I am honored and grateful to initiate our conversations through this E-Interview. What impressed me, among others, is her unflagging critique of academia. While keeping an academic position, even attempting to write as a feminist activist and philosopher is no small feat. It is a call, I must say. We feminist/matricentric/matriversal women need more philosophers. She is one whom I have discovered recently. I came into direct contact with Dr. Kaarina Kailo through the S/HE journal. Having contributed her essay, “Rebirthing Finnish Ancestral Mothers and Goddesses through Art and Research,” and her quilt work in the cover to S/HE Vol 1 No 2 in 2022, Dr. Kailo continues to interweave with The Mago Work. Recently she has given a back cover blurb in a new anthology, Celebrating Intercosmic Kinship of the Goddess (Mago Books, 2023). Also her research interest in the bear Goddess and sweat lodge overlaps with my research on Goma (Shaman Queen of Old Magoist Korea). With my respect and appreciation, I ask her the following questions.
Hwang Tell us about your career as a scholar and an educator concerning feminist/matricentric philosophy? What was your teaching experience for universities like?
Kailo After my first degree at the University of Helsinki, Finland, I continued my master’s studies at the University of Geneva, Switzerland (French, English, political science, Russian). I became a landed immigrant in Canada and taught at the universities of Toronto, Quebec University and Concordia, Simone de Beauvoir Institute. After completing a Ph.D. in comparative literature in Toronto, I worked in Northern Canada and finally in Montreal in women’s studies. My teaching covered a wide range of feminist topics from health, literature, Native studies, history, folklore, spirituality, ecofeminism to healing from gendered violence. Gradually I began to focus on matristic civilizations after first delving into the mysteries of the bear religion, mythology and sauna/sweatlodge research. Finding Gimbutas’ theories of Old Europe made me even more intent on combining the teaching and study of bear and goddess mythology.
Even though I had tenure, I accepted a position as the first women’s studies/multiculturalism professor at Oulu University, Finland in 1999 and moved back to Finland for personal reasons. The neoliberal politics affected women’s studies so my position was frozen and I ended up unemployed after a few more years as senior scholar of the Finnish Academy. This was a disappointment as I enjoyed teaching about goddess cultures and ecofeminism as well as woman-positive healing methods. Using the so-called midwife method and adopting the best Indigenous teaching philosophies, I sought to empower students to explore their own voice, wisdom traditions, foremothers and soul. I also encouraged students to get in touch with their dreams and the journals in the 101- level courses included visionwork and self-reflection, not just abstract theorizing and data collection. I learnt a lot from the Native North American students who taught about their very different methods and learning philosophies. I also mentored a Sami student from Finland and she ended up as a Native studies professor at the University of Toronto. Family and cultural roots seem to matter more to us women than to many men. Now I focus on publishing the research I carried out for 30 years. As a retired widow, I have time as never before…
Hwang Your research is multidisciplinary. How is your multidisciplinary approach reflected in your books and articles?
Kailo Gender studies in general tend to be inter- and multidisciplinary as wo/men’s experiences and philosophies do not automatically fit patriarchal ways of doing scientific work including its methodological biases, blind spots and assumptions/projections. I have applied Indigenous, ecofeminist, modern matriarchal and archeomythological approaches and methods to be able to foreground new perspectives and data beyond the limitations of patriarchal research that is often misogynous and quantitative rather than qualitative in spirit. Do we study women’s spiritual wisdom traditions, like menstrual or sauna rituals as part of archeology or religious studies, or something else? Religious studies still keep us out and voiceless, the bear ceremonial studies likewise exclude women. The traditional categories do violence to the topics, which have been shunned by patriarchal disciplines and their strict boundaries. Multidisciplinary approaches alone allow us to show how many topics overflow strict boundaries. I have had to jaywalk across disciplines to find “women’s ways of knowing” and living. I am very keen to delve more deeply into the myths of the Golden Woman, a great mother figure of Northern Europe of which little is written.
I have published hundreds of articles on the gift economy/imaginary, ecomythology, Bear and Great Mother Worship/mythology, the woman who married the bear, sauna and sweatlodge healing, Finno-Ugric ecomythology, modern matriarchal studies, healing from gendered violence, Jungian philosophy, on the gender impact of neoliberal austerity politics, ecofeminism, goddess mythology, Finno-Ugric mythology, gender and Kalevala, Indigenous worldview/theory, Northern women’s culture and literature, societies of peace (matricultures), Jungian and Freudian theories of creativity, anti-racist theory and practices, gender and future studies.
Hwang What is the main focus of your research? How did you make yourself an authority on your research topic?
Kailo It is a bit hard to focus on only one topic for so many themes are interconnected. For example, I studied the gender impact of neoliberal politics and the promise of the gift economy, showing how wo/men are the primary victims of patriarchal politics of multidimensional violence. My red thread has perhaps been healing wo/men from emotional, psychological, political, religious, spiritual and physical violence which explains why studying the sauna-sweatlodge connection was a logical consequence from my research on economic and cultural issues. Finally, having suffered enough violence myself, I found it empowering and scientifically important to study the bear religion/mythology where women were in an authoritative and uplifting role together with great mothers. The philosophy is also part of the maternal culture that is being ignored. Healing comes from being able to recover one’s “own” nonpatriarchal wisdom traditions and ecophilosophies in the name of collective and individual healing from patriarchy’s multiple dysfunctions and inequalities. Having lost my university position, it has not been easy to get “authority” as a scholar, but the International Network of Feminists For A Gift Economy has been my lifeline, where I have been able to share ideas and gifts of knowledge, get support, travel and interact with wonderful sisters from many backgrounds.
Hwang What types of art are you engaged in alongside your scholarship? What do your artworks mean to you?
Kailo I have experienced a few burnouts as professor due to the continuous dwindling of resources and increase of workloads. What healed me was the sauna and then the quilt work that got me back into my body rather than brain. It is well-known that working with one’s hands lowers blood pressure, with arts and crafts as a case in point. I found an inspiring group of like-minded handicrafts lovers with whom I have taken a course to complete my goddess art. I illustrate my books with these textile pieces also because the Finnish/Finno-Ugric female spirits and goddesses have hardly ever been depicted, some of them never. It feels very meaningful to help recover our lost traditions and figures that have been important to women but were transformed by patriarchy into male counterparts. I have also painted and gone to art school in my youth but textile work has become for me a real passion. Lydia Ruyle was my idol in this regard and encouraged me to trust myself and not worry that I was not “good enough.” I also seek to recover the best sauna practices and rituals which we have lost, but which seem to be coming back.
Hwang How do you envision your research/art oeuvre contributing to the world?
Kailo Wow. I feel too humble to think that my life’s work would get such wings. It is most therapeutic to try to have an impact on making the world ecologically and socially more sustainable and healthy, more just and less materialistic. Anguish about the state of the world compels me to act in some way, so I have been in party politics, in activist circles, peace groups and so on. However, at 72 I let myself also enjoy what I love the most—artistic and writing endeavors so I focus now on them while still spreading information about what heals and empowers us all. I plan to start a novel as that feels like the ultimate liberation – I call it writing my automythography. I hope it will be healing not just for myself but to the reader… time will show.
Hwang I have enjoyed our conversations. Thank you for taking time to answer my questions. It seems like you are embarking on a new phase in your life focusing on writing. I wish you the best and look forward to what will come out of it. Congratulations on your newly released book co-authored with Barbara Alice Mann, The Woman Who Married the Bear (Oxford University Press, 2023).
About: Kaarina Kailo, Ph.D.
Dr. Kaarina Kailo is Docent/Adj. professor of North American Studies and formerly first Chair and Full professor of Women’s Studies at Oulu University, Finland. She has also worked as senior scholar of the Finnish Academy. Kailo has held women’s studies positions at Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Canada (Interim Principal in l997) and worked at the University of Quebec, Chicoutimi and the University of Toronto. Her main fields are women’s, indigenous, cultural, literary studies and folklore; Her expertise includes ecofeminism, gift economies/imaginaries, gendered violence, Northern women and the Finnish Kalevala, Finno-Ugric mythology, Sami culture and racism, bear-woman ecomythology, neoliberal globalization and finally, Jungian and Freudian theories of creativity. She has published over a hundred articles and many books or co-edited anthologies. Main publications: Wo/men & Bears—the Gifts of Nature, Culture, Gender Revisited (2008), Introduction to Ecopsychology (in Finnish 2006 with Irma Heiskanen), Finnish Goddess Mythology and the Golden Woman, Climate Change, Earth-Based Indigenous Knowledge and the Gift (2019); Motherhood, Gift and Revolution. Honoring Genevieve Vaughan’s Life’s Work (with E. Shadmi, 2020). She is active in Finnish politics, a municipal councillor and self-made textile artist focused on Finno-Ugric deities. She was recently appointed on the Scientific Advisory Circle of Matrix: a Journal for Matricultural Studies (Ottawa). She has received three recognitions for her life work. Her current research focuses on Bear and Mother Worship, the sweatlodge/sauna and bear spirituality and traces of Finno-Ugric matriarchies. Homepage: www.kaarinakailo.info.