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 2S Native Northern American sharing indigenous lineage teachings to help humanity re-member our sacred nature of deep beauty and collaboration. Their work, The Collectivity Project, is an indigenous response to the pain of our world—to empire, ecocide, genocide, and separation—anchored in the truth that we all come from ancient people who gathered around fires storytelling, dancing, and grieving together in medicinal ways.

Personally healing multiple chronic illnesses, their work is rooted in holistic nervous system care and trauma-informed somatic practice that revitalizes pan-indigenous life-ways, restores relations to our lineages and to the land, and tends to the generational wounding of colonialism. De-individualizing all that is truly systemic, they strengthen the capacity for collective liberation through catalyzing our shared grief into sustainable action and empowering with practical tools for healing and belonging-based justice. All of their work holds heart in the belief in all people's wise ancestry, innate ability to heal, and inherent worth.

On a journey of Initiation to be a Good Elder, they carry a prayer of regenerative culture shifting, enlivening this new era of multi-cultural weaving that calls for the healing of our shared history, the reimagining of our village interdependence, and the remembering our ancestral ways of reverence for all that lives.

Trained in group facilitation and somatic healing, they hold community circles, ceremonies, and workshops, consultations for organizations, and personal rituals and mentorships in Ancestral Reclamation, Collective Liberation Practices, Decolonial Leadership and Relationships Life-ways, Grief and Initiatory Rites, and Spirit Healings. This work is a prayer for the world coming, where we gather over the flames that birth remembrance from the ashes of collapse, united in our Praise and Grief.

The Collectivity Project’s Website + Instagram. Reach them at [email protected].

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! :)