Episode 034, Lexie Gropper: Restoring Ecosystems, Health, and Community in the Amazon

Soul Soil: Where Agriculture and Spirit Intersect with Brooke Kornegay

Today we have the opportunity to glimpse what it means to stand for community and healing in the midst of the fallout of Western extractive corporate interests. Lexie Gropper is a biologist dedicated to deepening her understanding of the life cycles, with a passion for the processes of decomposition leading to fertile grounds and new opportunities. She dedicates her energy to the cultivation of plants, fungi, bacteria, relationships, community, and healing.

Lexie has been living in the Ecuadorian Amazon since 2014. She lives on her family's reforested edible jungle, a literal island in the middle of a sea of deforestation and ongoing contamination from petroleum extraction, cattle ranching, and cash crop monocultures. The name of their project is Amisacho Restauración, where they've dedicated themselves to three direct lines of action with communities in their region: restoring ecosystems, restoring health, restoring community.

In this episode…

• About Amisacho Restauración, reforestation, and education
• Rescuing ancient soil building practices such as terra preta
• The history of resource extraction in Sucumbios, Ecuador
• The ongoing 27-year legal battle between the indigenous population of Ecuador and Texaco (formerly Chevron) for the crime of ecocide and challenges of watching a corporation exploit loopholes in the legal system to avoid responsibility for damages
• Involvement with Environmental Reparations Committee, organizing social approaches to environmental restoration and reparations
• The health therapy program which sends health specialists trained in permaculture, biomagnetism, and holistic psychotherapies to support cancer patients in areas affected by the contamination of the waterways by petroleum industry byproducts
• Growing mycomedicinals (medicinal mushrooms) and donating tinctures to help support the remote indigenous population
• Offering courses in soil regeneration and returning indigenous forest microbes to the land
• The magickal mystickal Wood Wide Web, bokashi and biochar
• Biomagnetism

Resources

• Support Amisacho Restauración in donating seeds and mushroom medicinal tinctures to Sucumbios Reparation Committees. Paypal: [e-mail]

• www.amisacho.com; email: [e-mail];

• facebook: amisacho https://www.facebook.com/AmisachoRestauracion/

• Instagram: amisacho_restauracion https://www.instagram.com/amisacho_restauracion/

• Amazon Frontlines

• Reusing the Resource: Adventures in Ecological Wastewater Recycling by Carol Steinfeld

• Toolbox for Sustainable City Living: A do-it-Ourselves Guide by Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew

• Earth Repair: A Grassroots Guide to Healing Toxic and Damaged Landscapes by Leila Darwish

• Radical Mycology: A Treatise On Seeing And Working With Fungi by Peter McCoy

• Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Ellix Katz

• The Soil Keepers: Interviews With Practitioners on the Ground Beneath Our Feet and The Ground Rules: A Manual To Reconnect Soil and Soul by Nance Klehm

• Soul Soil Podcast Patreon Page

• Soul Soil Grow and Glow package