Stellar Village

"Human connection is a primary disruptor of oppressive systems."

Aaron Johnson is a facilitator, public speaker, and touch activist who practices closeness as a way to break down barriers between people. As co-founder of both Holistic Resistance and Grief to Action, Aaron takes the time to hold the stories of Black people around homophobia, transphobia, internalized racism, and those that are Chronically UnderTouched.

Grief to Action is a semi-mobile camp with a land-based community in the Mojave Desert. The community holds space on the land and with the land for deep grief and rage that gives birth to the creative solutions we need to resist and end oppressive systems. The land and sanctuary are Black-owned and Black-led, centering the needed grief support for African-heritage folks and all People of the Global Majority.

Interrupting four hundred years of the Black Brute archetype. Tender, caring, platonic touch between Black men, the Chronically UnderTouched (CUT) Project’s short film, Dark and Tender, drops Fall 2024.

Because oppression is a part of historical and present American culture, the long term impact of those trauma stories should be acknowledged and held as a map for our collective healing.

Aaron Johnson practices and invites various methods of moving through these stories, such as the communal listening ear, sound healing, meditation, and closeness to the earth.

Alyx Somas is a Native Northern American with roots from multiple Detribalized Peoples whose lineages have been living upon Tongva Lands for four generations. Their primary work is within movements of Collective Cultural Re-Indigenization, partnering alongside cultures of Belonging, Reciprocity, and Restorative Action.

Their community organizing is in service with Indigenous Knowledge Systems, supported by their training in group facilitation and somatic healing. They have spent the last decade working in education and organizing collective spaces for expressive arts, healing, de-colonization, honoring ancestry, connecting with the land, communal grief and prayer, and rituals of initiation. They especially find joy in decentralized spaces of ceremonial song, dance, and counsel.

They are on a journey of Initiation, training to be a Good Elder. All of their work holds heart in the belief that "we all come from peoples who gathered around fires storytelling, dancing, and grieving together." They are gently composting generations-old colonial wounding; resourcing in prayers that dismantle inner-supremacy, disengage from cultures of shame, blame, and carceral action, and offering prayers towards the unfolding of a multicultural peoples living out restored relations, in devotion to Inter-Dependence and to the ancestral ways of reverence for all that lives.

Their labor is for the world coming, where we gather together over the open flames that birth reciprocity from the fertilizer of our decay, united in our Praise and Grief towards the expression of our true nature — Reciprocity and Deep Beauty. You can connect with their work on their budding website https://thecollectivityproject.my.canva.site/landingpage and the IG @collectivitypr oject. Reach them at [email protected] for collaboration.

I was born in 1947 in the USA. Three years after World War ll ended. The America I grew up in (from my perspective as a white female) was giddy with new possibilities and the lack of war. We hid our grief & PTSD, valiantly tried to stuff the women who had been operating the country during the War back into high heels and kitchen aprons, and effectively lost track off whatever cross racial, gender, nationality, and religion community we had achieved in times of crisis.

It worked with variable success up until the 60’s when folks including my generation, the Boomers, started to seriously question things and rock the boat a bit...

The US (and from what I can see of it, the World) is a much different place today. Issues are now coming to light that were not even considered thinkable, let alone public conversation. I look upon the present day with awe and sincere appreciation. I do feel the human race is gaining! It may not always seem like it, but to my over three quarters of a Century mind we are making fantastic progress! Not that we don’t still have far to go, but progress none the less. Step by step (sometimes painfully) we are learning to play well together and work through the myriad vicious “isms”.

Throughout my life, music has been one of my great salvations. Singing with my children and singing within a group is a wonderful and healing part of my life. I am grateful to be able to help in some small way to make singing and all we are working toward here at Stellar Village readily available. Myself, I hope to be able to reach people my age. We sometimes lose track of how important community is.

For the last 36 years of my life, I have been fortunate enough to be living my dream life with my best friend / husband. Now, through Stellar Village—and technology we would have considered magic as youngsters—I can communicate with so many lovely people from diverse backgrounds all over the world, all from a cabin on a mountain, off the grid! Thank you for this opportunity to get to know all of you! :)