The Apricot Grove Episode 18: Homecoming
Oct 13, 2025
Kanisha Tiedeman, an Alaska Native birth worker, artist, and nature-based medicine practitioner from Cordova, reflects on place, memory, and ancestral practice. She describes Cordova’s coastal light and communal traditions. The conversation explores body-centered practices, reconnecting with land amid screens, and simple rituals like touch, humming, and listening to reclaim belonging.
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Childhood Sunlight Shaped Cordova Identity
- Kanisha Tiedeman's earliest place memory centers on sunlight and the unobstructed east-west light in Cordova, Alaska.
- She describes growing up in Old Town with clear horizons and an orientation to sunrise and sunset that shaped her sense of place.
Bodies And Plants Are Both Born Of Place
- Plants and bodies share being 'born of a place' so local ecology deeply shapes identity and health.
- Kenesha and hosts emphasize roots, seasonal rhythms, and that displacement disrupts those organism-place matches.
Cordova Is A Compass Of Waterways
- Kanisha describes Cordova as directional land with ocean, lake, and the Copper River nourishing salmon and migratory birds.
- She highlights short roads leading into nature, and moving between lake, ocean, and river as central to local life.