In this episode, Jacks and Sascha interview Pınar and So Sinopoulos-Lloyd from Queer Nature. We discuss everything from mythological remediation, challenging the colonial psychopharmaceutical system, and experiencing parallel realities to mystery as a primary need, ecological ancestral co-regulation, and that true identity can only be found in the collective. It’s a really exciting interview!
Full transcript available here.
About Queer Nature: Queer Nature is an education and social sculpture project that actively dreams into decolonially-informed queer ‘ancestral futurism’ through mentorship in place-based skills with awareness of post-industrial/globalized/ecocidal contexts. Place-based skills include naturalist studies, handcrafts, “survival skills,” and recognition of colonial and indigenous histories of land, and are framed in a container that emphasizes deep listening and relationship building with living and non-living earth systems. Queer Nature designs and facilitates nature-based workshops and multi-day immersions intended to be financially, emotionally, and physically accessible to LGBTQ2+ people and QTBIPOCs. We carry the story and hope that these spaces create resilient narratives of belonging for folks who have often been made to feel by systems of oppression that they biologically, socially, or culturally don’t belong.
Bios of featured interviewees
PINAR (THEY/THEM)
Pınar is an Indigenous futurist, mentor, consultant and eco-philosopher; co-founder of Queer Nature, an “organism” stewarding earth-based queer community through ancestral skills, interspecies solidarity and rites of passage. Enchanted by the liminal, Pınar is a neurodivergent enby with Wanka Quechua, Turkish and Chinese lineages. As a QTIBIPOC outdoor catalyst, their inspiration is envisioning decolonially-informed queer ancestral-futurism through interspecies accountability and the remediation of human exceptionalism in the Chthulucene. Their relationship with queerness, hybridity, neurodivergence, indigeneity and belonging guided their work in developing Queer Ecopsychology with a somatic and depth approach through a decolonial lens. As a survival skills mentor, one of their core missions is to uplift and amplify the brilliant “survival skills” that BIPOC, LGBTQ2SIA+ and other intersectional systemically targeted populations already have in their resilient bodies and stories of survivance. They are a member of Diversify Outdoors coalition. Follow their work on IG via @queerquechua + @queernature
SO (THEY/THEM)
Sophia ("So") Sinopoulos-Lloyd (they/them) is a white queer Greek-American who grew up in the northern hardwood forests of Alnobak territory (central Vermont). So is a nature-based educator, wilderness EMT, and writer. So worked as a seasonal shepherd throughout college and considers their life path(s) to be deeply inspired by the resilience and tenderness of cloven-hooved beings, who inspired them to study the earth more closely. In 2015 they founded Queer Nature with their spouse Pinar which offers nature-based programming for LGBTQ2SIA+ people with a focus on nature-connection, place-based skills, and transformative experience through queer and decolonial prisms. The soul of So’s work is animated by studies of identity, place, notions of the sacred, and interspecies relationship within contexts of colonization, globalization, migration, and climate crisis. So holds an MA in Religious Studies from Claremont Graduate University, and has had their writing published in The Wayfarer and Written River. Their special interests are being a spouse to their beloved, wildlife tracking, practicing survival skills, emergency medicine, dogs, and helping preparing their communities for uncertain futures.
Find Queer Nature online:
Queer Nature’s website: https://www.queernature.org/
On Instagram: https://instagram.com/queernature
On Facebook: www.facebook.com/queernature
On Patreon: www.patreon.com/queernature
Links to resources mentioned:
Loam magazine, where their upcoming essay will be published: https://loamlove.com/