Weaving Voices Whetstone Radio

The oldest strains of cotton tell a story of the people who cultivated it.
Weaving Voices is part of Whetstone Radio Collective. Learn more about Weaving Voices here.
Find show notes here.
And transcript here.

Sammy Oteng is a Kantamanto Market organizer in Accra Ghana. The market is a 28 acre site, historically created by the people of Ghana to repurpose and reuse materials. Since the onset of fast fashion, the marketplace has become a dumping ground for the waste of the Global North. In a country of 2 million, the marketplace is cycling orders of magnitude more individual garments than there are people. Beaches and open pits have become the homes for our overproduction.
Weaving Voices is part of Whetstone Radio Collective. Learn more about Weaving Voices here.
Find show notes here.
And transcript here.

Ground building legislation was passed in 2021 to protect the California garment worker community from the “piece rate”, otherwise known as life threatening wages. We’ll talk to the Executive Director of the Garment Worker Center, an organization that worked with the affected community to design and push the law into place.
Weaving Voices is part of Whetstone Radio Collective. Learn more about Weaving Voices here.
Find show notes here.
And transcript here.

Plastic textiles are flowing and shedding into our soils, oceans and bodies. The reality of 60 percent of our clothing being plastic is that the lint that our textiles produce ends up where we least want it to be— and that includes our biosphere, oceans and soils. We're permeating our ecosystems with a material that microbes can't eat. Dr. Timnit Kefela researched the fate our plastic microfibers during her PhD candidacy at UC Santa Barbara's Bren School. She is very focused on the transfer of these materials into terrestrial ecosystems, noting that where the fibers end up is an environmental justice issue that needs to be addressed.
Weaving Voices is part of Whetstone Radio Collective. Learn more about Weaving Voices here.
Find show notes here.
And transcript here.

For thousands of years to the present, the Indonesian archipelago textile communities have been producing intricately complex textiles— woven with yarns dyed in morinda root, indigo and hundreds of other dye plant recipes. In this interview with William Ingram, co-founder of Threads of Life, we discuss the plants, processes and non-material dimensions that guide the creation of millenia-old textile recipes.
Weaving Voices is part of Whetstone Radio Collective. Learn more about Weaving Voices here.
Find show notes here.
And transcript here.

In this interview with Jay and Nikyle Begay and Zefren Anderson, we learn about the long arc of relationship between the Dine and the Churro Sheep. Beyond the narratives promulgated by colonization about when this relationship began, we dive into a landscape of relationships held together by mutual care and exchange between shepherds and sheep. The wool from Churro is long, colorful and exists as the foundation for multiple artistic and deeply functional lifeways that are discussed in this powerful exchange.
Weaving Voices is part of Whetstone Radio Collective. Learn more about Weaving Voices here.
Find show notes here.
And transcript here.