BRATTLEBORO — Just in time for annual harvest celebrations, the Windham World Affairs Council will present on Sunday, Nov. 15, from 4 to 5:30 p.m., a Zoom talk by Dr. Tamara Stenn, “Indigenous sustainability, regeneration, and hope: Harvesting Bolivia's Royal quinoa.”
The presentation addresses the Fulbright work of Stenn, a Landmark College professor who has been a resident of Brattleboro for over 20 years. She travels frequently to Bolivia, which she considers her second home.
Stenn will take participants for a journey to Bolivia, sharing images of the birthplace of quinoa along the country's vast salt flats, which are ringed by volcanoes and infused with the cosmology of the region's indigenous peoples. There rare and ancient varieties of Royal Quinoa grow, including a 100-year-old, hand-planted variety considered sacred by its indigenous producers.
Stenn first traveled to Bolivia as a Peace Corps Volunteer in 1996 and, after consequent return visits, served as a Fulbright scholar in the country in 2015.
Her talk will address some ways in which she has found compatibilities in conflicting world views, concluding with an examination of new opportunities, such as her own development of a cooperatively-owned enterprise between Bolivia's royal quinoa growers and U.S. scholars.