This episode features my very special guest, Alysha! She's here for her third work-stay on the land, learning construction skills as she helps my husband, Ruben, build a livestock shelter. Alysha has been an amazing role model, resource, and thought partner for me around anti-colonialism for many years. Once again, here she is, advancing my thinking on the subject. Come grapple with us as we do morning horse chores!

I know that as a settler, a Land Acknowledgement isn't for me.

But as a participant in settler colonialism, it is about me in a way, and it does impact me in that it has been and continues to be a learning process.

I hope that, since we're trying to have a holistic, nuanced, and relational conversation about Land Acknowledgements, I'll be forgiven for saying that I believe having moral ambition benefits me by improving my self-esteem. I believe awkward participation in Land Acknowledgements is a pro-social, collective good. I don't know where the line is where it becomes a social detriment or we become numb to it, but I do think it's important they are not limited to formal events and those involving people who move the levers of institutional power.

Again, this process is of course not about making me, as a settler, feel good. But it does make me feel a lot of things, and not all of them are bad.

UPDATE March 26, 2026: I'm realizing that I threw the term "moral ambition" out into the conversation via the show notes and it perhaps lands a bit out of context. I recently published an episode, TNP306 {Dispatch: Jan 30, 2026} Lively v. Baldoni, Avoidant Attachment, and Moral Ambition, in which I grapple with, and ultimately endorse, that concept. The way I feel it relates here is that I tend to think that the way we ought to address numbness to the challenges of life is not to curtail our engagement but rather to become more present, to cultivate more maturity (emotional and spiritual), to stick with the trouble. There is a risk we fail, but it's honourable to try.

And that's all I have to say about that. 😅

Note: Dispatch episodes are recorded en plein air with all the sounds of farm life and chores in the background, (and sometimes a bit loud). We tried not to sniff too much but it was a cold morning, and sometimes the feed bags make a big tarp-in-the-wind-like sound. If auditory sensitivity is part of your experience, please consult your podcast player for a transcript.

With gratitude for the article of note to the writer, Khelsilem: Understanding the Purpose, Limits, and Misuse of "Land Acknowledgements": On symbolism, substance, and the limits of public ritual

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Today we're engaging in thought partnership around critical impact ratings, mental models, and reaching for what we care about in a risk assessment framework.

Note: Dispatch episodes are recorded while I'm doing farm chores and feeding the horses in the morning, so people with sensory processing challenges may not find this episode enjoyable. In this episode I'm walking in snow, jostling with metal chains, shovelling hay and packing it into hay nets. Lots of background sounds! Apologies for that – please check your podcast player for a transcript.

Born to Run, by Bruce Springsteen (book/autobiography)

So Sinopoulous Lloyd of Queer Nature who appeared on ep.93 of this podcast

The actual 2025 StatsCan data on small business longevity in Canada: About 22% of small businesses fail in the first year and only 50% survive after five years.

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, by Laurence Gonzales (Major trigger warning: Story after story of smart, well-equipped, experienced people dying by accident because this is actually really common)

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This episode is actually only 24 minutes long if you subtract all the parts with me managing the fact that the horses broke the fence and got stuck in a pasture they're not supposed to be in. Skip forward to minutes 9:30 - 35:00 to hear about what we can learn from 1970s China about navigating dictatorship and collapse and orienting to a more collectivist world. Note: I record dispatch episodes while doing my horse chores in the morning so there's lots of background noise that folks with certain sensory processing issues may not appreciate. In this episode you'll hear rain, my laboured breathing, the metal bin opening and closing, scooping and pouring out feed (beet pellets), plastic bags rustling, horses chewing...I also speak with some pretty stern vocal prosody when the horses try to push me or get too assertive mouthing me. This may be slightly startling since you have no visual cues to anticipate I might do that and you might be used to me having a more soothing speaking voice – you're not the one trying to bite me, though, so it's all good! Please check your podcast player for a transcript option if this doesn't work for you.

Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China, by Xioping Fang

my Facilitation Training (next Level 1 intake will be Fall 2026)