If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
-Auntie Lila Watson and the Aboriginal activist group Queensland 1970
PermaQueer: An Intersecting Approach
Born out of a desire to empower Queer community towards systems thinking solutions for their problems, PermaQueer now is turning that lens outward to offer Queer solutions to wicked problems in the world today.
PermaQueer is first and foremost a education outfit to support Queer, POC and other vulnerable communities through permaculture education. We offer a variety of courses in permaculture and the intersection of queer theory, permaculture and systems thinking with accessible options for our communities.
It’s not enough to just tend our queer and other vulnerable communities, as systems thinking tells us, we must also tend to the other systems we’re nested in and around as well. To address this PermaQueer has collaborated with a number of queer, first nations and POC communities to create frameworks forward for organisations and communities. Taking a decolonising stance and understanding that it will not be the individualist, the lone entrepreneur but vast and diverse communities across economic standings and ways of life all collectively taking regenerative postures in ways appropriate for them for a brighter future.
PermaQueer was co-founded by Guy Ritani (they/them/Ia) and Toad Dell (they/them/it)
This organisation has not been a sole effort by Toad and Guy though, the organisation is here because of the support and collaborations with women, POC and queers within permaculture and other communities.
Currently Toad and Guy are working with others in the hope of expanding beyond them more widely, increasing the team of PermaQueer. Our goal as a team is to develop PermaQueer into a social enterprise ecosystem, embedding queer and other voices to be leading within regenerative industries.
Who Are We?
A bit of history
PermaQueer as an organisation was dreamed up by Toad and Guy during the 2019 Covid lockdowns in Naarm (Melbourne) Australia. The two had done a Permaculture Design Course (PDC) with Delldint Flemming and thought
“while a lovely idea, not sure it can do much towards anything important” -famous last words
When food systems and housing security fell apart during the incoming lockdowns, what they thought was a quaint way to look at the world quickly became a source of security that was lacking for much of their community.
What started off as a wholesome gardening and community practice quickly became something that fed themselves and offered security beyond even themselves in a time of insecurity. From that PermaQueer was born with the goal of helping bring those skills into vulnerable communities where appropriate. PermaQueer quickly picked up traction getting a license with Ted for the first ever TedXPermaQueer.
It was there that the team at PermaQueer was met with their first real challenge when yarning with indigenous scholar Tyson Yunkaporta who asked “are you queers doing permaculture or are you queering permaculture?”. What hit like a bolt of lightening helped PermaQueer shift in how it started to do it’s work, now using frameworks from Permaculture and Queer theory to also help others in their own regenerative dreaming.
Our mission and vision
PermaQueer offers education based in Permaculture, Queer theory and systems thinking. This education is aimed at Queer, POC and other vulnerable communities in accessible ways but also to others who hold systemic power and resources who are seeking to be co-conspirators in a regenerative future that values the complexity and diversity of life.
We’re hopeful for a future that unfolds in surprising queer ways, economies that center wellbeing, communities appropriately resourced and the environment enshrined as a ally for this future, not an antagonist or endless reservoir or resources. We believe in an ecosystem of systems change, that everyone is uniquely equipped and placed according to their lived experience to do the work of regeneration and that this work will look radically different from person to person. We’re interested in how can we move forward as collaborators, not competitors towards a regenerative future.
The voices that built the old economies and systems are not going to be the ones to usher in a dawn of regeneration. We believe innovation mostly occurs at the edge, in the queer liminal spaces, the fringes. Systems that aim towards regeneration need to center those voices at the fringe. We look to a future where those that hold power have the skills to welcome in the new, offer support and those at the fringe can be resourced, valued and allowed to create and co-create new systems, new economies and ways of being. In this audacious hope we believe that this is how we can create queer ways forward.
A note on the work of Queering Permaculture.
One of the joys of Queerness like Permaculture is that it’s deeply a personal thing, it’s also relational, cultural, bioregional and held within community. The frameworks and works we’ve created have been a process of co-creation with the Queer, Indigenous, disability and other diverse communities we’ve worked and collaborated with.
Please take from the work that we do and apply it to and through your own unique context as appropriate and if you’d like, please contact us so we can hear all about it.