OtherWise Wageningen

Join us coming Monday for a lunch lecture on anti-colonial activism led by assistant professor Jennifer Veilleux! We'll be exploring insights on the Indigenous Sovereignty Movement in the US and follow up with a discussion on reframing resistance and practicing anticolonial actions. 

When? 2nd Dec 2024, 12.30-13.45

Where? Forum B0404

No sign up required :)

About the lunch lecture:

Anti-colonial Activism: Resistance in Settler-colonial States

Anti-colonial movements and decolonial praxis are actively resisting existing oppressive structures all over the world. In the United States Indigenous Communities are engaged in anti-colonial actions calling for recognition of their sovereignty and rights to reestablish and reindigenize their pre-contact land and water relationships. The effort to push back against extractive predatory capitalist industries propped up by settler colonial governing structures is strategic. This presentation explores the Indigenous Sovereignty Movement in the US through examples of decolonial campaigns for water rights and  #Landback. The story will explore how settler-colonial governments implement genocides and ecocides for profit and about the people who fight back. The discussion following the presentation will allow for better understanding and reframing resistance, anti-colonial actions, responding to genocides, and how student activists at WUR are currently engaged.

Speaker  Jennifer Veilleux, PhD is a new Assistant Professor in Cultural Geography Group at WUR. She researches changes to transboundary rivers and water security for local, national, and international communities from the Nile to the Mississippi. She worked with Brave Heart Society, a Traditional Dakota Women's Society, for the Indigenous Sovereignty Movement in the Missouri River Basin for the last eight years. She is currently interested in spatial issues about climate changes to water in transboundary rivers and coastal deltas and how multi-species communities respond. She is also working on questions about the use of art in climate change discourse, how maps are powerful storytelling tools in activism, and the ethics of community-related research.

Join this dynamic and reflective workshop with Niki & Katha, where we will explore the themes of decoloniality, accountability, and responsibility. Using the "7 steps forward, 7 steps backward or aside" framework, we will open up a space for awareness, self-reflection, and meaningful conversation.

This workshop will invite participants to examine the inner work required to confront and unlearn colonial mindsets, especially for those of us living in the Global North. Through dialogue, movement, and community-building , we will raise essential questions of accountability.

Together, we reflect on power, privilege, complexity, and positionality, creating an inclusive and brave space for everyone to share their perspectives. The aim is to foster a sense of connection and community that will inspire participants to carry this work forward.

This is an invitation to move together—whether we take steps forward, backward, or aside—as we engage in this collective journey.

⏰When? 5th December 2024, 5 -7.30 pm
📍Where? Clochouse (Generaal Foulkesweg 37, Wageningen), room: old library
🍒Snacks and Drinks provided

Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1uIjIAQP8HShu1L5E1U8uW1Z0P_HZDI43nvZMx4WUE9Y/edit

🏗️ “How to pay for saving the world?”

📹 Join Degrowth Wageningen x OtherWise for a documentary screening of 'Finding the Money' (2023) which addresses Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). A group of economists is on a mission to turn our understanding of the monetary system upside down!

🍁 Michèle Thole, who has recently translated a book on MMT, will join us during the event to share her thoughts and answer questions. 

🐌 After the film there will be time to share ideas and ask questions. We invite students, academics, activists and concerned citizens alike to join us in this conversation. 

🙌 When to watch?

*Date*: Monday December 9: 7:30 PM

*Location*: NuDeToekomst, Mennonietenweg 15A

🔗 For more information, see: https://findingmoneyfilm.com/ 

more details on the workshop will follow soon

We invite you to the  Capita Selecta Course (4ECTS): Building Community: Strengthening our Activism
In Period 3 & 4, 2025

Overview 
In attempts to bring change to a complex system, activists and those who work for alternatives face oppression, exhaustion and isolation. To sustain our efforts, we need to find sources of empowerment and nourishment that allow us to continue doing our work.  
But what keeps us together? What makes us continuously show up for each other?  

We think community is a central notion. Community is another way to understand, organize society, and to live life - an alternative to 'individualistic society'. Communities can support and strengthen the individual by creating relationships that promote collective action and social change, allowing them to deviate from the hegemonic model of capitalist patriarchy.

With this course, we wish to create a brave space to come together in community, hold each other in care, and work on core questions like: 

 • How can the way we live/be more coherent with the world we want to create? 
 • How are our own intimate questions around grief, gratitude, power, meaning, love and sexuality linked with our politics? 
 • How are we perpetuating ourselves the very dynamics we seek to interrupt? 

We believe the success of our social movements relies not only on efficient mobilization and strategy, but also on resilient communities grounded in deep relationships. As adrienne maree brown suggests, “What we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system.” With this course, we aim to turn ourselves into laboratories of transformation and experiment with inner shifts as seeds of new possibility for the struggles and contexts we're part of.  

In this course, we aim not only to create a shared space for knowledge and experience but also to develop practical tools and frameworks that you can apply within your activist and community groups. 

Find more info under Courses 2024/2025 .

Elective Course: Resistance, Power, and Movements, March - April 2025 (March 14,15,16 - April 4,5,6 - April 24, 2025)

What do 'activism' and 'being an activist' mean in today's political context? What are the different options that citizen groups and (activist) social movements have to organize around the topics they consider urgent? How to organize a sound and constructive movement or action group? What can be learned from the past's social movements and mobilizations? How can theories on social movements, activism and resistance be useful for organizing an impactful action? How to (be)come an agent of change? How to combine activism and academia and/or be an activist scholar? 

These questions are central to the elective course “Resistance, Power and Movements”, a collaboration between OtherWise and the Sociology of Development and Change group.

Register via OSIRIS (use the QR Code or Course Code)

For any questions, write to otherwise@wur.nl.

Hii everyone 🍉
The lino print workshop that took place in June brought to life this beautiful collective print designed and carved by a small group of passionate people in Wageningen.
We are so proud to announce that we started with the printing and distribution of the poster with an aim to raise money for the organization of Musicians Without Borders in Palestine.
You can find more information on how to get your poster and make a donation here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1U8C2ZZvHz33kZA3pmqKn58FgDFtuxBDk5TkP_XdSqgE/edit

Join us for a workshop and introduction on spiritual ecology on Saturday November 16!

What is spiritual ecology? It is a framework to navigate our current socio-ecological polycrises, by recognizing the spiritual dimension of the world. To move forward, we must re-examine our attitudes and beliefs about the earth. In this workshop we will explore how spiritual practices offer us a way towards deepening our kinship with the human and the more-than-human world. We also hope to offer a follow-up course on spiritual ecology in 2025.

This event is facilitated by Annick Nevejan and Ania Ektate, and is a collaboration between Spectrum, OtherWise and the Spiritual Ecology foundation of the Netherlands. We will be serving a vegan lunch during the event, as well as coffee and tea during the break times.

Sign up here 🦋 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdqzOwSYnO6QQQNol7UZ7t2oCyHsrNFgwGm5Gv8tiEm1X7NRA/viewform

When: September 30, 5.30-8 PM
Where: old library, Clockhouse in Wageningen

Register here: https://forms.gle/miHyjUEtsN9QM7Du6

The social cartography “The house modernity built”, developed by the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective (GTDF), was inspired by Audre Lorde's famous insight that  “… the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” How do we collectively build alternative modes of existence on a planet facing unprecedented crises?  

''The House Modernity Built'' is a metaphor that invites conversation around the modern/colonial global imaginary in which being is reduced to knowing, profits take precedent over people, the earth is treated as a resource rather than a living relationship, and the shiny promises of states, markets, and Western reason are subsidized by the disavowed harms of impoverishment, genocide, and environmental destruction.

Using the metaphor of a house, we will explore modernities' architecture through a listening meditation, and craft a house that imagines alternative modes of existence in a context where the house appears to be crumbling, and, indeed, has always been a fantasy.