About True Earth
True Earth is a community oriented organization based in Anishinaabe territory known as Ann Arbor, Michigan. We have been calling earth-honoring circles, building community resilience, and challenging systems of harm since 1990. We are continually growing and learning in our fierce commitment to the earth and to Community Care. Our offerings on plant medicine, earth-honoring traditions, and food sovereignty aim to restore reverence for the earth as a foundation for remaking the culture.
Our Core Team
ShuNahSii Rose (she/her)
here - I am the founding mama of True Earth - a radical, feminist, anti-racist, change-making, grandmother of working class Irish and Eastern European ancestry. Born and raised in Anishnaabe territory in the Great Lakes region, I grew up in Chicago and currently make my home in Ann Arbor MI. My relationship with earth-honoring ways has roots in my inner-city motherline - as a keeper of stories and ritual traditions in my oral culture family, I grew up learning to honor the seasons, build relationship with my ancestors and govern my life through dreams. My focus, devotion, and profession have been earth-honoring teaching, herbalism, community building, and community care work since 1990. I absolutely believe that restoring reverence for the earth is necessary to our collective healing and feel blessed to call this community my home.
Nora Berry (she/they)
I am a 19 year old nonbinary and neurodivergent person who lives on Anishinaabe land currently known as Ann Arbor, Michigan. Over my near-decade within the True Earth community, my place has morphed from a middle school student to a member of our teaching and leadership team. I am a musician and Vocal Performance major who walks with African and Norwegian ancestors and continually find myself drawn to explore the place and importance of harmonies - in our recordings, our rituals, and our community dreaming practices.
Maro まろ (they/them)
I am a queer, nonbinary, Japanese, Celtic, artist, designer, storyteller, drummer, maker, and student of shamanism. Born and raised in Lenape territory, currently living in Anishinaabe territory, I’m continually learning how to be a better citizen of the earth. The past 10 years of shamanic study has supported me in integrating my own ancestral healing, transness, and artistry. I wear many creative hats in the True Earth core team - backbone graphic designer, web support, dog walker, food forest tender, and both elder and younger sibling to many. With the support of my True Earth family, I am stepping more fully into my work of remembering, restoring, and dreaming forward trans culture as part of our human legacy.
Our Commitment to Community Care
Our True Earth community is dedicated to redefining wealth as a well planet and a well community. In this spirit, we hold a firm commitment to community care that acknowledges our inherent interconnection and collective responsibility for each other’s well-being, including the well-being of the earth. Because we are a multi-racial, cross-cultural, trans-inclusive, intergenerational community that is committed to improving access to care, approximately 50% of community members who participate in our core offerings are supported by scholarships; some partial scholarship, and many full scholarship. This is reflective of the need for the culture to shift the distribution of access to care and take responsibility for the well-being of the whole because harm to the people and harm to the earth are part of the same systemic problems.
Earth-honoring cultures see the needs of the whole community as the responsibility of the whole community. Honoring this, we are working to reimagine systems of care from the inside out in our small corner of the world. We believe this is how real change happens - through intention and care, where we are with who we love. As the earth is a generous and capable provider and a home where there is more than enough to go around when we live respectfully, inequity in access to care is a systemic problem. Community care work is not about charity, it is about restoration of equity. Our commitment to community care issues an invitation to everyone to participate in restoration of equitable access to care in very practical ways.
We have concrete reflections on and practices of Community Care built into all of our core offerings. If you are part of our broader community and would like to support these efforts you can do so here:
Our Earth-Honoring Ways:
Connection - Connection is a foundational truth and irrefutable fact of life on earth. Remembering and acknowledging this in the way we live our lives is our most foundational guiding practice. Human beings are an integral part of the living world; our health and vibrancy are interwoven with the well-being of the planet. Any world view that dismisses or denies this truth endangers our planet and our future and disregards essential Indigenous wisdom. In order to heal from the experience of fragmentation imposed by modern Western cultural norms and pace, we must wake from amnesia about our place in the family of creation and shake off the fallacy that human beings are somehow separate from, or smarter than, the rest of our family. This awakening asks that we learn to listen deeply and live differently. Our offerings and our community support people in the cultivation of these deep listening skills. By actually prioritizing connection with our wide family of creation, including the earth where we live, we come into embodiment of a culture of common sovereignty; a culture in which the sanctity, value, and contribution of each and every presence on earth (including the land and waters) are honored and celebrated for who they are. Real change happens from the inside out through deep listening and recognition of the earth’s inherent intelligence. It is ultimately our love for the earth that will help us to better love each other and mend the culture.
Direction - What underlying values direct our collective decisions and shape our systems? Who decides who does or does not have access to care, or who is or is not inherently “valuable”? Building on connection as a guiding practice, direction for us is about governance - the underlying values and practices that shape our collective decisions and priorities. Earth-honoring cultures have governed through collaboration and deep listening with the earth for thousands of years. As cultures of common sovereignty, they have upheld and continue to uphold the well-being of the earth as central to the well-being of the people. When our collective direction and systems of governance come from a place of deep listening and respect for the earth, our culture will inherently reflect sound values and community care, with the definition of community extending to all of the living world. We hold an unwavering commitment to the restoration of reverence and respect for the earth because we see it as the only hope for collective healing and a practical response to the state of emergency we find ourselves in at this time. The earth’s intelligence has the power to positively redirect us if we are willing to listen.
Liberation - Liberation is about equitable access to care, safety, and the ability to thrive. In the restoration of a culture of common sovereignty - a culture in which the sanctity of each being (including earth, water, and our more than human family) is honored, our commitment to deep listening and mutual regard is a daily practice and a course-correcting way of being. The systems of exploitation that deny equitable access - white supremacism, patriarchy, and extraction - are based on lies. Liberation is rooted in truth. We are liberated from the burden of the illusion of separation or any form of supremacy when we respectfully tend connection. Anti-Black sentiments are violence. Racism must be dismantled. Indigenous leadership is essential. The Earth has rights - the Rights of Nature. Corporations are not people. Our trans family members deserve to live in safety and be celebrated. Rape culture must die. No one should worry about access to healthcare because of socioeconomic violence. And all learning styles, languages, levels of ability, and lived experiences are valid and worthy of respect in the family of creation.
Tradition - Culturally and collectively, our traditions form the bedrock upon which we stand. As we build relationship with our guiding practices, we remember and strengthen earth-honoring traditions that are honest, vibrant, and help to heal the culture. Traditions are devotions and they shape the patterns we live by and the ways we “spend ourselves” whether we choose them consciously or not. A living, breathing relationship with tradition can help us to both, claim our roots and be responsive to the needs of our times. In doing so we step into collective accountability for re-weaving a culture of compassion and mutual regard. Respectful, earth-honoring relationship with the plants, beasts, lands, waters, and sky is an ancestral inheritance for people from every continent of this earth; reconnecting with these earth-honoring ways can help us to heal not only human health and vitality, but the very culture we live in.