Help Us Build A New Community Mushroom Center!

Please help us build the SPoRE: Salish Place of Remediation Education!

A partnership between Metamimicry and the Squaxin Island Tribe

The Squaxin Island Tribe, descendants of peoples of the Salish Sea, have long served as advocates for the natural resources of the land, sharing this knowledge freely with all who are willing to listen. Reclaiming Indigenous knowledge and integrating it into a shared vision for the future is necessary for building regenerative models of living.

The Squaxin Island Tribe faces a disproportionate amount of environmental health disparities among members as a result of being severed from traditional ways and shrinking access to foreagable lands and waters. A community mushroom lab, on-site at the Salish Roots Farm, would support Tribal efforts to cultivate traditional and medicinal foods, exchange knowledge about surrounding natural resources, and remediate polluted lands. Teaming up with Metamimicry, this effort has the human power and space to build but requires grassroots funding to get it off the ground.

Metamimicry forwards community-access labs as a way to centralize remediation efforts. Focusing primarily on mushrooms allows groups to practice cultural remediation (food sovereignty), remediation of the body (medicine-making), and healing of the land (bioremediation) all at the same time. The space would allow for community engagement, youth empowerment, and citizen science, to work towards bridging differing knowledge systems.

Metamimicry helps bolster the goals of the Squaxin Island Tribe as we both work towards a world returned to the original stewards of the land, including our non-human relatives. The Tribe will have the resources to develop a robust medicinal and gourmet mushroom program from this community lab, contributing to their food sovereignty and community self-sufficiency initiatives. Tribal youth will be able to participate in the lab, learn basic techniques, contribute to various research projects, and cultivate fungi from spore and foraged specimens. Tribal members and surrounding community members will be able to volunteer at the lab, utilizing the space to grow remediator species to apply in their backyards. Metamimicry and other partner organizations will have a designated place to teach workshops and a centralized location allowing for community-led bioremediation experiments and direct application of installations on Tribal lands.

Our community needs initial funding to construct the space to do this work. Our fundraising goal is $25,000. Broken down, it will be $12,000 for the lab, $3,000 for supplies and materials, and $10,000 for labor and personnel. We would appreciate any amount you can contribute to this collaborative project. Here are some examples of what your donation could be used for.

$50 would support 25 people to learn to culture mushroom tissue

$200 funds a pressure cooker for sterilizing substrate

$800 sponsors a 12-week internship at the lab

We look forward to seeing you at the Salish Place of Remediation Education! Thank you for your support and interest in building resilient communities for the future.