Piebird Farm Sanctuary

Vegan Farm Sanctuary

About Piebird Farm Sanctuary

Piebird is an independent farm sanctuary and vegan education hub in Nipissing, Ontario. Since 2005, our mission is to inspire change in human attitudes towards other animals and inspire action to make the world a better place for all.

We aim to help bring about the revolutionary shift in social consciousness to transform a culture of violence and oppression to one of nonviolence and liberation.

Outside of the spheres of animal rights, both Sherry and Yan steer the sanctuary in engaging with other intersecting circles of justice and liberation. We recognize that many entanglements of oppression and liberation are related.

With the sanctuary as our heart, we use that perspective of being-of-service to guide our outreach: creative activism workshops, community organizing and mobilizing, vegan education via cooking workshops, food sovereignty (veganic gardening education and a heirloom seed provider).

We believe in a world where all individuals of all species can flourish, free from exploitation.

As a sanctuary, our efforts should always foster escalating freedoms. We consider the ever-maturing practice of liberation to be an essential part of what it means for a sanctuary to be a sanctuary. There is always room for furtherance and growth when we are trying to uplift others. So from efforts in restoration of respect and the sustentation of love, we rise to take this push for justice to fresh altitudes, always.

This substantiates itself these days by our focus of working to culturally communicate the personhood of all animals. Come participate in sanctuary and learn from the animal-persons here who call this interspecies community their home.

What is a Farm Sanctuary?

Sanctuary is an act of revolutionary hope.

We provide a loving home to animal-persons who have previously been exploited as “farmed animals”. Here in sanctuary, individuals are uplifted into liberation, celebrated for who they are and not used for product or exploited for their bodies. To us, sanctuary is a safe place for expression of peace, ideas of justice and actions of equality for all beings.

Photos?

Over these last 14 years of sanctuary, we’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with the dangers of the human gaze in the use of photography to represent animal-persons. In our visual culture, rarely are animal-persons presented with dignity. They are routinely represented as comedy, perpetual victims, or simply fetishized as objects (think of the internet’s obsession for “cute goat pics”). This representation contributes to their invisibleness rather than uplifting the identity of individuals.

As a sanctuary we have tried for several years to visually represent the friends who live here with integrity and dignity (like the sample pics below), but it no longer feels appropriate for us to contribute to the unequal relationship between the viewed and the viewer.

Going forward, we are exploring the solution of no longer taking photos of the animal-persons who live here in sanctuary, and no longer posting existing images to social media. We have discussed more perspective about this conclusion in some recent speaking engagements and if your group is interested, please get in touch. We’re looking forward to find more meaningful ways to uplift the friends who live here.