After Dark: Conversations about Landscape

The Exploratorium is your playground after dark! Wander the galleries, sip a cocktail, and let a DJ from Hip Hop for Change set the vibe. Tonight, join us for a conversation with Ohlone writer and activist Gregg Castro, Presidio Trust Chief Park Officer Michael Boland, and Edward (Redbird) Willie of the Cultural Conservancy. They’ll explore the relationship Indigenous communities have with their homelands, what caring for those landscapes means, and more. 

Conservations About Landscape explores the issues that shape contemporary landscapes.

More Than Dirt: Landscape Is Homeland
With Gregg Castro, Michael Boland, and Edward (Redbird) Willie
8:30 p.m.

Join writer and activist Gregg Castro to explore the ancient and complex bonds that Indigenous communities have with the land that gave birth to them. Oral narratives often explain that these communities are not just from a land, but of a land: their very bodies and existence are made of the materials of their homes, be it soil, plants, tree branches, and more. For modern Indigenous communities, this relationship continues to power the sacred responsibility to take care of the land and all that lives on it. Gregg will be joined in conversation by Michael Boland of the Presidio Trust and Edward (Redbird) Willie of the Cultural Conservancy. 

Gregg Castro (T’rowt’raahl Salinan/Rumsen and Ramaytush Ohlone) is a 2021 Exploratorium Osher Fellow and a writer and activist within the California Indigenous community on issues of cultural preservation, protection, education, and traditional practices.

Michael Boland isChief Park Officer at the Presidio Trust. For three decades, he has focused on the future of parks as vehicles for addressing the pressing social and environmental challenges of our time. 

Edward (Redbird) Willie (Pomo/Wailaki/Wintu) is a native ecologist, an artist, and a land steward for the Cultural Conservancy. He teaches Traditional Ecological Knowledge, fire ecology, permaculture, and ancestral skills to people of all ages.