“Those toxins don’t stay buried, especially if they’re embedded in scriptures. We have to grapple with these legacies in order to heal because those toxins keep coming back and we’re seeing that with what’s happening now in the United States. And so these are stories we need to know - we need to know our own story.”~ Max Dashu

Have you ever wondered... how did we get here? Where are all of the women in history books? What about the true stories that have been left out of our school curriculum and kept hidden for centuries? How about cultures and societies beyond the patriarchal paradigm... What about cultures where women were not only equal, but people were living in a non-hierarchical paradigm that actually valued the maternal and revered Mother Earth?

How different would our world be today if we still lived by these principles and ancient ways of knowing?

That’s what Max Dashu asked herself as a young woman in 1960s who dared to defy her history professors at Harvard and embark on a journey to get out of the patriarchal interpretation of women and dig up suppressed histories. What she found not only changed her own life, but provides a template for reclaiming the wisdom and vitality we seemingly lost long ago.

Max Dashu is a historian and one of the world’s leading experts on matriculture. in this episode, she shares various historical global patterns that she discovered are missing in modern times, the nature-based practices and ways of knowing that Max has seen throughout history and what Max foresees in our collective future (with her unique perspective as a historian) plus the prescient advice she gives us for how to move forward.

I love how Max weaves together mind-blowing cultural findings, historical facts, linguistic patterns, and art in her teachings... if you’re a nerd like me, get your notebooks ready and listen twice. You’re in for a treat :)

Max Dashu founded the Suppressed Histories Archives in 1970 to research and document global women's history, reflecting the full spectrum of the world's peoples. She has built a collection of 40,000 images, from which she has created 130 slideshows on female cultural heritages, including Indigenous traditions, and patterns of domination. She is internationally known for her expertise on ancient female iconography, matricultures and patriarchal systems, medicine women and shamans, witch hunts, and female spheres of power.