Deschooling Dialogues

Recorded at Tierra Valiente in Costa Rica, this episode of Deschooling Dialogues features Kumu Ramsay in conversation with host Alnoor Ladha. Following a week of teachings with Diné elder Mona Polacca, Kumu shares deep insights on Indigenous sovereignty, the colonization of Hawai‘i, the sacred meaning of Aloha, and the necessity of restoring ancestral wisdom in a consequence-blind culture. This living transmission of relational intelligence calls us to remember our responsibilities to land, lineage, and Life itself. Produced by Culture Hack Labs.

This dialogue with Dr. Jessica Hutchings explores the grief and resilience of Māori communities amid renewed assaults on language, culture, and land under a far-right government. Hutchings weaves insights from her dual activist heritage—Māori sovereignty and Gandhian resistance—with a call to remember ourselves as nature-beings. She shares Māori cosmology as a pathway to healing and warns against the commodification of Indigenous wisdom. For Western allies, true solidarity means walking beside, not ahead, and dismantling the colonial-capitalist mindset that perpetuates harm.

In this conversation, Bayo Akomolafe and Alnoor Ladha explore the entanglements of identity, activism, whiteness, and emergence in a time of planetary crisis. Bayo challenges the notion of human centrality, advocating for humility as ‘dis-ability’ — an epistemological opening to new ways of knowing, being, sensing and relating in the world. They discuss whiteness not as a racial category but as a terraforming project, shaping the world’s dominant systems. From the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to the syncopation of cultural rupture, they examine how disruption invites transformation. Ultimately, they invite us to step beyond certainty, into the dance of becoming otherwise — together.

Episode 7 - Alnoor Ladha with Vanessa AndreottiWelcome to the Deschooling Dialogues. Today my guest is Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, who's a scholar, activist, organizer, and one of the founders of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research Collective, as well as Dean of Education at the University of Victoria.Vanessa is author of Hospicing Modernity: Facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism, and one of the designers of the course Facing Human Wrongs: Climate Complexity and Relational Accountability, available at UVic through Continuing Studies.

Episode 6 - Alnoor Ladha with Orland BishopToday I have the honor of being with a dear friend, elder and mentor Orland Bishop.Orland Bishop is the founder and director of ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation in Los Angeles, where he has pioneered approaches to urban truces and mentoring at-risk youth that combine new ideas with traditional ways of knowledge. ShadeTree serves as an intentional community of mentors, elders, teachers, artists, healers, and advocates for the healthy development of children and youth. Orland’s work in healing and human development is framed by an extensive study of medicine, naturopathy, psychology, and Indigenous cosmologies, primarily those of South and West Africa.

Episode 5 - Alnoor Ladha with Zhenevere Sophia Dao.Today I have the honor of being with a dear friend, elder and mentor Zhenevere Sophia Dao.Zhenevere Sophia Dao is founder of the philosophy of Post-Daoism and the MogaDao practice tradition. She has been a teacher and innovator of mythosomatic practices for nearly 30 years, and writes on wide variety of spiritual, philosophical, and cultural subjects. Zhenevere is also the founder of the organization, The Transgender Necessity, a platform to help educate individuals and institutions with regard to the cultural necessity of transgender people.

In this episode, I meet with Tiokasin Ghosthorse. Tiokasin is a Lakota elder. He is the founder and host of First Voices Radio that has been running for 31 years, the first Native-only radio show in Turtle Island. He's also the founder of the Akantu Institute. He's a dear mentor, older brother, friend, ally, teacher and elder. I'm excited to have him here on this episode of Deschooling Dialogues.

In this episode of Deschooling Dialogues, host Alnoor Ladha talks with Sophie Strand. She is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. But it would probably be more authentic to call her "a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories."Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand: Lunar Kings, Lichenized Lovers, Transpecies Magicians, and Rhizomatic Harpists Heal the Masculine is out now from Inner Traditions. Her eco-feminist historical fiction reimagining of the gospels The Madonna Secret will also be published soon. Her books of poetry include Love Song to a Blue God (Oread Press) and Those Other Flowers to Come (Dancing Girl Press) and The Approach (The Swan).Follow her on Facebook or on Instagram @cosmogyny.

Today we'll meet with V, formerly Eve Ensler, the founder of V-Day, of One Billion Rising, of so many important organizations and non organizations, movements in the space of social justice and beyond. She's also the co-founder of City of Joy, which is a physical healing center and space in the Congo. She is the author of Vagina Monologues, The Apology, her latest book Reckoning just came out. We're going to talk about that today and so much more.

HOST | ALNOOR LADHAThe Deschooling Dialogues is a collaboration between Culture Hack Labs and Kosmos Journal.This is a podcast about both unlearning and remembering, as our species is being prepared for even deeper complexity, breakdown, tragedy, renewal, and rebirth. This transition calls upon all of us to be vigilant students of our cultures, to contemplate our entangled destinies, to abandon our entitlement, to transcend the apparent duality of inner and outer work, and to reaffirm our responsibility to each other and the interwoven fabric of our sentient planet and the living cosmos.This is just some of what we’ll explore together.Episode 1: Gustavo Esteva (August 20, 1936 - March 17, 2022)Gustavo Esteva was one of the key leaders of both the deschooling and post-development movements. Gustavo was an independent writer and grassroots activist and a central figure in a wide range of Mexican civil society organizations and solidarity networks. In 1996, he was an advisor to the Zapatistas and their movement, the EZLN, in their negotiations with the Mexican government. He's the author of more than 40 books published in seven languages from topics including Economy and Alienation and Grassroots Post-modernism with Madhu Suri Prakash. He was a regular contributor to Mexico's leading daily La Hornada and wrote occasionally for The Guardian.