Blog

A selection of our writings from 2009 to the present. If you'd like to keep up to date with our latest posts, please subscribe below.

An open letter to a Labor minister complicit in iatrogenocide and genocide

Attention: Catherine King, MP

We wrote to you in November 2023 in relation to the iatrogenocide you have actively participated in since 2021. In 2022 you even went so far as to give one of our family members unsolicited medical advice, which we captured on video.

We are grateful that our family and around 300 people in our community, did not take your advice, and as a result none of us in this cohort has long Covid, immune system collapse, died suddenly, suffered heart inflammation, had a stroke, or developed blood clots, brain aneurysms, turbo cancers, or any of the other vast array of injuries associated with these immune and heart-wrecking injections. We feel gravely for those bullied into risking their health by public influencers, such as yourself, often in order to keep their jobs. The injection never was designed to stop transmission, yet you argued it would. It is now 2025, and you have never acknowledged your wrong-doing or the harm you helped cause.

And now, as a senior minister in the federal Australian Labor government, you are also complicit in the most public genocide the world has ever seen. Your support for an extremist-supremacist government that is, before our very eyes, killing and starving innocent peoples is not surprising to us, since we lived through yours and Morrison’s Covid regime. We are not naive to the fact that whatever big industry – especially weapons and pharma – want, Australian politicians grant without question. Yes, you are not the only one complicit in these crimes, but as a MP local to our home town, we want to be clear: concerning these big geopolitical and global health issues, you do not represent us.

While we, a part-Jewish family, do not think you or any of your colleagues will ever be prosecuted for the crimes against humanity committed over the past five years, we are writing to inform you that we and many others see your complicity as part of these crimes.

In one small response to the 18 month-long genocide of Palestinians, we wish to share with you and our readers the following.

 

 

We are currently raising money for a Palestinian permaculture and CSA farm that is practicing resistance agriculture in the West Bank. As we attend Q&A screenings of The New Peasants over the next month, we will hold a series of solidarity raffles for the farm. Om Sleiman Farm grows organic food for around 30 households, however over the years members of the farm have been shot at by those guarding illegal occupation. In the two photos of the farm above, the white settlement in the background, encroaching onto the farm, is the illegal occupation at work by ethno-supremacists, who, like early settlers in Australia, believe it is their god-given right to steal land and use violent force and tactics to do so.

Can you, Catherine, imagine a world where the Australian government not only imposed sanctions on genocidal regimes, but supported grass roots groups (not NGO colonialists) to produce ecologically-sound, organic food systems across all countries? Nutritious food that would radically reduce the need for pharmaceutical interventions and thus iatrogenic corporate profiteering? By living a permaculture lifeway and developing a community-sufficient (rather than corporate-dependent) economy over many years, has meant that no one in our family has required a GP for a decade.

Your support for the illness industry globally, enforced starvation in Palestine, and militaristic genocide by Israel is not the future. It is merely Five-Eyes neoliberal colonialism in action.

If you were truly working towards healthy people and healthy biomes, and access to these essentials for life making without proxy wars, we would celebrate you. It is clear, however, where your priorities lie. You do not represent us. We reject any authority or jurisdiction you might claim to have over us.

Sincerely,
Artist as Family

Bridging, on the way back to indigeneity (kinship, initiation, druidry, homesteading, wisdom and eldership) with Yin Paradies and Victoria McKay

 

Make yourself a cuppa and settle in for our next long-form yarn with Yin Paradies and Victoria McKay from Anam Cara Homestead.

Both Yin and Victoria invite us to be on the bridge that spans between modernity and what they call our ‘primal’ selves, and to find and nurture fellow travellers in that place of reclaiming.

We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we have.

Listener’s note: At one point the audio goes a tad crackly in the conversation but it doesn’t last long.

(Audio duration 1:11mins)

 

And, here is the video.

 

In honour of our dog-kin, Zero

 

Our dear old dog, Zero, took his final breath yesterday afternoon. We buried him this morning. He has been our trusty and beloved dog-kin for 15 years. He has always been fully in life, showing up everywhere; in the home food forest,


at the community garden,

on long haul bicycle adventures,

not missing any of the birthdays,

down on the coast,

when we went to catch some fish,

on our laps as we went through the many harvest seasons,

at Forest & Free on Mondays as we built more huts in the village,

by the fire recovering from dog attack,

with friends who lived with us,

and friends who dropped in,

on walks in the commons, checking on the Bill Mollison memorial oak tree,

with family at special moments in our lives,

with the goats in the old quarry,

in the outdoor kitchen teaching the youngster how to clean up during a slaughtering day,

on the outdoor couch, eldering youngster Lilly Pilly and passing on the household’s dog-kin culture,

in our arms growing old together,

and finally, this morning, the elder under the elder.

Farewell little dog. You have taught us so many things. Your spirit and your soul live on in us, and in the garden.

In-person film tour and online speaking events (The New Peasants and more…)

Jordan Osmond from Happen Films lived and laboured with us for six months while he worked on The New Peasants.


Film tour and Q&A sessions

We are joining Jordan from Happen Films (and Catie Payne from Reskillience podcast) on a road trip in August to help present, The New Peasants. After the film is screened at each of the following locations, we will join Jordan for a Q&A session. Come say g’day!

Sunday 27 July, (world premiere) Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Cinema Nova, Carlton, Victoria (bookings)
Friday 1 August, Theatre Royal, Castlemaine, Victoria (bookings)
Saturday 2 August, Palace Regent Cinemas, Ballarat Victoria (bookings)
Friday 8 August, The Pivotonian Cinema, Geelong, Victoria (bookings)
Thursday 14 August, Soldiers Memorial Hall, Stanley, Victoria (bookings)
Saturday 16 August, Far South Film Festival, Merimbula, NSW (bookings)
Thursday 21 August, Palace Electric Cinemas, Canberra, ACT (bookings)

Jordan and Catie will continue touring the film up the east coast with screenings in Sydney, Narara, Dungog, Bellingen, Lismore, and Brisbane. Head here for the event details of these screenings, to watch the trailer and also to organise a screening for your community.

Artist as Family would welcome being billeted in Stanley, Merimbula and Canberra, or anywhere between these locations. Please get in touch if you have a spare room or a patch of earth for us to pitch our tent in or near these locations.

Here are some reviews from those who have previewed the film.

A resplendent open window into the lived experiences of conscious simplification, connection to land and an intentional community compass.
– Uncle Charles Davison, Jen Ridley and family, Indigenous knowledge keepers

With this documentary Happen Films are revealed as masters of their craft honed over the years through an ethos of DIY minimalism to create a powerful and loving portrait of life lived to the full in the relationship to place, kin and community.
– David Holmgren, permaculture co-originator

The New Peasants offers an engaging and inspiring insight into one family’s local response to the predicament of our times.
– Helena Norberg-Hodge, writer and filmmaker

Beautiful portrayal of lives lived with purpose, beauty and courage in all its rawness, pain and worthiness.
– Su Dennett, permaculture teacher and elder

~

Online Q&A with Artist as Family

Before we go on the road in mid August, we are looking forward to meeting you online for our inaugural, Come ask us anything events. Please send us a message if you’d like to join either or both of these two sessions, and we’ll send you a link. Both dates are filling up with a goodly assortment of folk from all over.

Saturday 9 August 7pm – 8.30pm (AEST; online)
Sunday 10 August 9am – 10.30am (AEST; online)

Come ask us anything!

 
 
MAKE YOURSELF A CUPPA and come and have a chat with us. Over the years we have received messages from people in many countries asking us about various parts of our life and practice, and we have not always had the time to reply to everyone. So, we thought we’d offer a chance for people to come meet us virtually, ask us questions and participate in a generative discussion centred upon what we do and why.

We are making available two specific event times to try to suit as many timezones as possible; to come say g’day, ask questions, listen to other people‘s goodly questions, listen to our responses and clarifications, and feel the magic of connection that can often unfold by such a gathering of common interest.

Two online events in early August:
AEST: Saturday 9 August 7pm – 8.30pm and Sunday 10 August 9am – 10.30am

Topics we are often asked about involve home-education, subsistence economies, roles in the household, how did we begin, making decisions, ceremony and ritual, feeling demoralised, health fundamentals outside the industrial medical complex, involving children in labour, meaning and learning, dispute resolution, creativity in the home, and a plethora of other topics. We are very happy to answer your questions from very small details to the bigger picture stuff. We are also happy for you to come along and listen, and not necessarily feel the need to ask anything.

Please send us an email to register and receive the link to be part of the live Q&A sessions. Please put in the subject line which date you’d like to attend. Alternatively, feel free to write your question as a comment on this post, and we’ll take it to the live sessions. These sessions will be recorded and we will make an edited version available online.

We are looking forward to meeting you.

Warmly,
Magpie and Blue Wren