Patricia Allison

Ancestor, Former Faculty

Patricia was a Gemini woman, born in the south Louisiana oil fields in the Year of the Rooster. She was apt to change her mind, have a superficial knowledge of many things and people, and likely to crow or sing at any moment!

She started to notice alternatives to her white privileged culture around age 30, when she became aware of animal rights, and thus agriculture, and thus environmental and social justice issues, and thus organic growing, and birthing, and schooling, and living. In 1990, she found an integration and synthesis of her diverse passions in Permaculture and began teaching Permaculture Design Courses in 1994. As she discovered that the basis of permaculture is creating sustainable culture, she became increasingly aware of the importance of self-governance, and began teaching Consensus Decision-making in 1998.

Meanwhile, in 1996, following a fifteen-year search, she put down roots at Earthaven Ecovillage which was the best decision she ever made! Living in a village which is a developing demonstration of cooperation and partnership sharpened her focus on the cultural underpinnings of sustainability – our everyday practices and how they relate to the rest of the natural world: how we care for our health, how we birth and raise our children, where we get our food and water from, how we derive economic sustenance, how we entertain ourselves, how we practice our spirituality, and how we govern ourselves.

Since 2007, cooperative living came into sharper focus for Patricia, as she helped to create the Medicine Wheel Collective neighborhood at Earthaven where she lived sustainability daily, sharing it with the other members, renters, work exchangers, and interns. Patricia taught permaculture and consensus at Earthaven and beyond until she passed in 2018. She is buried at the Medicine Wheel Collective at Earthaven Ecovillage.