Colin explores the Cross-Cultural Synthesis of Contemporary Western Depth Psychology, Mythology and Traditional Southern African Cosmology.
Born in 1963 in Zimbabwe, Colin was raised in rural southeastern Botswana. Throughout his childhood, he traveled across Africa with his father, Alec Campbell, a cultural historian and archaeologist.
Their journeys to African sacred sites often granted them the privilege of visiting and staying with a diverse array of indigenous knowledge-keepers, some of whom Colin later apprenticed with.
In 1987, he graduated with distinction in Fine Arts from the University of Cape Town. Alongside his studies, he pursued courses in psychology and African musicology.
In 2000 Colin and his brother Niall were initiated as sangomas into the Fondo sangoma lineage. The following year, they founded the Ngonyama lineage and school for traditional healers in South Eastern Botswana. To date, the school has trained about 60 students. Ngonyama also runs public outreach programs, teaching wilderness-based knowledge systems to prominent politicians, environmentalists, and indigenous leaders from around the world.
Regularly facilitating group processes related to natural law, transformation, and cross-cultural cosmology, Colin has worked in diverse locations—from the Amazon Basin to Los Angeles, the sacred sites of Venda to the urban landscapes of Johannesburg, and from remote Ethiopia to the City of London.
His contributions extend to various organizations dedicated to environmental and cultural preservation. As a longtime consultant and associate of the Gaia Foundation, he has played a key role in developing experiential trainings in African cosmology. In 2022, he also co-founded Animate Earth with Rachel Fleming and Angarad Wynn.
Colin embodies a unique synthesis of traditional African wisdom and contemporary thought. His life's work continues to inspire individuals worldwide to reconnect with ancestral knowledge and the natural world, fostering a more ensouled and ecologically balanced existence.
Partners
EarthLore works with rural communities to accompany them on a journey to revive their traditional ecological knowledge and practices, seed diversity and farming and governance systems, essential for navigating climate change and defending their land against growing threats from mining and industrial exploitation. .
The Gaia Foundation is a small, international organisation with 35 years’ experience accompanying partners, communities and movements around the world to revive and protect bio-cultural diversity.
We are animist explorers, searching for the paths and practices that lead us back to our place in the more-than-human world. We are looking at ways our ancestors and our relations around the world find meaning, belonging and purpose that are relevant to us today.
SIAMA
Exploring Indigeneity, rooted in African cosmology.
The African Earth Jurisprudence Collective is a community of practice reviving Indigenous lifeways to enhance resilience.
PROTEUS INITIATIVE
Our work is an attempt to realise the consequences of true participation, of socio-ecological complexity, and of an emerging consciousness that holds freedom and responsibility as a generative polarity in the quest for wholeness.