Education Outside DEI Guides

Education Outside was a San Francisco based nonprofit that created wonderful guides specifically intended to bring diversity, equity and inclusion into garden classrooms and garden education organizations. These guides are for both personal and institutional use.

• Education Outside's Organizational Approach to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
• Building Culturally Responsive and Inclusive Outdoor Classrooms
• Hiring Considerations
• Laying the Foundation for Discussing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Among Garden Educators
• Getting to Know Yourself and Your Community: Identity Mapping, Fitting-in vs. Belonging & Asset Mapping
• Supporting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion with External Consultants
• Reflecting on Organizational Culture: Deepening the Work

Soul Fire Farms Language Justice Guide (Guia de la Justicia del Lenguaje)

School Garden Project of Lane County-Increasing Inclusion in the School Garden 

Resource Packet for Garden Educators to make gardens and garden education more accessible and inclusive. 

Community Agreements; Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group published a list of community agreements. Soul Fire Farm also has a published page about group agreements Community Agreements help us identify concrete ways to create that culture and to talk about and through conflict without creating a . Using these practices and tools we can challenge ourselves and each other while still recognizing we’re all coming from different places of knowing and transforming. If you are going to engage in conversations around DEIJ it is helpful to create a space with agreements to keep each other safe, and have methods for conflict resolution and honest discussion.

The Power of Community-Based Food Systems

The Food Systems Leadership Network published a multimedia storytelling project documenting how communities across the Northwest are using community-based food systems to catalyze resistance and resilience, self-determination and sovereignty, connection and liberation.  Inspiring, tangible examples of diverse food growing projects meeting the needs of the challenging year of 2020.

https://foodsystemsleadershipnetwork.org/the-power-of-community-based-food-systems/

Soul Fire Farm/ Farming While Black by Leah Penniman

Soul Fire Farm, cofounded by author, activist, and farmer Leah Penniman, is committed to ending racism and injustice in our food system. Through innovative programs such as the Black-Latinx Farmers Immersion, a sliding-scale farmshare CSA, and Youth Food Justice leadership training, Penniman is part of a global network of farmers working to increase farmland stewardship by people of color, restore Afro-indigenous farming practices, and end food apartheid. https://www.soulfirefarm.org/media/farming-while-black/

Of Forest and Fields: Mexican Labor in the Pacific North West by Mario Jimenez Sifuentez

Just looking at the Pacific Northwest’s many verdant forests and fields, it may be hard to imagine the intense work it took to transform the region into the agricultural powerhouse it is today. Much of this labor was provided by Mexican guest workers, Tejano migrants, and undocumented immigrants, who converged on the region beginning in the mid-1940s. Of Forests and Fields tells the story of these workers, who toiled in the fields, canneries, packing sheds, and forests, turning the Pacific Northwest into one of the most productive agricultural regions in the country. 

Employing an innovative approach that traces the intersections between Chicana/o labor and environmental history, Mario Sifuentez shows how ethnic Mexican workers responded to white communities that only welcomed them when they were economically useful, then quickly shunned them. He vividly renders the feelings of isolation and desperation that led to the formation of ethnic Mexican labor organizations like the Pineros y Campesinos Unidos Noroeste (PCUN) farm workers union, which fought back against discrimination and exploitation. Of Forests and Fields not only extends the scope of Mexican labor history beyond the Southwest, it offers valuable historical precedents for understanding the struggles of immigrant and migrant laborers in our own era. 

Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement’ by Dr. Monica M. White

Dr. White is assistant professor of environmental justice at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and in this book, she reframes agriculture — commonly and historically understood as a site of Black oppression — as a place of liberation. “This book recovers the efforts of black land- owners as well as the civil rights activism of sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestic workers,” she writes in the first chapter. “It focuses its attention on those who refused to migrate and who fought to stay in the South and maintain communities around agriculture. This book is an effort to recover, tell, and honor the stories of collective agency and community resilience of the black rural poor, a group the civil rights movement left behind.”

Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism by Julie Guthman

How does fatphobia play into the hands of capitalism and the industrialized food system? Here Guthman takes to task the touted ways in which “obesity” has been discussed, noting there are classist and racist elements at play that ignore environmental and economic realities.

• Racial Equity and Inclusivity in Food Systems
• Food Justice: A Vision Deeper than the Problem
• Robin Wall Kimmerer discusses the Honorable Harvest
• First Nations Development Institute | GATHER film

Soul Fire Farm/ Farming While Black/ Leah Penniman

Soul Fire Farm, cofounded by author, activist, and farmer Leah Penniman, is committed to ending racism and injustice in our food system. Through innovative programs such as the Black-Latinx Farmers Immersion, a sliding-scale farmshare CSA, and Youth Food Justice leadership training, Penniman is part of a global network of farmers working to increase farmland stewardship by people of color, restore Afro-indigenous farming practices, and end food apartheid. | Leah Penniman- Farming While Black (51 minute talk)

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses.  Braiding Sweetgrass offers a holistic approach to incorporating Native knowledge systems, perspectives, and growing practices. | Robin Wall Kimmerer talk (1:43 hour)

Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones

Dismantling Racism in the Children and Nature Movement. We all want to create more equitable access to the benefits of nature in our programs and in our communities. But to do so, we need to understand that racism exists, examine how it shows up in our lives and in our work, and then commit to organizing and strategizing to act

Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian's Native Knowledge 360° Education Initiative hosts a collection of recorded and live webinars centered around Native foods and food systems