Black Earth Institute
Connecting earth, spirit and society through the arts
Black Earth Institute is a progressive think-tank dedicated to re-forging the links between art and spirit, earth and society.
Until recent times, art expressed grander values than commerce and celebrity. Delphic oracle, Celtic bard, African griot, aboriginal orator: all used word and movement, color and craft, to bring wisdom from the spiritual realm to their communities.
In the great tradition of Blake, Yeats, Neruda, Rimbaud, HD, Hurston, Zitkala Sha, Rumi and Ramprasad, Black Earth Institute supports the artist as prophet and visionary, creating a society attuned to earth's rhythms and the rights of all people.
Our Emblem
The emblem (logo) of Black Earth Institute begins with a circle that represents both the earth and the human community. Such circular emblems were used in ancient Greece as symbols of devotion to the localized earth goddesses called nymphs.
Within the circle is a hand held open in greeting, a common symbol in many cultures for human connection. In the Middle East, it is the Hand of Fatima (Arab culture) and the Hand of Miriam (Jewish tradition), although its use as a sacred symbol predates both Islam and Judaism; called the hamsa, the open hand represents hopes for peace in the region. In the Americas, the hand crafted of shiny mica was a symbol, whose meaning is unknown, for the ancient Hopewell moundbuilder culture.
Finally, the emblem includes two leaves of burr oak, native to the American prairies and able to survive prairie fires because of its thick bark. Together, these images speak to us of intercultural connection, respect for the environment, and acknowledgement of the sacred.
Emblem design: Kathleen Monaghan, Portland, Oregon.
Scholar-advisors Mary Jo Neitz and Michael McDermott initiated a discussion of the connection of embodiment to place, with narrative being the connective between person and place. Cristina Eisenberg described her work with wolf-denning as an example of the significance of place to nonhuman earthlings.
Two field trips were special events for the Fellows. Scholar-advisor Kerry Trask narrated the somber facts of the Battle of Wisconsin Heights, 175 years ago, at a hill a few miles from Bridget Rest, where a handful of Sauk, Fox and Kickapoo warriors held off hundreds of U.S. soldiers so that their elders, women and children could escape across the Wisconsin River. To hear the tragic yet heroic tale while sitting on the battle hill was a powerful and profound experience.
Finally, the Fellows visited the "shack" where Aldo Leopold wrote the classic Sand County Almanac. Hosting us there was Nina Leopold Bradley, who shared memories of her parents' loving relationship with each other, their children and the land. We all were inspired by Nina's vivid storytelling and cheered by her warmth.
As a farewell to Bridget Rest at the end of the meeting, the Fellows (some of whom are ending their Fellowship years) planted a sugar maple in an areas designated as the "Fellows Grove." Laer groups of Fellows will add trees to the grove as they conclude their Fellowship period.
This summary of activities does not fully capture the spirit of joy and collaborative energy that the Fellows shared as they cooked gourmet organic meals together and drank homemade wine until the wee hours, sometimes bursting into songs or very bad jokes as they did so.
The award will be bestowed in Oakland in December. Roche studied poetics with Diane di Prima in the Bay Area.
Cristina Eisenberg's home is on Red Owl Mountain, part of the Swan Range in northwestern Montana. Grizzly bears and wolves outnumber humans in the area, which makes it perfect for study of tropic cascades (the connection between predators and biodiversity) and wolf ecology, Cristina's areas of interest. She is also a scholar of the works of Aldo Leopold and is completing a book for Island Press entitled Landscapes of Hope: Trophic Cascades and Biodiversity.
Kathleen Jenks taught mythological studies at Pacifica University in California; she now advises graduate students at the Graduate Theological Foundation in South Bend, Indiana (affliated with Oxford University in England). Kathleen maintains a website devoted to mythology (http://www.mythinglinks.org/) and has recently done work in mythological computer gaming.
Kerry Trask, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin in Manitowac, is the author of Black Hawk: The Battle for the Heart of America. Booklist said that "Trask's fine synthesis of historical frontier context and immediate events judiciously partakes of pathos and erudition," while the Chicago Sun-Times said, "Blending history with ethnography and a bit of sociology, Trask's volume explains the war and its lingering impact extremely well . . . Fascinating."
Scholar-advisors assist the institute in setting an intellectual foundation for its work. We welcome these new scholar-advisors to Black Earth Institute.