My name is Topher, and I am stoked to be one of the Core Facilitators for both sessions of Rising Earth Immersion in 2020. I have been working with Alison and the Eco-Institute since early last year to design these programs and had the immense pleasure of co-facilitating the Fall program last year. I am honored to be returning to work with y’all in this year so full of tragedy, tumult, and uncertainty. I believe that these times are calling on all of us to imagine bold and beautiful new futures together, to activate our potentials, and to offer our gifts wholeheartedly in the service of liberation. I am looking forward to learning, imagining, and co-creating with each of you!
If you are interested here's a little more about where I'm coming from:
I am an experiential educator creating culturally relevant and collaborative learning environments for youth and adults. Trained in mindfulness, trauma-informed care, nature connection, non-violent communication, and embodied and expressive arts-based facilitation, I bring a multi-modal and wholistic approach to environmental education and collective liberation praxis.
Growing up in a working class community on ancestral Cherokee land in the Southeastern US, I, like so many white men, was socialized and shaped by the toxic and divisive ideologies of patriarchy, racism, and colonization. I am committed to the processes of personal and collective healing and have spent many years studying, practicing, and receiving guidance from leaders in feminist and anti-racist organizing. I have spent the past several years exploring the ways that I, and my fellow cis white settlers on Turtle Island, can move toward reconciliation and solidarity with oppressed and marginalized peoples, and the ways that the broader human community can collectively restore our belonging with the more-than-human world.
Aside from co-facilitating the Rising Earth Immersion programs, I also lead anti-oppression workshops for white men, work as a mentor for low-income youth in Portland, OR, and spend my free time backpacking, writing songs, and painting watercolor birds.
