Wild Under Root The Root Circle

In this episode Lisa, Gina, and Marybeth discuss their personal critique and opinions about the movie "Cabrini" just out by Angel Studios. The movie is a biographical drama about the Italian nun Francesca Cabrini who was sent by the Vatican to New York City in the late 1800's to aid the Italian immigrants who were living there. Madre Cabrini was the first American saint and is known for her many miracles as well the orphanages and hospitals she founded.
Dr. Gina Miele is a professor of Italian literature, culture, and folklore at Montclair State University. She is a second generation Italian American and a fluent Italian language speaker.
Marybeth Bonfiglio is a writer, ancestralist, and works with people of all lineages to help them reconnect and remember who they may have been before the plague of whiteness, colonization, and assimilation. She holds ancestral pilgrimages on the beloved island of Sicily for those longing to go deeper with land, culture and people through her organization, Radici Siciliane.

In this episode I’m joined by Jordan Reed who tells us about her journey with ancestral reclamation as an adoptee. Being adopted or otherwise estranged from the knowledge of one’s ancestral lineage presents unique challenges when seeking to reconnect to our ancestral roots. Jordan shares with us an amazing circumstance that occurred between her and her ancestors during a recent event along with some of her process and practices of reclamation.

Jordan resides in Mi’kma’ki, the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Mi’kmaq people, also known as Nova Scotia, found on Canada’s east coast. Alongside travelling the world for volunteerism, language learning, patriarchy smashing, work, or fun, Jordan has been in strong relation with plants, magic, and healing arts from around the world for over 15 years. She hold a B.A in both International Development Studies and Comparative Religious Studies, and an M.Ed in Curriculum Studies, TESOL. She currently works as a CEO/Executive Director in international education, helping people reach their language goals, while creating opportunities for them to do local community development work amid centering social justice issues within the curriculum and workplace at large. She is also a mother, spouse, animal lover, freebirth champion and supporter, and anti-oppression advocate. As an adopted person, who only recently discovered her Sicilian ancestral lineage (with the help of dream journeying, plant magic, ancestry.com, Della Medicina, and deep trust), Jordan shares with us how you can do it too!

In this episode I’m joined by cultural revivalist Diana Lempel. Diana creates narrative interventions in space, community, and collections. I invited her onto the podcast to discuss her comments on a recent instagram post I made where I asked the question, “Can you appropriate your own ancestral culture?” This post generated many revelatory conversations as well as generated even more questions. Diana’s comments were some of the most revelatory around our ideas of identity, the reclamation of cultural symbolism and how those are different from the embodiment of cultural traditions outside of both ethnic enclaves and nostalgia.
Together we discuss how to pick up the remnants of cultural traditions amidst generations of assimilation and reweave them as a form of healthy revivalism without bypassing or denying the more difficult to integrate aspects of knowing “who we are.”

In this episode we share our experience and perspectives on Italian American protection magic as an ancestral practice and how that relates to living in the world today. My guests for this episode are Marybeth Bonfiglio and Kara Wood.

My guest this episode is Jonel Beauvais, a Wolf Clan Mohawk who is the proud mother of three children and chosen auntie, sister and friend to many. She works diligently to empower and induce healing within all Native/Indigenous communities in order to prosper in the Haudenosaunee teachings of good medicine and good minds.

In this episode I am joined by my friend, colleague, and teacher Marybeth Bonfiglio. Listen in as we discuss some of the most pressing questions facing the Italian diaspora, as well as other Euro-descended ethnic groups, at this time when there is an emergent collective surge towards ancestral reclamation and remembrance.

We share some of our experiences about growing up in Italian American communities, how we have both been impacted by the pressures of assimilation, and our concerns and questions about the ethical and appropriate transmission of cultural traditions and magic.

MaryBeth is a writer, mentor and ancestral catalyst. She believes storytelling heals, connects and can shift worlds, especially when we learn to tell and re-tell the stories of our ancestors and the stories of ourselves as future ancestors. She believes our bodies hold history and our cell memory holds magical multitudes. She received her MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and guides writers closer to all their voices. She is currently holding a container for ancestral storytelling, magic, ritual, oracle and fortification through Blood + Belonging; an ancestral wisdom school. She also runs Radici Siciliane which is a community pilgrimage effort, bringing the Sicilian diaspora back to Sicily to learn ancestral arts from elders. She has three daughters and a long time partner. She's originally from the land of the Eries People in upstate/western NY but now lives on the land of the Multnomah people in Portland, OR. Her italian nonne come from Sicily, Salerno, and Venaus. And her maternal grandmother comes from Poland.