Free Cascadia

As a collective this decision has brought up all kinds of feelings. Heartbreak, joy, sorrow, hope, indifference, dissatisfaction, satisfaction. You name it, one of us has probably felt it. 

We are living in challenging times, and there is a great need for gatherings where we can come together in ritual and magic. 

We are grappling with how to do that well. 

Organizers of Free Cascadia Witch Camp have been struggling with various issues as an organizing body. We have questioned our organizing model for years and not been able to come to a workable solution. We are also having challenges navigating differences in intentions, values, and priorities for camp within the collective. 

Some of the unresolved questions include: How can we be in integrity around holding camp on stolen land? How best do we engage with Reclaiming as a eurocentric tradition that desires to weave in and be welcoming to other traditions/communities while addressing issues of racism and cultural appropriation? How do we host a camp within a community that has varying experience with self/community work around racism and white domination? Structurally, we struggle to have enough time to adequately address these issues and dynamics while also working on the essential logistical elements of putting on camp. We are confronted each year with the need to handle these big questions and big issues without appropriate or adequate space or time. 

Some things however, are becoming more clear. Working across bioregions and land bases is undermining our connection and ability to be responsible and accountable to the land, the peoples of those lands and one another, and to work through the above issues and dynamics. Our hope is that by not taking on the logistical work of putting on camp, we will have time and space to better address them. 

What we are doing now is opening up to possibility and to the unknown. 

We are discussing many options including ending FCWC in its current form. If this is the case we want to do it well, by hopefully holding and tending the loose threads, wounds, inspiration and spirit of camp that has developed over the past 13 years. If this is our path, we want to provide opportunities for the seeds of future camps and gatherings to grow from the compost of our collective. An ending and a new beginning. A transformation. 

We will let you know more as our path becomes more clear.