News

Healing the Earth Radio has been on CFRU’s airwaves each since June 2005 – and this past June, on the show’s five year anniversary, the show has come to an end.

Hosted by Matt Soltys, Healing the Earth Radio has been one of a handful of radio shows in North America to focus on a deeper-green environmentalism that intertwines the struggles and perspectives of Indigenous people, political prisoners, and others at the frontlines of protecting the earth.

In the last five years, Healing the Earth Radio’s interviews have been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times from the show’s website – www.resistanceisfertile.ca – as well as rabble.ca and radio4all.net. Radio programmers across the continent have re-broadcast these interviews to hundreds of thousands more listeners in major cities and town across North America. The website will remain active into the indefinite future to make available these interviews.

In November 2005, Healing the Earth Radio won a scholarship for Youth Excellence in Climate Change, which included participation in the International Youth Summit and the United Nations Conference on Climate Change. Finding that forum largely disempowering and resistant to the voices of people of colour, Indigenous people, and those who challenge industrialism and capitalism, Matt left determined to use Healing the Earth Radio as a forum to advance an environmental justice analysis that included those relegated to the fringe of the mainstream environmental movement.

Since then, Healing the Earth Radio has featured interviews with Indigenous people from dozens of nations, authors, scientists, tree sitters and other direct action activists, political prisoners and their supporters, sexual violence and anti-rape activists, and many others. A main goal of this work is to break down perceived barriers between different subcultures and social movements, so as to encourage stronger alliances and solidarity, and increase our power to create change.

As a transition from the weekly radio show, Healing the Earth Radio is looking to publish a just-finished interview book that features thirteen particularly powerful interviews, all of which speak to important intersections between ecological and social issues. Tentatively titled Tangled Like Roots, expect to hear more about this in the future.

Come to the CFRU to see Healing the Earth's poster display, illustrating groups and individuals Matt Soltys has interviewed on Healing the Earth over the years and learn about important work these groups and individuals are dedicated to.

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