Heal the Land.
Feed the People.
Healing the wounds of colonialism through food, medicine, story, restoration and learning.
The Deep Medicine Circle (DMC) is a WOC-led, collaborative 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization dedicated to repairing critical relationships that have been fractured through colonialism. Starting from a place of correcting relationships between Indigenous and Diasporic peoples, we cultivate a culture of care to support the health and healing of people and communities of plants and animals which are critical for our survival and thriving.
We are a collective of farmers, elders, physicians, healers, herbalists, ecological designers, scholars, political ecologists, movement workers, educators, youth, storytellers and artists. We adhere to earth-based, ecofeminist principles of organizing, with participatory circles of decision-making. We understand the existential threat of climate change as the end-stage of colonial capitalist destruction, and we innovate structural solutions based in cosmologies that can heal ruptured relationships of people to one another and of people to the web of life. We support Indigenous communities in their processes of healing through facilitating land return, acknowledging their sovereignty and advancing practices that bring communities together in shared learning. We create opportunities for other groups marginalized through colonial structures to partner in this work while advancing structural solutions for health and vitality.
Read or listen to this story about our work from KQED’s California Report here
Nourish
Farming is Medicine.
Heal
Decolonizing Food and Medicine.
Restore
All of our relationships.
Story
Knowing who we are.
Learn/Unlearn
Seeding the Future.
Deep Medicine & The Care Revolution
DMC Founder physician and artist Rupa Marya and Treasurer food systems activist and political ecologist Raj Patel co-authored Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, a sweeping look at how colonial capitalism has impacted the health of people, societies and the planet. The book argues for structural change to advance health possibilities for all being. Deep Medicine translates concepts from Deep Ecology, where ecological balance is viewed from outside a human-centered lens. Deep Medicine moves outside an individual-centered perspective, understanding that health is an emergent phenomenon of systems interacting with systems. To achieve the possibility of health for people and the planet, structures put in place during colonial rule must be reimagined along axes of care. This is the Care Revolution which the work of the DMC is wholly committed to advancing.