Agraria_Journal_Summer_2022

44 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2022 AMY CHAVEZ Amy comes to Agraria with over twenty years of learning, practicing, and teaching holistic health as a somatic trauma healing practitioner, massage/craniosacral therapist, birth doula, parenting health educator, yoga instructor, community herbalist, and circle facilitator. She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Leadership and Change through Antioch University and serves as a trauma-informed consultant and trainer. At Agraria, she is developing the position of ReGenerative CommUnity Medicine Coordinator, which she describes as follows: ReGenerative speaks to the emergent generative creativity inherent when we cultivate the conditions of safety and support for healing, growth, and change. CommUnity speaks to the practice of unity as a verb in service to greater stewardship of the relationships with each other and with the planet. Medicine is real food, good dirt, a hug, listening ear, bird songs, fire, clean air, strong winds, good water, a story from someone who's walked a different life than your own, ceremony, songs, rituals that remind us of who we are, old stories from elders, imaginative stories from children—all are medicine we need to be the ones who support the great changes of our times and seed a new culture of ReGeneration. As Agraria’s land team holds the vision of regenerating soil, and the education team holds the vision of regenerative learning practices within nature, she is holding the vision of supporting others to be a part of actively ReGenerating the conditions of health for all people in our community. OMOPÉ CARTER DABOIKU Known as Mama O or O.C., Omopé Carter Daboiku, is Agraria’s first Artist-and Storyteller-in-Residence. A native of Ironton, in what she calls “southern southern Ohio,” she identifies as an Appalachian of mixed heritage. She migrated to Cincinnati in 1972, where she spent 30 years and made a name for herself as a storyteller, performance artist, educator, and writer. She has performed and led story circles throughout the US and internationally. After moving to Dayton in 2012, she founded the Dunbar Literary Circle for the National Park Service and served as artist-in-residence for the historic home of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. She is also a community producer for WYSO (91.3 FM) radio’s West Dayton Stories. In 2020, O.C. found another calling that harkens back to the agricultural roots of her childhood: teaching urban people how to grow their own food. “The goal is regenerating responsibility for food sovereignty,” she said. “I don’t care if I have 500 acres. The goal is to get 500 people to grow food in their own backyards.” She established an open garden for residents of the DeSoto Bass community and also became manager of Edgemont Community Coalition’s Solar Garden. That led her to Agraria as a Fellow in the first year of Agraria’s Regenerative Farmer Fellowship program. As Artist-and Storyteller-in-Residence at Agraria, O.C. has led two story collection projects: Pearls of Wisdom, a storytelling circle for elders, and The Storytelling Project: Regional Stories of Resilience, Food and Land. The project brought together teens and adults in three different locations to share stories from their lives. “Sharing our stories is what makes community,” said O.C. “We need to regain the ancestral wisdom encapsulated in story so that we might restore right relationship with the planet.”