What unites us…
1. interdependency of inside and outside
We understand the well-being of all of us as an interplay between us and our envrionment (humans, animals, plants, earth, water…). We want to learn to understand and especially to feel this connection between all living things.
We do believe that healing from within can not happen without healing on the outside and vice versa. That’s why we want to learn to take responsibility (again) for our direct envrionment and to trust more in the knowledge that change in ourselves already has an effect on the world surrounding us.
2. Patriarchy
We do understand patriarchy as a way of living disconnected, as a dualistic view of the world: good and bad, black and white, body and soul, thinking and feeling, human and nature, women and men,… , which overlooks the most important: that everything has one source, one origin and that therein lies the all-embracing commonality.
We understand patriarchy as the believe in development and progress, in the technological feasibility and the industrial overcoming of nature. Thereby it is being suppressed that all live depends on the earth, on nature, is related to nature. We see patriarchy as a logic that is deeply burned-in into all of us. In our way of feeling, thinking, experiencing and acting; as a logic that considers everything disconnected of each other, that disconnects everything. A logic, that is based on infinite growth. We do believe, that patriarchy has been and still is the root of capitalism and colonisation, of sexism, racism, industrialisation and so on.
2a Gender
We want to develop a deeper understanding for what it means to grow up in an patriarchal society which divides us into two genders. We want to reflect on internalized acting-, thinking- and feeling-patterns connected to the pressure to perform and self-sacrifice and review how far they are connected to our gender. We want to detect the female socialization of ‘only-carework’ and the male of ‘not-at-all-carework’ in ourselves and figure out how this is connected to health and healing, where it is in it’s way and how it could help us.
2b Preservation of knowledge and tying with history
Patriarchy has stolen our history, let’s take it back! We do believe that history has an fundamental influence on our self-image and sense of self and want to develop our own view of history. We see the prosecution of witches in connection to resistance against the beginnings of capitalism, the systematic devaluation of women and reproductional work in general, the upcoming wage labour and economization of live. We want to look at the role of christianity and the church in the enforcement of patriarchal values and to go back to the very beginnings of patriarchy. We want to search for links in history, so we can reanimate suppressed knowledge as far as possible.
Patriarchy burned our history, our primary-own and our intuitive knowledge and with it a essential prat of self-determination and independency – but we want to find access to remaining and collect it, to reveal suppressed, buried and banned knowledge. We see patriarchal takeovers in prosecutuin of witches, the criminalization of healing-knowledge and the systematic devaluation of women, the crush down against resistance in the beginnings of capitalism, the upcoming hired labor and rationalization of life.
2c health away from the logic of utilization/ different approaches to healing
We want to develop an understanding of health beyond the logic of utilization and (self-)exploitation. We see, that there are different approaches to healing and that healing can also mean to deal with (suppressed) feelings like hate and anger and to open the room for that.
2d reproduction of patriarchal structures
We want to learn by and by to reproduce less and less patriarchal structures, therefore it’s important to us that the camp becomes a place where there’s room for a lot of different people. It’s important to us that it will be a child-friendly space, where people, who are often not able to participate because of carework (childcare, care of elderly and sick people…) are being thought of. We want the camp to be composed in a way that carework is not only the task of few, but to create a general and awake awareness that carework is supported collectively.
3. Resistance connected to healing
We know that the current social system stands in the way of healing and every life, it even actively bars us from it. We do understand it as resistance to withdraw ourselves from this exploitative, efficency-orientated logic and to immediately bridge the big divide between us and everything surrounding us. We do believe that it are those connections which make us take care of each other from the bottom of our hearts, which can keep us from exploiting other beings and which can make us take up the necessary means to make life in all its ways possible and ,if necessary, to defend it. So we do understand healing as a part of resistance and resistance as a part of healing.
3a Self-organized networking
To put our self-concept into action self-organization and being free from hierachy is crucial for us just as being transparent about it. We don’t like imbalance of power and expertise not only among the participants and referents but also within the orga-crew, rather creative and open exchange, ability to take criticism, respect. We want to create, find and live alternatives to expensive institutions and authority-dominated ways of transfering knowledge. To strip aways any form of social, financial/material injustice we empower collective support,networking and self-organzied working which are important aspects for us.
4. Willingness to reflect (esp. cultural appropriation, spirituality, natural_science)
On the camp we want to create room for questioning manners and approaches to natural healing and to reflect our own behavior within it. Overall this involves critique of the existing, oppressing, exploitative and growth-demanding system, but in detail we also want to look at allday, invisible discrimination. We aim at reflecting and realizing structural racism as we find it in cultural appropriation, spirituality and (natural) science. Most of all we ask for willingness of reflection, especially in relation to everyone’s own actions. Working power structures and with them one’s own privileges are mostly invisible and racist behaviour is often reproduced without knowing or bad intentions.
5. Awareness in the process of organization
In our crew we try to live this understanding: it is important to us to take time for getting to know each other. While working we want to realize and avoid pressure to perform, intenalised self-exploitation and to question gender identities.
Radical Hebalism
Radical Herbalism – “Radical“, natural healing that starts at the root: Radical descends from Radix- root and means the base, examination of natural healing from the root on. From our understanding(s) of health and which alternatives there are, over the dimensions of health (health at a physical, mental-spiritual, social, political, ecological and economical level), through to a self-responsible, self-determining and aware way of living.
But we also understand Radical Herbalism as the root of community/society, describing an acient access to natural healings without pressure to productiveness, profit and power – open to everyone.
Everybody despite their social, cultural, national, ethnical, sexual, economical belonging and of every age and abilitys should have access to this knowledge and be qualified to care for one’s own behalf and decide which way of healing they wish.
We understand that different roots of different parts of the world have a variety of diverse methods of applications. But this doesn’t justify the exploitation of knowledge and resources or ancient traditions of indigenous people through capitalistic- patriachal structures.
