season 5, episode 3 - “fibershed” by rebecca burgess

Written By ash alberg

in today's episode, we review fibershed: growing a movement of farmers, fashion activists, and makers for a new textile economy by rebecca burgess. while ash has been embedded in fibreshed advocacy, economy, and practices for the better part of a decade now, this book is a seminal read no matter where you might self-identify on the “fashion as daily life priority” spectrum. with its soil-to-skin-to-soil values and methods, fibershed makes the argument for and outlines the ways through which we can move forward as the current fashion industry collapses in on itself and humans continue to need to wear clothes. through hard data and important stories, burgess lays out the path for re-investing in our local land-based textile economies in creative, sustainable, and financially viable ways.

other things mentioned in this episode:

bring the magic of natural dyes into your home and classroom with the exploring natural dyes series, written in age-appropriate language for ages 4+. step into your conscious life with a little help from ash and yarrow atelier, where we build slow sustainable living crafted around everyday magic & ritual. never miss a thing by joining ash's newsletter.

transcript

snort & cackle - season 5, episode 3 - fibershed by rebecca burgess

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] Hello and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast, the podcast where work and ritual intersect. I'm your host, Ash Alberg of Sunflower Knit and Yarrow Atelier, and I'm an artist and educator specializing in natural dyes and slow fashion. This special season, we'll be diving deep into some of the research I'm doing on both of these topics. Consider it an extended version of the Snort and Cackle Book Club. Follow us on Instagram @SnortandCackle, #SnortandCackleBookClub, subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and find your complete show notes and transcripts at ashalberg.com/podcast. Looking to bring the magic of natural dyes into your home or classroom? Check out the new Exploring Natural Dyes series, a full K-12 curriculum written by Ash with the support of Manitoba Arts Council's Artists in Schools program. Teach natural dyeing to kids aged four and up and learn alongside them with hands-on activities, dye recipes, and more resources. Find the full curriculum at ashalberg.com/natural-dyeing-with-kids.

Our third episode for this current season of Snort and Cackle is a book review of Fibershed by Rebecca Burgess. So the full title is called Fibershed: Growing a Movement of

Farmers, Fashion Activists, and Makers for a New Textile Economy. And as far as slow fashion goes, I would consider this book kind of a non-negotiable. And it's funny at this point for me to be reviewing it because I have spent the last several years so embedded in Fiber Shed advocacy and politics and values and practices that it is to a very large extent for me like a more of a review than anything else or second nature really. And also for any individual, even if you have been embedded in Fiber Shed politics or in Fiber Shed types of practices, then this book will still give you great context about the current Fiber Shed movement, where its roots are, and where it is moving towards and provide lots of very concrete examples of projects that Rebecca Burgess has undertaken herself and her colleagues, what they have undertaken. And I think also just provides a really great kind of model or map of how to be navigating this kind of world yourself.

And so to kind of back it up a little bit, Fiber Sheds are how we used to do clothing for millennia. The concept of it is a place-based textile economy, where you are taking the most raw materials and turning them into finished items of clothing. And that is how we used to make our clothes. It was inherently place-based, inherently rooted in the local environment, in the local materials that were available from whether it was furs and skins and hides or plantbased fibers and the dyes and how things were constructed, the artisans that would do that construction as machinery started kind of getting worked in. Then, of course, we had the hand tools, and then it evolved into the machines as we think of them now and new technologies. And we'll get into the whole new technologies of it all.

But the role of a Fiber Shed and of a local textile economy was truly central to the livelihood and lifeblood of many communities, of most communities. And that decentralized approach was very important and also was much more attuned and allowed for much quicker responses to environmental shifts and changes that were most appropriate for a local area. So the word Fiber Shed or the phrase of a Fiber Shed is newer and kind of links us back to the concept of watersheds, which oftentimes Fibersheds end up kind of structuring themselves around.

But the ways in which a Fiber Shed functions is not new. And so I do want to kind of lay that out there. It's not as though Rebecca Burgess came up with this like brand new concept in the late 2010s and suddenly like launched a thing that has now rolled across the world and nobody else has ever been doing things like this. I think what this book lays out really beautifully is that what Rebecca has done is given it a structure and given it some kind of some tools and framing that allow it to be rebuilt in different spaces now in an easier way because there is a vocabulary and set of resources built around it as a concept. But, you know, she, much of what has led into Fiber Shed came as a direct result of her interacting with other folks who were already doing, you know, tangential work with her and them and kind of solidifying that work and making it more official and more either permanent or formal depending on the project. And so multiple people coming together and multiple organizations and folks with different skills coming together in order to complete these much bigger projects than any one individual can or reasonably should undertake themselves.

And I think that's one of the things about the Fiber Shed model that is extremely important and also very much can get lost in our current, you know, Canadian and American. The Fiber Shed book is based in America, in California primarily. But our societies have become very individualistic and very segregated in the way that we approach every aspect of our lives and also very isolated from the cycles and systems and ecosystems that create the different aspects of our life and the different pieces that fit into a life.

And what the Fiber Shed model demonstrates very clearly is that it is not possible to do the big things on your own and you don't need to. And in fact, what is most beautiful is when you bring many people together. And maybe it's not many people always, but, you know, it's depending on the size of the project, you bring in the people who can bring their expertise to the table to address a specific need or requirement of that project. And through that collaboration, then there is more innovation and there is also stronger support and stronger structures in place that then allow the project to move forward. And then as the project gains its legs and gains solidity or solidifies itself, then it in its turn is able to support more and more people. The goal is not that one individual is, you know, coming out of anything ahead of everyone else.

The goal is that we are creating these communal systems that support one another and create these ecosystems of reciprocal energy. And that includes, you know, posthumanist concepts as well. It's not only the humans that are involved. It is inherently in relationship with the land, with the water, with the creatures other than humans that inhabit those spaces as well. And so, yeah, I think it's an essential read for anybody that is interested in slow fashion. I think if you are personally interested in slow fashion, regardless of whether you are a consumer, if you are a designer, if you are a hedge fund capitalist, like whoever you are, if you are interested in slow fashion and you are not working in fiber shed values and ideals and practices into the way that you are engaging with slow fashion, then you are not actually doing slow fashion, in my opinion. Obviously, I have my biases. But I don't think that it is responsible or realistic to have a lifelong, if we're looking at like the long-term goal of a slow fashion wardrobe. I don't think it's feasible, especially with the way that now fast fashion is infiltrating and honestly infesting our secondhand clothing options. I don't think that it's realistic to be approaching a slow fashion wardrobe right now without considering working within some level of fiber shed. But especially as we look towards longer term, we cannot keep going the way that we've been going. Fashion cannot continue the way that it is continuing.

Even if humans decide to put their heads in the sand and the folks that make all the decisions decide to put their heads in the sand and pretend that climate crisis is not happening. It is, and it's going to happen whether or not they want to acknowledge it. And so the only way that we are going to be able to move fashion forward, and we will have to regardless of what your personal feelings might be about fashion as like a general concept, although I'm assuming that if you're listening to this episode slash to this podcast, you give some shits about clothing and value the artisanship of it to some extent, whether or not you yourself consider yourself to be an artisan when it comes to textiles.

But even if you didn't give any shits, you do still need to wear clothes. Like humans, no matter what climate you live in, we cannot survive without clothing at this point of evolution. We don't have enough layers to support ourselves. If you're in the cold, you know, you're literally gonna die because of frostbite and hypothermia. If you're in the extreme hot, you're gonna die because of heat stroke and sunburn. Like it doesn't matter who you are, what race you are, what your ancestors, you know, did or didn't do. We need clothes at this point in time as part of our like baseline survival. And then from there, we can start getting into all of the, you know, the values and theology and philosophy and debates around the value of clothing.

Obviously, I personally am on the side of clothing being extremely important. And anybody who wants to come at me about that, like, sorry, if you're wearing an everyday uniform, you've made a choice about your clothing, whether or not you want to acknowledge it, and whether or not you want to acknowledge the role in which you have made those decisions, that it is not just as simple as like, oh, well, I just don't want to make a decision, you've made a decision, you've chosen to place this as like a lower value on your priority, as like a day to day choice. But also your everyday wardrobe, you've made a decision about that, what that everyday wardrobe looks like, how it functions for you. And, and, you know, the colors that cut everything, you've made a choice about how you want to represent yourself through your clothing.

And so even if you're going to pretend to not be so engaged with the fashion industry as a whole, and it's fine to not be engaged with fast fashion, please, like, obviously, we're not here for, you know, flash in the pan trends. But to pretend that clothing and fashion are not inherently tied into the human experience and inherently tied into the ways in which we engage with one another, with culture, with, with religion, with class, like it is, it is so tied into every aspect of the way that we see ourselves and perform our identities. And depending on what you are wearing, and what your identity is, and where you are living, your clothing can also very directly indicate whether or not you are physically safe in any given space.

It's, you know, it's how we, it's how we signify who we align ourselves with what communities we are associating ourselves with. It's also, you know, what I particularly love about it as somebody who is an activist and also is a very emotional critter who gets burnt out really easily. I love how fashion and what I put on my body each day can be as far as being a tool for engaging with my values, without having to sit and record an hour long podcast every single day for every single thing that I care about. I can put clothes on my body, and that is an embodied practice in, in engaging with my values and in demonstrating my values and in voting with my dollar under this capitalist hellscape. Or, or, you know, choosing to go the other route and not voting with my dollar because I am choosing to invest in higher quality pieces that mean I don't need to spend as much money, and I don't need to engage with traditional capitalism so frequently. Or that I can trade skills and, and items with other folks that are within, you know, my textile world and within my fiber shed.

You know, there's, there's lots of ways of, of engaging with this. And what it all comes back to is that fashion matters whether or not we want to build our entire lives around fashion. And so longer term, the fashion industry is not going to disappear, but the ways in which that it is currently functioning are not tenable.

They will not last, no matter how much we want to pretend that their role is not as, as central as it currently is to our current climate crisis. And the ways in which our, our global resources are collapsing, because we are extracting more than what can be regenerated based on current large scale production. And so we need to start thinking fiber shed, no matter what.

It's very, as far as I'm concerned, it's actually a very simple solution. We, we, you know, need to be engaging back with our local, our local terroir. We need to be engaging with our local environment, and our local producers and building systems in place so that as various disruptions, whether it's through global conflict, or climate crisis, or, you know, another pandemic, that we are able to, to withstand those more easily, because we have built these local, these local economies around us, and these local resource banks around us, that allow us to respond more quickly and to pivot when something isn't working, and also to be directly engaged with our local community and, and be seeing people in, you know, next to us, they are our neighbors.

And so we, we do like, it's unfortunate, but realistically, we care more about the folks that live right next to us, than we do about folks that live half a world away. And that is shitty, we should care about everybody. And also, I think it's realistic that humans have limited capacity for caring so deeply about everything, like when you do care so deeply about everything, it can be so overwhelming, that it forces you to shut down. And so being able to make those direct connections is an easier way of navigating. And if we were all doing that, if we were all engaging with our local communities, then and actually caring about one another, then and finding those common grounds, it is also building the skill set to do that with others when we engage with others too, rather than continuing this pattern of isolating ourselves of, of situating ourselves in echo chambers, of losing all of the nuance of losing all of the context under which something is happening. I think what's also really important about fiber sheds, and engaging with these more local economies and movements, is that also, you're not going to agree with every single person who's in the room with you. And also, you still need to be working together in order to achieve these bigger projects. And so you learn how to navigate those, those moments of crunchiness, or those moments of, of conflict, in a way that is still respectful. And maybe that doesn't always happen.

But my experience has definitely been that the fiber shed and natural dye communities that I engage with, and the folks that I, that I learn from, and that I engage in communications with, and that I, you know, host for for different conversations, or, or have conversations with myself and participate in those conversations, there is a much broader sense of abundance, and abundance not being solely based off of a capitalist view of abundance, but actually being about like, a generous nature in terms of knowledge, in terms of time, in terms of energy, in terms of skill sharing, in terms of resource sharing. And, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we are quite frequently more directly engaged with our local, not only human economies and, and ecologies, and, and systems. And so we have a deeper appreciation for, for, you know, dealing with the things that are not quite so simple as like, black and white words on a short social media post, you know, we know that there's more that is inherently complicated about something, and that things aren't always going to turn out exactly how we expect, and we learn to roll with the punches, and, and pivot and navigate, and, and gain resilience in the process of doing that.

So, you know, this has been my, my world for years now. And clearly, it is something that is like, so deeply embodied for me that it's, it almost feels a little silly at this point to be reviewing this book, because I'm like, well, everybody should have read it a long time ago, and we should all be functioning like it. And, and to me, the the concepts aren't new, the base concepts aren't new. But I recognize that for many folks, that's not the case. And so the book will challenge, I think, many people in the way that they think about a lot of a lot of things. But also, I mean, I'm looking at the book beside me. And I've taken to when I'm going through these books, or rereading these books. For this season, I have my little sticky notes that I'm putting next to quotes that are, you know, as I work on on different research pieces, then I'm also collecting banks of quotes. And Fibershed is like this book is just I swear, it's like every other page, I've got like a little old sticky note, because there are so many great examples in here of different things.

There's so much great data. And, and so it even if this is something that you have been very engaged with for a long time, there's still lots that you will find valuable in this book. But if you've never thought about, you know, where's your clothing come from? Or what is the actual like, soil to skin, and then back to soil system through which your clothing came from? And it are you getting your materials or your clothing or your makers tools from, from places that can give you that full process or not? And how much of your closet can you say is fully traceable? And what is the tracing of that? And and how much of isn't? And have you ever tried to make an entire outfit that is solely from your local, your local Fibershed, whether it's an identified, formal affiliate, Fibershed group or not? I think there's, we're all going to fall within a spectrum of those different kind of ends of each of each category.

And so what I think this book offers is a very concise and clear way in, and in the same way that I think Alden Wicker's book, To Dye For, which we spoke about last episode is essential reading. I think that this book also is essential reading, especially for the folks that are making the decisions, the folks who are, you know, working with the banks and the investment firms and the government groups and the larger scale fashion design houses and the production spaces and the legislating bodies. I think it's exceptionally important for those folks to be reading this book because they are making decisions where if they don't have this knowledge to begin with, then we're already so much further behind.

And this book very much demonstrates that where the the work that is happening at the grassroots level is to incredible scale, but in order for it to actually scale up and be, be like applied at the kind of general consumer scale, there needs to be so much more money in play. And the money is not going to come if there's not the data to support it, if there is not the, you know, governmental support to support it, if there's not the legislation that is requiring us to make changes, if there are not the designers who are, you know, understanding why they shouldn't just be looking, you know, offshore and getting something that is going to keep their bottom line as, you know, good as possible under current capitalist structure of like what is considered progress, which is basically, you know, what gives you the biggest profit margins. That's, you know, never been the way that I have functioned, never been the way that my business has functioned.

But it's, it's not just about like, it's also one of these things where it's a false, it's a false concept to say, well, the, the cheapest fabric or the cheapest options for either labor or material or, or whatever, when it comes to the fashion industry is, you know, these, um, like using polyester or, or working offshore, like we'll be able to make more. And the reality is that there are huge costs associated with that, but they are not, I mean, in some ways they are super simple, right? Like we're seeing what happens when you are allowed to just pollute waterways. And so we see videos coming out of India and China where there is toxic foam that changes the color of rivers that had previously been important water sources that are now so polluted with the effluent from the fashion industry that you can't even go near them anymore if you're, because you're going to break out in an all body rash slash have worse, um, worse, uh, effects from them.

Um, but that's like actually a really simple example of why this is the way that we're doing things is not okay. Um, but there's also the part where like, there's this whole section, uh, near the end where Rebecca is pointing out, and I'm going to try and find the quote, uh, and read it for you because it's actually, it's actually like really important, kind of shrinks down the, the whole scale of it into something really feasible. So, uh, the quote is found near the end of the book, um, on page 197. Uh, and, and I'm going to read it fully out to you because I think it's important that we are actually like articulating how these gigantic things that can be so big and complicated that it feels impossible to, to narrow down. Why does it matter so much? Um, Rebecca's really good at doing that. So I'm just going to read her words, uh, and, and stop trying to, you know, bring all of the different pieces that I have learned myself through experience and, and research, uh, into one sentence because she's already done it. Um, it's in like three sentences, but that's okay. So.

“Many of the conflicts we see unfolding today are rooted in changes in the environment and economy that stimulate human migration and in turn lead to increased human pressure and conflict for dwindling natural resources. These cultural and political tensions are often attributed to populations moving out of vanquished rural communities. It may not seem obvious at first to consider how intricately woven all of these pieces really are, but small and medium scale family farm and ranch prosperity, political stability, cultural continuity, continuity, and decentralized value chains that can support the efficient processing and distribution of farmed and ranch material into a local economy. The decentralization of processing and milling in the mid 20th century is one important tool in the kit for anchoring healthy food and fiber systems within our regional economies and restoring our resource-based rural communities.”

So to expand on that, there's earlier in the book, um, Rebecca actually directly, uh, links the, and again, this book is based in the States. So the examples primarily that are, um, given throughout the book are, are American. Um, but she directly links, uh, the, um, inventor of a couple of different pieces of machinery that like the, the ways in which colonialism and fashion are intertwined are like very deep and very, very long and old. Uh, and, and current, um, they're still going on.

Uh, but one very specific example is how, um, this inventor created both a, uh, machine that, uh, improved the efficiency of cotton ginning, which is basically the process through which you are separating out, um, the fluff of cotton from the seed balls, uh, that the fluff grows around. And it's the fluff that we use to make the clothing, of course. Um, and that person also invented something that made, um, making guns easier. And if you know the history of cotton in the States, and also incidentally, the history of indigo cultivation in the States, they are deeply attached to slavery. And so it actually, those, those two things, the cotton ginning, um, and the guns actually directly led to the civil war in the States.

Um, so there's these like very concrete examples in which the ways in which we were manufacturing cloth and also continue to manufacture cloth, let's be honest, are directly attached to global conflict and the pain and suffering of humans and the loss of human life and the loss of also other lives. Um, but we don't always like to, to make it so simple because, you know, the folks that are in power benefit by having things be so large and convoluted and, and opaque in their processes and in their, in their systems that the average person doesn't know where to start. Um, and so within slow fashion, so much of what we are doing is trying to make those, those, uh, production systems more transparent.

So that's where Fashion Revolution comes in. That's where Fibershed comes in. That's where, you know, the Who Made Your Clothes, um, project comes in, uh, where you are encouraged as a consumer to demand of the clothing companies that you engage with, where did my clothes come from? How were they made? Who made them? Who did the, who did the, um, manufacturing, but also where did the raw materials come from? Like trace it all the way back. And fast fashion is not, not designed for that.

And it doesn't want to admit how it is making things because that would be, you know, opening it up to, I wish I could say, opening it up to lawsuits. Realistically, the way that it also, um, thrives is by moving things further and further, uh, into countries that have weak, um, environmental and social responsibility laws, uh, and protections. Um, and so as a country, uh, develops and, and strengthens those rules or regulations, then the, the companies, they just jump and they move to another country that has looser ones so that they are never actually having to step up to the plate and do good.

Um, and what I think is super important about a fiber shed model is that it is the same concept, uh, as the local food movement and, and food and agriculture or food and fiber agriculture are like deeply entwined as well. Um, so if you are somebody who, you know, shops at farmer's markets or makes a point of buying organic food for your kids, or haslike a really specific diet that is based. You should also be doing that with your clothing. And if you are not, you need to start now because it is, um, hypocritical to lean into one and not lean into the other. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to have like all of the resources to do all of the things, but you should be cognizant of, and, and putting as much effort into learning about what is going into your clothes as you are about what is going into your food, because realistically the health implications are the same. Um, our, our skin is our largest permeable membrane. Uh, it's our, it's one of our biggest organs. I think it's actually the biggest organ. Um, and, and things get soaked from the outside onto the inside.

So, you know, if you're concerned about the, the chemicals or the antibiotics or the, you know, whatever's, um, you know, false flavors or processed weird ingredients of the food that you're putting into your body, but then you go and you buy polyester clothing from Walmart, that's like, you're, you're kind of defeating the purpose there. And I feel more comfortable saying this because realistically, if you are somebody who is investing money into, um, eating in that kind of a way, you most likely are also somebody who has the kind of budget who can make choices other than Walmart. Um, and it doesn't mean that you have to have all of the money in the world.

There are lots of ways of engaging with slow fashion in a way that does not require you to be making, you know, six or seven figures. Um, you can be buying secondhand, you can be, uh, you know, doing trades with folks, you can be mending your clothing, you can be, you know, if you're shopping at somewhere like Walmart or like, um, Superstore or, or I don't even know Zara, like don't, I don't even think that this is possible with Shein. Um, but although I did just see a, a stat that their, their, um, sales increased in like most recently, while everyone is talking about how terrible the economy is, Shein grew by like nearly 40%, which is disgusting actually. Um, when you think of like, what are the implications of that then on the planet and on people?

Um, but for the not, the not-Sheins, even if you don't have the kind of money that allows you to spend, you know, several hundred dollars on one garment, which is not everybody's possibility. It might be if you, it first for, you know, many of you who are listening, but if that is not your case, or if that is not how you spend your money and you have other other ways that you value and use your dollars, then a very simple option is to just be finding the natural fibers in those fast fashion spaces. At the very least, even though it, you're still spending money in fast fashion and, and putting money into those systems, you are putting money into those systems, into biodegradable materials at the very least.

The ways in which they are manufactured and the chemicals that might be, you know, on them, uh, can be quite extreme still. Um, and again, if we read to die for, then the chemical soup of it all is terrifying. Um, and there's actually a chunk at the very back of Fibershed that also kind of goes over those things basically, uh, in, in a much smaller quantity, of course, it's like, you know, five pages of versus Alden's book of 300 or something pages.

Um, but, uh, at the very least, cotton is going to break down in a way that polyester won't, uh, and it's not going to shed microplastics in the same way. And also the dyes that can attach to a natural fiber, regardless of whether it's a natural dye or synthetic dye are still going to be better than the dyes that don't actually attach to, um, synthetic fibers. Uh, there, there is no safe dye for synthetic fibers.

There are absolutely safe dyes as far as, uh, natural fibers, because you can use natural dyes or you can go with undyed, um, natural fibers as well, and just use the natural color. Um, but even if you're using synthetic dyes, they are, there are options within those synthetic dyes that are not nearly as toxic. Um, just, and it's just because of the like chemical breakdown of, of what is trying to bond with what.

So, um, so yeah, like there, there's definitely ways of engaging, uh, that don't require you to have a gigantic, you know, clothing budget every day. Um, but I, I think what this book lays out really well for folks, especially if you haven't, um, kind of come across the concept of a fiber shed model before. And again, for me, it feels kind of weird trying to break this down because it's become so second nature for me in the way that I, uh, approach things and, and work, um, and, and think about things and value things. Um, but if that isn't the way that you have functioned up till now, I think this book gives you a lot of really great examples of why you should, uh, and why, if you are a decision maker or somebody with money, um, or somebody who controls the way that money flows to different projects, that investing in fiber shed models is also a good idea.

Nevermind the fact that it is good for, for non-financial reasons, but also if we're looking at finances, there are so many benefits to investing in a fiber shed model, which is not only that money invested locally tends to stay local as well and, and has this growth effect and allows folks to, um, to stay in place and, and raise their families where they actually want to raise their families and do it in a way where everybody's healthy and stable and functioning from a more grounded space. Um, but again, if we think about like, like one of the stats that is in this book talks about how by, I think it's expected by 2050, maybe, uh, that 75% of the world's population is expected to be in urban centers. And that just increases our, um, our, you know, reliance on, on big systems because we are not, um, we're not attached to the land. When we are all centralized in an urban space, there's just like physically not enough space within urban centers to do all of what is needed to support, um, an entire community. You, you need to engage with the land more and with resources more, but if we're not investing in those rural communities, then we're going to become more reliant on fewer, uh, fewer sources, which, you know, monopolies are never healthy. They are not healthy systems.

Um, and we're also putting our rural communities at risk. I mean, I was just reading, uh, uh, it was either a paper or an article about, uh, you know, the number of suicides in, or no, it was actually in Fibershed. See, this is the problem is that I read all of these things and they all feed into one another. Um, it's not a problem. It's just a fact.

Um, but the, the number of suicides in India, um, uh, farmers, and this also is reflected in Canada. It's been seen in the States it's been seen. Um, but you know, farmers who are finding it harder and harder to keep their lives financially viable and they're trying to provide for their families and they're unable to, uh, and the stress of that leads them to suicide. And, and that's not okay.

Like we, we physically, like, I think the pandemic, I mean, the pandemic was messed up for so many reasons, but something that the pandemic really demonstrated very clearly was how if you were not living on your own land, growing all of your own food and making all of your own clothes, when you were reliant on other people doing that and filling the shelves at the stores, and then that got disrupted, it was like it in a lot of cases, it's life and death, right? Like, we're not talking about like, oh, well, it would be nice to have this new toy or this new, even like new book as we do a book review episode. Like this is literally our food and our shelter and our clothing and our clothing falls under our shelter because it is a thing that protects us from the elements.

Um, these are like baseline needs as far as Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Like this is the bottom rung. And when we are separating ourselves from the ways in which those things happen, and the ways in which they are extracted or removed from the ecosystem in order to then move through our body system and then return to the ecosystem, which actually, if we think about it is just keeping it within the system, but we always like to remove ourselves as humans from the ecosystem.

So let's pretend that we're our own little ecosystem for a moment and not part of the larger whole. But when we're removed from the ways in which those things happen, then it's, it very rapidly can come back to bite us in the ass. And we're seeing that right now. So I've already been talking for, you know, 45 minutes about why this is important. And so I'm just going to remind you to go and read these books yourself. Fibershed at this point, I believe is available in an audiobook, as well as a physical book and an ebook. So you have lots of ways of engaging with it. The other thing that I'm going to recommend that you do is you go to Fibershed.org and you see, you know, what are the different projects that are happening and also check out their affiliate directory because then you can see, is there a local Fibershed affiliate near you? They are all over the world at this point. I was just checking out Fibershed Philippines.

And I've been working with Fibersheds across Canada for years now, the better part of a decade, which is kind of fun. And I'm, you know, I talk regularly about Pembina Fibershed, which I am a member of. I'm a producer member. I'm also now the natural dye liaison lead. I don't know how we're identifying that, but I'm taking on more of a role there.

And they're important and it doesn't need to be a formal one. You don't need to have the affiliate directory for the work that your local textile economy is doing for that to be important or valued. It just gives you a little bit more structure, a few more resources, which is always great, and a global community to engage with. But there are plenty of ways to engage without having the formal Fibershed title next to your community's projects and communal works.

But I think what is important as a takeaway from this is that we need to, in our local communities, be banding together and formalizing the work that we are doing and presenting it in a way that is going to allow us more ways into those systems that control the money, that control the research, that control the resources, so that we can be moving projects forward and not putting it all on, you know, like individuals who, it's just not realistic to expect every regional area to have somebody who is so deeply devoted that they have like $26 million in their back pocket. That is a really specific number that is very specifically attached to an example of a mill project that is outlined in Rebecca's book. But it's not, you know, we can do certain things ourselves and then there gets to be a stage at which unless you are independently wealthy, and by independently wealthy I mean like billionaire level wealthy, we need to work together.

And honestly, we do better when we work together anyway, so there's no reason to not.

So I think, you know, one of the things that is kind of my like key takeaway from this book is that it's actually really important that we not try to isolate ourselves and do items in a vacuum or do projects in a vacuum or undertake changing these big complicated systems in a vacuum or on our own. You know, the whole issue right now is that there are an increasing number of things that are becoming centralized in too few hands. And so actually what we need to be doing is opening it back out into communal work. And so, you know, you need dedicated players and you need folks coming in from different avenues and with different viewpoints and different skill sets and bring in the experts into the same room. And everybody bring their heads together and innovate in a way that is not possible if you're just doing it on your own.

And so, you know, one of the things that is really clearly outlined in this book is the role that universities have to play in these kinds of things. Basically every project that is outlined here is attached to some university because of their access to resources, their access to capital, their access to cohesive research systems that then can plug into these other systems in an easier way. Also the the role that local government has, the role that legislation has, the role that fashion designers have, and the role that consumers have.

And I think what's really lovely about this is that it's not putting all of the work or all of the pressure on any single individual or any single industry. It's not all on the farmers to change what they are doing. It's not all on the designers to change what they are doing. It's not all on the activists to change what they are doing. It is on all of us to come together and through the Fibershed model of looking at your local economies and your local players and also your local land-based needs restrictions, bounties, and by that I mean bountiful as in like an abundance of looking at like what your local resources are that you have accessible to you and being in active relationship with those so that as a season fluxes that you are fluxing with it. You know, that's where our strengths lie and that is where the diversity in which we can look at our systems and look at what our needs are, what our place-based needs are.

That's actually how we are going to make this feasible in the long run and how we are going to make fashion sustainable in the long run so that as these systems that we have been using for the past couple hundred years and have been collapsing around us in an increasing speed that we are going to be able to respond and pivot away from them and into healthier systems. One of the ways that we do that here in the Pembina Fibershed that isn't really outlined in Fibershed the book but that is really important for us here in the north is that we lean more heavily into our furs and our skins because our climate is one that requires that. For all of your vegan or non-leather based approaches, when it's minus 40, I'm sorry, I want fur around my face and my fur alternatives are plastic so I'm going to take the fur. But the ways in which we do that ethically and the ways in which we do that that are environmentally responsible and that are with animal welfare at the height is by engaging with furs and skins through that same Fibershed model of values.

I think there's lots to be learned and depending on where you live then there are going to be different answers for you than there are for me where I live and that's kind of the whole point. And so I will leave it at read the book.

You know it's kind of a seminal work and it's an important work and if you don't have the attention span for reading the book at this point in time then just start engaging with Fibershed's resources because you can find a way in that doesn't require you to read so heavily. There were definitely sections of the book where because it was less of an area that I personally have interest in or that is directly relevant for our ecology up here then the heaviness of some of the research was like it made my eyes glaze over a little bit. I won't lie.

So if this is like a brand new concept to you then it might be a little too heavy. It might be a little too scientific in its approach and in its research findings. I think it's really important for anybody who's engaged in the fashion industry to read and start thinking about now because realistically it's how we are functioning.

But if you're an average person, an average consumer and the only ways that you're engaging with fashion at this point are that you're putting clothes on your body then you know maybe the book is something that you read a few months down the line after you've watched some documentaries or you have started following them on Instagram and found your local Fibershed affiliate and gone to maybe some local events and you know maybe you've watched a doc screening that your local Fibershed is putting on. Heyo Nettle Dress screening we are going to be doing here in the Pemina Fibershed inyou know about four weeks. So there's lots of different events.

You know there might be a market that is happening. There might be some one year one outfit challenges that are happening. So if you're a maker a really great way of building your skills and building your knowledge about Fibersheds and engaging with your own is by you know trying it out and going to a one year one outfit gathering and learning from one another. There are these really really beautiful kind of like tapestries of humans and skills that and skill sharing that kind of contextualize what this book is putting down into words. I am always a fan and a proponent of of more of an embodied practice when it comes to big complicated concepts. It's why I like fashion so much because our clothes allow us to do that and making our clothes allows us to do that.

And so so yeah so maybe that's kind of the way in is that if one if if you read this book or you start to read this book and it's making your head swim a little bit look into trying to make a single item with whatever your chosen craft is whether it is knitting, crochet, weaving, whatever. Maybe you don't do any of those things. Maybe you've never sewn something before. Maybe you've never knit something before. Maybe maybe hands-on craft is not something you've done yet. Use this as your excuse to do that and and go super simple and try and find something in your local fiber shed that has been produced from raw material to finished resource whether it's yarn or fabric or whatever and then make something with that.

Or if you're really not a maker and you're like that sounds like my version of hell try and find an a finished item that has been made with those processes in mind where from raw material all the way through every stage of production to finished item that is in your hand that it has been produced within your local fiber shed. And if you don't have a formal fiber shed that it has been produced within an immediate region that falls within a watershed. That's a really great way of kind of identifying a space. For us we're 250 miles around the Pemina Valley and so you can kind of use that as your And if you're finding hey wait there's a gap here that's really important that's kind of the whole point of a fiber shed is identifying where are those gaps and and so what are the pieces that we are missing and what are the compromises we need to make accordingly.

There's it you're not you're not going to get all of it in just a single book or in a single project or in you know one day out or one documentary watched. This is an ongoing living thing to engage with but it's a really important thing to engage with and so I'm going to recommend that you read the book but I'm also going to recommend that you engage in in other simpler ways too.

So follow them on Instagram follow your local fibershed affiliate on Instagram, follow From Field to Skin or go and and you know watch the interviews that From Field to Skin has done with different Canadian fibershed players and producers and just start to learn more and you don't need to change your wardrobe overnight but I promise that as you start to engage with these things more your wardrobe is going to shift and I think there's something really interesting about looking over the course of time at our wardrobes as we learn more things and seeing how our wardrobes shift over time and the decisions that we make shift over time.

So yeah that's my kind of very very loose review of Fibershed the book. It's less about the book itself and more about the movement as a whole which I think is vitally important and so I hope that this gives you a few ways in. I hope that by the end of this episode you feel like you've got a few tools for your way in. Go read the book Fibershed: Growing a Movement of Farmers Fashion Activists and Makers for a New Textile Economy by Rebecca Burgess and then let me know what you think. I hope that it inspires some of you to get more involved and maybe some of you are going to start your own fiber shed affiliates as a result of this with with some of yourfriends and maybe you will make lifelong friends like I have as a result of your own engagements with your fiber sheds.

So thanks so much for listening and we will be back next episode. We are going to be reading a book about indigo and there will be lots of books about indigo that get linked in the show notes for that particular episode. So we'll see you soon and thanks so much for listening.

You can find full episode recordings and transcripts at ashalberg.com/podcast. Follow Snort and Cackle on Instagram @snortandcackle. Don't forget to subscribe and review the podcast on your favorite podcasting platform.

Recording and mixing by Ash Alberg, music by Yesable.

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season 5, episode 2 - “to dye for” by alden wicker