asking questions and those questions having great implications.


So in a sense, I think with rewilding, I think there’s a lot of questions, but at the same time, what we’ve seen is really what I’ve been reacting to, I think we’ve been reacting to to a large degree is also at what point we’re applying these critiques and at what point we’re stepping aside and I think that this is something that’s been coming up a lot more often.


I guess there’s two sides of it.


The one side is that, the positive side is that I see that the undercurrent of the paleo stuff, even if it is attempting very, very much to co-opt any anarcho-primitist, Korean anarchist, anti-civilization kind of critique, is that it is pushing that the base idea here is that we are still nomadic hunter-gatherers.


That is how our bodies are shaped, it’s how our minds are shaped, it’s how we see things, it’s how we interact, it’s what we need.


It’s something I’ve been saying for a long time in terms of saying that anarchists and radicals have always wanted to say capitalism is creating these urges, is creating these wants, and all the things that we’re looking at are kind of manufactured desires.


It’s like, well, the problem with that is that Capitalists aren’t that good.


They’re not that smart.


I mean, capitalism is going to fall as surely as any other civilization and the reason why is that not because they’re able to create these things and maintain this mess and this, you know, they’re just not very good at that necessarily, but what they are good at is redirecting the innate desires we have as animals and as human animals and so the crack in the sidewalk here is the paleo stuff, and it’s saying it’s like, okay, even if it’s like this very disconnected, strange, like almost alien version of saying, Hey, you’re a hunter-gatherer, that’s the baseline of all this stuff and the way that it’s being taken and manipulated, I mean, it’s a huge issue, and I mean, I don’t know a better answer than saying, like, what I do is just keep attacking at that.


But, you know, I think the undercurrent, the underside of that stuff is a net positive, despite the fact that the people and the past that go on and seeing the co-option of things that I think we all hold as essentially sacred is horrific and it’s intensely hard to see.


But at the same time, I mean, I think that’s where, you know, we have to come in and take this critique and say, Well, where are we getting it wrong? What are the things we know that are happening? One of the big conversations that I’ve seen happening and I’ve seen over the last 10 years shift from green anarchists and anti-silva anarchists or anti-silva anybody was talking about rewilding and now we’re talking about permaculture.


All these people have this kind of transfer over and it was almost like the worse things are getting in terms of climate change, in terms of the collapse of civilization, the more real that side of things kind of becomes, the more it’s like permaculture seems to be the new revolutionary ideal, as though this is the thing that’s going to save us, and just kind of pouring back into that and with that has brought this entire opening of marketable skills, instead of seeing just, of course, there’s examples to the contrary, but In large part, we used to have these gatherings that were free.


We teach primitive skills.


We all learned it together.


We all had a drive to learn these things on our own and kind of go through our own process of figuring things out along the way and now it’s just like, pay for this class and do this thing, and then you’ll be there and I think that’s where, you know, I feel like there has to be some some areas there where there’s a medium of like, this is a liable, this isn’t.


But there’s no discussion to be had because as soon as you start questioning it, then everybody wants to throw everything in there and say like, oh, you know, somebody takes \$5 to lead some kind of skills workshop or something like that is, you know, if you’re not opposed to that, then why not have a two or \$3,000 ninja training class?


\textbf{Peter:} Right.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Hey, I think we should take a break [\dots{}] and we have a call.


\textbf{Co-Host:} Yeah, we do. This is Paul.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Paul, what’s up?


\textbf{Paul:} Hey, how you doing?


\textbf{Zerzan:} Good.


\textbf{Paul:} Hey, I had a couple ideas or recommendations or something like that.


I mean, one of the things that I think is sort of detracted from the potential of green anarchism in general is the fact that there’s no dialogue going on really other than accusations from the other side you know from from mainline anarchist positions you know and I’m wondering if it’s at least possible that there’s some kind of organized event or something that that maybe focuses in on sort of like a a scientific consensus in terms of what level of technology or civilization is sustainable given the population level you know like like is there something that is a scientific threshold that says this is a sustainable level and I mean we would have a different view than they have but It could be that objectively, scientifically, that there is some kind of a consensus point, you know?


\textbf{Zerzan:} Are you talking mainly about within the anarchist milieu or just in general?


\textbf{Paul:} Between the green anarchist, primitivist positions and the mainline anarchist position, which is obviously, they’re focused on getting the keys to the factory.


Exactly right.


I mean that’s their focus, but I mean maybe that you know they respond to Science or they claim they do you know I don’t kind of like science-based.


\textbf{Zerzan:} This is not dialogue this discussion can’t be happening right now, but that’s a good question.


Do you have another one?


\textbf{Paul:} Well, yeah, the other thing is that a lot of criticism that I hear from that side is based upon medicines and modern medicine And I don’t know if there’s, if any thought has been put into a system of, I know that, like in the Amazon, they are putting together a codex of\dots{}


\textbf{Zerzan:} We’re just on the break, Paul.


I’m sorry, I got to kind of cut you off here, but thank you. [\dots{}] Another call and then we’ll get back with, Kevin [\dots{}]


\textbf{Zerzan:} Hi there. Do you have a question?


\textbf{Zach:}  Hey, it’s Zach Villaruda. Peter, you stayed on my couch.


\textbf{Peter:} Hey Zach, how’s it going?


\textbf{Zach:}  What’s your question? Yeah, I have been so inspired by Rewild Portland, and I’m just at the point where I’m starting these days to lead wild food, edible, you know, urban foraging and man, I like making baskets.


So my question is basically if, if, you know, if these ancestral skills workshops are some form of cultural appropriation and we’re not going to do anything super violent, I don’t think because we’re on the radio.


So then what else are we going to do? And I think, you know, specifics are great.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Yeah, yeah.


Thanks very much, Zach.


\textbf{Peter:} Thanks, Zach.


\textbf{Zach:}  That’s all.


Yeah, and thanks, Peter and you know, I think it’s cool to find wild edibles and make baskets and permaculture and planting back and all that stuff is really great and that’s great.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Cool and you’re sort of asking what else should be done? Is that it?


\textbf{Zach:}  Sometimes I hear like that stuff is inappropriate.


It’s ineffective.


Yeah, and if it’s inappropriate, like Peter’s talking about people co-opting the movement, selling deer antler velvet or selling nettles or something that is really the beauty in nettles is you go out and find it and you plant back and you grow the nettle patch and that’s what it’s about.


So I think it’s great to share those skills with city dwellers and say, here’s a nettle.


Plant it back and if we’re not going to do that, then what else are we going to do?


\textbf{Zerzan:} Yeah.


Oh, I see.


Right.


Hey, thanks a lot for calling.


\textbf{Peter:} Thanks, Zach.


\textbf{Zach:}  Okay.


\textbf{Zerzan:} We can, I hope we can get back with Kevin.


He’s probably been trying to get through.


Wow.


Man, I bet there would be even more calls if we had more time.


Yeah, we had some car crash lander.


We’ll save that for next week.


\textbf{Zach:}  Yeah.


\textbf{Zerzan:} So I think we’ll do you want to maybe while.


Oh, there he is.


I think he’s probably back with us.


Nope.


Do you want to tackle anything from Paul or other or your friend Zach? Sure.


Did you hear the Sort of off air stuff there, Kevin? It wasn’t off air.


You were off air.


Yeah, did you hear the calls?


\textbf{Kevin:} I did.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Okay, okay.


\textbf{Kevin:} Yeah.


Do you want me to comment on the off one?


\textbf{Zerzan:} Sure, yeah, go ahead.


\textbf{Kevin:} Yeah, I mean, so I think that I have a lot of sympathy and I think that there’s a lot of inherent power and rewilding and I think even from like an anarchist practice, just talking about you know, mutual aid and self-sufficiency, even like these very classical ideas, there’s a lot to be said for, you know, taking part in the means of procurement and actually like being involved in reducing mediation and markets in your own life.


I think there’s a radical aspect of that that’s undeniable, but at the same time, I think the bigger issue for me is really just that, you know, looking at some of the stuff, and I think we’ve all kind of gone through this, I’m sure you can reiterate the same kind of things and I call it the the process of radical humility, really just kind of like going at these things from a normal survivalist kind of perspective, like going on the first field guys I got were U.S.


Army manuals and just kind of having these ridiculous ideas was like, okay, if I get these skills, if I do this, if I do that.


then I’m going to get there and I’m going to learn these things and having this timetable as far as saying, I’m going to get these field manuals down and get the field guides for plans and I’ll learn it like this.


It doesn’t happen that way and that’s what separates rewilding from survivalism and that’s the idea is that we’re talking about getting grounded, not just making it through with a \$200 survival pack that we bought from Alex Jones.


That by getting grounded and having this sense, of what’s going on in the world and understanding that things really are connected and there’s this, as John Young talks about often, learning bird language, you can’t help but get to this point of empathy and when you get to this point of empathy and feeling the forest and feeling what’s going on and feeling this interconnectedness, that you can’t just do nothing with that and that’s what’s important for me and I think that rewilding cannot be separated from resistance and I know that people do, I know that people approach them in different ways and everything like that, but there’s still, at the same time, there’s this undercurrent that’s indisputable and in terms of questioning revolution, in terms of questioning, you know, these leftist or romantic ideals that often come along with anarchism and radicalism in general, when When I started questioning that stuff, I just kept coming up to the same thing.


Like, why did indigenous resistance movements succeed, or were they so successful, or were they willing to fight to the death, whereas revolutionary movements always end in gallows and it’s because it’s this matter of the known versus the ideal and if you’re fighting for ideals, you’re never going to get there.


You’ve got to get some contorted sense, and you’re going to probably kill a lot of people.


But if you’re fighting for something that you already understand, and you see the beauty in this land, you see the beauty in this way of life, and you feel the destruction that’s happening all around you as a part of what’s happening to you, and you’re getting some connection to that, then that’s a completely different impulse and it’s impossible to, I think, or at least I’d like to think, I personally feel, it’s kind of impossible to get to that place without having that impulse within you and I mean, you know, the We’ve got a lot of baggage.


There’s a lot of missteps along the way, and that’s why I call it humility, just because, you know, you just come out into the world and you’re just doing stupid things and realizing right now and then, it’s like, oh, that’s why, that’s why these things work.


That’s why, you know, the people who lived here 5,000 years ago might have done this or that.


So it’s like a multifaceted process, and I think that it’s impossible to to get to that point without getting that empathy.


Or if you are, I guess you could say you’re doing it wrong.


Even if you are making a lot of money from it.


\textbf{Peter:} Right.


\textbf{Kevin:} Sorry.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, I feel like I want to speak to Zach’s feeling of maybe just like harvesting nettle is ineffective or I don’t know if that, what was your interpretation of what he said?


\textbf{Zerzan:} I got the feeling he really was trying to avoid the commodification of stuff and just replant it and share it and don’t turn it into a something with a price tag and I think he was just, it seemed to me, he was really supporting the work.


\textbf{Peter:} The original idea, you know, when I started the Rewild forums back in the day, the whole point of it was to create a space where people with an internet connection could connect and learn skills, cross-cultural, pollination.


But the idea always was to get people to just have that be a starting place for people to start free skill shares in their area and it just never took off, partly because I ended up realizing I was wasting, or not wasting, but just spending too much of my own personal time on the internet trying to get this thing going and not enough time just actually building a community in Portland.


So more or less I walked away from that project to start Rewild Portland, not as the end-all, be-all, but a starting point.


there’s lots of people that come to our programs and are like, oh, this is kind of, I’ve reached all this is going to be.


it’s a non-profit, it’s a business, it’s not, it’s an artificial community, it’s not a real community and then, but we’ve brought them in, now they’re going to actually look for, you know, they’ve made connections there.


Those people want to go out and do these things together, you know and that’s why I think of that as a starting point and I think equal to the idea of resistance and protecting wild lands is planting them back.


I think it’s, that’s two of the, they’re the same thing in my mind of, not necessarily the same thing.


Because one is sometimes legal and the other one is always illegal.


But, if you look at like what Fenicia Medrano is doing out in Eastern Oregon, I don’t know if you’re familiar with her.


She’s basically been a large influence on the rewilding subculture here on the West Coast.


\textbf{Co-Host:} I just want to say that we have a question from the internet, and it’s rotten.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Well, I thought he’d be doing his own radio show this evening.


\textbf{Co-Host:} Maybe he is.


He used his internet skill to hack my computer over the internet and ask this question.


This is to John and Kevin.


Maybe it’s not for John and Kevin.


Maybe it’s for Peter and Kevin, but because it references John.


So in a world that continues to grow more and more miserable, alienated and dysfunctional, both on the macro, culturally, politically, et cetera, and micro anarchist scenes, et cetera, do you, like Jay-Z, have hope, Kevin?


\textbf{Kevin:} Yeah, I mean, I’m not afraid of anarchist boogeyman and I think hope is one of those and I, frankly, I guess when it comes down to it, when it comes to looking at the term and, you know, what it implies and all this stuff, I just don’t care.


Like, you know, so much of anarchism gets caught up in lingo and, you know, Steve, who’s an editor of Black and Green Reviews, has been pointing out for a while now, this color beautiful theory, and that’s really kind of what it feels like a lot of the time.


So there’s baggage with everything.


I use the word human nature, and I know anarchists just love to hate that.


But I think that there’s a certain degree which, if we want to break out of that microcosm and get into the macro or have some kind of impact, You know, you gotta kind of accept the language.


But I mean, that doesn’t mean you have to be naive and I think that there’s an idea that any sort of hope is naive.


And, you know, maybe there is even truth to that.


I mean, I guess I just don’t care.


I hope my daughters don’t die because of fracking.


I know, I mean, that might be naive.


I live in Pennsylvania, there’s all kinds of things that happen out here, there’s pipelines, there’s, you know, we’ve lived in areas where there was fracking where you know, actively having to avoid that.


But I mean, like, is that naive? I mean, maybe, but at the same time, who cares? I mean, like, there’s a certain degree to which we are incapable of fully processing the consequences of the world that’s been heaved upon us and I think that there’s a matter of saying that there’s a balance between being realistic and also maybe having some of that false hope, if it is false hope, or, you know, maybe it is real.


But, I mean, to make hope a boogeyman, I just, I just don’t care.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah.


\textbf{Kevin:} Sorry, Robin.


\textbf{Peter:} Same here.


\textbf{Zerzan:} You know, the caller Paul, the first call during the break, just to switch the subject here a little bit, he asked about dialogue.


Is it possible to arrive at dialogue, especially with the focus that helps us get somewhere? And, you know, this gets back to what we were talking about and what Kevin brought up about there’s some deep-seated stuff here and the people, if we’re talking about just the dialogue among anarchists or even beyond that, there are people who are not going to go and do your classes.


They’re not going to get their hands dirty.


They’re just not going to go there and you know, it can be a deeply ideological thing.


I think, or maybe I just hope, that some of these characters are leaving the scene one way or another, but it’s about losing our civilized superiority.


These people on the left, that’s their definition, that’s their identity, their legacy is progress and all that and that’s, I think that’s kind of at the heart of why I’ve seen over the years, there’s way less dialogue, or maybe it’s because there are fewer people that are really holding up the banner of progress and more industry and all that stuff, it’s kind of hard to do.


But they used to come out for a fight and I always thought it was great.


Okay, show us what you got.


I mean, why do you think that now they have to defend all these things that are just so indefensible? Like I think of Andrew Flood in Dublin and I guess I basically said, so you’re defending mass society, In other words, go ahead and he said, you’re putting words in my mouth and I thought, no, I’m not.


That’s what you people believe in and there it is.


can’t you back it up? Let’s hear your side and so I think they’ve, I think they’ve failed, but it is a deep-seated thing.


There are people that are already motivated to go in a certain place and to explore with Peter up there, for example, and there are others who aren’t and it’s, I don’t know how, that’s a slow deal, I guess.


Or maybe not.


Maybe it happens, can happen.


somewhat suddenly.


I wouldn’t be too surprised given the complete poverty of the answers they have.


You’d think they’ve lost.


Anyway, I’ll drop that.


\textbf{Peter:} I guess I have a, I’m curious what you, I want to plug your upcoming black and green review too and I’m curious, what is your objective with it? Like, what what’s like when you dream of putting it out? How do you see it affecting people?


\textbf{Kevin:} Well, obviously that question goes to John as well, but I’ll, you know, have time to answer.


You know, I mean, I want, I genuinely want discussion.


I want the debate and the critique.


to go on and I think one of the ideas that we’ve had behind it and we work really hard as editors and John can attest to this I mean we’ve been you know very harsh and trying to press each other and press anybody who’s contributing to really draw out their points and not to get stuck and just kind of like 101 kind of level stuff, not to make it like unattainable or anything like that, but to expect more from people.


You know, we’ve seen within the anarchist milieu forever, this whole thing that like, oh, you need to define every term every single time, you know, there’s just kind of like, it’s all about, you know, that beautiful theory about this, this idea of like, presenting this thing that’s so crafted and articulate and able to spite down any aspect of like, well, you have moralism, you have ideology, you have this hidden thing here and here, like responding to the idea of having this kind of perfect thing that you’re presenting rather than focusing on the content itself and I think a lot of that has to do with this egoist and individualistic kind of stuff where, you know, I’ve heard some of these people say that anarchism is their enacting on these desires rather than saying anarchism or anarchism, any civilization, anything as a matter of, you know, what are we trying to do? I’m not delusional and I’m not, you know, to answer Ron’s question, I’m not hopeful in the sense that I’m like, oh, people are going to see Black and Great Review and Civilization, they’re going to pull the plug and we’re done.


I’m not stupid, I’d like to think.


But I think that there’s more here, and there’s more room that we need to give credit to other people, or credit to everyone, that we’re capable of having these discussions, we’re capable of enacting them and I mean, I think that there’s always a part of me that sees how hard it is to push a project right now, how hard it is to get people to actually commit to, I mean, the small amount of money we’re asking for a book and just say, you know, what can we do to make it cheaper? What can we do to get it out there more and get people to actually read something that’s not online To actually engage with the stuff and try and get things going again try and get some momentum and try and actually develop ideas instead of just Immerse yourself completely in identity politics and get right just get lost with it and try to be right And so I I don’t know I mean I’m there’s a there’s a part of me that’s just the grumpy guy I sound like the grumpy guy all the time.


I was just like, well, ten years ago, you know, everything was on fire.


Like, and to a certain degree that, you know, there’s truth to that and it’s not like we had all the answers then.


We certainly didn’t at the same time, like there was more going on and that has really washed away since the green scare and it’s really washed away since social media has just this eclipsed everything.


And, you know, that’s why issue number one, we focus so much on technology and social media and the neurological and psychological impacts of using these technologies and how civilization has gotten so much worse since these things have been around and how quickly they’ve integrated into our world.


So, you know, is it the right thing to do? Is it the right place to put as much time and energy and money as we have? I don’t know, and I guess there you go, I’m hopeful.


that at least doing some of these things, at least having this out there and at least trying against all odds, when you can’t even get people to just log off of Facebook.


I mean, maybe it is just futile or whatever, I don’t know, but I don’t know what else to do.


So it’s kind of my default mode to just keep trying to press it and try and become more articulate and more defined and we’re able to actually try and just discuss these things at the level that I think that we are hopefully getting to.


\textbf{Co-Host:} So we have a follow-up from Rotten.


He says, I’m hopeful in my life, pessimistic that any ideas will change much, and very hopeful that in my life the world will go through some very dramatic changes.


Thanks for continuing to challenge things in your own ways.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Sweet way to go out.


Thank you, Rotten.


Pains me to say that, but thank you, Rod.


Well, we’re out of time here.


\textbf{Kevin:} It harms us all.


\textbf{Zerzan:} It harms us all, yes.


It’s painful.


\textbf{Peter:} Thank you so much for having me on the show, you guys.


This has been really fun.


I feel like we could talk for hours.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Oh, that’s for sure.


Really appreciate it for coming down here and thank you, Kevin.


\textbf{Kevin:} One last plug, if I can.


Black and Green Review \#2 is going to the press this week.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Sweet.


\textbf{Kevin:} Black and Green Review.org.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Check it out. All right. Thanks for listening.

\section{2019-03-26}


\textbf{Co-Host:} This is KWVA Eugene.


It is time for Anarchy Radio.


I have John Zarzan here and a very special guest in studio.


Would you like to introduce him, John?


\textbf{Zerzan:} Yes, sir.


We have Peter Bauer, also known as an Urban Scout.


\textbf{Peter:} Hello.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Glad you’re here.


Thank you for coming down.


Yeah, this is.


This is a great opportunity.


So we’re going to grill you and [\dots{}] maybe you could just give us a little bit of what you’ve been trying to do, Peter, what you’re currently doing, because later I also want to ask you how you see the the general state of things.


But if you could just share somewhat about what your projects have been.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah. So I started Rewild Portland and over the years, we’ve changed our mission a little bit here and there, tweaked it and essentially, I’m kind of freezing up here.


You know, we want to build resilience and to me, that’s, we keep changing the names and words of all this, trying to get really to the heart of what it is that we are doing, and you can see it in other people and you’re like, they’re on the same page or we’re close enough.


We’re working toward the same goal, right? Might be using a little bit different language, might have a different thing, you know, but at the end of the day, what we’re trying to do is become like people of place.


We’re trying to like become whatever, we, it’s not sustainable, that’s kind of going out of the way, regenerative, resilient is sort of the, some of the newer words that we’re using to describe, I think, what we’re trying to do.


So, obviously, rewilding to me is the core or central element of that and to me, rewilding is just like primal anarchy in practice or something like that.


Like I see it as a, there’s theory and then there’s like putting the theory to work and so to me, it’s sort of the togetherness of both of those things, like actually doing it.


One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is like in terms of Rewild Portland, you know, it’s an institution of civilization, right? It’s A nonprofit.


We operate within the capitalist empire of the United States government and all of the regulations and all of that kind of stuff.


So it’s this weird like middle ground of like Not necessarily.


I don’t really particularly see it as like working within the system to change the system.


I think that’s never going to happen.


But what I see it as is sort of the way of using what we have today to prepare and prep for what’s going to come tomorrow, which I believe is there will be an inevitable collapse and in that time, people are going to come up with better ways of living and so what we’re trying to do is just be ahead of the curve or whatever in that regard and have that resilience built in whatever means we can and obviously rewilding is this crazy spectrum of things.


There’s no one way to do it.


There’s no one thing, you know, it could mean for some people like to go and live in the woods away from things.


For me, you know, obviously the nickname Urban Scout was, or the moniker Urban Scout was something that I was attached to for a long time in part because I’m from Northeast Portland and I’m a fourth generation Portlander and I’m just sort of like rooted to that place.


My ancestors are buried there and so I’m like, how do you rewild in an urban context was sort of always something that’s going on in my mind and honestly, now I just want to get the **** out, sorry, get out of the cough, get out of the city and be in the forest.


But there’s this charge for me personally as an individual to stay in the city and continue to do work here, and also financial barriers that prevent me from escaping.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Right, The necessary scratch to do that, one of the obvious barriers.


Well, and this involves skill sharing, all these different types of things that are just really awesome and you, as I understand it, the basis has been, even in the city, you can reconnect with the land.


You can learn what people used to do or what, you can identify the parts of the real world that are still there.


\textbf{Peter:} Well, I mean, you know, our mascot is a raccoon, and that’s because, you know, they have adapted to the urban habitat, which I don’t, it might be human made or civilization made, but it’s still to them just another habitat that they’re perceiving and utilizing as a wild animal.


So, a raccoon is an animal that’s maintained its wildness, but been able to leverage the environment or habitat of a city to its success.


I don’t know if that’s the right word, but to its resilience, right? Same with pigeons and crows and other animals that actually end up utilizing the environment, the artificial environment that’s been generated there.


Although I have problems with the word artificial as well, but anyway.


But yeah, that’s why the raccoon is our mascot is because we essentially, you know, one of the things that we constantly talk about is cultural appropriation, not wanting to appropriate from, particularly indigenous people, because, you know, as a rewilding, trying to follow our way back to being place-based, obviously we’re going to need to learn from people who have been here forever, but also we don’t want to just like copy them and not interact with them and just sort of like have sort of neo-colonial elements and I think part of that is if you look at humans and how they migrated or however they existed, a lot of what we did was mimicking animals and as mimics, it’s one of those things like, well, we don’t have to copy people.


We can actually just look at how other animals are living here and potentially mimic them and so that’s, anyway, this is sort of getting into the long backstory of Rewild Portland, but some of our philosophy, underlying philosophy, but I don’t generally talk about this kind of stuff.


Mostly it’s just like teaching people how to do a bow drill in a park, you know, that kind of thing.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Well, it’s wonderful to get a little bit behind the scenes and to understand more fully what it’s about.


What is your perspective? Why do you do it? And then your own personal and family background as a part of it.


Yeah, and the part about reaching out, I know I’ve learned from Dean at Dart, in particular, the The means of communicating, the emphasis on communication, there are cultural barriers, that’s for sure and how to make some headway there, how to listen and how to go forward together.


It’s just a very exciting prospect, and we have to do more of that.


We have to push that forward, and it’s just going to be healthy and marvelous, and that will be among other things, is you put it being ahead of the curve, being ahead of the what’s coming, what’s getting worse by the hour, to be in some position vis-a-vis all that.


Or even if it wasn’t going to collapse, I mean, who knows exactly about that, obviously, but just how one lives, how one, what is one’s relationship to this planet, to these lands?


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, it’s interesting too, like our, we do two big events throughout the year.


We have Echoes in Time, which actually we inherited.


It had been going for about 15 years and I’d done work trade there for about 10 or 12 years or so and because I’d just been there for so long and was really good friends with the organizer, I ended up absorbing it into Rewild Portland and that’s just a week-long ancestral skills gathering that was inspired originally by Rabbit Stick Rendezvous, which, is one of the oldest ancestral skills gatherings in the country.


But then we realized there was still this, you know, so we’re teaching skills, but it’s not just about skills.


There’s also the whole philosophy and worldview behind them, which I think is more important in a sense.


Like skills are actually pretty easy to learn.


You know, hit it with a rock is like a motto among ancestral skills because That’s essentially it was like, oh, there’s something wrong with this.


Like, what should I do? And like, hit it with a rock.


It’s just like a running joke, you know? They’re just not super challenging.


I mean, you know, obviously everything is nuanced.


There’s lots of nuance in ancestral technology, but you can troubleshoot your way through collectively with a group of people.


But, you know, so in looking at that, it’s like the worldview to me is the most important thing behind these skills and I think, you could practice the skills and get to that worldview, or you could come at it from the worldview angle and so we kind of want to do both and so we started the rewilding conference a couple of years ago.


We’ve done two now and the last one, you know, the first one we did was the theme was restoration to what? Because, you know, you’ve got like Pleistocene rewilders, these conservation biologists who want to introduce elephants and savanna lions in North America to replace the loss of woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers.


I mean, there’s something of like, just throw everything at it, right? I’m not necessarily for or against that.


I’m just, you know, I’m fascinated that there’s all of these ideas.


But, you know, rewilding also has a very big perspective or is also coming from the conservation rewilding side of things, which is generally to let a piece go without any human impact on it, which to me isn’t actually rewilding because wild humans were, and still are in some places, heavily integrated into landscapes.


So, you know, he’s got these people saying, oh, this is wild, but they’re restoring it to what? If they’re trying to restore it to 200 years ago, they need to have humans as a component of it, right? If they’re restoring it to 5,000 years ago, well, then yeah, they’re going to, you know, where’s the megafauna who existed with those ecosystems? 10,000 years, are we talking, like what? What are they talking about in terms of restoration or rewilding? Rewilding to what? you talk about a paleo diet or something like that.


Like what era of the paleo diet? What bioregion? What, you know? So we had a lot of conversations around that, which I thought was great.


But, you know, I looked around the room.


It’s kind of like what you were saying about that comment from last week from Ron saying that, you know, white blindness.


I look around the room and it was 99.99\% white people and I think part of that is Portland is one of the whitest cities in the United States.


I’m a white male growing up in that environment.


I don’t have a huge network of people that are not of that demographic and years ago, I went to a training at Portland Parks.


We were collaborating with them on something and one of the questions the organizer asked me was like, how diverse is your organization and your clients? And I was like, well, you know, it’s Portland.


We’re pretty white and would probably more or less fit that demographic, and she was, and I was like, so we don’t really try all that hard and she was like, that’s not right.


She’s like, you’re wrong, actually.


Portland proper might be super white, but everything outside, once you get outside of that main core, it’s actually pretty diverse and so you can’t use that as an excuse and it kind of floored me and so then, you know, we started trying to build in plans around diversity, equity, and inclusion and because I noticed the conference was so white this year, I was like, the second year we have to have a dialogue about that and so the conversation this year was diversity, equity, and inclusion in rewilding and 99.9\% of the people there were white.


But what I did was get a lot of the speakers, the people in positions of power that were disseminating information, if you want to call that a position of power, leadership positions.


I diversified that heavily and thought in a way that would bring in a more diverse crowd, and I was wrong and so, you know, it’s one of those things where we’re constantly learning as an organization of how to be more inclusive and how to be show up for people and create environments that aren’t just white spaces and I think, one of the things that came out of the conference or the organizations that we work with are really taking that on and making, like there’s a resilience conference coming up for people of color in Portland that’s gonna be, you know, ancestral skills, wilderness, resilience.


It’s put on by wild diversity and queer nature.


And, I think part of their understanding the need for that was like coming to our spaces and being like, this is kind of a joke and we need our own space for people to feel safe.


And, when I first started doing this, I was thinking like, is this going to just keep fractioning people away? Does this mean that we’re not going to have like an event where people can come together? But I think it’s actually like the opposite.


I think that when there’s a when there’s a safe space that people become resilient together, and then they become stronger leaders and practitioners, and then they feel more willing to come into spaces that aren’t.


\textbf{Zerzan:} I see.


\textbf{Peter:} Do you know what I’m saying?


\textbf{Zerzan:} That’s the way it works, you see.


\textbf{Peter:} That’s what I’m hoping, you know, and we partner with a lot of different organizations to bring in more demographics.


Like, for example, for Echoes in Time, you know, I’ve, that one’s a, that was, I inherited that and so It was even more challenging in some ways to transition that to change the demographics or diversify the demographics more because it already had like a history of not really doing that.


Even though the core principle behind Echoes in Time is that this is for everyone, there still has to be a thought of like, well, why isn’t everybody here? And so that was kind of, you know, when I took it over, I think that was like the next step for the the event was for me to say, like, well, why isn’t everybody here? what’s going on that people aren’t comfortable being here? And so the first thing, again, it’s like with leadership, I’m starting kind of in the top and going down and diversifying the instructors, bringing in a lot more Native folks and people of color and queer folks and part of that, one of the things that we did last year was have a, partnered with Queer Nature to do a program the week before on the same property called Queer Scout Craft, where or stealth craft, where it’s like a BIPOC only space to learn like wilderness camouflage and bird language and stalking and invisibility and those kinds of skills that are generally kind of, I don’t really like the term toxic masculinity or, but like, mainstream or whatever sort of concepts of masculinity and I’ve never really, that’s one of the reasons why I stopped doing that kind of stuff.


Like I went to Tom Brown Junior School when I was like a teenager and it was just super highly competitive in this sort of like bro, you know, masculine type way and I’ve just never been that kind of man or person and so, yeah, we wanted to create a space where it was just queer folks learning those skills to see kind of like what would happen and also they’re really good at like working on working through like traumas and things that come up with people when they’re doing those kinds of activities.


So basically what we did was create a space on site, a safe space on site for queer folks and then they got into Echoes in Time for like Half Rice if they wanted to stay.


So it was like a thing where we created a queer safe space that existed prior to the event and lasted through the event.


So if there was something, anything like microaggressions or something like that would make somebody be uncomfortable or just not feel like they wanted to be in that space, they actually had a place to go back to and be with one another and then just chill out and so we’re trying to kind of brainstorm things like that together with leaders of other organizations that are demographic specific so we can partner with those demographics and expand it and I don’t know if it’ll work in the end, but it’s all about like what we’re capable of doing in the small scale and then maybe being an example for other people to try similar stuff in other places.


\textbf{Zerzan:} That sounds great.


I mean, it’s the challenge to be open if you haven’t been doing that sort of thing.


I mean, one gets comfortable and the people and stay in that groove and it’s working, but is it?


\textbf{Peter:} Totally, yeah.


\textbf{Co-Host:} Do you have any connection with homeless people?


\textbf{Peter:} You know, back in the day, we did a We did a, we got a grant to do like a homeless youth writing project back when Rewell Portland was still under the name Myth Media, but we haven’t really connected much like in the urban context beyond that.


\textbf{Co-Host:} Because homeless people seem kind of half wild.


\textbf{Peter:} Absolutely.


Already.


Right.


Yeah.


I mean, that was, it’s funny that you say that because like, you know, in terms of thinking about my own the way the Urban Scout Project originally started was me essentially trying to figure out a way to be a homeless hunter-gatherer.


And, at first was I was going to do it 100\% primitive and I had all these plans in my head for how it was going to work and I was going to like live in friends’ backyard, multiple backyards, and build debris shelters and underground shelters and I did that in a few places and eventually I was like, okay, this This is really challenging for me because I need, I actually have to have stuff.


Like I can’t do this with nothing.


This isn’t, I wasn’t trained.


I don’t have the skills to do this without anything and then also like being alone.


isn’t really how humans evolved.


So, I’m like, okay, I need certain amounts of technology, right? That I can’t just like go from these things.


I actually have to carry a knife.


I have to carry, you know, these things.


I need clothes and shoes.


Otherwise I’m going to get arrested or, you know, like eventually I was like, I have all this stuff, you know, if I just had a tarp, that would be amazing, right? Just a tarp to carry around and I’m like, maybe I’ll get a plastic tarp and then I was like, okay, I’m going to get a sleeping bag because, you know, like, I just can’t carry it and I was like, okay, I’m starting to carry all this stuff.


Like, what would be, I’m like, wow, it would be really great if I had like some sort of thing with wheels on it that I could carry it.


I’m like, oh, like a shopping cart and I’m just like, wow, I’m a ******* idiot.


Oh, sorry, cough.


I was like, wow, I am an idiot.


You know, and I’m just like, that’s one of the things where you’re like, you’re a privileged white kid from Portland without any concept of like how other people are existing in the world and there’s oftentimes, you know, those folks who are living that way already know survival skills.


They already know a lot of that stuff.


I think the main sort of difference between homeless people that are living autonomously outside of taxation, outside of the system in that regard, and maybe living off the waste of it, obviously like raccoons, but they’re not necessarily serving an ecological function the way that I think hunter-gatherers would be like, even if they weren’t doing any like super intentional manipulation of land, even if you’re just like pooping seeds out somewhere, you’re still like integrating into an ecosystem, whereas that demographic is existing off of the refuse of the civilization ecosystem, if you want to call it that.


But so yeah, there’s definitely like a, you know, an opportunity there to connect more with homeless people.


\textbf{Co-Host:} I would think so.


I mean, there’s drug abuse and mental illness, but there’s probably also just young kids that maybe haven’t fallen prey to that yet.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah.


\textbf{Co-Host:} That.


\textbf{Peter:} Right.


\textbf{Co-Host:} Could have things to teach and things to learn.


\textbf{Peter:} Absolutely.


obviously, I think a lot of the mental illness is a direct cause of civilization.


So there’s an opportunity there for working through the traumas that have been inflicted by civilization.


\textbf{Co-Host:} Yeah, and it’s, I mean, it’s right there in front of your face.


You don’t have to look for the rainforest in Brazil.


\textbf{Peter:} Exactly.


Yeah.


I think oftentimes it’s the people who, you know, one of the people who comes to my mind is Fenicio Medrano, AKA ****** Granny.


who lives, essentially, she calls herself a glorified bag lady and that’s what she is.


She’s homeless, and lived in a horse-drawn covered wagon for years.


And, on some level, we would say she has a mental health problem or something like that.


But it’s often those people who are the disenfranchised the most, who are the most willing to abandon civilization at all costs, or are just simply unable to live here.


Right and I think there’s a level of there’s just you can’t sit in like there’s it’s so uncomfortable that everybody can, not everybody, but a lot of people can sit in the discomfort enough to just withstand it because they have their TV or their whatever.


But there’s certain people, whether it’s health problems, mental health, physical health, whatever, that ends up leading them toward an anti-civilization lifestyle, even before they have a worldview for it, simply because they can’t be a part of it.


I’ve never really thought of myself as that, but there was a reason why I had to drop out of high school and run away from home is essentially mental health.


I would have killed myself if I had to stay in those places.


From the time I was 11, I was like holding a knife to my wrist and crying myself to sleep because I did not want to be a part of any of that and even today, it’s like, I think if I didn’t have rewild Portland, or if I hadn’t thrown myself into this entirely, I don’t know where I would be.


I’m definitely not somebody who would hold on enough, I think.


I’m one of those people who’s not like super, I don’t know, like people like Phoenicia to me are like, super strong, even though they might have their own issues that prevent them from being a participant in civilization, it’s not like she ever wanted to off herself.


You know what I mean? She was willing to withstand being beaten and tortured and all those things and being and having this crazy life, but never, you know, ended up ending it, at least hasn’t yet.


I know she’s had problems.


So I hope she doesn’t.


I hope she lives for a lot longer and continues to teach.


Even though she has a challenging personality to be around.


Anyway.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Wow, okay.


Well, let’s just slip into music break.


We have the rare Americans and after that, possibly your calls, and we’ll just go on and on here.


That’s just wonderful stuff.


\textbf{Zerzan:} And we’re back.


Elijah, I see your inside out t-shirt, Burning Man is stupid.


\textbf{Co-Host:} Yeah, but it’s backwards for whatever that means.


I don’t know.


\textbf{Zerzan:} It’s not inside out.


There’s, do you see? Maybe at the origin of Burning Man, some glimmer of light in terms of alternative.


\textbf{Co-Host:} Oh, I think Burning Man still offers a glimmer of hope in many ways.


I’ve seen it, it’s changed my life.


I’ve seen it change other people’s lives, get them in touch with values that are outside what we’re expected to consider important.


I haven’t been for several years, but I started going in 98 and I went 10 or 12 times and yeah, it’s not just a big party.


There’s a lot of education that goes on there and connections are made.


\textbf{Zerzan:} All right, good to hear that.


Mostly I’ve seen these stories about now it’s rich people and they don’t talk about anything else that’s going on.


I was always curious as to what, I’ve known people have gone, but I didn’t know much about it.


\textbf{Co-Host:} I think they became, they used to be a limited liability corporation and the people who started it, Larry Harvey, the founder of it, actually died a couple years ago.


But they became a non-profit, as I understand it, because there were people from Google who wanted to give them a bunch of money.


so that they could buy some of the land.


They want to buy the land they do the event on, so that they can have a different relationship with law enforcement out there.


I don’t know if that’s happened, but they are a non-profit now, for whatever that’s worth.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Yeah, Country Fair bought that land by the long term.


Anyway, I think people, there is a hunger for something else that’s That’s clear, and so many dead-end answers to that need.


But there are efforts, people.


You know, I was just looking at this thing again.


Oh, yeah, it’s just, this is in the sort of the TV Guide section of the local paper here, and advertising Dr.


Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Documentary, One Nation Under Stress, and it mentions, in a shocking reversal, life expectancy in the US has declined and is declining faster than in any other developed nation.


Suicide, opioid, you know, I talk about this pretty much every week.


All those things, cirrhosis due to alcohol and everything else, all on the rise, despite the fact that the US spends more than any other nation on healthcare.


This series supposedly argues that it’s self-inflicted deaths of despair that’s the real thing.


\textbf{Co-Host:} Do they offer any explanation for that?


\textbf{Zerzan:} Well, this wasn’t much of a message about it, but I know inequality, they put a lot on that, it sounds like, and I think I’ve read a lot that it’s really not so much about inequality.


Inequality is nothing new, but a lot of these, some of these things are are quite new.


Mass shootings.


They didn’t have, that’s 20 years old.


Not, almost never did that happen before then.


Now, it’s just pretty chronic and today in the news, maybe you saw this, there’s been a spate of post-mass shootings, suicides.


I mean, this awful thing is, you know, as if the shooting, these horrific shootings aren’t enough and then there’s the relatives or the survivors, several just in the past week.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah.


It’s amazing.


That’s crazy.


\textbf{Zerzan:} And obviously it’s hard to get out of where we’re at.


If you have some capital, you can make a start.


You can get some land somewhere.


I know people have said, you can get some land.


It may be stumps and you could get that cheap, but even that, who has even that much money?


\textbf{Peter:} Right.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Excuse me.


So yeah, that’s obviously a key thing right there.


We’re kept in our places.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, it’s one of the reasons why, I always envisioned creating Rewild Portland and then creating enough programs, getting enough funding to buy land and when I first started doing this, I thought, you know, oh, we’ll have enough money maybe in five years to buy this land and I was looking in this particular area in the Cascades and five years goes by and we have a tiny bit of money that would have been probably an okay amount to buy some property with like 10 years ago and in the Willamette Valley here, the property values have tripled, quadrupled in that time.


So what would have maybe been a tiny little thing now is like absolutely nothing.


It’s a drop in the bucket for what the land is now.


kind of essentially given up.


And, to me, any kind of barrier can be overcome with creativity and social capital or whatever.


I hate that term capital, but through community and social networks and creativity and brainstorming, you can come up with solutions to those problems and so like, when we got kicked off of state parks for Echoes and Time, not because we did anything illegal there, they just were changing their policies around, but we had to move to private property and it’s actually been really beneficial, not just for us as an organization, but also for the property owner who, you know, didn’t have maintenance happening there and now there’s this relationship where we’re helping to be a part of that ecosystem there and in fact, now we’re actually like having, we’re attempting to get grants and things like that for restoration of the river and stuff like that the government can provide for those places.


So, there’s this interesting relationship now where we can actually do some of that work for that property.


But, it’s one of those things where we’re realizing like, oh, this is the dream, is the dream is always to sort of like get land.


I’m A renter.


There’s no way I’d ever be able to afford buying a house, especially now in Portland.


You know, I’m trapped.


If my rent goes up anymore, I don’t know where I’m going to go.


Rewild Portland might become rewild Detroit or something else, you know, which is already happening there.


So that’s cool and there, I don’t know if there’s a rewild Detroit, but that’s it.


It’s rewilding, right? Yeah.


But I just, you know, it’s a weird thing of like, again, being like, sort of like trapped on all sides, but then figuring, okay, what can I do to make it work where I’m at? And One of the things that I’m really looking into is essentially transition, the idea of transition tech or whatever, transition culture, where I don’t know if we’ll be able to immediately go back to living any type of way that I think would be the ideal, but we can keep the ideal there and work toward this other thing, right? As long as we’re continuing to keep that ideal there and not get sidelined or sidetracked or wrapped back in.


to the current system and I think as collapse intensifies, there will be more and more opportunities for rewilding and I think of permaculture as one of those examples of like permaculture on its own isn’t a critique of civilization and so therefore is, you know, I read one article once in the Willamette Week that called permaculture just a messy garden.


And, but at its core, when I took the permaculture design course, it’s kind of funny.


I actually took the course just so I could critique permaculture and I took it from Toby Hemenway, who passed recently a couple of years ago and his last book was City Permaculture.


But in his permaculture course, his first essay, or not essay, his first lecture that he gave was entitled, How Permaculture Can Save Humanity, But Not Civilization and he had a whole critique of civilization and he was the only real big permaculturalist who I ever saw talk about that and even in that class, even after that, my whole thing, my permaculture design, we did this, it was like we split into teams and did like fake design, not fake, some people actually implemented them, but we did like courses, projects together and ours was to like, the one I got put into was the Portland, the PSU art building, which is essentially a concrete block with no windows.


It’s like 4 stories and my solution was to dismantle the whole building and plant, you know, a garden and, you know, things for weaving and natural dyes and stuff like that and it’s funny because it’s in downtown Portland.


It’s right on the freeway and like, you know, I had a whole thing of like, well, we’ll demo the building and inoculate it with mushroom spores.


So there’ll be a mushroom cloud when we move to bring it down.


I don’t know, there’s stupid things like that.


But it was still like considered super radical to everybody that was in the class, even after this like critique of civilization, even after talking about how that building is essentially useless and, or, you know, functionless in terms of permaculture.


any ultimate goal anyway, right? So permaculture is a design science, but in and of itself isn’t a critique of civilization.


This is sort of a tangent, but I’m only bringing it up in terms of thinking about what Rewild Portland can accomplish on our transition to a more, you know, I think that for me, like immediate return, hunter-gatherers are essentially an ideal way for humans to exist.


It’s what we did for so long in theory.


I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to get back to that in any way, although I would like to hope that at some point, whether we transition into something else that is similar to that or, which I think is probably more likely to happen than to have the same type of thing going on as before.


I don’t think there’s any really more resilient lifeway than that and so to me, that’s like the litmus test, you know, that’s the bar and then what are all the things that we can do to make that happen with the constraints that we have around us? Each individual is different in terms of their willingness to abandon civilization or their willingness to dismantle it, or not necessarily even willingness, but with people who are, like we talked about earlier, unable to function within the society, those are the people that are at the forefront of that and I’m not, I don’t have enough, whatever.


Obviously, I work within the city limits.


I’m not homeless myself.


But I’m trying to do all of those types of things to transition into something else, whatever is beyond that,


\textbf{Zerzan:} right? That comes out very clear and in a worsening context, in terms of what is happening with urbanization, All these promises, smart cities.


I can’t think of anything that isn’t getting worse from what I read every week.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah.


\textbf{Zerzan:} I mean, it’s just kind of bizarre.


It’s like the whole chimera, all these promises and no solutions at all.


There’s no, okay, that sounds good.


Is it working?


\textbf{Peter:} Right, exactly.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Of course not.


It’s just making people crazy and people live less.


They used to be the fallback thing, again, this thing about longevity.


you can blah, blah, blah, but people live longer.


Not even that anymore and even if they were living longer, you could also point out what kind of life that can keep people alive longer in a very anti-robust state.


I mean, even in terms of, and Kathryn used to talk about this a bit, in terms of the military, in terms of wars.


They can keep people alive.


We have only one limb left and half of their brain or something.


So it’s not a death.


Nobody died.


\textbf{Peter:} Right.


\textbf{Zerzan:} I mean, you know, that’s an extreme thing, but that’s also part of the picture.


\textbf{Peter:} Totally.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Wow.


Well, you know, there’s still time.


Call at 541-346-0645.


I’m finding this really Fascinating.


Is something blinking in there? Oh, it’s not.


Whatever the heck that is.


No, it’s not.


It’s not a phone.


It signifies nothing.


Right.


My wishful thinking.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, I think, you know, it’s interesting too, like in terms of, is that a call? There’s more lights flashing.


I don’t know.


In terms of like transition technology and the rewilding conference, and echoes and all these sort of things.


It’s like, I used to try to think that we could get more grandiose with things and build more and more, but now it’s like I’m spiraling downward and trying to do less and just more quality with less.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Well, it’s a tough time.


\textbf{Co-Host:} We have Rhea.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Rhea, how’s it going?


\textbf{Rhea:} Hey, how are you doing?


\textbf{Zerzan:} Good, Catching this great episode.


\textbf{Rhea:} Oh yeah, this is really a good one for me.


I wanted to start by letting you know though, John, that my father’s Lakota.


I don’t really put it out there much.


I try to avoid labels and I try to self-marginalize myself on all my labels.


Peter, it’s really good to hear the work that you’re doing.


When you brought up permaculture, though, I’m like so anti-permaculture, mainly for two reasons.


One is because I see it as just, you know, it looks like it’s more of a wild thing, but I see it as more architecting around man, except you’re actually architecting nature and I don’t know if it does more or less harm or whatever, but just the whole concept of it.


really turns me off and plus, I’ve seen so many examples of it being used, different permacultures, putting out these skills and techniques and knowledge that are actually harmful to natural environments and indigenous living communities.


\textbf{Peter:} Absolutely.


\textbf{Rhea:} The level of knowledge among many of these permacultures seem so low on that regard and then when you point it out to them, they either excuse it away or they say it’s a one-time, it’s just one species or, you know, so I’m glad we’re in agreement on that.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, I don’t, you know, I think that’s the sort of the challenge with something like permaculture is that any individual who takes it up can kind of do whatever they want with it and really at the end of the day, it is just an attempt at indigenous horticulture.


So if you’re in collaboration with people like, Rewild Portland at our conference this year, the keynote speaker was Dave Lewis from the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and his talk was on Kalapuya land management.


So, you know, here in the Willamette Valley, the land was tended here by horticultural hunter-gatherers.


I’m not going to say that that’s, you know, like I said before, I think immediate return under gatherer is an ideal.


But in terms of like longevity and resilience, they were here for 12,000 years at minimum without destroying things, even if they were essentially keeping the landscape here in the same type of ecosystem for so long.


But essentially, I think like permaculture is trying to replicate some idea or maybe initially was, but like you’re saying, yes, it’s essentially like this oftentimes can be architectural.


\textbf{Rhea:} Right.


\textbf{Peter:} And I totally agree with that and I definitely see that as a problem as well.


\textbf{Rhea:} Yeah, but that kind of leads into my next question for you and that is, I have this, you’ve done some wilderness awareness stuff.


You said Tom Brown studied under?


\textbf{Peter:} Yes.


\textbf{Rhea:} Yeah.


So I’ve done a little bit of programs through Wilderness Awareness School, and I’ve done some volunteering.


with some of the children’s camps, and it was odd.


One of the children’s camps was at a forest that I’m also stewarding, so I got to see it through two lenses and there was a constant tension between the need for the children to be in the forest you know, to learn the animal connectedness and to experience their senses and the work that had been, seeing like where their feet were, you know, and like we had just planted those ground covers right there for this reason and those children are now walking there, you know, like seeing the impact of it and there’s just like this population pressure, like this would be no big deal, you know, If we weren’t in an urban area, if we were like really out in the wild and we had a smaller number of children, but there’s so few areas left where there’s, you know, forests and woodlands and wetlands and stuff and when you start getting programming going into those places, trying to help people to rewild themselves.


I almost feel like, you know, restoring, intending to these wild places should be part of rewilding yourself.


\textbf{Peter:} Absolutely, absolutely.


\textbf{Rhea:} Especially nowadays.


\textbf{Peter:} Yes.


\textbf{Rhea:} And then I’m concerned, like, after big collapses, who’s going to take care of all these? If no one is, if people are just gonna go, like, hunt and gather, and without the awareness that hunter-gatherers used to have.


Like if they’re going to start, then I can see a lot of like the problems that we have already sparked in these natural areas are going to continue because no one’s going to even know how to tend to it.


\textbf{Peter:} Right.


\textbf{Rhea:} But go on.


\textbf{Peter:} So yeah, cool.


I’ll answer the first part of Wilderness Awareness School.


I went there, I was part of the homeschool program when I was a teenager and I ran away from home.


I went up there and I lived for a short time at that school.


I have a lot of respect for a lot of the things that they do and also, obviously, I have a critique of everything.


I’m sure people have critiques of everything I do.


But, you know, one of the things that you mentioned of kids trampling stuff that you planted there, it’s something that we’re dealing with here in Portland now, especially like with the population boom.


that’s happened here and as an organization that works in an urban context within the parks, that’s like a constant conversation we’re having and in fact, here they have things with the parks called stewardship agreements where nonprofit organizations can partner with the city to basically create like a relationship around ground rules of what you’re going to do in terms of like how you participate with the parks.


But one of the things I’m going through right now is I’m actually meeting with a bunch of the other organizations that do this kind of stuff, that do nature education, especially with youth, and coming up with a, I know this is going to be so ridiculous, a permitting process that allows us to do certain things in the park and participate in ways, like, for example, the last time I tried to get a permit, I was told I was no longer allowed to build stick forts with kids in the parks.


which to me is insane.


you should be able to, that’s, if part of environmental education is connecting kids through participation in nature, like stick forts are essentially like square one.


It’s like kindergarten, right? And so how could you deny that experience? Instead, what they want is to mediate the nature connection with like test tubes and magnifying glasses and things like that, which to me is just a sort of weird further removed thing, right? So why not create a context or parks specifically with the ability to do those things or even have stewardship built into all of those programs to offset any type of damage that might be happening at those parks and so, you know, with our homeschool program that we do on Fridays, we actually do partner with the stewardship coordinators and we do planting at the parks that we’re at.


So not only are the kids there being able to make stick forts and things like this in particular areas, but then also we’re helping plant back the what are quote unquote natural areas and then they can see how those plants change throughout the years and know that they were a part of that restoration.


Right.


So there’s like all of these different relationships that you can build across platforms like that and this is just a weird thing of being like, essentially having anarchist values, but working with the city to get permits and things like that is so bizarre.


But so that’s one thing I just wanted to address in terms of how those relationships can actually strengthen both the children’s connection to nature and the relationship with the people in power who have the, you know, the control over those natural areas in the present moment.


The second thing you said was like, how, what do we do if, after collapse, people are no longer tending these places and things like that? Is that essentially, maybe you could reiterate that.


\textbf{Rhea:} I mean, you can look at it closer to the urban areas.


You know, you’re gonna, when you look at where like the forest stewards are and the restoration ecologists are, they tend to be closer to urban areas.


urban areas, even though there’s not much nature there.


So I can see that like some of those people kind of might take the lead with stuff like that.


But when you look at like the government controlled vast areas of land like the national parks and national forests and the BLM.


You know, right now the government is maintaining those areas and I can just see like with collapse, people rushing in there and like hunting and whatever without the knowledge of how to tent, how to not do harm and how to do it in a way that’s helpful.


\textbf{Peter:} Absolutely.


\textbf{Rhea:} So there’s like two ends of it.


There’s like the urban end of it and the swaths of natural area end of it.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, and I mean, you know, it’s one of those things where we don’t actually know what will happen and so it’s challenging to come up with any sort of strategy or idea or plan that’ll carry over to that, whatever the future is, right? So anything that we consider wilderness right now might be stripped and mined and logged and destroyed in 50 years by the government, you know what I mean? And as it’s collapsing.


Another thing is like, you know, food sources and, Generally, I think what happens when civilizations collapse is they implode.


So people, initially there’s maybe government aid.


Everything is imported into cities.


They don’t really have much resilience themselves.


So people tend to flock towards them for aid, food aid and things like that until they are completely decimated before people are willing to go out to those further stretches that are further away from what they’ve known, right? So I think people who live on the fringes, and even in the Great Depression, you saw this, where the people who lived way out in the countryside fared way better than those who lived in an urban context, because they could garden a lot more efficiently and easier and there was more access to plants and animals in the forests that were further away from those urban centers.


But honestly, you know, in a collapse scenario you’re talking about, if all bets are off, people, anyway, yeah, who knows exactly what’s going to happen.


I think that, you know, there’s a whole conversation of fearing of where we think things are gonna go.


\textbf{Rhea:} I mean, kind of what you’re, part of it is kind of what you’re also doing, and that is, you know, the, ethic of we have a responsibility to learn about the natural areas in a way that’s helpful where we can interact in a way that’s helpful and healing.


You know, that really needs to take off.


\textbf{Peter:} Totally.


\textbf{Rhea:} And it kind of like, I like the way you’re doing it where it’s like alongside, you’re doing both at the same time and they do go hand in hand, really.


\textbf{Peter:} Absolutely, and you know, I think too, like as collapse intensifies, here we are, on the edge and I think there will be people very, at one point, I think Rewild Portland seemed like a radical organization and I don’t think we really do anymore.


it’s just a matter of getting buy-in and I think that buy-in happens, the worst things get.


Do you know what I’m saying? So, you know, all of the solutions already exist.


Empire prevents anything from actually happening.


The state prevents anything from actually happening.


not necessarily even the people in power, just the way that it operates as a system.


It doesn’t allow for anything else.


But as soon as that breaks down, people start looking for something else and if we are, if we’ve situated ourselves in this place where we already have these types of relationships and this type of land management and practice and ideology, then there’s a potential that those people are going to come to us and ask for our assistance and not just us, but obviously all of the networks that we’re connected to and the voices that we’ve elevated, including Native folks of this region.


\textbf{Rhea:} Yeah, it’s really interesting.


I’d love to talk with you some other time about what we got going on up here in Seattle and Awesome.


Thanks, John, for having Peter on.


Great meeting.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, thanks for calling.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Wonderful, All right, take care.


\textbf{Rhea:} Yeah, you too.


\textbf{Zerzan:} Right up to the end of the hour.


Pretty nice timing.


All right, thank you, Peter.


I want to echo that and Elijah, this has really been a marvelous hour.


\textbf{Co-Host:} Great to meet you, Peter.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, thanks.


\textbf{Co-Host:} I was able to be here tonight.


\textbf{Zerzan:} All right, I guess next week, just Carl and me, Two weeks, Kath will be here to co-host, and yeah, we’ll see what’s going to happen in the meantime.


Thanks again, Peter.


\textbf{Peter:} Yeah, thank you.









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The Ted K Archive





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Conversations with Peter Michael Bauer on Anarchy Radio



2007, 2015 \& 2019


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2007-08-07: <\href{https://archive.org/details/JohnZerzanAnarchyRadio080702007NWC7Jcspiva}{www.archive.org\Slash{}details\Slash{}JohnZerzanAnarchyRadio080702007NWC7Jcspiva}>\forcelinebreak 2015-10-06: <\href{https://archive.org/details/AnarchyRadio10062015}{www.archive.org\Slash{}details\Slash{}AnarchyRadio10062015}>\forcelinebreak 2019-03-26: <\href{https://archive.org/details/AnarchyRadio03262019}{www.archive.org\Slash{}details\Slash{}AnarchyRadio03262019}>
   

       

       

       

       

       

       

   



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\textbf{www.thetedkarchive.com}


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