Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
2025 Annual Eco Hero Award
Honoring Bill & Athena Steen & Roxanne Swentzell
Natural Building Pioneers
Sunday, March 23, 6:30-9pm, 2025
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network celebrates its 5th Annual Eco Hero Award, a community event that honors those making significant and positive change in the world for more than 30 years. This time we honor Natural Building pioneers, Bill & Athena Steen, & Roxanne Swentzell, who will join us in person on Sunday, March 23, 2025. All three hail from the American Southwest, they are natural builders, authors and acclaimed artists, each one devoted to the beauty of the land, with a commitment to building with care of the earth as a priority.
How we continue to build will affect the chances of survival for our grandchildren & future generations. Modern buildings are often toxic to both the builders & their inhabitants, with many becoming chemically sensitive to products used. Natural building, with materials like clay, straw, wood & stone are not only non-toxic, they are life enhancing, and if designed correctly, conserve heat & energy. Natural building has joined the modern age with beautiful and functional structures, that are also less likely to burn in wildfires.
Please join us for a very special evening with Bill, Athena & Roxanne in person, with time for conversation and questions about Natural Building. What is it? Why did it become their passion & lifework? How is it different from Green Building? What do they see as the future of natural building, especially for young people looking for a meaningful lifepath & career.
Bill & Athena Steen are founders of the Canelo Project in Elgin, Arizona, defining their priorities as “sustainability and cross cultural relations”. After building their first straw bale home for their family in the late 1980’s, they began conducting straw bale workshops in southern Arizona and Mexico. They were later invited to teach workshops around the world, sharing their skill and knowledge on how to build sustainably and affordably, using only earth, clay, sand & straw, materials all found easily in nature.
Athena’s heritage inspired her, growing up surrounded by clay artists & builders on the Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico. Bill also grew up in the southwest, becoming an author and professional photographer keen to capture the beauty of the land, and in time, the numerous projects they were creating. Together they coauthored many natural building books including The Straw Bale House; Beautiful Straw Bale; The Small Straw Bale House, and The Canelo Project. A family affair, their sons Kalin & Benito, document the Canelo Project with their video series, the Nito Project.
Roxanne Swentzell is a world renowned sculptor, ceramic artist, indigenous food activist, and co-founder of the Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute. In 1986 Roxanne returned with her two small children to live on the Santa Clara Pueblo in the high desert of New Mexico, building an adobe house where the family together created a lush food forest within its enclosed earthen walls. New to permaculture in those early days, Roxanne adopted some of its best design techniques that were culturally appropriate.
Later with other community members she embarked on an experimental journey of eating only foods available to their ancestors before the Spanish arrived in 1540. This experiment led to a marked decrease in diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure with those participating. To complement the experiment Roxanne coauthored The Pueblo Food Experience Cookbook: Whole Food of Our Ancestors. Today the Flowering Tree Institute has eight sites, including a native seed bank, and intern residences and farms where workshops are held. Roxanne’s artwork is displayed in museums and galleries worldwide, and the Roxanne Swentzell Tower Gallery, located at the Pojoaque Pueblo Cultural Center north of Santa Fe.
The Santa Barbara Permaculture Network Eco Hero Award honors those individuals who have committed themselves to work in service of the planet and its inhabitants for more than thirty years, with actual solutions and concrete ways forward that benefit many, often on a global scale. We encourage the next generation to come and participate in a robust Q&A, a part of every Eco Hero event, learn from our Eco Heroes, who have so much to share.
Past recipients of the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network Eco Hero Award include John D. Liu; Paul Stamets & Louie Schwartzberg; John & Nancy Jack Todd, & Albert Bates. We are honored to have Bill & Athena Steen, and Roxanne Swentzell as the recipients for the 2025 Eco Hero Award. Buena Onda Empanada buffet reception follows in the Lobero Courtyard, all ticket holders welcome.
A Community Event Hosted by Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
www.sbpermaculture.org
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