Mycelial Connections
"Underground, the structure of a fungus is formed by many filaments,
called hyphae, that grow together in a mycelium. Just one cell thick,
hyphae extend through the soil column in search of water
and nutrients."
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"Fungi, through their underground hyphae, [form] intimate relationships with almost every single plant species, hence enabling plants to survive and flourish."
(Hathaway 2022: 11, 33)
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Like the mycelial connections that foster flourishing amongst flora, fauna and funga; this page honours just some of the networks of connection and collaboration in my own work.
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The Matsutake Worlds Research Group is an experiment in collaboration. The team explores the more-than-human social worlds this mushroom engenders in Canada, the United States, Finland, China, and Japan. They study matsutake picking and the matsutake commodity chain, showing how diverse cultures and ecologies engage each other in the matsutake trade. The Matsutake Worlds Research Group is interested in matsutake cultures and ecologies as multispecies worlds where life continues in the midst of great disturbances.
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Click on the names below to find more work by members of the Matsutake Worlds Research Group.
Members of the Matsutake Worlds Research Group left to right: Tim Choy, Miyako Inoue, Leiba Faier, Shiho Satsuka, Anna Tsing, and Michael J. Hathaway
The Art & Fungi Project is a series of artistic projects led by Willoughby Arévalo and Isabelle Kirouac. These projects provide sensory and playful experiences in relation to fungi and how they shape and connect our world, growing the interconnections between communities, the land, and its more than human inhabitants.
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Willoughby, Isabelle and their daughter Uma are dear friends and collaborators.​
Willoughby Arevalo and Isabelle Kirouac
Saki Murotani is a motion graphics designer, animator and Illustrator who brings stories to life. Driven by her passion to create visually engaging art in motion she enjoys collaborating with other animators, designers, filmmakers, musicians, and artists. Her animated films have been screened at film festivals and also projected in live performances nationally and internationally. Her commercial work has been broadcast throughout Canada and featured online worldwide.
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Saki is a friend and collaborator. She created the beautiful artwork featured in What a Mushroom Lives For. Saki also designed the cover for the Russian translation of Environmental Winds.
Sara Dosa is an Oscar-nominated nonfiction filmmaker and producer whose work centers on the human relationship with more-than-human nature. Sara directed the Academy Award nominated "Fire of Love" (2022), about French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft.
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In 2015, Sara directed the Indie-Spirited Award nominated "The Last Season" a verité portrait of two Oregon veterans turned wild mushroom hunters. The film is in conversation with/draws mutual inspiration from the work of the Matsutake Worlds Research Group.
Mendel Skulski is a storyteller with the podcast Future Ecologies: a show produced on (and often about) unceded Indigenous territories across the Salish Sea. Trained in Industrial Design, and steeped in reverence for nature’s infinite, entangled beauty, Mendel opted to devote themself to a less material form of production — that of sounds and ideas. They apply a musical ethos to narrative composition, using soundscape as an indispensable layer of communication. Thematically, they seek to illuminate the assumptions that shape our eco-social relationships, so that we may each discover other ways of being a part of the natural world.
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Mendel is a friend and collaborator in the Vancouver mycological scene.
This project explores the hidden legacies of Indigenous transnational activism and diplomacy by examining two important trips taken by Indigenous Ainu delegates from Japan and First Nations delegates from British Columbia to China in the mid-1970s. The delegates were impressed with what they saw among China’s ethnic minorities, which inspired them to envision new kinds of activism when they returned home. There is little recognition that Indigenous peoples have travelled and explored the world, especially outside Europe. This project challenges stereotypes that Indigenous people are passive subjects of colonialism and global history-making.
Contributors and collaborators on the project include:
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Rick Colbourne, Cheyanne Brown Armstrong, Glen Coulthard, Michael J. Hathaway, Scott Harrison, Manuhuia Barcham, Aynur Kadir, Kate Henessey, Rudy Reimer, ann-elise lewallen, George Nicholas, Deanna Reder, Keziah Wallis, Regina Baeza Martinez, Kaori Arai, Ty Bryant, Quiton Huang, Yiwen Liu, Yuan Wei, Saki Murotani, Sayano Izu, Cynthia Cui, Jacquelyn Yu, and Nat Begg
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Pasang is a mother, anthropologist, researcher, educator from Pharak, southern part of Mount Everest region in Nepal. She is an Assistant Professor of Lifeways in Indigenous Asia at the University of British Columbia. Pasang uses ethnographic methods to study everyday concerns of Himalayan people in order to normalize our experiences and represent us as equal partners in decision-making spaces. She believes that our sustainability as a Sherpa people in the wake of climate change depends on keeping our songs and stories about people, places and things alive for the next generation. Her current research applies community-based approach to exploring the possibilities of collective survival on warming planet.
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Pasang is a friend and collaborator.
Aynur Kadir is an Indigenous Uyghur scholar, filmmaker and curator with a research focus on the documentation, conservation and revitalization of Indigenous cultures and languages. Her work bridges the gap between Indigenous studies in Canada and in Asia. Her research interests are in global indigeneity from the Uyghur in China to Coast Salish and Six Nations in Canada; transnational Indigenous diplomacy; and the safeguarding and revitalization of languages and cultural heritage through digital technology and collaborative initiatives.
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Aynur is a previous PhD student, now collaborator on various projects including Transnationally Indigenous.
Cheyanne Brown Armstrong (née Connell) (they/she) is a Queer Indigenous scholar and registered member of West Moberly First Nations (Dunne-Za Cree). They are a Doctoral Candidate in Socio-Cultural and Indigenous Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (UBC), UBC Public Scholar, and Canada Graduate Scholarship recipient. Currently, they are 'in the field' working on their PhD research project, which aims to explore how traditional language values are embedded within Dunne-Za and Cree identities, with a special focus on ancestral culture and spirit inheritance and gender. Their PhD research is inspired by their MA project, which focused on urban and diasporic Indigenous Ainu identity-making in transnational digital spaces, like Instagram and TikTok. They are a frequent collaborator on and advocate for Indigenous-Asian relations related projects and initiatives, along with decolonization efforts in academia. They are also an artist and their practice is largely informed by their research interests, which works to contribute to the increasing realm of contemporary Indigenous expression in digital and global spaces.
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Cheyanne was a previous Master's student, now PhD student of mine and collaborator on many projects.
Ty (he/him) is a member of We Wai Kai First Nation and a graduate student in anthropology at Simon Fraser University. Since having conceptualized the creation of Asian Indigenous Relations (AIR)in May 2024, he has served as Executive Director, stewarding the research team’s offline/online initiatives and relationalities. His current research is based on ongoing fieldwork with multiple generations of the Taiwanese diaspora in colonially called “vancouver, bc, canada” on the never ceded, traditional, and stolen territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. He is focusing on how community members are doubly reckoning with (and orienting) their roles and responsibilities towards Indigenous lands and life in “canada” and Taiwan.
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Ty is a current PhD student. Click on the link below to learn more about the organization he co-founded and co-directs, Asian Indigenous Relations.
Morgaine Lee is a filmmaker and recent MA anthropology graduate from Simon Fraser University. Her research and artistic interests dwell in the realms of interspecies relations and world-making, creative methods, and affect theory. For her MA research she worked with artists, mycologists, and mushroom-lovers to explore what draws people to fungal worlds. Morgaine's project lives in three forms, three baskets of mushrooms; a written thesis ““This does not render the world gentle” An Anthropological Foray into The Worlds of Art and Mushrooms,” a short experimental documentary do i know you mushroom?, and an art installation/film screening extravaganza of mushroom art that took place in November 2024.
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Morgaine is a previous MA and BA honours student and collaborator in fungal-research endeavours. Work she created for classes I taught, including ANTHROPO a story about fungi in four parts (2019) can be found at the link below.