This episode shares an interview with Bonnie from Raven Sun Apothecary. We talk about herbalism, anarchism, herbal mutual aid, reciprocity with the land and so much more.

About Bonnie: Bonnie (they/them), founder of @RavenSun_TraditionalTrading grew up on Cucapá lands, their early life was defined by a deep connection to family, food, and nature. This bond was shattered when they lost their mother to deportation and their father to suicide, forcing them into a restrictive foster care system defined by total separation. Though they survived the system and excelled in college, discovering a passion for culture, art, and medicinal plants, unresolved trauma eventually led to severe addiction. At 26, the plants called them back, grounding their seven-year recovery and inspiring them to launch Raven Sun Traditional Trading. For the last eight years, they have used their lived experience and endless study to share herbal medicine with unsheltered relatives and anyone who wouldn't otherwise be able to access these offerings, turning grief and rage into community healing.

Links & resources from this episode

• Website: https://ravensunapothecary.com/
• Instagram: @RavenSun_TraditionalTrading

Find them all at solidarityapothecary.org/podcast/

Support the show

Music from Sole & DJ Pain – Battle of Humans | Plant illustrations by @amani_writes | In solidarity, please subscribe, rate & review this podcast wherever you listen.

Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast with your host, Nicole Rose from the

Solidarity Apothecary.

This is your place for all things plants and

liberation.

Let's get started.

Hello.

Welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism

Podcast.

How are you doing?

I hope you are staying cool.

Now it's a heat wave in England and Wales and anyone who knows me constitutionally, I am not

a fan of the heat.

I am an absolute winter baby and I just melt

like, like when I used to work with the mobile clinic in France all winter, I would be

absolutely fine being able to like open all the dressings.

Like, could like be outside for hours on end.

And then as soon as we did like the summer

trips, like, I would be the team member in the back of the van with a ******* heat stroke.

So anyway, I am struggling.

I've moved from the static caravan into my

mum's house where it's a bit cooler,

but it's just.

Yeah, it's just hard, isn't it?

And I'm just thinking of everyone who's like, unhoused or just in **** accommodation without

good airflow or fans or even air conditioning.

Like, it's just.

Yeah.

So today I have a real treat for you.

I interviewed Bon last week and yeah, we talked about all the things from like

anarchism and herbalism to like coming at this stuff, like this work from, you know, like

things we've been through and like creating offerings that are like healing for us and

other people.

And yeah, we just like talked about all the things.

So I'm gonna read Bon's bio out and you can find it in the show notes as well.

But I just, yeah, wanna extend my gratitude for their time for this.

Like, it, yeah, was really, really special.

Like there were so many times during our call

where I got like proper,

proper goosebumps.

If you, yeah, if you are kind of passionate about the potential of plant medicines and

their role in the world, then, yeah, you will just ******* love this interview.

So they them is the founder of Raven Son Traditional trading.

Grew up on Kukapa lands.

Their early life was defined by a deep

connection to family, food and nature.

This bond was shattered when they lost their mother to deportation and their father to

suicide, forcing them into a restrictive foster care system defined by total

separation.

Though they survived the system and excelled in college, discovering a passion for culture,

art and medicinal plants.

Unresolved trauma eventually led to severe addiction.

At 26, the plants called them back, grounding their seven year recovery and inspiring them

to launch Raven Son Traditional Trading.

For the last Eight years they have used their lived experience and endless study to share

herbal medicine with unsheltered relatives and anyone who wouldn't otherwise be able to

access these offerings,

turning grief and rage into community healing.

So yeah, I'm going to shut up and I'm going to let you listen.

I'm going to be back soon talking about the clinic.

So yeah, just want to.

Another little shameless plug that my Rosehip

herbal clinic, my kind of like rebrand basically.

I'm available for new clients at the moment after being super busy since January.

So yeah, if you are interested in one to one in depth personalized support, please reach

out.

I would love, love, love to connect with you.

And anyway, I hope you enjoy this interview.

Thanks again to Bonnie.

It was just, yeah, absolutely amazing.

Okay, take care of.

Hello.

All right,

so welcome to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.

I have wanted to interview you for so long.

Thank you so much for, yeah, making time for this.

For people who don't know you, could you please introduce yourself?

Your pronouns, like any like projects you're doing or political affinities.

Just.

Yeah.

However you'd like to introduce yourself.

Yeah, of course.

Well,

oka.

Hello everyone.

I too have been very excited about this podcast with Solidarity Apothecary.

I've been following their work forever and it's definitely inspired some of the ways that

I work in herbalism as well.

So with that being said, I started Ravenson Apothecary in 2022 with the goal of providing

access to herbal medicines that people wouldn't otherwise be able to.

So we did a lot of unsheltered relative support and things like that.

My pronouns are they, them.

I am a native anarchist.

And that also informs a lot of how I work within Ravenson and within the wellness and

health community as well, I think.

You know, Nicole brought up a really good and interesting point in the interview questions

that were sent to me prior to this recording and I loved the,

you know,

moment to kind of reflect on, like, what does it mean to be an anarchist and an herbalist?

Because there aren't a lot of us out there.

And so I'm like really excited to have this

really specific conversation about,

you know, frontline herbalism,

anarchist herbalism,

you know, queer herbalism and and so on.

So I can't thank you enough for having me

here.

Thank you so much.

Oh, pleasure.

Yeah, I guess one of the things that stood out for me on your website,

like, which obviously links like obviously everything is super connected.

But one of the statements that really stood out me was yeah, My work is rooted in the

belief that healing should not be a privilege.

Through herbal medicine, mutual aid, and community organizing, I strive to create the

kind of care, dignity and support I once needed myself.

And yeah, just.

It just like, hit me so much.

And I'm just curious, like, could you share a little bit more about that and.

Yeah.

What that means to you?

Sure.

Well,

I think that,

you know, by and large,

I guess, to.

Yeah. To specifically kind of share about what

I mean here is mostly that what I have, you know, kind of found through lived experience

and embodied experience is that when people go,

you know, to the doctor because of a certain ailment or.

Or whatever,

there obviously, I think we all know that there is not a cohesive way of understanding

what is hurting one, you know, one person.

And so you get prescribed a pill or,

you know, you have to go get this scanned or you need to go get this test or what have you.

And you can be waiting years to actually figure out what's going on.

And while you're doing that, you're going through an immense amount of, like, pain and

suffering.

And.

And usually you end up realizing that what, you know, these Western doctors are.

Are saying and prescribing you isn't actually healing you, it's just relieving symptoms.

Right.

So true healing,

true embodied healing comes,

I think,

as a privilege to those who can,

you know, have the time to research what's going on with them outside of Western medicine

that they have access to.

You know, I've spent tons of time researching

and looking for answers as to kind of some of the things that were going on with me that I

didn't understand before.

I really had an embodied experience with,

like, nature and plants.

And I know that,

you know, not everyone would have the exposure to this kind of healing,

living in,

you know, an everyday Western society.

And so I think that when people get to a point of their healing process and realizing that,

you know, Western medicine didn't provide them any answers,

it takes a lot of resources to find those answers.

You know, I don't know how.

How much outside of what I already paying into,

you know, here in America, we don't have.

We have privatized health care.

So you're paying a premium on anything that

you need to.

For.

For health care and let alone any alternative, quote unquote, alternative health care.

So I know tons of people who have looked outside of Western health care and have had to

spend a lot of money to access that kind of healing.

And that's what I mean, that it shouldn't be a privilege.

And that should really be the start of someone's healing journey.

Is, is really with the plants and, and,

and looking at, you know, who,

who is this individual connected to? Do they have a community?

Do we need to help them find one?

Do we need to make sure that they have healthy food?

You know,

and, and there's so much more to healing than just going to a doctor.

There's actually more to healing than even what a lot of western herbal,

you know, modalities kind of practice.

You know, there's not,

you know,

in some ways there, there are some,

you know, clinical Western herbalists that operate,

you know, in the same kind of.

Well, we're going to treat the symptom, not the root of what's going on with you, although

that's a lot less common.

And so I think you can't just have herbal medicine without,

you know, an element of mutual aid and reciprocity being part of your practice.

You can't really have mutual aid and reciprocity based in your practice if you're

not part of a community.

So I see all of these things as deeply interwoven and that is what I,

I would like everyone to have the support and being able to do for their healing.

Amazing. Yeah. Like,

I think it's so true about especially I've.

I've never been to the like so called us but

in the uk, like a lot of herbalists just like, they just want to be doctors, like even to the

point of wearing like white coats like during their clinical training and stuff.

And it's like.

Anyway.

But yeah, like, I think.

Yeah. Another thing that struck me was like,

you know, like this,

this drive in us that we're often trying to create, like the care that we wish that we had

ourselves or,

you know, maybe someone we loved or you know,

lent on and like.

Yeah, like, for example, with the solidarity

apothecary, like that this project's really emerged from like my experiences of like state

repression and going to prison and all that malarkey.

And like now I'm like constantly trying to organize care for people, like going through

those experiences, because I wish I had had that myself, if that makes sense.

And yeah, I'm just curious, like, what does that kind of look like for you with like

Ravenson Apothecary and ye.

Yeah, like your kind of like, approach to herbalism in general.

I think a lot of what that looks like for Ravenson Apothecary is definitely about

the plants and connecting people to plants and plant medicine,

I think even more so Than that is just letting people know that there is a person out there

who deeply cares for them,

who deeply wants them to have what they need and who deeply empathizes with them.

You know, I,

as someone who's gone through a lot of life experiences very early on in, in my life,

I can, I can remember the individuals along that, that struggle that just made me know,

just reified for me that I was not alone.

And I would love the apothecary and, and the apothecary has been this for so many and, and

communicating that through the plants that they are not alone and that they truly are

connected to a whole community of,

of non human relatives and,

and of human relatives who deeply care for them.

I I guess to speak for the apothecary in, in a more tangible kind of material way.

When I started it,

kind of like how I had mentioned in the introduction,

I was deeply intertwined with a community of people who are doing unsheltered relative

support in a place called,

known as Flagstaff, Arizona,

one of the snowiest cities in here in the States.

And so every winter unsheltered relatives would obviously struggle to survive and many

oftentimes freeze to death.

And so,

you know, and thinking how in the ways that one could become unsheltered under

colonialism, under capitalism,

we know it could happen to anyone and has happened to so many,

including people that we like, probably know and really love.

And you know, coming from a place where I have a mother who was deported and likely is living

on the streets somewhere,

I hope that someone out there is caring for the unsheltered, wherever she might be,

as much as I'm caring for them where I live.

And I think that in that kind of,

you know, in that kind of way of like creating the care we wish we had somehow isn't even,

you know,

is, is kind of encapsulating of what living in reciprocity even means and living the, you

know, walking the plant path and how that shows you that there are,

you know, plants and medicines that are there to care for us in very specific ways and how

that,

you know, coalesces to a life of like caring for ourselves and for others because we're

just conduits of what the plants are,

you know, the messages that the plants have.

And I think that when we interact with people through the medium of plants,

it empowers them to know that they are cared for.

And so that's been a large part of how Ravenson apothecary works isn't just like, oh,

you know, Your back hurts because you're unsheltered and living and sleeping on

pavement.

So here's some CBD cell.

It's actually so much more like, look at.

You know, we have great conversations about,

you know, being able to grow your own medicines and find your own medicines even

while you're unsheltered,

and what those medicines and plants are really looking out for for you on,

you know,

on.

While they navigate life as an unsheltered person.

And, of course,

being connected to a lot of native community, knowing a lot of elders.

A lot of my work has centered on caring for.

For our elders and families who just need some extra love and support.

So I think that's definitely been my focus and why I started Ravenson.

Amazing. That's.

Yeah, such, like, beautiful.

Yeah, beautiful necessary work.

And I totally agree about plants like, us

being conduits for the plants.

Like, I often think that about dandelion in

prison and, like, the prisoner's herbal.

And I'm like, yeah, I'm just, like, promoting this herb all over the world now.

But, yeah, I mean, I guess, like, that leads to, like, you know, not a small question, but,

like, you mentioned about, like.

Like, indigenous relatives and elders and.

Yeah, I'm interested in, like, how does being

indigenous, like, shape herbalism for you?

I know that's a very small question.

Well, actually,

you know, like,

I.

And I think, like, earlier,

like, versions of me would have said that it,

you know,

somehow,

you know,

makes my spiritual connection to the plants even stronger than other people's or,

you know,

this kind of maybe what I would call.

Kind of like almost like an indigenous cosplaying of, like, how to relate to our

natural world.

And I think I've really kind of seen a lot of that be a vehicle to gatekeeping,

people's connection and reverence and relationship to the earth, to the plant, to

the sky and to the water.

And that's something I've very carefully and

reflectively been trying to understand how to communicate because it is not a popular.

It's not exactly a popular stance to.

Within the native community in the way that I have experienced, to just outright say that

there is no,

you know, there is no one individual who belongs more than the other in any certain

area.

You know, that is that, to me, when I hear,

you know, people saying things like, well, you know, here in the States and in native

community, you hear things like, well, the Europeans should just go back to Europe.

And I don't particularly, like,

stand behind expressions like that because I don't think that me Being indigenous and

someone else being European influences my,

my or their relationship to being a steward of the sky, the land and the water as much as

anyone else is.

And I hope that in some way that's what anyone who is turning towards the plant path will

realize.

I don't,

you know, I,

I think that it's a simple question in a way that it uncovers so much complexity around

being indigenous,

specifically being an indigenous person who is living,

you know,

in the region of my homeland where I was created by the,

by the Colorado, the so called Colorado River.

And I think that I,

I.

But. And speaking of like, me personally and how,

you know, the plans have showed me about my belonging is more so through a reclamation of

using plants for healing,

as many indigenous people have always done.

And that has been connecting to nature and the plants has been a huge way in that I've healed

from being separated from my indigenous mom at a very young age.

I think that a lot of people who experience family separation,

especially within indigenous community,

find their belonging through nature,

find their belonging through reconnecting.

Because the,

you know, the plants and the animals and the water in the sky is not concerned with are you

native or are you white here on this land,

but more so, like, what,

what, what can we do for each other and how are we defending each other?

I think is so much more important than are you this race or that race or this gender or that

gender.

I think that conclusion obviously comes from an analysis of like, what is white supremacy,

what is colorism?

You know, obviously we all know the horrible history of colonialism on this,

on this continent,

but I really, truly don't think we're going to really reach this point of living in harmony

with the land and the sky if we keep gatekeeping what it means to be an herbalist

and a healer on certain lands.

Thank you for sharing that.

Like, I think that kind of like,

like relationship without like mediation is like, ******* powerful.

And I think that's kind of also what how I like, connect herbalism to anarchism, which we

can, you know, like, come on to.

But,

um,

you've mentioned your mum a couple of times and.

Yeah, I, Yeah, I guess, like, for people that like, you know, listen to the show or follow

the solidarity apothecary, they'll know that like a big part of my sort of like,

work in the world is around talking about trauma, like in the present tense and

recovering from trauma.

And yeah, like, I'm.

Yeah, I know it's like,

sensitive, like, for people to talk about, but I was hoping like, would you mind speaking

about, like, foster care and like, the trauma of separation from parents just as like a kind

of like.

Yeah, like a embodied experience for you? Because I just.

I just feel like it's something that people don't, like, really talk about much.

But,

yeah, I'm just interested in, like, how that has, like, shaped your life and.

Yeah, and like you said, like,

led to this relationship with plants, but yeah, if you could speak to that, that'd be

amazing.

Of course.

Yeah, I.

And people who follow my work will know that I am not very shy and talking about this because

I'm sure that the population of people who have been in foster care and aged out of

foster care seems small.

But there are so many of us.

There are so many of us who are pretending

that that didn't happen to us.

And actually,

more recently, I kind of, you know, during the kidnappings by ICE here in the states of our

indigenous relatives,

you know,

made a post about, like, why I started Ravenson and shared about having been

separated from my indigenous mother at a young age and then having her go missing and that

being part of the larger missing and murdered indigenous relatives movement in that sharing

so many people were so many people who I've known who are also,

you know, on the plant path.

Shared.

Oh, like,

thanks for sharing this.

This, you know, affected me in my life too.

And so I, I really,

I'm really grateful that we're not shying away from topics like that and the things that,

you know,

people need lifetimes of healing from after,

you know, experiencing the traumas of family separation and foster care.

And,

you know,

I did get to spend the first 10 years of my life with my parents here in the States.

And that's,

you know, that's where that's.

That's who taught me mutual aid.

We would go back to my village.

Well, here I guess I'll rewind a little bit.

So I'm Coco Pa in German,

indigenous from my mom's side and European from my dad's side.

And my parents met in her village in Mexico were Coco Paw.

So there are cocopaw where I live here in so called Arizona.

Our tribe was basically separated by the border.

So technically, in terms.

In. In colonial terms, I'm a Mexican Cocoa Paw

person.

But.

And so, yeah, so I have very fond memories of, you know, going from where a lot of Coco Pop

moved to in the States in a place called Buckeye, Arizona,

to.

We would go back from.

We would go from Buckeye to our village in Meicali and bring supplies and different

things that the people there needed.

Clothes, you know, essentials.

And I also have like, just really like special memories making like tamales and pozole and

different foods with my mom.

And I often say, like, you know, our bullism

starts in the kitchen because that food, that ancestral food and all food is medicine.

Huge part of like a reclamation of like an indigenous identity or a hair, you know, a

heritage for those who've been separated from their culture.

I think a lot of it comes through the, you know, herbalism as food, herbalism as

medicine.

And you know, having been,

you know, been separated at the age of 10 from my parents,

because I know that probably won't make sense, because if only my mom was,

you know,

I guess, like, indigenous from somewhere else, like,

you know, why did I enter foster care?

Well, when my mom was being deported,

my father couldn't handle the stress of it and unalived himself.

And so that's how me and my sister entered foster care.

Then me and my sister were separated and within the foster care system.

And then,

you know,

there's a lot of neglect and abuses of all kinds of.

In the foster care system.

And so I got myself out of the foster care system by basically like through study.

I was a great student.

I knew that whatever was in my mind could not be taken away from me like everything else in

my life ever had.

And so I was very studious and I went to university and got my degree and you know,

entered the nonprofit world.

And you know, of course, as like a young person entering the non profit world with

these kind of rose tinted glasses, not realizing, like, how insidious non profits

actually are,

was also kind of when I was finally, you know, after 21 years of living in a survival mode to

keep myself, like alive and somewhat out of harm's way within the foster care system.

Of course I was abused in that.

Within that system,

I finally had, you know, the opportunity to heal.

Heal from,

you know, the emotional trauma, heal from the mental trauma,

physical trauma,

and the self inflicted trauma.

You know, I started drinking when I was 14

years old,

every day, very hard.

And I did that for 12 years so I could somehow survive all of the horrible things that were

happening to me in the foster care system and all of the things that I had witnessed before

entering the foster care system.

And so at that point, I finally had the opportunity to actually, like,

not just survive, but start to heal.

And so while I was, you know,

on this, like, huge healing path, I was in therapy once a week.

I was,

thank goodness, living in the M.O. one of the most beautiful places in the states of so

called Flagstaff, Arizona,

where I really got to connect with nature there.

And it spoke to me in a way that,

you know, my therapist never could have, or a friend never could have, or,

you know, any kind of teacher could have.

And.

And so I started really connecting with plants.

And that's when my kind of herbalist journey began.

I started.

I took a class of native plants to northern Arizona and learned how to infuse them, learn

how to identify them, work with them and things like that.

And then of course,

while I was sort of doing that, I was, you know,

fighting for people in terms of like, organizing laborers,

organizing around MMIW G2ST missing and murdered indigenous women, girls, trans and

two spirit folks,

you know,

and working with unsheltered people and.

And really actually putting myself in danger,

more danger doing that.

I was arrested for protesting and sadly,

you know,

I didn't realize that I didn't actually have the tangible community support that I really

needed to be able to get through that level of state repression.

Because anyone listening to this podcast probably knows that people who help other

people for quote, unquote free are not really well liked by the state.

People who fight for other people who are being abused by the state are not really liked

by the state.

So I was dealing with all kinds of state oppression,

societal oppression,

community oppression,

all at the same time.

The plants were holding me close.

They were like, caring for me.

And others connected to plants were caring for

me, others connected to the struggles were caring for me.

It just was, sadly, a very small percentage of people in the community who,

who were connected in a way that could support what an individual who went through foster

care, who was abused in foster care, who was abused by the state,

who, you know, experienced so much, could really,

could really come to support.

And so,

you know,

after so long of being a trauma survivor, you're.

You kind of have this experience where you've waited so long, maybe your entire life to feel

like, understood by somebody and you just won't be like,

I know that as a trauma survivor, like it that has been the hardest conclusion that I've come

to is that there will be no one who will fully understand what it has been like.

And so a large part of that attachment to like,

you know, fighting so hard to be understood has been through letting go,

through letting,

you know, our more than human relatives speak to me in a way that I haven't by another

individual before.

And that is why I'm so,

you know, so hard pressed to make sure that,

you know, people who want to be held and understood in a way that another individual

might not ever be able to know that the plants can do that for them.

Thank you for,

for sharing like all of that.

And like.

Yeah, I,

I always talk about how like it's like the relationship of herbalism that is healing.

Like I can send someone a bottle of medicine or tincture or whatever, but like, yeah, that

relationship is so transformative.

And I think when people have been through like so much ******* trauma, like,

you know, like it's really ******* hard to trust humans.

Right.

And I'm so sorry to hear that,

you know, people didn't show up for you through like the repression you went through.

And I always think there's like some weird subconscious fantasy in me of like, if I have

yeah,

enough contacts like in the anarchist black cross world or whatever, that I'll be

supported in whatever situation.

And it's just like so hard that like still

that doesn't happen.

Like even when people are like super active in

certain like crews or networks or movements, it's just.

Yeah, it's really,

really, really tough.

So yeah, I guess that brings me on to like anarchism of like.

Yeah, like what, what does that, yeah, what does like anarchism mean to you?

Like what's your relationship with that as a worldview or a movement or however you relate

to anarchism?

Yeah,

yeah, I think I love that like you know, highlighting that like herbalists and

anarchists don't identify in similar circles.

And I think that goes to basically a great

critique of both communities.

I mean I think it,

to me,

they,

they're so deeply intertwined that I can't understand how,

how they've been so compartmentalized from each other.

Because herbalism is you know, like, like how to, to.

To be an anarchist I think is so.

Has so much to do with living in a non

hierarchical praxis.

And I think so much of herbalism is the same,

is the same in terms of like how we connect to each other,

how we connect to the world around us.

And so,

you know, sharing more specifically about what anarchism means to you and how that relates to

anarchists organizing mutual aid and ravenson apothecary is pretty simple.

I mean it,

it's,

you know, of course anarchist theory can go,

you know, you can go in circles of, you know,

these terms and you know, these histories and,

and the praxis and the theory and.

Oh like I definitely have done that and

there's a lot of good resources out There But I think to really boil it down to something

pretty simple to me is just living in a non hierarchical relationship to everything.

And I think, and as specifically, if you're looking at,

you know, an indigenous anarchism that includes,

you know, how we live in non hierarchy to the land and specifically defending,

you know, what's sacred.

And I think,

you know, there's a big,

you know, I guess debate, if you will, within anarchism of, you know,

white anarchism,

you know, white slash European anarchism and how that's just,

you know, a copy of like how people,

indigenous peoples across the world had,

have and had always lived.

And I, I find validity, I find some validity

in that.

You know, if, if me just practicing my life

way schoolya, which means to give because others are in need,

makes me an anarchist.

And you know, I'm fine with identifying as

that.

I think specifically what attracts me to

anarchism over other like I guess if you want to be binarical about it, you know, the left,

their leftist identities is that even in socialism and liberalism there's still some

central figure who is,

you know, tasked with basically distributing, you know, the goods or the materials of,

of the community, whether that be the neighborhood, the city or whatever.

And I just don't find that kind of governance by any one entity,

no matter how democratic it may be necessary.

It's just, I don't think it is.

I think one thing that,

and you know, being indigenous and being an anarchist has,

you know,

I guess led me to believing is that,

you know,

cycles of reciprocity kind of just sort themselves out in a spiritual connected way.

And so why not just live and that trust, why not just live in the trust and then in the

knowing that reciprocity in one way or another is always achieved.

We have to trust that.

And so I think that part of being an anarchist over,

you know, as opposed to like a socialist or whatever other leftist identity is so,

so rooted in the idea that like we don't need to have,

you know, we don't need to live in a scarcity mindset.

And that's another part of anarchism for me is knowing deeply knowing, deeply trusting that

we do have what we need and what we need will,

you know,

will present itself to us.

And I think that anarchism, that kind of deep, deeply trusting is a lot of how I got through

so much of,

you know, the childhood abuse that I experienced, the state abuse that I

experienced and you know, even lateral violence that,

that I have experienced,

you know, within native community.

I think there is this kind of tension between being native and being an anarchist.

Because with the native community,

there's a lot of protocol.

There is an embedded hierarchy within those protocols.

And a lot of people see that my kind of anarchism does not align with a native

protocol.

And that has led to a lot of experiences of

lateral violence within that community.

But,

you know, kind of going back to like, well,

how does being indigenous shape herbalism for you?

And it maybe,

maybe.

Maybe I'm outside of native community.

It seems obvious.

But within it,

I'll, you know,

I'm not,

like.

I'm not afraid to say that, you know, most indigenous people aren't practicing with

plants.

Most indigenous people aren't defending the sacred.

And that's really sad.

But it's also.

It makes sense because of colonialism,

obviously,

in capitalism.

And so,

you know, that brings a lot of, like, conflation as to how to, like,

move along in a.

In a way that is, like, respectable.

And also part of,

you know,

I think part of having an obligation or responsibility to a native protocol is

hierarchical and it's coerced.

It's not something that aligns with how I operate as an anarchist.

And I think that a lot of people who are trying to understand their positionality

within decolonial movements,

within liberation movements see that hierarchy of like, well, I'm.

You know, that person is brown and I'm white, or that person is black and I'm white, so I

should obey is actually like, just redefining.

Redefining or re.

It's kind of just remixing, like, what we're saying we're against.

And so I think that's how.

That's what anarchism.

And seeing that through an herbal,

through herbalism,

me, like, how that all, like, kind of connects.

And I hope that more people.

More and more people will kind of embrace this kind of anarchism over like, an anarchism that

has maybe taught them that,

you know,

or this kind of, like, social media anarchism that is based on hot takes and not, like,

grounded embodied experience in mutually collectives and organizing anarchist

organizations or.

Or what have you.

Oh, my God. I could, like, literally talk to you all day with, like, so many

questions about this.

I'm just watching the clock, though, because I've got to go back to my little one at half

six.

It's very close to his bedtime, so.

But yeah, like, wow, there's like, so much to unpack there.

And I'm.

Yeah, I'm sorry to hear about the, like,

lateral violence.

You mentioned and like,

anarchism is a ******* lonely place.

Like, I feel like there's like, hatred from

everyone, like, from like the authoritarian left, from the ******* state, from

capitalists.

Like, I just feel like if you align with like

a sensation of like, freedom and self organization, then like, yeah, people like,

you know, it's a threat to power.

Right, so.

And yeah, that can just like, manifest in so many spaces.

But you mentioned, like, defending the sacred a few times and yeah, that obviously made me

think of a close friend of yours,

Klee. And yeah, I never had like, the honor of meeting him or talking to him.

I've, like, read a few chapters of his book.

But, yeah, like, it just came out just before

I was about to give birth, so I haven't had much, like, reading time.

But. Yeah, could you.

Could you share a little bit about who he was

and like, your relationship and.

Yeah, I just. Yeah, I. I always associate you with him, so I'm just kind of interested.

That makes me happy to hear because, oh, my gosh, we had such a good time talking

smack, organizing,

fighting a state,

fighting repression or, you know, it.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

So the first time I ever met Cle Banali was during.

During the,

I guess, 2000.

What was it? I think 16 rise fascism.

The.

Someone had just been murdered.

An anti fascist had just been murdered in Charlottesville, North Carolina.

And so we took to the streets all the way over here.

You know, a lot of people did across the states.

And I was kind of coming out of my realization that organizing within the colonial state, you

know, and my experience of eight years of labor organizing and raising the minimum wage

and getting rid of tipped wages,

you know, was not the answer this.

It was not,

you know, the freedom and liberation from,

you know, the clutches of abusive powers that I. I wanted and needed.

And so I was, you know,

I headed down to the.

You know, to the town center,

and,

you know, I was kind of like, felt like I was kicking rocks because I'm like, oh, my God,

like, here we are again, standing on the corner with our signs.

The police know we're here.

Nothing's really happening.

Like, there's got to be something more meaningful than standing on the corner outside

of city hall every week,

spending hours in these city hall meetings.

There has to be something that can speak

louder than this.

And of course, I saw this motley crew of black

blood,

you know,

people with, you know, more.

More profound messages against colonialism and fascism.

And so I was like, well, God, I'm gonna go over there and hang out with these Folks.

So we started,

you know, marching,

and there was an invitation to debrief,

debrief after the.

The action.

And that's,

you know, when I first really connected with Klee Binali.

And so ever since then,

we.

We just grew very fond of each other and, you know,

had really similar ways of seeing and believing and acting and stuff.

So we were really close for the last, like, eight years of his life.

And,

you know, in a lot of ways, he was my mentor in terms of, like, anarchism.

And in a lot of ways,

you know, as he shared with me, I was.

I was helping him,

you know, kind of helped him stay young and.

And especially in, like,

staying,

you know,

kind of keyed into specifically, like, a lot of gender nihilism,

queer stuff,

and kind of like,

really,

you know, together helping shape what an indigenous feminism is and, you know, what

indigenous masculinity looks like outside of CIS heteropatriarchy.

And, oh, my gosh, like, this could be a whole podcast in itself of all the things that we

did together.

But,

you know, there's a lot of.

There's so many layers to.

And how the end of his life,

you know, coalesced into the kind of forced,

kind of like the forced.

Breaking up of Indigenous Action and how that resulted in a lot of.

Kind of digression of.

Of what Klee actually really fought for and

believed in as Indigenous Action turned into more so of like a,

well, you know, a property thing.

Well,

you know, Indigenous Action wasn't just Klee Ben Ali, but it very much turned into that

after he passed away.

And so a few members fought really hard to keep it and to keep the platform,

you know, to be able to do all of the amazing things that we did, which was obviously

provide a lot of political education,

but also so much organizing and so much crowdsourcing for people experiencing state

repression, people experiencing abusive relationships,

all kinds of things was just kind of,

you know,

just starting to really crumble apart because of, you know, this person is,

you know,

this person, and that person knew what was best.

And, you know, it just all kind of ended in a shamble.

But honestly,

no. One of our podcast mottos was let the bridges we burn light our way and stuff.

And,

you know, that.

That kind of going up in flames of what was

Indigenous Action after the passing of Clubinal,

I suppose, was,

you know,

it lighting its own fire and showing us all a different way of being.

Because,

you know, as Clee was so loved and adored and looked up to and inspired so many people,

that was at the Cost of his health.

You know, for someone who had never had a drop of alcohol in his life, to have liver disease

was a clear indicator that the amount of necessary and righteous anger that that person

carried was unsustainable.

And you know, and being in circles of anarchism and seeing how poorly activists and

accomplices care for themselves because they are so entrenched in the fight is so,

so heartbreaking and so,

so sad to me.

I think it's not a way of living an anarchist

life.

Anarchism necessitates that we care for ourselves deeply for the long haul.

And so I think after,

after seeing the,

you know, him and so, and many others really suffer so much because of their fight and

their dedication to the fight really changed how I approach,

you know,

my fight now.

And you know, I,

I cared for her in a lot of ways, especially in the last three years.

And you know,

I think that it showed me so much about what it means to be like an anarchist and what it

means to,

you know, take such good care of each other and such good care of ourselves if we want to

see,

you know, live a full,

healthy,

spiritual,

joyous life.

That I don't think is associated with anarchism.

And it absolutely is and it absolutely should be the norm for us anarchists to live enjoy

because we're all experiencing the repression, we've all experienced the burnout, we are all

experiencing the,

the,

you know, responsibility that we take on as anarchists.

It's not just doom and gloom and it never should be and it doesn't need to be.

And I really hope that, you know, an anarchist, herbalism,

indigenous herbalism, anarchism,

you know, really comes out of what we've been experiencing not just here in the States, but

globally for the past few years with the rise of fascism and oppression.

And of course we all know we've all been experiencing that since time,

you know, since contact of the settlers here.

Especially as a connected indigenous person.

I just, I really hope that in that,

you know,

experience of seeing,

you know, a very well known indigenous anarchists suffer so much, I think,

and others within the anarchist,

you know, community,

I really hope that we don't keep normalizing this, that level of burnout and see a,

a healthier way of doing anarchy.

Oh my God, we're definitely gonna need a part two.

Like seriously,

like one of my like biggest like mentors in my life when I was a child, like she passed away

really young, like, and just the levels of like self neglect were like so extreme because

of this like, kind of,

like, yeah, just, like, disposability culture.

And,

like, yeah, like, I really, like, it literally gave me goosebumps.

Like, what you were talking about then with anarchism and, like, caring for ourselves and

each other for the long haul, and it's like, what we're really trying to kind of achieve

with the Black Flag Herbal Clinic is just,

like, normalizing, like, this culture of care and how that.

That's just so, like, has so much affinity with what anarchism is or can be.

Um,

so I text my babysitter, and I said, can I overrun by five minutes?

And she was like, yeah, it's fine.

So I had, like, two.

Two questions.

Like,

I feel like we.

We both like love plants so much, but we

haven't talked about any, like, specific plant friends, so I would love to hear.

I. I absolutely wince when people ask me for a favorite plant, because I'm just like, how the

hell could you choose one?

But. And you can share, like, a little bit about a plant that you have a strong

relationship with.

I would love that.

And the other question I had was,

you talk about, like, traditional trading, and I'm, like, super curious about that because

I've heard, like, this critique around, you know, like, commerce is, like, very difficult,

very different.

Sorry.

To capitalism.

And, like,

you know, I'm also, like, trying to ******* build a livelihood in this, like, really weird

world and, like, trying to financially survive and all of this ****.

So.

So I'm just, yeah, curious about what that looks like for you with, like, Raven Son

and stuff.

So, yeah, I don't mind where you want to go.

I've literally got about five minutes left, but.

Okay. Yeah, okay.

In these last five minutes, sure.

Well,

I. As cliche as it might sound,

I. My favorite.

I do have a favorite plant, and my favorite

plant is 1000% rose.

I.

And it probably seems so cliche.

You're like, oh, my God, roses.

That's, like, you know.

But I guess.

I don't know.

Like, I'm so drawn to rose.

They're, like, just like this, like, delicate,

but also, like, resilient, thorny, woody.

Also, like, beautiful plant.

And I think roses have so much to teach so many of us about staying soft and beautiful

and graceful while also,

like, being boundaried and protecting ourselves and.

And I think there's so much to be learned from roses, aside from them obviously just being

absolutely beautiful and having so many, like, medicinal qualities both and, like,

I guess,

you know,

like, their effect on our systems, but also spiritually and energetically.

I think they're Just a great symbol of like how to live in a really balanced way of having

that softness, but also that,

you know,

thorny boundaried life.

So that would be definitely my answer to that.

But I think in terms of, you know, traditional

trading and you know,

kind of seeing this trend and in this uncharging trend that I see entrepreneurs kind

of doing right now,

if that's what you know, you could even call me or us,

you know,

of course I do have a survival job at a restaurant.

But you know,

anyway, going back to like what is traditional trading?

I think for me in opening up my apothecary,

well for one it always has been.

I have always operated the apothecary on a

trading basis.

I have always operated the,

the apothecary as a direct aid basis.

But I think becoming more,

you know, going more official with it is communicating that level of that trust that I

was talking about earlier.

That trust that we do live in abundance.

That trust that like we don't have to live with a scarcity mindset even,

even in the hardest of clutches of colonialism and capitalism.

I think embracing the knowing that everything that I need will come and knowing that we can

do that by trading services I think also speaks to like you know, living in anarchists

praxis.

You know, there are things that I could pay someone to do that I need done or I could just

give them like a care package and they could care for,

you know, me and what I have going on that I need help with that I don't know how to do.

I don't know how to do a lot of this tech stuff.

And you know what, the way the world is now, you kind of have to be a bit more savvy with

technology and websites and you know, putting up the trading post in my website and oh my

gosh,

like all this stuff that I don't know how to do and also just all of this stuff that I

would never,

I would never do for myself.

Like so far since I've made the trading

official,

I have gotten beautiful art,

I have gotten a custom made beaded bolo with a raven and a rose and all of these things that

I would have never thought of providing for myself.

And that I think is what living in a traditional way here in a modern society where

colonialism and capitalism dictate that we must have this amount of money to be able to

live has brought me so much more than,

you know, if I had just charged the $85 for the,

the salve and that, you know, or and vice versa.

If I had just like given that person,

you know, their service fee for helping me with my website.

This is a transaction.

That's a transaction.

It's not.

It does not communicate the deep kind of care that I crave so much and being like, seen and

valued.

And it does not translate to the way that I

want others to be seen and valued by me because at the end of the day, a transaction

cannot communicate that.

Of course, you know, small business capitalism has propagandized like, you know, supporting

support, small support, local,

you know, but you're still like,

and, you know, convoting for your dollar and stuff like that.

Those are all still reifying capitalism.

And obviously that is something I want to

abolish while also understanding that it is absolutely, like, necessary for one's

survival.

So making compromises where I can through traditional trading and obviously knowing that

there are some compromises that I cannot make because I just need to live and care for

myself.

It is a long and hard road to be on,

but it's one that I think every anarchist should start to think of how to, how to do

that.

And it actually doesn't even apply just to anarchist.

Everyone.

Every person that is that to me is living in an abundant mindset and trusting that we will

have what we need.

Amazing. Thank you.

That was like a beautiful summary and again,

could be a whole like podcast interview easily.

So. Yeah, so where can, where can people find you?

Yeah, give us.

Oh, obviously if you send everything over,

I'll put it in the show notes.

But yeah, just so people can hear.

Like, yeah, how can they learn from you and connect with you and.

Yeah,

yes.

So I am mostly active on Instagram.

I hope that changes.

But people can find me at Ravenson Underscore traditional trading.

My website is definitely under construction,

but it's Ravenson apothecary.com and those are the two best ways people can find me.

I hope to expand outside of the metaverse for folks to connect with me too, but those are

the two main ways for now that people can find me.

Amazing.

Thank you.

Oh, thank you so much for your time.

I really appreciate it.

And I could just like ask you question after

question for like hours and hours,

but I better go and get this two year old to bed.

But yeah, thank you.

Thank you so much again.

And I ******* love that you said rose because, like, I'm such a rose person.

I'm just like, yeah,

so, yeah, thanks so much again.

Okay, well, Nicole,

thank you so much.

It's been a pleasure.

I really hope this lends to more

collaborations on more podcasts and zines or what have you.

But it's really been lovely and I hope you know everyone enjoys listening to this.

Thank you so much for having me.

Amazing.

Thank you so much.

All right, take care.

Thanks.

Bye.

Bye. Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.

You can find the transcript, the links, all the resources from the

show@solidarityapothecary.org podcast.