May 2nd, 2023
Keynote Address: Alexis Nikole Nelson on Foraging and Abundance
12:00 – 1:00 PM | Redwood Auditorium (EMU 214)
Alexis Nikole Nelson (she/her) is a forager and an outdoor educator using her platform to yell, sing and celebrate all the edible plants hiding in plain sight! She invites all who will come on the foraging journey of collecting, identifying, and eating wild food.
Nelson has also cooked up quite a few awards, receiving the James Beard Award for “Best Social Media” 2022, being chosen for the Forbes “30 Under 30” list, being chosen as a TikTok Tastemaker, and being honored as part of Fortune magazine’s “Creator 25” in 2021.
With 5 million followers joining Alexis on the adventure, she reframes the world of food, asking us to consider tastefully satiating and environmentally sustainable food choices. She also peels back historical layers on African American and Indigenous food traditions that have traditionally been repressed. Whether Nelson is teaching audiences which seaweeds are delish or turning acorns into cheese, she does so with a song and a smile. Nelson’s comedic lessons and videos direct audiences to freely accessible food options and demonstrations of tasty dishes.
While delivered in a light-hearted manner, Nelson’s content has empowered those living in food deserts with greater self-sufficiency – which is no laughing matter.
Nelson takes audiences into the woods and to the oceans in search of edible plants to enrich their palates and the planet.
As Alexis would say, “Happy snacking, don’t die!”
Foraging Walk with Alexis Nikole Nelson and the Outdoor Program
May 2nd | 1:30 – 3:30 PM | OP Barn | NOW FULL
The foraging walk is an educational, group activity in which Alexis leads a group of students throughout campus identifying the different types of trees, plants, mushrooms, berries, and more, and provides information on their use and history. It’s meant to be equal parts entertaining as it is educational as she always adds a fun comedic twist to everything that she does.
May 3rd – Workshops
Reimagining our Built Environments with Aimée Okotie-Oyekan
May 3rd | 10:00-10:50 AM | Swindells (EMU 230)
Aimée Okotie-Oyekan weaves the boundaries between science, policy, and art to advance environmental and climate justice. As a storyteller, community organizer, land use planner, and engagement facilitator, she collaborates with community partners to support environmental and climate policy, inclusive engagement, and placemaking projects that cultivate a sense of belonging for historically marginalized community members. Her art spans the mediums of writing, spoken word poetry, music, dance, and modeling and stories her lived experiences while exploring concepts of identity, place, environment, and collective liberatory futurities.
This session will facilitate a reimagining of built environment design through a lens of environmental justice, land use planning policy, and play!
Embodied Facilitation with Presence O’Neal
May 3rd | 11:00-11:50AM | Swindells (EMU 230)
Presence O’Neal (she/they) is a researcher, educator, and 
curriculum designer. They are a proud women’s college graduate and got their undergraduate degree in Political Science and Astrophysics. After graduating, they spent five years as a science teacher in the K12 context and spent four years as a program director for Educational Outreach at Reed College. Since then, she has completed a master’s degree in Educational Leadership & Policy at PSU and begun a PhD in Critical & Sociocultural Studies in Education here at the University of Oregon. Their research interests include addressing the impacts of settler colonialism, white supremacy culture, and neoliberal capitalism on youth, teachers, communities, and public schools. She is particularly interested in research that advances environmental justice by de-centering whiteness in early childhood education.
Facilitators play a huge role in the trajectory of environmental justice projects. A common theme in many dominant systems that perpetuate environmental injustices is a tendency to uncritically rely on the binary assumption of the mind/body divide. This goal of this workshop is to support facilitators of all kinds in the work of challenging the mind/body binary through facilitation practices. It is not just the content of our facilitation but also the facilitation practices themselves that foster transformation towards justice. During this workshop, there will be two main activities: first, attendees will engage in a guided somatic activity called “Body as Place” and second, attendees will visit stations throughout the space to put together a toolkit of embodied facilitation strategies that they can apply in their own contexts.
Storytelling as a Tool for Action with Coalition Against Environmental Racism
May 3rd | 12:00-12:50PM | Swindells (EMU 230)
Storytelling, individual or community, is relational. Stories offer the language of experience and connect community members to each other from that experience. Through story, we invite listeners into our memories of joy, meaning, and belonging. Through these memories, we can expand our understanding and create innovative and healing ways to work together in community.
Reimagining our Relationship with Fire feat. SFA, NASU, FireGen, and the Wagon Burners
May 3rd | 1:00-1:50PM | Lease Crutcher Lewis Room (EMU 023)
This workshop is co-facilitated by the Student Fire Alliance (SFA), the Native American Student Union (NASU), FireGeneration Collaborative (FireGen), and the Wagon Burners.
SFA aims to engage students through a time of crises to strive for safety, equity, and sustainability with fire. NASU assists American Indian, Alaskan Native, and Indigenous Peoples in maintaining cultural values while pursuing educational goals, and works to ensure Indigenous communities and the majority population understand issues that Indigenous people of this land are facing. FireGen works on transforming fire culture, community governance access, and solutions by foregrounding Indigenous leadership and diverse young generations. The Wagon Burners center Indigenous people in building regional fire capacity in the Willamette Valley, and are dedicated to uplifting Native fire stewards on their homelands.
Workshop: Modern wildfire management casts fire as a hazard and an enemy, but fire is an essential component for many Pacific Northwest communities, implemented by Indigenous stewards of the land since time immemorial. In this workshop, we will complicate and reimagine mainstream narratives surrounding fire through interactive and creative activities with Indigenous fire practitioners and fire researchers. We will work together to reframe our understanding of fire and envision a more just world.
Awakening our Ancestral Ecological Wisdom and Abundance: A Workshop by the Healers Project with Dr. AlaÍ Reyes-Santos & Dr. Ana Maurine Lara
May 3rd | 2:00-2:50PM | Lease Crutcher Lewis Room (EMU 023)
Dr. Alaí Reyes-Santos is an independent scholar and consultant. She teaches as a Professor of Practice at U of Oregon’s School of Law and is the Associate Director of thePNW Just Futures Institute for Climate and Racial Justice. Her training as an Iya, water priestess, and founder of the AfroIndigenous ceremonial community Ilé Estrella de los Mares, informs how she leads research and conversations about social violence, power, and solidarity as community healing processes. Dr. Reyes Santos is certified in the ThetaHealing Technique, a meditation practice that she deploys to support individuals engaged in processes of self- and community healing and empowerment. She has experience accompanying people working in academia, health care, public service, social and environmental justice advocacy, and the arts. Find more information about her work here.
Dr.Ana-Maurine Lara (She/ her) is currently an Associate Professor and the William and Susan Piché Faculty Fellow in the Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies department at the University of Oregon. Lara’s work focuses on questions of Black and Indigenous people and freedom. She is a national award-winning poet, novelist, performance artist and scholar. She has led numerous performances including the collaboration piece, Sanctuary (2021), Landlines (2015) among others. She has been published in numerous literary and scholarly journals and anthologies. Find more information about her work here.
In this interactive workshop, join us as we spend some time awakening our ancestral memories, and the ecological wisdom and sense of abundance each one of us can embody and transmit across the generations. Drawing on our experiences side by side Afro-Indigenous elders and ceremonial practices as documented in the Healers Project, we seek to leave participants inspired to imagine together a world full of possibilities for healing and justice for all beings.
Critical Sustainability with Filippo Ferreira
May 3rd | 4:00-5:50PM | Lease Crutcher Lewis Room (EMU 023) 
Olá! Filippo (they/he) is a third culture, Brazilian-born immigrant, educator, musician, and amateur mycologist. He teaches Investigating Popular Culture and Intro to Gender & Sexualities Studies at Portland State University and the final Thesis course in the MFA Program at PNCA. In their spare time they enjoy reading and writing, playing with their band, and producing music that combines modular synthesizers and acoustic instruments. Filippo is driven by hope-full social movements and the sense of awe, curiosity, and wonder curated by plants and mushrooms.
‘Critical sustainability studies’ is an effort to politicize sustainability and sustainability education. In addition to reviewing its conceptual framework, in this workshop we will explore the different ways that mainstream ecology and sustainability currents sustain problematic dynamics and ideals through a series of participatory and experiential activities. We will also use ecological principles and critical imagination to conceive of new, more just and sustainable worlds.
May 4th – Outings and Volunteer Opportunities
Plants as Teachers: Reciprocal, Resilient, Relational Lifeways with Nick Sky
May 4th | 11 AM – 12:30 PM | On campus, meet at SSC (EMU 005)
This walk will be a chance to learn from the green members of our U of O community. Come meet some of the many wonderful plants on campus and learn their stories.
Explore pollinator/native biodiversity plantings at U of O and discuss local native pollinator diversity as we explore Kalapuya land and contemplate Indigenous world views of life and interaction with our more-than-human relatives.
In this short exploration of a daily-life space we will learn lessons from plants about decolonization, ecocultural complexity, storytelling, resilient sustainable lifeways, and relational understandings of the symbiotic/mutualistic, interwoven, interdependent, reciprocal nature of life on earth.
Mount Pisgah Outing
May 4th | 2-5 PM | At Mount Pisgah, meet at SSC (EMU 005)
Enjoy the vibrant spring life at the Arboretum with a local ecologist’s guide. We will identify and engage with flowers, trees, birds, bees, and anything else around us in the Arboretum. Afterwards, we will plant native species to grow the biodiversity of the surrounding area!