Land: Loss and Reconnection
Land is how we live. We live on the land, we live because of land, and when we die we go back into the land. Yet land, in our modern capitalist dystopia, is often the farthest thing from our mind. Few of us even have access to land — everywhere it is fenced off, paved over, gated, polluted, and destroyed.
How did it come to this? How did the notion of private property come about? Why were so many people displaced from the land through enclosures, the transatlantic slave trade, and brutal colonization?
And what has this done to us?
In this course, writer, artist, and Gods&Radicals co-founder Alley Valkyrie will lead you through the history and meaning of land, illuminate the processes and politics that caused our separation from land, and guide you to spiritual reconnection and political reclamation of the land beneath our feet.
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Introduction
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Chapter One
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Chapter Two
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Chapter Two: How The Land Was Lost, part 2
This chapter picks up where the last one left off, from Columbus to the effects of the Reformation, the subsequent development of what we know today as Capitalism, and the Enclosures that followed, all which triggered wave after wave of mass migration to the “New World.”
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Supplement: Catholic and Protestant Values
This supplemental video discusses the differences between Catholic and Protestant values, and how the Reformation helped birth capitalism.
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Chapter Three
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Chapter Three: Cutting the Cord - The Rewriting, Manipulation, and Erasure of History
This chapter covers the various methods employed to create spiritual and cultural separation from the land, and how such erasure is essential to promoting the ‘myth of progress’
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Supplement: The Myth of Progress
This supplemental video discusses the Myth of Progress, why it developed, and what its problems are.
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Supplement: Ancestors
This supplemental video discusses Ancestors and how to work with them.
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Chapter Four
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Chapter Four: Land — Its Echoes, Spirits, and Peoples
In this chapter, we concentrate on what the land has to tell us, with some personal stories about how places hold the energy of their past and the stories that such energies can illuminate for us.
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Supplement: Land Spirits
This supplemental video discusses land spirits and gives tips for how to approach them.
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Chapter Five
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Chapter Five: Spiritual and Cultural Connection and Reconnection to Land
This chapter is about reconnecting. We examine both the difficulties and possibilities of reconnecting to land, whether we are settlers who are there without permission or if we are not. We’ll also examine how we can connect to our ancestral homelands, even at a distance.
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Supplement: Ancestry
This supplemental video discusses the thorny topic of ancestry, and offers a way to understand it more clearly.
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Chapter Six
Alley Valkyrie
Your Instructor
Alley Valkyrie is an artist, a spirit worker, and a former street activist now living in Bretagne, France. She’s devoted her entire adult life to the study of land, land rights, and land spirits.
Course FAQ
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As long as you need!
We recommend you devote one week per chapter, but we've designed all our courses to be flexible. Take your time with each lesson, and only proceed to the next one when you feel ready.
And you can take the course over and over whenever you like!
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It's up to you! The supplemental reading is there for those who'd like to delve even deeper into the topics covered in the videos.
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We highly suggest this, as it will help you embody what you're learning. That being said, like all other parts of this course, it's designed to be flexible and you can decide when and how you do it.