This episode is an interview with Layla K. Feghali (she/her), an ethnobotanist and cultural worker living between Lebanon and California.
We talk about the current iteration of genocide in Gaza, and the need for resistance, rage and action. Layla shares her experiences within herbalism and how folks can support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that is highlighting herb companies supporting the Israeli Occupation. We discuss her new book The Land in Our Bones which weaves together her work in exploring the herbs and land-based medicines of Lebanon and Cana’an. We talk about ancestral herbalism, plant medicines for steadfastness, and so much more!
Links & resources from this episode
- Layla’s website – https://www.riverroseremembrance.com/
- Layla’s instagram – https://www.instagram.com/riverroseremembrance/
- For The Wild Podcast Interview with Layla
- BDS Campaign against Starwest Botanicals, Frontier co-op and Pacific Botanicals
- Mutual Aid Support Network Fundraiser providing direct aid to families surviving genocide and displacement
- The Land in Our Bones Book and where to order
Find them all at solidarityapothecary.org/podcast/
Music from Sole & DJ Pain – Battle of Humans | Plant illustrations by @amani_writes | In solidarity, please subscribe, rate & review this podcast wherever you listen.
Transcript
Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast with your host Nicole Rose from the Solidarity Apothecary.
Nicole:This is your place for all things plants and
Nicole:liberation.
Nicole:Let's get started.
Nicole:Hello, welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast.
Nicole:I hope you are okay.
Nicole:I am feeling very, very pregnant now, waddling around like a duck, but I love ducks, so that's fine.
Nicole:And yeah, I just want to share a few interviews this week.
Nicole:This one today is with someone called Leyla.
Nicole:Yeah, it just, I don't want to, like, talk too much about it because I think the interview speaks for itself.
Nicole:But yeah, she's an amazing herbalist, ethnobotanist, and describes herself as a cultural worker, kind of living between Lebanon and California.
Nicole:And yeah, like, just content warning, we do talk about the genocide in Gaza and, you know, just the need for resistance and rage and action and the kind of, yeah, difference.
Nicole:of that, to grief, if that makes sense.
Nicole:And yeah, we talk about the BDS movement, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and her amazing book, which I highly recommend.
Nicole:Check it out in the show notes.
Nicole:Such a beautiful offering.
Nicole:I literally read the whole thing, like, like in preparation for the podcast.
Nicole:And I'm yeah, I definitely struggle with reading someone with dyslexia.
Nicole:But it was just absolutely enchanting.
Nicole:And I think whatever your heritage, like, or your lineages, like, I think it's Such a beautiful offering to herbalism.
Nicole:So anyway, I'm not going to speak for long.
Nicole:Please just dive into the interview, which is amazing.
Nicole:I cannot say thank you enough for her time.
Nicole:Please check out all the links in the show notes.
Nicole:Just enjoy this interview.
Nicole:Like I think it's, yeah, really beautiful.
Nicole:Hey, welcome.
Nicole:Please can you introduce yourself, your pronouns and like any projects you'd like to include?
Layla:Sure.
Layla:Thank you so much.
Layla:My name is Leyla Feghali . My pronouns are she, her.
Layla:I run a small herbal practice called River Rose Remembrance which also hosts the Ancestral Hub formerly known as the Swana Ancestral Hub.
Layla:And my, I'm an ethnobotanist and a cultural worker and an author of a book coming, well, that's about to be released in just a couple weeks called The Land in Our Bones.
Layla:And my, my work is you know, I'm an ethnobotanist.
Layla:Plants kind of anchor my work, but the work is a larger body of work that's really around reconnecting to cultural memory and land based practice, especially in the Swana region or Southwest Asia and North Africa.
Layla:And you know, I've had like a special focus on the Levant more recently, as we'll share more about with my book coming up.
Layla:Yeah I would, there are some projects I would love to include, which I will just share that today I will be launching a mutual aid project with my friends from, from Gaza.
Layla:So I hope everybody listening to this goes and checks out my Instagram page to support that effort.
Layla:And that will just be an ongoing effort of mutual aid.
Layla:That's, you know, no NGOs, no bureaucracy, no big organizations, just really a colloquial network of friends from Gaza with, you know, family and relationships directly on the ground.
Layla:And just a redistribution of funds towards those who need it.
Layla:So direly right now.
Layla:Yeah.
Layla:So I would like to name that.
Layla:And I know we'll talk about some other things going on through the course of this.
Layla:This interview,
Nicole:yeah, for sure.
Nicole:I mean, yeah, like as you've already seen in advance, I've got a million and one questions about all your like amazing work in the world and your book.
Nicole:But before we dive into that, like it does feel really important to speak about the kind of current iteration of genocide, like in Palestine in your region.
Nicole:And I know that you spend half of your year in your family's village in Lebanon which is like a few hundred miles away right from Gaza and I just wonder like how, yeah, how, if there are words for it, like how have the last 100 days been for you?
Layla:Yeah, there really aren't words.
Layla:You know.
Layla:Our region has been under perpetual assault for a pretty long time and this level of assault is just unprecedented and so many ways and beyond, beyond what I ever imagined I would witness in this way in my lifetime.
Layla:It has been excruciating and consuming.
Layla:In so many ways.
Layla:It has been enraging.
Layla:It has been very sobering and clarifying also in so many ways.
Layla:And, you know, it's There is so much just, you know, there's, there's just so much loss and there's also so much possibility for types of liberation that have just never felt so close, but to be completely honest, it's also just, I think for those of us that are intimately connected to the region.
Layla:There's also a deep awareness of how complex that really is and how layered that is and how layered, you know, liberation and those possibilities are as well.
Layla:So, you know, it's been very consuming on both practical and just political, emotional, social levels in every way.
Layla:And it has been a very busy time.
Nicole:Yeah.
Nicole:Yeah.
Nicole:I can imagine.
Nicole:I listened to your podcast interview on for the wild and yeah, it was really moving how you spoke to how, like, Like there isn't, there hasn't been like time or space for grief, like you haven't been able to grieve because it's still so like ongoing and that now is the time for like rage and for action and I just wondered if you could like speak to that.
Nicole:Briefly, I'll put a link to the episode in the show notes so people can can listen to that interview because I think it's really powerful and will say lots of things that I'd probably also ask you but yeah, just I wondered if you could speak to that.
Layla:Yeah.
Layla:Thank you for that.
Layla:Yeah, you know for me and just what I've noticed just in my immediate community and you know, there is no, I mean the Imperialism and colonialism and its influence and if impact on our region has done quite a number and trying to divide the lands between Syria and the Sinai in a certain way, but there really is no.
Layla:True separation between Palestine and Lebanon.
Layla:In fact, you know, as many people know, although I feel like it's fallen off the radar, you know, the South of Lebanon has also been in, in active war and against, you know, the Zionist occupation through these past three months and has been part of the frontline you know, in solidarity with.
Layla:With Gaza and solidarity is not even really the word because the Zionists have been a direct They have been a direct threat to, you know, the Lebanese livelihood, the Syrian livelihood, all of us in reality my own mother's village was in Lebanon, my mother's Lebanese village was occupied by Israeli The Zionists until the year 2000.
Layla:So it's all, it's all very tied in.
Layla:And so what I have observed, you know, for the people of my communities, my cultural communities through this time is that, you know, the, the true spaciousness for.
Layla:The type of grief that I'm, I'm kind of sensing and observing from the West is that's just what we are like in full response mode.
Layla:We do not have the luxury of being in this sort of mourning what has passed while we're still fighting for, for what still is and for who still is.
Layla:And, you know, that being said, I, I do believe that.
Layla:Rage is also, you know, it is, it's, it's my expression of grief right now, I suppose, but I do, you know, I've been thinking a lot about that, especially as that particular interview moves around.
Layla:And I watch a lot of Western audiences who I myself have seen just continually kind of center the notion of mourning and grief sort of start to circulate.
Layla:Those words about rage and I think it's, it's just really, what's been present with me is, you know, there is just like the part, the part of us that is capable and inclined to resist all of us on this planet kind of need that part of us to be awake right now.
Layla:And I think that I hope that, that.
Layla:You know that call or that acknowledgement that rage is purposeful and that there's a reason it's there and there's an energy that it that it carries that can carry us through this moment.
Layla:I hope that it like compels some sort of reflection.
Layla:Or some sort of spark in also, you know.
Layla:The Western bodies of being that our resistance is important.
Layla:You know, we, we need to see ourselves as part of the resisting forces against empire because We are empire, you know, we are empire.
Layla:Those of us living in, in, you know, in Western Europe and in America and, and, you know, anywhere in North America, all these, you know, we, we are part, we are empire.
Layla:And so I think.
Layla:You know, it's important to be in touch with, with our active resistance and our agency to respond to what is happening and not just to revert into the, the, the pain, but comfort of like a passive type of grieving when we're still in the crux of.
Layla:Of a real battle, you know that really requires action and requires you know, it, it requires motion.
Layla:It requires response.
Layla:And that helps us to, to stay alive really to, I mean, not just physically, but also just in the, in the soul of us, you know, how alive are we?
Layla:How, how.
Layla:How much is our ability to respond actively respond and engage intact and.
Layla:You know, how do we practice that as a form of, of of love, of rage, of even, even of grief.
Layla:So kind of moving from like a passive sort of, of state of reflection and remembrance and towards more action, more more responsibility.
Nicole:Amazing.
Nicole:Yeah, for sure.
Nicole:And I think that has been like, I don't want to say like the one inspiring thing, but I just want to say that like having organized like around Palestine solidarity work prior to this like current iteration of genocide.
Nicole:You know, like it, it's like amazing somehow to see this like global resistance come up and, you know, all these like massive marches and everything else and people doing different direct action campaigns and things and like, it still never ever feels enough.
Nicole:But it's like, yeah, it's kind of interesting that it is somehow like amplifying resistance now, if that makes sense, but yeah, I totally hear you on like moving from this like centering of people in the West and their sort of shock and horror when actually levels of violence are so normalized in other places, if that makes sense.
Nicole:But anyway, I'm sure we could talk about it so much.
Nicole:But I just wanted to, yeah, take it to kind of herbalism.
Nicole:And I know that we're both involved in this kind of, like, often really weird world of herbalism which can sometimes be, like, the most beautiful, life affirming community, and other times can just feel, like, so frustrating and oppressive.
Nicole:And I know there's no, like, homogenous mass of, like, herbalists or what they represent or anything, but I just wondered, like, how have you found the kind of herbalist community, like, In general, like in response to the genocide or in kind of terms of like wider understandings of like colonialism and state violence?
Nicole:And I know that's a really big question, but I'm kind of curious to see if you felt kind of supported or if it's felt like the opposite, if that makes sense.
Layla:It does make sense.
Layla:And I do want to just say one thing about what you just said.
Layla:I agree that, you know, seeing so much public support for Palestine, you know, has been incredible.
Layla:And also, I just want to say that You know, I was just speaking to a friend of mine from Gaza yesterday and you know, we were working on some, some a number of mutual aid projects of different kinds.
Layla:And we were both just reflecting and, and I really feel this for, for me.
Layla:If I was not taking action right now, I would be so much worse than I, I mean, this has been excruciating as is, but.
Layla:I honestly, I would, I would be in a completely different state of just paralysis and despair, I think, and, and an unwellness if I was not taking action, you know, taking action is, is also it's part of, of how we I mean, it's power, it's power in the face of what feels just like.
Layla:Insurmountable oppression and power is such a life preserving and life affirming force that that just it's part of our own self preservation to, you know, and it's a way to it's a way.
Layla:To cultivate some moons, which, you know, we'll talk more about later, but it's a way to cultivate the steadfastness and the the longevity for these liberatory possibilities.
Layla:And so on that front about the herbal community You know, it's an interesting question because I think that by nature and virtue of who I am and my, my lineage and just how I've approached herbal practice in general I've kind of found a pocket.
Layla:I've always been in sort of this pocket of herbalists who have a bit more of, you know, a lot of racialized herbalists and folks who are a bit more politicized in their understandings.
Layla:And so there are parts and ways that I've actually experienced the herbal community that I'm a part of to be incredibly supportive and, you know, just understanding a lot of these things.
Layla:But of course the broader kind of herbal world, you know is like largely white.
Layla:And very much like just engages herbalism as sort of this you know, this, this kind of like, here I am.
Layla:I make remedies out of plants and sort of strips everything that is involved with that.
Layla:You know, beyond that, away from it, as has made been made very clear through some of like the boycott stuff, which we'll get into a little bit later.
Layla:But yeah, I, lately, if I'm truly honest, what I feel is that maybe my herbal communities have actually been more responsive than some of my other communities around this in certain ways.
Layla:But to be quite frank, like I barely.
Layla:Have been engaging beyond the, the Arab community lately.
Layla:I mean, I have found in general across the board I have found just, you know, most of my other communities.
Layla:Whether it's like based on, you know, trade or, or racial affinities or whatever it is to be honestly like just lacking in, in understanding of the importance of this moment and their commitment to truly expanding thoughtful action around this moment.
Layla:Everyone just seems kind of frozen in a way that, you know, honestly has been a little surprising to me even people who consider themselves radical, even people who have analyses of colonialism, even people who have expressed solidarity around Palestine before there is this kind of Frozen energy that that I've observed.
Layla:And there are very few people outside of the Arab community that I've honestly seen stepping up in any sustained or, or truly meaningful way.
Layla:And, and, you know, I don't want to discount those who have been but truly it's just.
Layla:It's been, it's been surprising.
Layla:And if I'm really honest, that's how I've, I have felt.
Layla:I have basically chosen to focus most of my energy on the communities that are ready to act.
Layla:And so I'm, I'm a little bit just blocking everyone else out at this point.
Layla:But you know, if they're out there doing things like it hasn't reached me.
Nicole:Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Nicole:I think sometimes like When I've been involved in, like, particular struggles, like, I have tried to focus on what I'm doing and almost, because you can just, like, fall into despair, right, if you look around you of like, hey, like, what are other people doing right now or something, or it's like, yeah, complicated feelings.
Nicole:But I'm, yeah, I'm really glad that people in your kind of herbalist kin have been responsive.
Nicole:That's kind of reassuring to hear and yeah, on the herbal front, I know you've been pivotal in speaking about the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement which, you know, if listeners don't know is, is like a Palestinian led movement that calls for, you know, boycott of Israeli goods and divestment from companies profiting from Israel.
Nicole:And you know, it's been going on a long time and there's like, you know, vast grassroots campaigns around the world focusing on different targets and different moments, but yeah, in a herbalist context.
Nicole:You've been kind of drawing attention to how many herb companies are sourcing herbs from you know, quote, unquote, Israel.
Nicole:And yeah, I just wondered if you could share, I know people can find stuff online, but if you could just share like a little bit about this work and like what are the next steps people can take.
Layla:Yeah, thank you.
Layla:Yeah, this has probably been the The place where the most of that kind of active solidarity from the herbal community has come through.
Layla:And there has been like a contingent of anti Zionist Jewish herbal friends that have supported with this campaign over time and a contingent of Swana and Arab folks and and like a contingent of indigenous.
Layla:Folks from from the Americas that I have been blessed to kind of be in a closer orbit with who have found each like we have found each other through this campaign.
Layla:And that has been really powerful and really beautiful and and deep and meaningful in this time and in past past like times of aggravated assault on our region.
Layla:You know, the BDS.
Layla:I get started against mountain rose.
Layla:I'm really bad with like years and dates and all of that stuff.
Layla:But one day I was on their site and I noticed that they were sourcing some things from from Israel.
Layla:So I, you know, I had to just do something about that.
Layla:And then it started this whole campaign, which took a lot of years.
Layla:Of action and pressure before they kind of, you know, hesitantly, very reluctantly agreed under the, the crux of the pressure to stop sourcing from from these particular farms.
Layla:But basically all of the other large herbal companies in the, in the U S anyways are sourcing really basic herbs.
Layla:Like, I mean, really basic, we're talking like cilantro.
Layla:and dill and just really basic spices from, from the Zionist state.
Layla:And we have definitely been trying to Just you know, push against that.
Layla:And so the BDS movement has a pretty targeted list of specific companies that have the highest influence to target, but on their list is also agricultural products of which spices are included in that.
Layla:And so my hope is that this campaign will sort of, you know, touch that part of the targeted boycott, especially and just draw more attention, kind of in line with the earlier question you asked to the fact that there really is no reality in which herbalists of any kind anywhere on the globe are granted the the ethical privilege of ignoring the realities of colonialism and its impact because we work with land and land puts us in relationship with colonialism and its violence.
Layla:No matter how we want to, you know, no matter what we do to try and explain that away, the reality is that we work with land and land puts us in a direct conversation with colonialism, with settler violence and with the ways that land and land based cultures have been exploited.
Layla:Herbalism is a lineage of practice that is built on the back of ancestors from all over the globe who have tended relationships with land and culture for thousands of years.
Layla:And, and pass down knowledge that we benefit from.
Layla:We keep alive, we evolve and are in conversation with every single day.
Layla:There is just simply no reality in which herbalists can ethically ignore their direct responsibility to the integrity of land and culture, which means that we need to be in a confrontation with violence, which means that we need to be in a confrontation with colonialism, which means that we need to be sourcing our plants in a way that does not contribute to further desecration of land and culture.
Layla:And so there is, in my mind, there is no.
Layla:Like sincere herbal practice that does not have a responsibility towards boycott a divestment sections, you know, of Israeli herbs at the very least, you know, and I think that my hope is that that actually draws attention to all the broader ways that our, you know, the Western herbal culture has kind of you Replicated colonial dynamics and that we also as people who care for land and who heal with land have a proximity and a possibility of helping kind of amend those relationships and restore a more regenerative relationship.
Layla:More life affirming way and culture of being, because that's what healing is.
Layla:And that's what, that's what like the lineages of herbalism that we truly stand on embody.
Layla:And I guess I can't say we, right?
Layla:Because the truth is that that we is vast.
Layla:And not all of us have come from lineages who have the same experience of that and there have always been extractive forces.
Layla:And so I think it's really just about what we're really trying to do and what we really see as like a healing practice and what we really see as like a cultivation of.
Layla:of, of care in, in in connection and kinship with land and indigenous sovereignty for to me has to be fundamental to that just globally, Palestine and beyond.
Nicole:Amazing.
Nicole:Yeah.
Nicole:That is such a beautiful, articulate, powerful response.
Nicole:Yeah, it just drives me wild when herbalists kind of think that you can interact with this stuff in non political ways, because like you said, you know, like we're completely connected to land and yeah, there's, yeah, anyway, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna chip in because you've said it absolutely perfectly, but yeah, I also saw on your Instagram this kind of generous offering of plancestral medicine for resilience and Sumud.
Nicole:And when I was in Palestine the year before last, like this concept of kind of steadfastness was one of the things that like really struck me other than just like the like amazing incredible culture of like collective life and relationship to the land like it was so moving but I just wondered if you could share like what what steadfastness means and kind of, yeah, and also just the practical things of like what was involved in your offerings, like what were you kind of you know, gifting people?
Layla:I love this question.
Layla:Thanks.
Layla:Yeah, Sumud means steadfastness and it's so present in the consciousness of Palestine because Well, 75 years of settler occupation, you know makes steadfastness a very important just like element of of persistence and of resistance and of survival within unfathomable layers of violence.
Layla:And and so I feel like Sumud is, it is like the, our cultural.
Layla:Version of, of resilience really.
Layla:And I know that the word resilience, you know, people have different relationships to that word and to the way that resilience has been exploited, you know, the resilience of global peoples who have been oppressed has been exploited.
Layla:But to me, you know, it's really about just.
Layla:The, the ability to like, so mood feels like the ability to be in it for the long haul, you know, and to find and harness.
Layla:Dignity and life affirming liberatory, just like the soul of the life affirming liberatory goals and, and dignity within the, the struggle for liberation every single day, even when In a moment like this, when the loss is, is just beyond it's not digestible, it's just simply not digestible.
Layla:When the violence increases, it's almost like.
Layla:It feels like there's a feeling in, in this, the word or the, the energy of Sumud that feels like this kind of like deep, this anchor so deep in, in in like the love, the love that binds land and people to each other that kind of, Stays steady, regardless of anything that tries to annihilate or you manipulated or strip it from from its power and its dignity and its persistence and and perseverance.
Layla:And it's knowing that that what is righteous is inevitable.
Layla:Not inevitable because You know, it's just going to happen magically, but inevitable because of the love and the trust that that is invested in that.
Layla:And so the herbal offering was my.
Layla:You know, I think for me, Sumud is, is it comes from land in so many ways, it comes from love and it comes from the land that has loved us and the love we share on, on a shared land and beyond the shared land, but it comes from the relationships of place that have been cultivated and the relationships I, you know, when October 7th, when, when the genocide began, I was still in Lebanon in my village.
Layla:And I just really felt, you know, I live in a coastal village that shares the same waters as, as Gaza.
Layla:It's just a couple of hundred miles South of me.
Layla:And every day I would go to the waters and I would just.
Layla:Be with the land.
Layla:And I just, I feel, and I know in my bones that the land is witnessing and registering everything that's happening that the land has.
Layla:Kind of like a different timeline how to articulate this, you know, I'm still in like trauma.
Layla:I am in trauma brain myself and sometimes the words and everything gets all jumbled.
Layla:So bear with me.
Layla:But the land, you know, has a before and a future that is So expansive beyond just the violence of the moment, but it also is deeply attuned to the violence of the moment and it is attuned to the healing and the power and the life, the life, like the source, the well source of life in our bodies and in our beings and that when we work with plants.
Layla:We're connecting to all of that.
Layla:We're not just connecting to, you know, the chemical component that makes your anxiety go down or that helps you sleep or that you know, nourishes your body in this way or that way, but we're connecting to this whole lifeline of, of memory and of, of love and of kinship that.
Layla:That strengthens us and that expands our connection to the source and the connection to the source gives us opportunities and possibilities of imagining our way towards the future.
Layla:And so.
Layla:I don't, I, this all feels like a little abstract perhaps, but like I wanted to make an offering knowing that, you know, a healing from the pain of this moment is not really possible, but that a strengthening and an expanding into the love and the power and the strength and the life source of who we are and who we were and who we will be.
Layla:Is available through the plants and it was my, my love, it was my offering of love to my, you know, my siblings of, of our region who are trying to cultivate some moods.
Layla:And an act in a liberatory way towards this moment and my invitation towards the land through these little bottles that I could share with plants that come from the land because many of them were collected from From my time in Lebanon, my time in the region, and we're plants that really have spoken to me around this moment.
Layla:And some of them were from my native California plant garden, because I really felt when I returned, I was grieving being further from the land, because even though the the violence felt more visceral there.
Layla:And It didn't, you know, bodily, it's less safe to be in Lebanon in a moments like this, but, but, but spiritually there was something I, there was a type of power that I felt just being in that land that I grieved a little bit when it, when it came time for me to return to California.
Layla:And when I got to my garden in California, I felt like the land.
Layla:We're reminding me, you know, the plants indigenous to this place, which was also is also a settler colony, a place that had, you know, 90 or 95 percent of the indigenous populations genocided.
Layla:And, and most of the rest forcibly displaced and shuffled around and, and culture taken and, you know all, all the things that we know, and I felt like my California plants were telling me.
Layla:We, we know this, we know this story, we know how to live through this and we have help to offer here.
Layla:Like, don't, don't forget, like we, we're, we're in it together kind of feeling.
Layla:And And that was beautiful.
Layla:And so I just tried to you know, listen and heed that, that invitation and that call and just to it's my, my, my humble sharing to my communities to our communities, really.
Layla:And there's still, I did make some extra remedies.
Layla:So there's some available, you know, the mutual aid, and, and, and, effort was, you know, I gave a lot of free remedies away to people from the Levant.
Layla:And especially made some special packages for some of the organizers from our communities.
Layla:But I do have a version of the remedy available to the broader public, and it's on my website, and anyone is welcome to You know, to receive it
Nicole:amazing.
Nicole:So yeah, if it's okay with you, I would love to move on to speaking about your, your other work and your incredible book.
Nicole:But yeah, before we kind of dive into the book, just like a, like a, I know, I know it's not a small question because it's as explored in your book.
Nicole:It's like a huge kind of dynamic region, but for folks who aren't familiar with the terms, SWANA, can you like just briefly speak to this and also how you kind of currently frame the region as like the crossroads in your book?
Nicole:Yeah,
Layla:I'm so glad you asked this because I can't wait for people to actually read the book so that I can start using the language I use in the book without it confusing folks.
Layla:SWANA is stands for the Southwest Asia and North Africa and was kind of a reframe from different activists from our region who basically, you know, didn't want to use Middle East and North Africa anymore because middle of where east of where as our elder Edward Said, a Palestinian scholar, wrote in his book, Orientalism, and kind of drew attention to, you know, it's a very colonial, geographical placement that centers Europe.
Layla:And so, Swana was sort of a way to, you know, de center Europe through, you know, identifying the region through its geography.
Layla:But in reality, you know, Swana still kind of reproduces some of these, you know, these colonial mappings.
Layla:Because, first of all, These continents and their borders have been created by by who, you know, like who created the borders where, how did Asia become Asia and Africa become Africa and Europe become Europe, you know, that's also defined by colonialism and more specifically, you know, the the splitting of North Africa from the rest of the African continent and sort of the racialized and geopolitical realities within, you know, the way that that this region has been constructed and its relationship to empire has been constructed and it's racialized relationships have been constructed around that.
Layla:And this is, I'm, I'm, I'm a part of that.
Layla:I'm trying to hold myself from like going on a deep tangent that will last for the rest of this interview.
Layla:Because like folks can read the book and learn more what I'm getting at, but I did want to kind of remap the region a bit in the book and so in thinking about what kind of language, what I think a lot about.
Layla:I think a lot with, with peers too, but there's a lot of thought around you know, what would it look like if our, if our mapping of our peoples of our lands of our cultures of our identities was defined more by the ecologies and waterways and the natural Relationships that the earth itself has, has, you know, has shaped in different parts of the world because we share waterways and land masses and because we're migratory species like so many other migratory species on the planet.
Layla:And because of this more dynamic kind of living orbit of Of relationship and interaction that that actually defines who we are, our cultures, you know, all these things before colonialism kind of starts to meddle and reconstruct those for the purpose of profit and power, which is really just what empire does and has been doing for thousands of years.
Layla:I mean, it's not just you know, Western empires and colonialism.
Layla:But this has been happening in different forms throughout our region and the world for thousands of years.
Layla:And so I, in the book end up using the word the crossroads to to talk about what we usually consider the SWANA region and crossroads was the word was proposed by Sanyu Estelle Nagenda.
Layla:Who is you know a thinker and a a wordsmith and a soothsayer as she calls herself, that is a friend of mine who I often was talking about in these, in these conversations and And it was a word that I felt really actually captured the essence of this region.
Layla:This region is like a crossroads.
Layla:It's a crossroads of cultures of species, like both ecologically.
Layla:You know, racially, culturally, landmass, waterways you know, in every way, it's kind of a crossroads and I feel like crossroads lens, this sort of feeling of like a threshold also in, in, in a way that I think is actually really alive right now.
Layla:Because I feel like we're sort of like a threshold.
Layla:Of liberation as much as we have been a threshold of of kind of like the crux of empire and, and colonial pursuit.
Layla:So I'm going to try to leave it there and just say, yes, I know that this is all a bit I'm leaving a lot to be.
Layla:you know, elaborated, but please read the book and then we'll have these conversations.
Nicole:Oh, bless you.
Nicole:And yeah, the book is like absolutely incredible.
Nicole:So yeah, it's called The Land in Our Bones and it will be published in February, right?
Nicole:And yeah, I've just like, been completely absorbed with it since you, I had the privilege of you sending me a copy via email in preparation for this interview and I've just like, yeah, I've just been so mesmerized by it and yeah, so like, yeah, a lot, like, very, things I weren't expecting really came up around grief and relationship to land and like, all sorts of stuff but your writing is just like, so stunning and moving and Yeah, you share, like, so much detail and depth about plants and land and also, like, how you speak about like, the harms of separation from land is, like, so powerful and, yeah, it's just such a beautiful offering, so I encourage anyone listening, like, actually, whatever your lineage is, I think I would encourage everyone to read it but, yeah, can you share with the listeners, like what the book is about.
Layla:Thank you so much.
Layla:I'm so glad you have been enjoying the writing and the book, you know, not many people have read it yet.
Layla:So I'm still, I'm talking about it, but I have no idea.
Layla:So, you know how it's going to land with people.
Layla:So I really appreciate hearing that.
Layla:And thank you for, for that generous yeah, just support of my book.
Layla:The book is about the.
Layla:You know, plancestral or herbal and cultural healing lineages of, you know, of Canaan or the Levant.
Layla:I also reclaimed the word canine or Canaan, which is going to be probably a little controversial to people from various walks of life, including my own people, but I explained why I do that in the book, too.
Layla:And.
Layla:You know, just like trying to evade colonial language of our region and our names even just proves, I think, shows so much about how profoundly we have been visited by so many different forces over the years and decades.
Layla:And so the book is about our Healing and herbal lineages, but I it's also about, you know, diaspora and it's about colonialism and it's about how we become displaced from our lineages and also just land and and land based knowing and land based kinship and land based power because of colonialism very intentionally and explicitly.
Layla:And it's my humble sort of ways that I have been kind of like emergently moving through how to.
Layla:To interface with that, how to start repairing some of that, how to remember in the midst of that, how to reclaim and reconnect to our sources of power, our sources of love, our sources of life and our lineages of life affirmation as a way to interface with the ripples of Of colonialism and empire and just capitalist extraction and displacement in our world from wherever we are.
Layla:Really.
Nicole:Amazing.
Nicole:And yeah, one of the kind of big themes of the book or like how it spoke to me about how you talk about plants is how plants wake up like ancestral lifelines inside of us.
Nicole:And you describe them affectionately as plant sisters.
Nicole:And I just wondered if you could share a little bit more about this.
Layla:Yes, I do talk about them as plant sisters because the plants are indeed our ancestors and kind of along the lines of some of what I sort of was.
Layla:Alluding to before, but you know, our, our, the lands that our ancestrals evolved on, they resonate inside our bodies and inside our consciousness and they build.
Layla:You know, they literally build our bodies and our genetic makeup and they, we have literally evolved from them even they've been on the planet longer than we have, but they also build our cultures and our story and our memories.
Layla:They carry our memories, they translate our memories, they retain our, our memories in so many ways.
Layla:There's just.
Layla:Their living energies that they mirror us and reflect us.
Layla:And I think because so many people on this earth are so deeply displaced, not only just because Their actual lineages, you know, have migrated or have been forced into exile or have been physically shuffled around because the truth is people all over the earth have been in different migratory cycles for many reasons.
Layla:But, you know, the violence of displacement and I think of the world systems that are defining so many of our realities right now.
Layla:Are that they intentionally also just separate us from land on purpose because the land is literally like a raw force of power, which is why empires are always trying to.
Layla:Extract it, but somehow we have sort of like forgotten that it's still underneath our feet and it still is literally in our bones and that that too is a source of power that can't really be taken away, but it can be harnessed.
Layla:And so I feel like the word, the language of plant sisters is like a constant sort of reclamation of that connection that we have with the plants as our ancestors and especially, you know, what is possible when The plants of our ancestral lineages of our ancestral lands when, when we work with them, what is possible, what is activated through our, our kinship through.
Layla:Our residents, the residents of our bodies, the residents between our bodies and the lands that we came from, which I feel like the plant sisters have the power to wake up and just sort of lights up these source places inside of us that we've been pretty intentionally and strategically severed from as part of, you know, colonialism's It's an empire's sort of project, I think, you know, of just of control, of controlling people and resources.
Nicole:Yeah.
Nicole:A hundred percent.
Nicole:And I think every single plant that you dive into detail about, like, you really bring those lineages alive with like, you know, little stories and anecdotes of people you've met.
Nicole:And and like, intimate experiences you've had with plants, and yeah, I just think, I haven't read a herb book like it with so much like, intimacy, if that makes sense, and like, embodied practice, like, I think a lot of herb books, it's just like, so like, cerebral, and kind of colonial, and analytical, and stuff, and yeah, it's just so beautiful how you speak to all these amazing plants, not just through like medicine, but food and everything else.
Nicole:But yeah, one of the sentences that really stood out for me was you describe herbalism is a land based therapy that emerges from generations of intimate relationship with place and practice.
Nicole:It is impossible to engage with its cultural legacies without confronting the ways our sovereign relationships with land and lineage, and lineage have been interrupted.
Nicole:This work emerges as a reckoning with colonialism, nation building, and empire, and all that becomes lost and distorted in the land's desecration over eras.
Nicole:I think many people like won't be aware of the region's kind of contribution to herbalism.
Nicole:I think people that like, for example, in England or who kind of, Use like quote unquote like Western herbal medicine, have like no idea of its origins if that makes sense and you know medicine in general like more allopathic medicine and yeah, they also don't have like any idea of like colonial histories of herbalism And again, I know it's like another massive subject area that we could talk about for like several hours, days, years, but yeah, I just wondered if you had any thoughts or feelings on this because I would love to kind of just like hold space for them in this interview.
Layla:Yeah, yeah, thanks for that.
Layla:Yeah, I mean, I, the, actually, even in like the more conscious parts of our like racialized herbal communities that are practitioners of Western herbalism, where people speak a lot about reclaiming for example, the, the African lineages, the, the, you know.
Layla:The just lineages and this might be more specific to the Americas, but, you know, enslaved people's imprint on on the herbal legacies of the quote unquote, Western herbalism of the West and the indigenous peoples, you know, somehow our region gets forgotten and our region, you know, was kind of one of the first I mean, I don't want to say first, but it's one of the primary places sites of extraction for Europe and has been for literally thousands of years and literally everything about modern Western science, you know, medicine.
Layla:Everything.
Layla:Honestly, I could the list of institutions, language, everything.
Layla:So much of it has roots in our region or the quote unquote, you know, cradle of civilization and kind of the, the, the place where, you know, Egypt and Sumeria are like some of our oldest documented records of herbal medicine and the roots of of what eventually became and was, was, you know, transformed in different iterations by different empires, by different people, by different forces to eventually build the, the foundations of what we consider Western medicine and Western herbalism right now.
Layla:And of course, There are indigenous peoples all over the globe, you know, and especially in these old world systems, the Ayurvedic and and Chinese medicine and, you know, the entire African continent all these old world medicine systems that have been Vibrant and advanced and systematized for thousands of years, which have influenced and been taken and reappropriated many times over and over again in different forms by Western civilizations to build their empires.
Layla:I mean, you know, that just is what it is.
Layla:And you will notice that so many of the, even the herbs, like the Materia Medica of quote unquote, Western herbalism, how many of those herbs, you know, come natively from from the Mediterranean.
Layla:That's not just because it's not, it's not because Yeah, I'm I'll spare a little bit of my extra shade on that because I'm sure you guys are picking up what I'm putting down.
Layla:But like, yeah, we some sometimes it's interesting that we've been appropriated so profoundly that people don't even remember.
Layla:You know, they don't even remember that it's been appropriated because what they think is theirs actually, you know, barely exists within the remnants of, of what they have taken along the way.
Layla:And so, you know yeah, that, that's my, my introductory statement on that.
Nicole:Amazing, and like, I'm muted when you're talking, like, on this app thing, but it's like, you just, you missed me, like, chuckling when you were like, Oh, I won't throw shade on that, but yeah, anyway, thank you for that that response.
Nicole:I'm aware of time, but I just wondered if you could share a little bit I saw on your website about the Plancestral Remembrance Circles, and I wondered, were they involved and kind of like, yeah, what does this, like, how do people practice this kind of remembrance work, like, you write in the book about belonging, like, as a practice and also if you could share a little bit more about the Ancestral Hub as well, that would be amazing.
Layla:Thanks.
Layla:Yeah, the Plancestral Remembrance work is it's like an emergent process of, you know, I think at some point I realized that there was a lot of remnants of memory of knowledge of connection that I really honestly wasn't even going to find like going through my, you know, region and visiting villages and talking to old people and there wasn't like some, you know, ultra cohesive.
Layla:Source of knowledge or some system that was just going to be, you know, regurgitated to me in a certain way.
Layla:And so you know, it kind of propelled me to look towards the source, which is the land.
Layla:And so the plant Cicero room remembrance circles sort of emerged in an understanding that all of our bodies carry, carry knowledge and all of our bodies At the intersections of these lands carry different layers of memory and knowing and connection and wisdom and just like we ourselves are archives of knowledge and that when we, when our bodies merge with the plancesters of these places, the conversation between the land in our bones and the land in Our villages and our plants kind of get to converse in in an alive way.
Layla:And when we do that together in a circle with intention, with study, with with attention to, to all of our senses and all of our.
Layla:And each other's experiences and each other's wisdom that we kind of men together this sort of puzzle, this puzzle pieces, and we sort of men together.
Layla:The lost fragments of of ourselves, really, and of the stories and the knowings and the medicine and the wisdom and the secrets and, you know, all of the things that our own bodies and lineages and And beings carry and crave to share and like what they become when we when we hold space for them together what, what we understand through being in conversation with each other's bodies and the land in unison.
Layla:And so that's what the plant celestral remembrance circles like why they emerge, I felt, I felt lonely.
Layla:I felt like I needed help.
Layla:I felt like I wanted to you know, that these pieces need to be gathered collectively because everyone carries, you know, like any ecosystem, every single living organism within, within it has a specific A specific purpose to land and a specific piece that completes the other pieces and.
Layla:You know, and that was that and then the hub was meant to be a place where we actually got to kind of archive more of those knowledges and being more of like a, you know, public sharing of what we unveiled and kind of cross pollination of conversation around the different musings that You know, various individuals across our very vast diasporas and homelands have to, to lend to the conversation so that we could be in you know, just like deepen, deepen those threads and cast the, the net wider and just.
Layla:Be in that process together.
Layla:Really.
Layla:It's been a little inactive.
Layla:We, we kind of needed to, we, we, we had a social media and I think the energy of social media sort of detoured.
Layla:I don't know, not I, it was constructive and generative in some ways, but also I was finding that actually the true archival and sort of What's the word?
Layla:Sort of like co creative emergent intention of the hub was, in honesty, not really being fulfilled.
Layla:It felt a little bit like people were, you know, maybe receiving knowledge or asking for knowledge and requesting knowledge, which is important.
Layla:But the, the cultivation of being, being in our, In the knowledge of our own bodies and beings and lineages and having that be more conversational and communal and generative.
Layla:It wasn't quite happening in that forum.
Layla:So to be honest, I've, I've left it up as archives, but I, you know, I've been actively kind of rethinking what are the forms that are conducive to, to that in, in a more proactive and reciprocal way.
Layla:And then in a more like empowered way yeah, it's, it's an ongoing kind of reflection.
Nicole:Yeah, that makes sense.
Nicole:I think I think anything involving the internet that isn't with people like in that embodied way is always so challenging of the internet is perfect as an archive, right?
Nicole:But beyond that, it's, it's, it can be difficult.
Nicole:But yeah, so just kind of like, I guess, one of the last questions from me, which is, yeah, like a kind of personal thing, but I read your chapter, well your chapters on kind of like birth and like postpartum care and like yeah I literally was just like bawling my eyes out which isn't uncommon right in pregnancy but yeah like I think for people listening like the book isn't just amazing for people that are kind of herbalists and interplants like I think it's amazing for anyone who cares about Like, building collective life and free life and learning from ancestors and understanding colonialism and all these things.
Nicole:But also I think it would really speak to birth workers and people doing this kind of community care work with people who are birthing.
Nicole:And yeah, like, just on a personal level, like, you know, I'm six months pregnant now and it's been pretty kind of I hate using the word traumatic because I feel like having a caesarean with no anaesthetic in Gaza is traumatic.
Nicole:But in terms of my experiences of having like hyperemesis, like this really violent vomiting and nausea for like five and a half months, and like frequent visits to hospitals and IVs and scans and like all this horrible medication that I don't really want to take, but I kind of have to.
Nicole:Yeah, it's just like my whole experience of pregnancy has been so medicalized and kind of any sense of like, sacredness that I'd imagined with pregnancy has kind of evaporated.
Nicole:But yeah, your book is just so beautiful how you share about some of the traditions in Lebanon around birth and postpartum support.
Nicole:And I know we don't have much time, but I just wondered if you could just share like a little tidbit about what you explore in those chapters.
Nicole:Cause I think, yeah, it's really, really stunning.
Layla:Yeah.
Layla:Thank you so much, Nicole.
Layla:I actually, this part of the book is really intimate to me.
Layla:It's very special to me.
Layla:It's the most important part of the book to me personally and a lot of ways.
Layla:And so I just want to yeah, just also just acknowledge that I, I just I'm with you and I feel for you and I, I empathize with how difficult your pregnancy has been.
Layla:And I hope that any of like the invitations in the book Even if it's not for the pregnancy, but for the postpartum, I think one of the things that keeps standing out to me around just traditional models of birth and birth care is that no matter how difficult and traumatic the, the pregnancy is, the processes and the, there is something about like the, what happens.
Layla:After during too, right?
Layla:But also what happens after no matter what the outcomes are that has such healing potential and which gets minimized a lot in Western cultural context because the mother or the birther is not usually prioritized with the same importance as as the baby.
Layla:And so I hope.
Layla:That you have any people or places in your life that will care for you through the challenges and the trauma of the process, but also that will really honor and and, you know, ritualize.
Layla:You both, you know, on the, on the other end in ways that can maybe provide some kind of healing or, or integration of how much your body has truly been through.
Layla:And so I think that the, one of the reasons I chose to focus on this is because believe it or not, I am the first generation on both sides of my family to be born in a hospital, but it is.
Layla:Almost impossible to find traditional midwives anymore and so much of of the region because it has been criminalized.
Layla:Thank you to the European colonial systems.
Layla:And, and there's actually no real sort like I could not find sources.
Layla:I have not seen archives or sources that have really honored these generational transcription at all.
Layla:legacies of, of knowledge that our grandmothers just kind of embodied and had and practiced colloquially for generation and generation after generation that has allowed us to be here.
Layla:And it really struck me that this was that it was ignored that just, it hasn't been important enough for people to even you know, to even I don't know talk about really or or archive at all.
Layla:And because it's it's becoming lost due to the criminalization.
Layla:I really felt like I I owe it to us and to myself and to my grandmothers and to the earth to, Just share and collect as much of the knowledge around those practices that are still around as possible because it is literally the practices that have ushered us into existence and life and birth is so profound.
Layla:It is such a liberatory portal of possibility.
Layla:How we welcome life and how We see it off has massive, massive implications and how we regard life as a society, as a culture of people and beings in general, and I do believe that within the mysterious threshold of birth, we really interface with the possibilities of kind of Anchoring an entire paradigm of, of care and of, of respect and of dignity to the living in all of its expressions on this planet.
Layla:And I, I really feel that through all my searching and my, I have searched, I have searched, I have searched for healing.
Layla:And all the places through traditions all over my diasporic realities, which have provided me with abundant, you know, possibilities and lineages who have shared so generously and my own region, which I have traveled around, I have searched, I have searched in so many ways and through all my searching.
Layla:You know, everything has truly returned me most of the steadiest thing that I've returned to is something just in the really humble, simple, loving practice of life stewardship that my grandmother's just embodied constantly in every second, in every moment, in every day, which is, and I say this a lot in the book, Basically a practice of just tending the life directly in front of them.
Layla:And I feel like it kind of begins with, with how they birth and how.
Layla:They, how they honored that right of passage and that, you know, just that welcoming of life onto the planet and the care that they continued to Steward it with after those moments.
Layla:And so it's such basic, basic stuff in so many ways, but there is so much dignity.
Layla:There's so much just dignity in that is offered to, to life and to the process of becoming that I think has just been stripped.
Layla:You know, from the like modern, you know, colonial context of our world, and I believe that that has been that stripping that from this moment of arrival this threshold of arrival has had repercussions on the way that we see it.
Layla:We dignify life every day, honestly.
Layla:And and so, you know, I wanted to both preserve and archive these precious, you know, ancestral lineages of knowledge, but also You know, deep in my own reflection of, of the deeper wisdom within, within what they really carry and embody.
Layla:And there is something that I think I kind of, I maybe said this in my, for the wild interview, I honestly, these interviews are a blur after I do them sometimes, but in so many ways, I think that the medicine that surrounds birth has.
Layla:The most relevance for the world that we're living right now and for the process of liberation and that the mysterious threshold of birth in its proximity to death, in its proximity to loss and all the layers of grief and loss and violence that exists even within just a birthing body, the arrival from one state to another.
Layla:It, it, it has some wisdom, you know, for those of us who really are in the, the work of.
Layla:Birthing new worlds are trying to birth new worlds and these liberatory thresholds that we find ourselves in on a planet that is, you know, in climate catastrophe where there is so much loss.
Layla:There's so much being taken.
Layla:There's so much that needs to be tended.
Layla:There's just so much being Lost and born at once, and I do feel like the birthing wisdoms have profound keys to, to offer around all these different processes and thresholds and initiations and rites of passage that just go on Intended in our lives in our modern lives.
Layla:And so many of the postpartum rituals, I just, I feel like they're also the ones that we have to rebirth ourselves into after war and after violence and after trauma.
Layla:You know, and yeah, everything, everything just leads me back to the life tending simplicities that my grandmother's embodied and their.
Layla:Their power, but they're like very understated power in these birthing traditions that are just like really, you know, these colloquial village.
Layla:Like when I asked the, when I asked my elders about most of the things I share in that book, you know, a lot of the times they look at me funny, like, why do you want to know this?
Layla:Like, what is, this is just normal for us.
Layla:This is how we do.
Layla:You know, this is this is how we live.
Layla:This is who we are.
Layla:And it's so embedded in the just the dignifying way of being with life when it arrives when it leaves and for every moment in between is so embedded in the collectivist.
Layla:And culture of just sheer love.
Layla:That that especially, I think my grandmother's just they, they just embodied that in a way that I.
Layla:I'm so humbled and grateful that I got to live at all.
Layla:So it was my ode to them, but it's also my ode to our world and these thresholds of of birth that we are collectively, I hope tending towards a reality that dignifies.
Layla:Life over, you know, the desecration that we are living and seeing and like the cultures of severance as I call it in the book that these systems of, of, of power have kind of wrangled us into.
Nicole:Yeah.
Nicole:Yeah.
Nicole:I just want, I just wanted to say like thank you for sharing that.
Nicole:And I think the whole book is like a really beautiful combination of like how somehow things are so normal and embodied.
Nicole:Like you said, like this chapter on pregnancy, it's kind of just like, yeah, like birth is just normal.
Nicole:Like I just had this baby in the field and like, you know, it's kind of, but then also just like capturing all the magic and the kind of sacredness of everything.
Nicole:And yeah.
Nicole:Anyway.
Nicole:I'll just encourage people to buy a copy but before we finish, is there anything else you'd like to share and also can you share like where people can find you and keep up to date with all your amazing work?
Layla:Let's see, anything else I'd like to share?
Layla:No, I mean, except that, please do go support my mutual aid effort that I just launched.
Layla:Well, probably by the time this interview is on the air, it will have been out for a couple of weeks.
Layla:And also my book launch is connected to that.
Layla:So people in Oakland, please feel free to come and join us.
Layla:And you can, I'm, I'm pretty good at updating things on Instagram.
Layla:So you could find me on Instagram.
Layla:I, my handle is river rose remembrance and, you know, just yeah, you know, please.
Layla:Yeah.
Layla:Keep following me there.
Layla:And keep supporting Palestine and just thank you so much, Nicole.
Layla:It was nice to have a more politically anchored conversation amidst all these book talks.
Layla:Honestly, it's a, it's rare.
Layla:It's rare.
Layla:So I'm very appreciative.
Nicole:Honestly, like the honor and the pleasure has been all mine for sure.
Nicole:So yeah, thank you.
Nicole:Thank you so much.
Nicole:Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.
Nicole:You can find the transcript, the links, all the resources from the show at solidarityapothecary.org/podcast.