The Free Tree: An Open University
The Free Tree, is an Open University that CIEDS has initiated as part of it's ongoing attempts to create open spaces for critical thinking and learning outside academia for students of life; free spirits in search of new knowledges, new wisdoms from the perspective of the Global South. Located on 12 acres of naturally rock sculpted landscape in Vemgal, Kolar where Vimochana’s women’s shelter is also housed, this space and learning process seeks to connect scholars, activists, visionaries, artists and poets across countries and cultures. One of it's first programmes was a six week Study Abroad Programme conducted for the students of Iowa State University in 2005.
The Roots of The Free Tree
The Free Tree that we from CIEDS Collective have initiated, is part of our ongoing attempts to create open spaces of critical and creative learning through more inclusive, incisive and introspective intercultural conversations that allow for the creation of free questioning spirits in
search of new knowledges, new wisdoms... from the visions and wisdoms of the Global South. For, as Black Elk, an old woman, an indigenous woman, a wise woman said while telling the story of her sacred mountain:In a different place, in a different time, Black Elk heard the Song of the Wind
“I saw myself on the central mountain of the world
the highest place, and I had a vision because I was seeing
in the sacred manner of the world”, she said
Remember, she said she was seeing in the sacred manner of the world
And the sacred, central mountain was a mountain in her
part of the world
“But”, Black Elk continued to say
“The central mountain is everywhere”This story invites us to another way of seeing, another way of knowing: Knowing that often when our eyes cannot see horizons it does not mean that those horizons do not exist.
As realised by the peasants in Chiapas, Mexico who sum up their vision that does not offer clear, rigid universal truths, in three little words: asking, we walk. The asking in itself challenges master narratives, master’s houses, houses of reason, universal truths of power, of politics, truth of the one imperial medicine, of the one science, the one development, the one democracy, the one knowledge, the one sacred mountain. And all other sacred mountains, their cultures, their civilisations, their knowledges, have to be measured vis-à-vis the sacred mountain (of the west). There is an urgent need to challenge the centralising logic of the master’s narrative/the sacred mountain implicit in the dominant discourses – of class, caste, race, gender. (Extracts from South Wind, Corinne Kumar)
Therefore we offer The Free Tree as our Sacred Mountain. For gathering under a tree also allows us to be still, to go to that place inside us where stillness and movement come together and listen to our inner voices, to each other, to other sacred mountains.
The Meaning and the Metaphor
Why do we choose the metaphor of the tree, The Free Tree?
The Free Tree, inspired by the Persian name, Azad Darakth for the Neem Tree, an important ecological source of meaning and healing in India and the Asian continent, which was sought to be patented and rendered the private property of a few multinational corporations, is our metaphor for a new way to learn, to know.
The Free Tree therefore conjures up many images: of a nurturing space, a nourishing place, a place of shade, of shelter; the tree protects, it connects, to other cosmologies, to other world views, sitting under a tree is very non-hierarchical, even non-patriarchal; it speaks to community, to conviviality; it reminds us of an ethic of care and concern. Almost every culture as we all know has its Tree of Life, its Tree of Knowledge.
The Free Tree is our tree of knowledge.
The Programme
One of the first programmes organised by Free Tree was a six week residential Study Abroad Programme for the students of the Iowa State University in 2005 that looked at issues related to Globalisation, Development and Gender that challenged and provoked them to look beyond the universal paradigms of growth, progress and equality that they have imbibed as part of their Eurocentric modes of knowledge production and consumption.
Beginning with an opening session on A Requiem to Modernity by J.P.S. Uberoi, Professor of Sociology from Delhi University, followed with a series of classes on different issues around globalistion, development and gender as also field visits to related organisations, the programme concluded with an Open Forum on Democracy and a session on Viewing India Through Non Eurocentric Lenses that was facilitated by Dr. U.R. Ananthamurthy, Kannada litterateur and Jnanapith award winner.
The other resource people for the programme apart from the members of CIEDS Collective and the accompanying faculty from Iowa State University included activists, academics, artists and scholars from different organisations and institutes, each known for their experience and insights in their own fields of involvement. The resource also included students from other city colleges. [Link to resource persons]
We seek to offer more such programmes in the future for students, scholars, activists, artists….seekers of critical and creative knowledges as part of our Open University programme. This we will be doing also in collaboration also El Taller international in Tunis.