Earthseed Speaker and Skillshare 2026

Kindness eases change. Love quiets fear.
Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

Talk and Community Conversation

Shawn Stevens

Wednesday, Sept. 30, 12:30 p.m.
BCC

Shawn Stevens (Standing Eagle), an enrolled member of the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohicans, is a spiritualist, musician, artist, historian, and storyteller dedicated to sharing his culture and knowledge. Shawn has spent decades connecting with his people's ancestral homelands and sharing their cultural history across the eastern and midwestern regions of North America. With a deep commitment to cultural preservation, Shawn fosters understanding, healing, and unity in people’s lives and within communities, creating a ripple effect that extends far and wide.

Shawn Stevens (Standing Eagle)

As a Mohican storyteller, drummer, singer, flute player, and ordained minister, Shawn Stevens addresses the impacts of ancestral trauma, encouraging healing and positive transformation. Passionate about cultural revitalization, Shawn believes in the interconnectedness of all people and works to promote unity, well-being, and harmony. His efforts help individuals reconnect with their roots, embrace their heritage, and find balance, purpose, and a deeper connection to themselves and their communities.

The Earthseed Speaker and Skillshare honoring Octavia E. Butler at BCC is an inspiring, accessible, and engaging event that brings experts from a variety of fields and experiences who provide unique insights into overcoming local and global challenges. Earthseed recognizes that imagining a better world and taking action requires the equitable inclusion of diverse voices and the sharing of deep-rooted wisdom and skills often ignored by broader society. Each session allows attendees to connect with speakers and probe deeper into specific areas of interest, fostering a collaborative environment that invites meaningful dialogue and interaction. The event aims to cultivate a community of learners, equipping them with insights and hard skills to enable us to adapt to inevitable change by making big ideas accessible, bridging knowledge gaps and providing attendees with actionable insights that can empower them both personally and as members of the greater community.

Skillshare: Birthing Fire with Shawn Stevens

Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, all-day workshop (exact time to be determined)

Details coming soon.

About the Earthseed Series

The Earthseed Speaker and Skillshare honoring Octavia E. Butler at BCC is an inspiring, accessible, and engaging event that brings experts from a variety of fields and experiences who provide unique insights into overcoming local and global challenges. Earthseed recognizes that imagining a better world and taking action requires the equitable inclusion of diverse voices and the sharing of deep-rooted wisdom and skills often ignored by broader society. Each session allows attendees to connect with speakers and probe deeper into specific areas of interest, fostering a collaborative environment that invites meaningful dialogue and interaction. The event aims to cultivate a community of learners, equipping them with insights and hard skills to enable us to adapt to inevitable change by making big ideas accessible, bridging knowledge gaps and providing attendees with actionable insights that can empower them both personally and as members of the greater community.

Earthseed Speaker events are open to students, staff, faculty, alumni, OLLI members and the public. The Skillshare is offered to students first as participation is limited to eight to 15 participants for hands-on learning, depending on the topic and modality.

Contact Us

Toni Buckley, Director of Mission, Values and Community Impact
abuckley@berkshirecc.edu
413-236-3075

BCC is committed to providing universal access to its events. Contact abuckley@berkshirecc.edu or 413-236-3075 to request disability accommodations.

Past Events

Spring 2026: Brooke Marie Bridges

Brooke Marie Bridges

Wild Healing: Farm and Forage for Self-Care

Brooke Marie Bridges is a holistic coach dedicated to the intersection of internal wellness and ancestral wisdom. By integrating Earth-based healing, such as herbalism and nature immersion, with evidence-based modalities like somatic and cognitive behavioral therapies, Brooke facilitates a deep, restorative connection between the self and the natural world.

Skillshare description: In this hands-on workshop, Brooke Marie Bridges will guide participants in discovering the wild plants growing around campus and learning about their medicinal uses. The workshop will culminate in planting a campus herb garden and making our own herbal salves.

Talk description (this event has passed): The Mind-Body-Earth Protocol: A Radical Framework for Integrated Healing: How do we lead when the ground is shifting? Join us for an immersive keynote that blends somatic healing, storytelling, and herbal wisdom. Grounded in the Mind-Body-Earth framework, Brooke Marie Bridges guides us through a sensory journey to reclaim our resilience. Experience a collective tea ritual, somatic rooting, and ecological mentorship as we learn to adapt, grow, and thrive together. Every attendee will receive a signature grounding tea blend.
Fall 2025: Jen Salinetti and Woven Roots Farm

Jen Salinetti

Jen Salinetti (she/they) is a co-founder, queer farmer, and a collaborative director at Woven Roots Farm. Jen is a transracial adoptee from the highlands of Colombia. She has chosen a path of deep relationship with the land to reconnect with ancestral ties that were forcibly removed from her. It is through this relationship that Jen has come to understand her responsibility for tending to community. As a farmer and community organizer for over 20 years, Jen has offered workshops and courses that develop relationships to land, build skills of resilience, promote Indigenous growing practices, and amplify pathways to social justice. Jen is a Massachusetts Environmental Justice Council member. She is also a soil health and beginning farmer consultant.

Photo by Aurelian de St André
Spring 2025: Leah Penniman and Soul Fire Farm

Leah Penniman

Leah Penniman (all pronouns) is a Black Kreyol farmer, mother, soil nerd, author and food justice activist from Soul Fire Farm (SFF) in Grafton, NY. She co-founded SFF in 2010 with the mission to end racism in the food system and reclaim our ancestral connection to land. Her books, Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land (2018) and Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists (2023) are love songs for the land and her people.

Lecture: Some of our most cherished sustainable farming practices — from organic agriculture to the CSA — have roots in African wisdom. Yet, discrimination and violence have deprived the Black community of farmland, capital, and healthy food access. Soul Fire Farm is part of a national network working toward food sovereignty and land justice. Learn how we can build upon Afro-Indigenous wisdom in reshaping the food system to be based on equity and abundance rather than exploitation and deprivation.

Dialogue: How can each of us be part of the movement for food sovereignty and help build a food system based on justice, dignity, and abundance for all members of our community? Building on Octavia Butler’s Earthseed vision, this dialogue will explore the world we can create together in the face of societal collapse.

Soul Fire Farm

Soul Fire Farm (SFF) is a community farm located in Petersburg, NY, a 45-minute drive from BCC, and is committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system. SFF uses Afro-indigenous agroforestry, silvopasture, wildcrafting, polyculture, and spiritual farming practices to regenerate 80 acres of mountainside land, producing fruits, plant medicine, pasture-raised livestock, honey, mushrooms, vegetables, and preserves for community provisioning, with the majority of the harvest provided to people living under food apartheid and targeted by state violence in our local community. SFF is a resource for education in ancestral farming practices and collaborates with the land to support our communities in healing from racial trauma and imagining bolder futures.

Volunteering at SFF will teach students about some of the farming practices while supporting SFF's work and getting their hands on the land.

Community farm days are one of the few times SFF is open to the public, so a range of ages, geographies, and ethnicities are represented. Some people may be completely new to ideas of food justice, farming, or racial justice. For those who have been to the farm during immersions or another caucus space — this is different — there are generally more white people than at other times on the farm. Everyone who comes agrees to SFF's safe space commitments and generally the energy has been beautiful and synergistic.