Online Feb 24 & Mar 3 | Mar 7-8 In-person
Turning to Our Roots
Resistance As An Ancestral Practice
A full-weekend, in-person immersion with two online preparatory sessions with Lydia Violet Harutoonian & Leah Song
On the left: Leah Song of Appalachian and Irish roots. On the right: Lydia Violet Harutoonian of Iranian and Armenian roots.
Faravahar - ancient Persian guardian of truth and righteous resistance. The eternal choice between light and darkness, carried on wings of ancestral memory.
What if resistance is not something we invent in moments of crisis, but something we remember?
Across cultures and centuries, our ancestors carried ways of surviving, resisting, grieving, celebrating, and protecting life through stories, songs, dances, rituals, and communal practices. These were not only expressions of culture. They were technologies of resilience, dignity, and continuity in the face of oppression, corruption, displacement, and loss.
This iteration of Turning to Our Roots (formerly Tending The Bones) is an invitation to return to those roots.
Together, Lydia and Leah offer an experiential weekend grounded in the understanding that resistance is an ancestral skill passed through bodies, stories, rhythm, culture, and relationship. We will study and engage ancestral cultural legacies not as artifacts of the past, but as living lineages that still know how to hold us through collapse, change, and transformation.
Why Ancestral
Study Matters
Learning about the cultures of our ancestors is not a nostalgic pursuit; it is a rigorous and intimate process of remembering. In a time when many of us have been severed from the languages, land-based practices, and cosmologies that shaped our lineage, turning toward ancestral knowledge can offer powerful tools for:
• Disentangling inherited patterns of disconnection and harm
• Cultivating more honest and rooted relationships; with ourselves, others, and the earth
• Recovering a deeper sense of meaning, belonging, and direction
As we engage with ancestral stories, songs, and lifeways, we begin to re-enter the psychic and spiritual terrain our people once walked. This work is not about returning to an idealized past, but about listening carefully to what remains— allowing it to inform how we live, repair, and imagine forward.
Hangaku Gozen - legendary Japanese onna-bugeisha who commanded troops and defended Tossaka Castle with unmatched archery, refusing surrender even when wounded. Beside her, an Uzbek warrior of Safavid Persia bearing the shamshir - the curved Persian blade that became the soul of mounted resistance. Two warriors, centuries and continents apart, united by unbreakable spirit in the face of overwhelming odds.
Celtic spear and torch crossed with horseshoe for protection, flanked by the eternal Celtic knot of unbreakable strength and the Triskele of forward motion; symbols warriors carried into battle. The amphora holds ancestral wisdom, the scroll preserves their resistance. What our ancestors fought to defend, we inherit. What they refused to surrender, we remember.
What We’ll Explore Together
Students will have a chance, through resources offered and facilitator support, to research folkloric and/or historic stories, songs, dances, and other cultural artifacts that came forth through the spirit of resistance in response to state violence, economic oppression, cultural erasure…any situation where dehumanization was met with a vigilant holding to dignity, beauty, and defense of life. We will ask how these practices can resource us now, not by romanticizing the past, but by listening carefully to what has endured and why.
Our shared aim is to nourish and amplify ancestral touchstones that remind us how to live centering humanity, dignity, and reverence for the living world. By reconnecting with stories, songs, dances, and rituals that have carried people through hard times before, we seek to strengthen our capacity to resist dehumanization and to act in ways that honor one another, our communities, and the Earth itself.
This is not about performing culture. It is about remembering what our lineages know about courage, grief, joy, and collective survival, and allowing those teachings to shape how we show up in this moment.
Course Structure
This offering includes two live online preparatory sessions (that are also recorded) designed to build shared language and context, followed by a full in-person weekend immersion at the Graton Community Club in Northern California, where we gather to practice, embody, and deepen the work together.
The online sessions will orient us to the framework we have honed through previous Tending the Bones cohorts, offering inspiring ways of understanding cosmology, worldview, psyche, and story. Together we will explore cultural amnesia and its impacts, alongside practices and perspectives that support remembrance, healing, and the restoration of shared meaning across generations.
Ancestral symbols gather beneath the Orion constellation. The talharpa sings a reclaimed song of survival and memory, while the Chinese dragon embodies wisdom and protective strength. Lavender marks healing after battle, and the stars remain as guides through darkness; honoring the beauty the warrior protects.
Al-Burāq is a supernatural, winged, horse-like creature in Islamic tradition, best known as the mount that carried the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem and through the heavens during the Isra and Mi'raj (Night Journey). take our aztec hummingbird and replace with this photo, which from what i looked at is public domain historic imagery
Who This Is For
This course is for people who feel the call to meet these times with cultural repair and togethernessIt is for community members, organizers, artists, healers, culture-bearers, facilitators, and anyone longing to reconnect with ancestral wisdom as a source of strength and guidance. No prior experience is required, only curiosity, care, and a willingness to move at the speed of relationship.
We come not to harden, but to root.
Not to bypass grief, but to let it teach us.
Not to face the future alone, but together. For there is no other way.
March 7-8 in person from 10:00 am - 5:00 pm PST with two online prep sessions Feb 24 and March 3 at 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm PST
The Pan-African flag, also known as the RBG (Red, Black, and Green) or Black Liberation flag, is a tricolor symbol created in 1920 by Marcus Garvey and the UNIA to represent pride, unity, and liberation for people of African descent worldwide. It was designed as a direct response to racism and symbolizes the struggle against oppression, colonialism, and injustice.
 to represent pride, unity, and liberation for people of African descent worldwide. It was designed as a direct response to racism and symbolizes the struggle against oppression, colonialism, and injustice.](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/690cca9dd2a18eeda23cadb3/69867d3c2a771a92be6055de_pan-africa.avif)
Curriculum
Online: February 24 & March 3 | 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm PST
In-person: March 7-8 | 10:00 am - 5:00 pm PST
Location: Graton Community Club, Graton, CA
Day 1:
Session 1
A Cosmological Home – Discovering Lineage and Legacy
❥ Understand the concept of cosmology and its relationship to culture, humanity, and story.
❥ Dive into the rich cosmologies and cultures intertwined in your lineage.
❥ Unpack archetypes, psyche, and soul.
❥ Explore ‘de-orphaning’—reconnecting with parts of ourselves disconnected from our ancestral cultural knowledge.
❥ Learn how myths convey deep, often non-literal, insights.
Day 1:
Session 2
Myth & Folklore I – Archetypes and Universal Narratives
❥ Discover the mythic and literal truths in folklore.
❥ Explore archetypes and figures of resistance and their cultural and personal significance.
❥ Identify patterns in stories and practices of resistance across cultures
❥ Explore what these resistance practices teach us for current times
Day 2:
Session 1
Healing the Split Through Song – Vocal Harmony and Heritage
❥ Participate in an optional, expansive vocal exploration led by Leah Song (no musical experience needed!).
❥ Explore the variety of percussion, string, and wind instruments in our folk heritage.
❥ Explore the meaning and impact of folkloric music traditions in cultural longevity and movement.
❥ Learn Lydia's model for discerning cultural inspiration, resonance, exchange, appropriation, and erasure.in non-punitive dialogue.
Day 2:
Session 2
Tending the Bones Celebration – A Cultural Mosaic
❥ Share an artifact of resistance from your cultural exploration: a story, image, song, mythic figure, ritual, dance, etc.
❥ This is a gentle, supportive circle—no perfection needed
❥ Listen, witness, and celebrate the discoveries of others as we weave a collective mosaic.
❥ Final thoughts with Leah Song and Lydia Violet.
Your Facilitators
Lydia Violet
(She/her)
Lydia brings robust scholarship in cosmology, archetypal psychology, and group facilitation centered around personal and collective healing. Through compassionate, playful, and grounded leadership, she integrates intellectual study, ancestral cultural reconnetion, and emotional mending. She creates learning spaces that are rigorous, relational, and deeply resourcing, offering steadiness and companionship amid ecological and cultural upheaval.
Leah Song
(She/her)
Leah, frontwoman of Rising Appalachia, brings over 20 years of experience in folk music and community healing. She blends music, storytelling, somatic movement, dance, and meditation into a soulful offering of embodied cultural exploration. Her facilitation invites people into embodied presence and collective remembering through rhythm, voice, and movement.