“Our Rocks Are Alive”
06/2021
On Short Cuts, BBC Radio 4
Featuring Alicia Potts
Singing by Chanse Adams-Zavalla
Photo by Alicia Potts
Co-produced by Michelle Macklem, Alicia Potts and Zoe Tennant
Edited by Andrea Rangecraft

Each autumn, when the oak branches shake off their acorns, Alicia Adams Potts gathers the nuts. Alicia, who’s from the Maidu tribe in northern California, grinds the acorns into a silky white flour using a stone mortar and pestle that belonged to her grandmother, and to her grandmother’s grandmother before her. Alicia’s sister grinds her acorns in a Vitamix, but Alicia likes to keep it old school, she likes to hold the same pestle that her ancestors’ hands held. Alicia often gets texts and calls from other Indigenous folks about how to prepare acorn -- she’s known as the go-to acorn person. Alicia, like the Maidu women before her, uses the flour to make acorn bread and acorn soup.

For Indigenous tribes in California, like Alicia’s, acorn is more than food. Acorn was, and still is, at the centre of everything.

Acorn was at the heart of Indigenous social and economic systems, and at the centre of their story. That story became buried, though, in the wake of colonization. But today, Indigenous people like Alicia are bringing the acorn back into focus.

“Our grinding rocks are all over the state of California. Our creation stories start here, we are created here. We believe our rocks are alive,” Alicia told us.

“Gow Gei”
05/2021
On Short Cuts, BBC Radio 4
Featuring Jess Ho, Denny and Ophelia
Co-produced by Jess Ho and Michelle Macklem,
Edited by Eleanor McDowall

Jess’s Dad has always told her that she have the palate of an old man because she loves bitter flavours, and old-school, traditional Cantoense dishes. As long as she can remember, Jess loved this herbal soup her dad made for her as a kid. Because her parents didn't know how to translate gow gei into English, she grew up calling it 'leaf soup’. Her Dad is extremely protective of the leaves used to make the soup, and his elusive tactics have left her searching for the truth behind the recipe.

You’ll hear from Jess Ho’s parents, Denny and Ophelia, and of course, Jess as they head out to the garden to try and find some answers. Jess translates her parents’ conversational Cantonese into English.

“The Acorn: A Love Story”
02/2021
On Outside/ In, NPR
Featuring Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino
Edited by Justine Paradis
Co-produced by Michelle Macklem, Zoe Tennant, Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino

In the early 1900s, an Ohlone woman named Isabel Meadows was recorded describing her longing to eat acorn bread again. She detailed the bread’s flavor; the jelly-like texture; the crispy edges; the people who made it. And she talked about the bread’s place in the creation story of her tribe. A century later, a young Ohlone man named Louis Trevino came across the recordings and recognized Meadows as an ancestor from his community. Today, Trevino and his Ohlone partner, Vincent Medina, are on a journey to bring acorn bread, and the language and traditions connected to it, back to the Ohlone people.

The Acorn: An Ohlone Love Story is a documentary about Ohlone food, language, and history. But, ultimately, it is a story about Ohlone strength and homeland, the landscape that stretches from the Bay Area of California to Monterey and Big Sur. And at the heart of this story are acorns.

“There Is Space For You Here [Remember]”
For Wheeler Centre’s Signal Boost 2021
Featuring Lia Stark
Mixing help from Atticus Bastow
Special thanks to Maddy Macquine for commissioning

Crafted entirely from fragments of discarded words, mouth sounds and breaths, There Is Space For You Here [Remember] explores the spaces we dispose of in the editing process. All sounds are rooted in land, even when we try and remove that context through studios and closets and duvets, our soundscapes and field recordings and voiceovers are complicit in the act of colonisation, in the process of capturing and taking. I’m interested in ways we can recognize this and have more conversations about audio recording and the politics of land and voice. In making this piece, I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land. I recorded this audio on the lands of the Bunurong Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation. I pay respect to their Elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge that Aboriginal Australians have one of the oldest storytelling cultures and ties to land in the world. It was stolen by white settlers and the struggles for decolonization of this land continue. It always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

For a while I’ve been interested in working with the sounds we edit out in the process of making podcasts , the clicks and pops. Deleted words. Erased breaths. So I made a piece, a bit of a song if you will, all from bits of space that had been thrown away during a particular recording session. I’ve been questioning what makes a voice ‘listenable’ and how to subvert the process of ‘cleaning and polishing’, using those extraneous bits to make something completely new, sparkly and fun.