Kalamazoo

Kala Wilette

Kala is primarily a mother of two curious, fun-loving and endlessly giving young children. She teaches part-time at Western Michigan University and is a certified yoga instructor. As a researcher, Kala is endlessly fascinated by the phenomenology of space and place and environmental and indigenous justice. She has a passion for poetry and writing, rockhounding and exploring nature, large bodies of water, music, and learning.

What originally awakened Kala to the beauty of native plant gardening and ecological restoration was a seminar that discussed the association between the rehabilitation of native landscapes and healing the wounds caused by the colonization of indigenous peoples. She has come to view these small-scale ecological restoration efforts, that start in our own gardens and lawns, as individual acts to acknowledge and stand against the compounding, ongoing effects of white colonization and neo colonization of both indigenous populations and the Earth. Kala feels that restoring the intimate connection between humans and their natural environments, thereby resurrecting, supporting, and fostering biodiversity, is vital to the healing, wholeness, and survival of all beings.

Kala would like to acknowledge that Kalamazoo is located on lands historically occupied by Ojibwe, Odawa and Bodewadmi nations, also known as the Three Fires Confederacy.