My Story

My name is Justine Kiva Epstein (she/her and they/them pronouns) — I’m an organizer, facilitator, writer, naturalist, tracker, rites of passage guide, ad-hoc ritualist, council carrier, and bird enthusiast attending to the cry of the earth and people for ancestral healing, cultural renewal and systemic reimagination. 

I am descended from an expansive mix of peoples from the European continent, most prominently the British Isles, Ireland and Germany, as well as Lithuania and Russia of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. My ancestors crossed the Atlantic in many waves and due to many different circumstances over the past ~400 years. I am very much still in the process of uncovering the individual and collective stories of my people, both before their passages and after, and how their lives and legacies shape the world and my place within it. 

I live with an enduring sense of responsibility to uncover and acknowledge the truth of my ancestors’ lives and actions and the larger narratives and ideologies of racialized capitalism and dominance that they lived within, and in some cases built — and to do what I can with my time here on earth to reckon, grieve, heal and transform those legacies into something more humane, whole, and just.

My deep longing for justice and the dream of a world of balance and regeneration have guided me to ask what is mine to do in service to healing, liberation and repair for myself and my people? I have found that the most meaningful and impactful work I can do is to turn towards my ancestors and the money I have inherited in their names, and begin to uncover their stories, and release that unjustly accumulated wealth into the communities most directly harmed by its creation.

Over the past few years organizing with Resource Generation I have begun to redistribute my own inherited wealth and mobilize other people with wealth and class privilege to join me. I am currently redistributing 50% of what I have access to and am working to increase my giving in the coming years while organizing my family and extended family towards reparative action and right-relationship with money, land and power.

My Training

I am a three year graduate and current board member of Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education (WE), a community of practice focused on earth intimacy, co-liberation, embodiment and prayerful action where I was mentored in practices and pathways of relationship with self, community and the earth, ancestral lifeways (such as bird language, wild tending, fire by friction, permaculture design, wildlife tracking, storytelling, herbal medicine making, ancestor honoring), social justice education, The Work that Reconnects, group facilitation and council. 

I am also a trained rites of passage guide with the School of Lost Borders, a member of Beyond Boundaries and the Walking Water Collective, and I supported the founding of Education for Racial Equity. I also credit Resource Generation, a multiracial network of young people with wealth and class privilege organizing for racial and economic justice, as my political organizing and movement home. Thank you to the LONG list of people, organizations and communities who hold me accountable and continue to orient and humble and love me in this work.