Who are we?
Emma has been practicing ancestral skills for over 7 years and has a deep love of sharing the crafting and creative aspects of rewilding. Spending much of her 20's living a simple nomadic life camping and travelling the east coast of Australia. Her journey very much started with learning about foraging for wild edible weeds and bush tucker which then led her organically to start exploring natural basketry and fire by friction through the knowledge cultivated about her local ecology.
She began mentoring at Bluegum Bushcraft's Wild Village Family Camps in 2018 with Lee Trew and Gina Chick which exposed Emma to a community of like-minded folks and a culture of deep connection to nature. Then in 2020 Emma completed Nature Philosophy's year long Nature Connection Teacher Trainer program and began to run small workshops teaching foraging and basket weaving under the name of Arcadian Wildcraft. In 2021 she began her on-going collaboration with Wild Beings co-facilitating their bi-annual Women's Rewilding Gatherings which teach and empower women in many earth-living skills including: fire by friction, spoon carving, shelter building, wild foods and medicines, natural cordage, basketry, bone tools, wild awareness.
Since moving down to Tasmania in 2022 Emma has also established a career as a bushwalking guide, sharing her knowledge and passion for the island's unique flora and fauna with guests from Australia and across the world . In 2025 Emma and her partner Sarah travelled to the USA to participate in Way of the Earth School's 4 month immersion program. This experience deeply inspired and transformed Emma's approach to ancestral skills as becoming a vital opportunity to practice land stewardship and the importance of fulfilling our caretakership role as humans of this earth. It is this inspiration that birthed Wild Roots Tasmania.
Emma Sanders
Sarah Haley
Sarah grew up in rural Tasmania in a large outdoorsy family, and has always felt deeply connected to the Earth. Some of her earliest memories are of foraging for native pepper, chewing on sassafras leaves, and learning to identify different tree species in the temperate rainforest surrounding her childhood home.
Motivated by her comfort and aptitude in outdoor settings and her natural tendency towards leadership and nurturance Sarah completed her Certificate III in Outdoor Recreation at TasTAFE in 2016, and has been working as a freelance outdoor education instructor and commercial guide since then.
For Sarah her rewilding journey really began during a one year contract at Wollangarra Outdoor Education Centre in 2021. A voluntary position on a truly off grid 'pioneer style' homestead in rural Victoria. Here she was able to fully embrace simple living; cooking on fire, sleeping under tarps, tending the veggie garden, sheep, and poultry, relying on the land for the majority of her needs and living with a sense of grounded reciprocity. Here she was also introduced to some ancestral skills and crafts such as shelter building, fire by friction and spoon carving.
This experience rekindled her desire to live a simple, grounded, and deeply connected life of reciprocity with the earth, but it was meeting Emma in 2022 that really ignited her passion for ancestral skills. Since then Sarah has deep dived into the world of primitive skills, co-facilitating workshops with Emma, volunteering at every Wild Beings Women's Rewilding Gatherings she could attend, and becoming a regular mentor with Bluegum Bushcraft's Wild Village Family Camps.
In 2025 Sarah and Emma travelled to Maine USA, to participate in Way Of The Earth's 4 month ancestral skills immersion. A deeply enriching and inspiring program that focused not only on a huge breadth of physical skills and crafts, but also on inner skills -emotional intelligence, processing trauma, building community, conflict resolution. The immersion had a large emphasis on humanity's role as caretakers and stewards of the earth, informed by the understanding that "you can only heal the world as much as you heal yourself" and that every action we take is an opportunity to participate in earth stewardship. An experience that was fundamental in the development of Wild Roots.
Sarah believes than in coming home to the earth we come home to ourselves, and that fulfilling our role as caretakers of the land is reciprocally nourishing. She also understands the deeply healing, nourishing, and energising nature of engaging with ancestral skills, and is driven to share these skills and ways of life with the broader community. In so doing creating happier, more connected, and more resilient communities.