00:00:13.260To make a donation, visit forthewild.world slash donate or find us on Patreon.
00:00:19.240If you'd like to support us in other ways, consider sharing our episodes through social
00:00:23.860media or leaving us a review wherever you listen to the podcast.
00:00:30.000Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today I'm speaking with
00:00:42.000Enrique Salmon. The knowledge will re-emerge when it needs to re-emerge through this natural
00:00:49.160process. Enrique Salmon is Ramuri. He is head of the American Indian Studies program at Cal
00:00:57.740State University, East Bay. He holds a PhD in anthropology from Arizona State University
00:01:03.880and has published many articles on indigenous ethnobotany, agriculture, nutrition, and traditional
00:01:10.740ecological knowledge. He is the author of Eating the Landscape, American Indian Stories of Food
00:01:17.180Identity and Resilience, and Iwikara. Hello Enrique, welcome to For the Wild. So lovely
00:01:27.220to be speaking with you today. Good morning. It's nice to be here with you. Yeah, it is. It is a
00:01:33.940good morning. It's sunny here at Cougar Mountain and the wood stove is crackling, keeping me toasty
00:01:40.280in this winter, this dry but chilly winter. And yeah, I'm really looking forward to speaking with
00:01:49.000you about concentricity. And I'd love to give listeners some background on the idea of
00:01:56.400concentricity as it's an idea that courses through much of your work. And so how is
00:02:03.460concentricity articulated in our lives? It's really about getting, helping people to see how
00:02:15.400we as as humans are directly related to all the natural world around us to the plants the animals
00:02:26.540even the stones and so on that they are our direct relatives and if we can get more of us to start to
00:02:39.380recognize that reality, then it can have a huge impact on the practices and the choices we make
00:02:46.980with regards to our interactions with the natural world and our relationship building that we can do
00:02:55.580with this larger community. In concentric ecology, indigenous perceptions of the human nature
00:03:05.280relationship, you write, quote, it's an awareness that life in any environment is viable only when
00:03:12.820humans view the life surrounding them as kin. The kin or relatives include all the natural
00:03:19.040elements of an ecosystem. Indigenous people are affected by and in turn affect the life around1.00
00:03:26.180them. The interactions that result from this kin-centric ecology enhance and preserve the
00:03:32.440ecosystem. Without human recognition of their role in the complexities of life in a place,
00:03:39.140the life suffers and loses its sustainability. And I think about how many feel that the teachings
00:03:47.440of ecology remain mired in the paradigms of environmentalists and scientists who have
00:03:53.440historically disavowed the human as a way to sanitize and exalt their respective fields.
00:04:00.520And so I'm curious to hear what you'd say to those who are adamant that the Earth, especially now, would be better off without humans having any role in it.
00:04:11.160Well, unfortunately, I think they would be sadly mistaken. To borrow terminology from ecology, I and other Native researchers and scholars like myself, we view humans as keystone species in environments all around the world.
00:04:36.400meaning that like sawato in the sonoran desert those tall comular cactus that grow up being 40
00:04:44.380to 50 feet tall if those cacti were removed from the sonoran desert it would have a detrimental
00:04:50.760effect on the entire ecosystem that's all important a role that those cactuses play
00:04:58.360in that desert that makes them keystone species well humans are this have been the same way
00:05:06.200in ecosystems around the world and here in north america when europeans first showed up
00:05:13.780they perceived this quote-unquote pristine landscape but in reality what they were looking at
00:05:22.660was this carefully managed garden that spread across an entire continent and it was a garden
00:05:31.100managed by native peoples there wasn't hardly there was hardly any place in north american
00:05:38.660continent in this case that was not untouched by human hands you know only the highest mountain
00:05:46.340peaks and maybe you know a few areas of say death valley um where there not really much going on
00:05:54.360in regards to native peoples interacting with and sustainably managing these landscapes.
00:06:02.280And we can demonstrate this, I guess, again, to borrow from, you know,
00:06:09.000this ecological terminology on an empirical scale and using empirical evidence when,
00:06:16.880for example, in the desert, the Mojave Desert in Southern California,
00:06:22.600I was part of a meeting years and years ago with Park Service folks and some Paiute and Chemuewe people there, and the Park Service people were trying to explain to the Native folks why it was important to leave some of the landscape, the desert landscape, untouched so that it can regenerate itself.
00:06:46.900and I'll never forget this elder woman who got angry with the park service people and telling
00:06:55.040them you're just letting the desert go to trash you're destroying the desert she said you're
00:07:03.480making it a waste and she went on to explain how by allowing native peoples in this case of the
00:07:11.580mojave desert to come and to collect the pods from mesquite trees that it had a positive effect on
00:07:20.100the biodiversity of the landscape because the pruning of the trees through the collection of
00:07:25.480the pods was good for the people because there was an important part of their food source
00:07:30.400but also by collecting the the pods it actually caused the mesquite trees to grow more pods and
00:07:41.020And part of the process of collecting was to have controlled burns, to do some pruning and coppicing below the mesquite groves.
00:07:50.460And that created more space for small mammals to move in the mesquite groves.
00:07:58.640And it decreased competition for the mesquite trees and other useful herbaceous plants.
00:08:04.900And so, in other words, when Native peoples in this situation were using the desert in a sustainable way, it actually creates more diversity, not just for the people, but it's a positive thing for the animals, the insects, and the plants.
00:08:21.440thank you for sharing that story i was imagining the mesquite pods and yeah just that sacred
00:08:32.200relationship that we've been conditioned out of some of us beaten out of and yeah it's
00:08:42.120feels so important to speak about this reconnection and i understand that this notion of
00:08:50.100concentric ecology was something that you created in order to address the lack of indigenous
00:08:55.800perspective in Western paradigm. And I do think it's interesting how captivated and attached
00:09:02.760Westerners have become to certain concepts like ecology and cosmology, but it feels as if many
00:09:10.080get stuck in the abstract cultural realm. So what are the challenges of cross-cultural approaches
00:09:16.980to knowledge? I think the biggest challenge is our languages and the meanings that we connect
00:09:26.640to certain words. You know, for example, I have difficulty with this notion, this concept of
00:09:36.520traditional ecological knowledge. It's been around for a few decades, but because of this,
00:09:44.960The words traditional and ecological, it reframes Native knowledge automatically, when we use this phrase, into a Western model of describing and trying to interpret how Indigenous peoples view our relationship to our landscapes.
00:10:06.040ecology is as you know your listeners will know is just you know disciplinary study
00:10:13.960interactions in particular habitats and ecosystems and so on but it's a western frame
00:10:22.300it's a western frame that detaches the observer from what is being observed and so it becomes
00:10:30.480this objectified approach to the natural world as if it's a thing and for native peoples those of us
00:10:39.580who are you know we still are still see ourselves as practicing our ancestral connections relationships
00:10:46.760to the natural world it is not just a thing it's a being it's a relative it's a part of us we are
00:10:55.100part of it um i remember standing on the hopi mesas one day during a basket dance and one of the
00:11:04.280my friends there was looking was with me we're watching these rain these these um pods of rain
00:11:12.240coming across the colorado plateau coming from the south where flagstaff is the san francisco
00:11:18.740peaks over there and you can see these pods of rains just moving across the desert and i remember
00:11:23.920him saying you know we're looking at ourselves that rain is us we are that rain and this is an
00:11:33.240exact way of how native peoples around the world perceive our relationship to these landscapes
00:11:41.720around us it's not something that can be objectified and so when i come back to some of
00:11:47.780This language, traditional ecological knowledge, becomes this static, objectified way of trying to describe this very complex and sophisticated relationship that indigenous people have.
00:12:05.000I do a lot of work with American Indian foodways and agriculture, and there's been this newer idea of what's known as regenerative agriculture.
00:12:17.800But again, it's this Western frame of trying to explain how Indigenous people grow food and, again, objectifies the practice when in reality for Native peoples it is something that we do that reemerges from a millennia of connecting ourselves.
00:12:47.800to the landscape through our food it is a identity and that that traces its origins
00:12:57.880to our clan histories and i can just keep going on that it's not something that can just be
00:13:04.940described in one way it's several things it's this overlapping complex of identity and worldview
00:13:14.620and spiritual connections and these we're to keep coming back to this relationship
00:13:20.840that implies a responsibility that we have to the natural world because it is so directly related to
00:13:31.780us yeah this isn't the first time that i've heard critique on terms like traditional ecological
00:13:41.920knowledge and regenerative agriculture, I feel like this challenge against these words that
00:13:50.960have, you know, now been co-opted and used by a lot of non-Indigenous people to
00:13:58.900get funding or attract attention. And yeah, it's very problematic. And TEK or traditional
00:14:08.480ecological knowledge, have become very popular in the lexicon of environmentalism. And it often
00:14:13.980feels as if everyone needs to publicly translate their understanding of these concepts for show.
00:14:20.800But yeah, I know you've urged caution at the practice of transforming knowledge and taking
00:14:26.640it out of context for the sake of preservation. So why is it that you think dominant society has
00:14:33.000become so obsessed with memory banking? And what advice would you offer on moving into a
00:14:38.760concentric practice of practicing living knowledge? I think there is this effort to
00:14:47.400create these memory banks, partly because we're, as a larger society, are observing1.00
00:14:56.080We're observing the disappearance of libraries of knowledge as a result of language disappearing around the world among Native peoples.0.93
00:15:09.760And then the elders disappearing, who are the ones who have been holding on to the last vestiges of these libraries.0.95
00:15:20.740This pandemic has sped up this process, unfortunately.
00:15:24.600I was very saddened recently watching an interview with a younger Navajo woman on the reservation explaining how the pandemic has disproportionately hit the elderly.
00:15:38.660And she was describing how every time one of these elders dies, all that knowledge goes with them.
00:15:46.320And this is just increasing exponentially around the world.
00:15:50.300And so I can understand people wanting to develop these memory banks to try to hang on to some of this knowledge.0.96
00:15:59.260Unfortunately, again, from an indigenous perspective, it in a lot of ways kills the knowledge when we create memory banks.
00:16:11.800This kind of knowledge that we're talking about is alive.
00:16:19.460It has a spirit, it has a breath that we share with it, like we share the same breath with all the natural world around us.
00:16:28.840And it is not something that can be stored and pickled like when we pickle chili peppers or cucumbers and that sort of thing.
00:16:40.160And then we put it on a shelf to look at and use later on.
00:16:43.780And this is the kind of knowledge that NADS needs to be kept alive through language and through practice, through actually living it.
00:16:55.080I'll never forget when I used to teach in Ethnobotany Field School, and my students and I were visiting a Hopi elder in between 3rd and 2nd Mesa near a community called Kakotsmovi.
00:17:08.300and my students were hoeing his field of weeds and and then he would you know stop there now
00:17:18.200and explain uh some you know important ecological Hopi knowledge to my students and it was a great
00:17:25.700exchange but I remember at one point one of the students asked the elder why don't you just
00:17:31.040record what you know because he was the last member of his clan he was explaining how when
00:17:39.700he passes away all his knowledge will go with him because he doesn't have any female children
00:17:46.760the Hopi like a lot of native communities are matrilineal societies and so knowledge passes
00:17:53.000down through the female side the matrilineal side and so the students were concerned and he said
00:18:00.160When I leave, this knowledge leaves with me because that is just the way it has to be.0.79
00:19:43.040I'd like to now ask about what a concentric approach to something like invasive and native
00:19:58.180species looks like. Data suggests that, quote, at least 25% and perhaps as much as 85% of Earth's
00:20:06.280estimated 8.7 million species are already shifting ranges in response to climate change,
00:20:13.740end quote. And these sort of migrations are complex because on the one hand, invasive species
00:20:21.420have been flagged as a key driver of Earth's biodiversity crisis. But I also hear perhaps a
00:20:27.420more concentric approach would view this change as a natural migration. Ken are doing what they
00:20:34.600have to do. So I'd like to ask your thoughts on this and how you think concentricity needs to be
00:20:42.100applied to traditional ideas about native and invasive species and how we define desirable
00:20:48.320environments. You kind of answered the question already. Remember that I like to use this example
00:20:58.260here again in North America, where American Indians have been, if we take the most conservative
00:21:08.320estimates of the populations here in North America of indigenous peoples, and how long
00:21:17.920we've been here, some anthropologists suggest 20,000 years. I think it's a lot longer. I think
00:21:25.660we've been here for at least 40,000, maybe even 100,000 years, even if we assume that we weren't
00:21:32.280always here, as our legends and our cultural histories describe. But even if we take the
00:21:38.980most conservative estimate of 20,000 years, that means that Native peoples have been observing and
00:21:45.300interacting this continent and its natural workings for 20,000 years. European biologists
00:21:55.420and so on have only been looking seriously at north america for maybe 200 years
00:22:03.540that's quite a difference in the degree of understanding of the natural world in north
00:22:12.760america and south america that native peoples have compared to that of european science
00:22:19.060And so therefore, our stories, our cultural histories, our songs, our ceremony, our rituals, these are all reflections of this deep understanding of these complex workings that happen in ecosystems.
00:22:40.080And part of that understanding is change, that things are a constant flux, and our ceremonies recognize it, our songs, our stories recognize these complex changes.1.00
00:22:54.920This is the reason why we have most Native peoples around the world tell trickster stories.0.83
00:23:04.380It's this recognition of that gray part of the universe, that part of the universe that we don't quite understand, but we know is there.1.00
00:24:39.180And so it's just this linguistic, and then as a result, this metaphorical and worldview approach towards accepting and adapting to these new things that have entered into our lives.
00:24:54.620wow that was so beautiful and relieving i've been really sitting with these western
00:25:03.960thinking back to language and thinking about words like apocalypse and collapse and
00:25:09.020anthropocene and how i've heard a lot of my indigenous friends and allies say like
00:25:17.320you know we've been through apocalypse we've been through collapse before this is because you know
00:25:23.800So many people are talking about that with climate collapse and just where the world's going at this point and the sixth mass extinction and the way you're bringing up Trickster and speaking to these huge shifts in the way that you are is, yeah, it just feels really potent.
00:25:41.120And in your recent book, Iwigara, you write, quote, through trickster, we learn to embrace
00:25:50.900Colorblindness is assumed as well as every variation of gender.
00:25:55.460Therefore, trickster expands the indigenous consciousness by freeing all constraints and
00:26:00.980creating an opening and threshold for flexibility and change.
00:26:04.540Through this kind of consciousness, culture and society are in a better frame for resilient
00:26:10.720thinking and adaptation, end quote. Oh, yeah, I just, I really think about trickster energy in
00:26:17.980terms of ushering us through moments of collapse and apocalypse, because it feels as if many are
00:26:24.920becoming snarled in the polarity of our projected futures. So I just, I would love if you could
00:26:31.120elaborate a bit more on trickster in terms of resilient thinking and adaptation.
00:26:35.460yeah um i often sign my emails to my colleagues in my department
00:26:43.060the trickster you know trickster or if we were to focus on coyote as a trickster figure
00:26:53.600coyote would never get his coffee from a starbucks coyote would never shop at a walmart
00:27:01.960coyote probably wouldn't even have cable tv or direct tv um coyote does not want to be stuck
00:27:09.340in this one polarized perception of of itself and i intentionally used the word it because coyote
00:27:19.880does not have a specific gender um coyote is just coyote or trickster is just trickster and
00:27:27.360And it's this, you lead me to another approach I've taken to my work.
00:27:33.840You know, all my work as an Indigenous scholar has been about trying to help non-Native peoples better understand an Indigenous approach to everything, you know, not just the natural world.
00:27:49.880And a few years ago, I adopted this approach to studying natural systems through what's known as resilience theory.
00:28:04.300And in short, it's this idea that systems, any kind of system that is resilient, is resilient only because it was able to withstand and adapt to and learn from and reshape itself as a result of shocks to its systems.
00:28:27.420and in the case of native peoples the shock would be european contact and a lot of native
00:28:36.480communities resisted and unfortunately to their own detriment resisted and went extinct
00:28:44.260and some communities like mine we figured out quickly how to absorb to and adapt and learn from
00:28:55.360these new things that came as a result of contact and it's those indigenous communities that are
00:29:02.080still resilient that it really that adopted the trickster approach to everything to recognizing0.98
00:29:10.440that change is constant and that are we have to allow our inner tricksters to emerge to come to
00:29:19.940the surface so that we can survive and we can learn from and adapt to these these changes and
00:29:26.820these new ways of doing things we therefore you know increased the emergence of tricksters in
00:29:36.620our ceremonies to remind people about constant change you know we see more um koshari the clown
00:29:44.900figures at pueblo dances you see more of the the gray one in the gone spirit mountain spirit
00:29:53.640dances with the western apache and my people were seeing more of the trickster busco dancers
00:30:01.520this is um in our our spring ceremony our planting ceremonies and so this is for we're
00:30:09.620telling the rest of our society we have to continue to recognize this increasing and
00:30:19.240speeding up of change so that we can survive. We are, as Native peoples, we're like juniper trees
00:30:27.400in the southwest. Juniper trees aren't that tall. They're sometimes kind of scraggly looking on the
00:30:34.360surface but the roots grow very deep and spread out and i'll never forget an elder at tells
00:30:43.080probably telling me this story about how um european people you know americans for the most
00:30:51.120part are like aspen trees they're tall and beautiful and showy and it's been a you know
00:30:58.700in the fall but their roots are really shallow and next big wind that comes along there was a
00:31:06.000lot of those aspen trees will fall over but us native peoples we're the junipers when the big
00:31:12.280wind comes we're still going to be here afterwards wow i was getting lost in the metaphors of the
00:31:19.240trees i was right there with those trees and yeah i'd like to ask about exploring concentricity in
00:31:30.140places that the western paradigm has unequivocally denied as being a part of nature or the wild
00:31:37.640so how can we work to disrupt the nature city binary and for listeners how can one begin to
00:31:46.080incorporate kin-centric approaches amongst the wealth of natural ecosystems in urban areas.
00:31:54.700You remind me of another chapter I wrote in another book. The book was about wildness.
00:32:03.320And my chapter was about how in my language and in most indigenous languages, there's no word for
00:32:10.620wild and this is because euro americans the language again coming back to language you know
00:32:18.380important it is perpetuates this idea of the separation between us as humans and everything
00:32:28.380else and so we have this category of wild and wilderness places that we're not supposed to
00:32:39.220to visit or if we do we leave only you know footprints this notion of wilderness something
00:32:46.400that is totally separate um from us as as modern day human beings that we are the things that are
00:32:56.040wild or are untamed that they're they're out of control and so on and so there's this sort of
00:33:03.900negative connotation with these notions of wild and wilderness and i think it expands into
00:33:10.980notions of the of nature and increases this urban versus non-urban sort of schism
00:33:21.480and when in you know for indigenous peoples if there's no word for wild no word for wilderness
00:33:28.080then there's no category there's no no mental space for seeing a such a division even for
00:33:37.180indigenous peoples living in an urban environment we still recognize that everything around us is a
00:33:46.180part of the natural process even the urban stuff it's we're still directly related to it it is
00:33:53.360still a part of us we are a part of it and even if we want to hang on a little bit to this this
00:34:03.260urban versus non-urban division we can still find and celebrate the the natural that is around us
00:34:15.600in this urban environment we can still celebrate the natural process of climate
00:34:23.220we can still see insects and birds and you know listen to birds and pay attention to
00:34:31.300the stories that they're giving to us we can still even as my mother she got older and living in this0.53
00:34:39.880little apartment sort of complex as assisted living place she still found ways to grow her
00:34:47.020favorite little herbs and chili peppers and so on outside of her front door and celebrated those
00:34:52.720little tiny connections to to nature and never forgot the importance of singing songs to these
00:35:00.820things and would go out even at night and sing songs to the stars because even in urban situation
00:35:06.660we can still see the stars up there our relatives in the sky and we can still sing songs to them
00:35:12.460and it's just a it's a mental game i think i invite urban dwellers to play to not focus so
00:35:24.180much on the separation between the urban environment and the so-called natural world
00:35:32.580but to celebrate what is still there with us and to invite more of it to join us in places like the
00:35:42.060Bay Area, like Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and to find ways to work to bring in more
00:35:51.380of the so-called natural world into these spaces.
00:35:57.780We're seeing this happening more and more with, I guess it would be sustainable architecture.
00:36:04.220People wanted to create rooftop gardens to create more green spaces in urban areas.
00:36:12.060you know we can we can work to do more of that yeah I feel so connected to what you're saying
00:36:20.600in terms of the frame of mind of being connected or disconnected or a part of nature or separate
00:36:27.540from nature and yeah to play to get into our mental games because my gosh our minds are so
00:36:35.960complex but also i think our our needs and our desires are actually quite simple but
00:36:42.280somehow this complex web in our heads make things so hard and yeah i i really appreciate that
00:36:50.780invitation and can i can i speak to that please because i want to add to that the the importance
00:36:58.400of story you know we as human beings we wake up to our stories every day and we live our stories
00:37:10.640every day sometimes there's several stories we're living every day you know in in in this
00:37:16.220european western society and we think of stories as like you know you know the beauty and the beast
00:37:24.720Hansel and Gretel that sort of thing you know they all and once upon a time and then they all
00:37:29.280lived happily ever after sort of thing but if we stretch this notion of story story is all that we
00:37:38.200are we are stories and we we enjoy telling stories we enjoy um hearing stories because it's a way
00:37:50.420for for humans to find commonality you probably noticed already in this this interview i like
00:38:00.360accentuated things that i'm saying with stories because it's a way to help the listeners in this
00:38:07.700case to find their own space within this these topics that we're talking about and to connect
00:38:15.020to it in some way, to relate to it, develop a relationship with it. That's the power of story.
00:38:22.240And so I think we need, as a society here in the West especially, need to find a way to change
00:38:30.980our story. What if the American story was not the one connected to manifest destiny of, you know,
00:38:42.240this ongoing desire to conquer and control the entire continent,
00:38:50.700this need to be the rugged individual frontiersman and frontierswoman
00:38:57.400and that sort of thing, to be the individual.
00:39:02.160What if our story was more of, say, you know, to borrow from American history,
00:39:06.620What if our story was not Paul Bunyan, but the Lewis and Clark expedition?
00:39:14.040What if we borrow from how the core of discovery left what we call the shores of Missouri along the Mississippi River, traveled up to the Missouri River, interacted with countless native communities, made it all the way to the Pacific Ocean, made salt, ate a bunch of salmon and elk, and then came back.
00:39:41.160and the whole time they only lost one member of their party that was only because of appendicitis
00:39:49.260they accidentally killed a couple of blackfoot indians because of a misunderstanding over
00:39:57.160some horses but it wasn't because of hatred or so on or racism it was just it was more of an
00:40:04.160So the whole time, there was a story of collaboration. And what if we made that our story of finding ways to interact peacefully and to collaborate as opposed to the larger, unfortunately, American story today of individualism and conquering. And then we could slowly create a different society.
00:41:57.960The landscape becomes a moral landscape.
00:42:00.280As we move across the landscape, it's not like we go across thinking of these stories all the time.
00:42:06.680We are remembering this story and that story and so on, but it's just a sort of automatic subconscious connection to all these things in our environment, to the plants, to the animals, to geographic or geologic formations and so on.
00:42:21.680As a result, our morality is directive or becomes directly from a landscape.
00:42:27.560consequently we find a way to interact in a kind way with our landscape end quote and so i'd like
00:42:36.600to hear more about how the moral landscape functions and whether or not this will take
00:42:42.380on new meaning as we find ourselves in an age of migration and changing ecologies the the land
00:42:51.360is a living entity and it is constantly in conversation with those of us who know how to
00:42:59.900listen to it and through those conversations there's there are lessons and this is an example
00:43:09.360of how our histories our stories are encoded and embedded in the land itself the land our
00:43:23.660stories that take are always take place on the land and include things that come from the land
00:43:30.200natural entities animals and plants and insects and so on they all emerge from the landscapes and
00:43:36.760We find ourselves as indigenous peoples emerging into this kind of mental space.
00:43:47.160And therefore, our languages are actually voices of the land.
00:43:56.660and so when we speak our native languages we're actually speaking the voice of
00:44:01.800of our specific landscapes across the continent and around the world
00:44:07.600um and so our morals are not human made we didn't develop the ways or values of
00:44:19.680ideas of rights and right and wrong and so on from human constructs we develop them from our
00:44:26.440experiences on our specific landscapes and so that's what i mean by the emergence of the
00:44:33.080our moral or the idea of moral landscapes you know the land itself or this is a source of our
00:44:40.820values of our morals and these values of morals are encoded in the stories about our connections
00:44:49.300to the land um and in our our modern day society where we are in constant movement
00:44:59.300and where a lot of us are so disconnected from anything from the natural world
00:45:07.500it's increasingly difficult to recognize those morals it's increasingly difficult to even
00:45:15.180hear what the land is telling us i want to go back to my example of the student exercise where
00:45:25.440i had them watch sunset and sunrise and there were more than just a couple of students
00:45:31.580who never realized that as seasons change the path of the sun changes that it would set or rise
00:45:42.180um different parts of the horizon they have been so disconnected from the movement of the sun that
00:45:49.540it took that awareness kind of practice to see that oh that's right the days do get shorter as
00:45:55.900the year gets closer to you know october november december and so on and so that's how disconnected
00:46:03.300our modern society is and it's even increasingly disconnected as we are having to do things more
00:46:11.540online you know we're sitting in front of our computers and hardly spend any much time outside
00:46:18.560and it's it's uh for people like me it's creating this increasingly sense of of dread
00:46:28.020that our generations as we move you know more and more into this 21st century
00:46:38.060are less understanding the need for us to be connected to even simple things like the sun
00:46:46.420and the moon to understand the importance of just being able to hear bird song and so yeah this is
00:46:55.380one of the responses that i don't have much of a positive reaction to because it's uh it's
00:47:01.860it's kind of getting worse especially in this pandemic is making things worse as we are
00:47:07.200increasingly forced to have less contact, not just with the natural world, but with each other
00:47:13.700as human beings. It's such an important source of wellness to just be able to do something,
00:47:22.860to see a person's smile that we're standing a few feet away from. We need that connection.
00:47:31.640and it's it's um it's gone from us right now yeah that's a really challenging time for connection
00:47:42.780and i hear you in that grief well going back to your book you cover the plants that are most
00:47:54.520important to native north american peoples and i wonder if you could speak about how you define
00:48:00.480importance when you look at something like that well you know when i was invited to write the book
00:48:07.060by timber press you know they originally wanted me to write a larger sort of of um
00:48:14.380i guess like a dictionary sort of thing of of indigenous ethnobotany and i you know i sat with
00:48:26.500that for a little while and then I realized you know I really can't I don't really want to do that
00:48:30.960because there's been there's been a lot of books about American Indian plant knowledge and they're
00:48:38.040really just these sort of dictionaries like here's the name of the plant here's what its
00:48:41.520name is and then Shoshone or Lakota and then here's what it's used for and I wanted to do
00:48:50.040something deeper I wanted to be able to tell the stories of the plants so that the readers can
00:48:58.720understand the plants more in just a sort of static dictionary kind of approach to ethnobotany
00:49:06.660and so I proposed to Timber Press why don't I do a fewer plants but larger longer descriptions of
00:49:19.540them and they liked the idea and then I what I did is I contacted my network of of plant knowledge
00:49:29.520holders across the continent and because I've been doing this for several decades and so
00:49:35.580I asked them can you give me a list of in your mind the top 10 most important plants
00:49:46.560to your people and to where you live and so i got those lists back and from that list i came up with
00:49:54.200the 80 plants that are in the book these are the plants that are most important in the minds of
00:50:01.340indigenous peoples across north america and the word importance is is aligned with ideas of
00:50:11.840important spiritually um important to us culturally important sometimes in the case of
00:50:21.420that plant's place in the natural ecosystem that where it resides and as a result of that you know
00:50:30.780like i said i came down with the ed plants and then proceeded to as best i could tell the stories
00:51:02.720one of our greatest challenges remains
00:51:05.100the inability to recognize the sovereignty of land, to be able to ask, what does the land want?
00:51:13.140And I think about wildlife restoration and land management, and it too is devoid of honoring
00:51:19.540land's role. No doubt in my mind, because to do so would be incompatible with the profit-driven
00:51:25.660world. So can you speak to the practice of asking, what does the land want? And how does one begin
00:51:32.940to listen to this well we first have to begin with honoring and recognizing and speaking of
00:51:42.480the land as as an entity as a being in itself and as a result of that recognizing that it has rights
00:51:51.480watersheds have certain rights mountain ranges have rights you know desert scapes prairie scapes
00:52:01.340have certain rights and oceanscapes have rights and if we recognize them as you know recognize
00:52:08.620the rights of these particular natural systems then we can work to first listen to what its
00:52:18.340needs are but we got to start first recognizing that this is not a human centered relationship
00:52:26.100and unfortunately that's where that's the perspective and the vantage point that most
00:52:32.160of the world has been working from for the longest time and if we turn that around then we can start
00:52:39.840to leave these landscapes alone for a little while so that it would allow us to see what its
00:52:46.080needs are and then work towards developing those needs and in a way where we can work in concert
00:52:55.660as human beings with these natural worlds and it'd be amazing what we can learn from it from
00:53:02.360being able to stop and pay attention and stop looking at the land in terms of dollar signs
00:53:11.440you know we see these dollar signs for the most part when we see landscapes and start to look in
00:53:18.360terms of what are i guess the um the possibilities from working in concert with what the land
00:53:25.560can give us what are the things that we can celebrate from such a relationship and this is
00:53:33.680i i'm i'm i'm sort of stuttering here because this is a difficult thing because we see this
00:53:41.920every day happening you know in different landscapes around the world where it's all about
00:53:48.800profit and we're increasingly destroying our relationship in these specific landscapes
00:53:56.480and somehow leaders around the world need to recognize these living entities and that's
00:54:06.280where it needs to to start but until that happens the destruction of natural systems is not going to
00:54:12.560And fortunately, maybe unfortunately in the minds of some people, the earth is going to take over at some point and tell those of us who are destroying it in very harsh ways that it's time to stop.
00:54:40.680i think you know i started thinking this way back in in january and february when we first started
00:54:48.540getting word of covet 19 that this is just the opening salvo from the earth telling those of us
00:54:57.960who have been destroying it you know you guys might want to stop it's uh it's time maybe in
00:55:03.800the Hopi way for the fifth world to come about.
00:55:08.600The Hopi believe we are in the fourth world.
00:55:11.300The previous three worlds were destroyed.0.68
00:55:13.660Then we emerge into this fourth world.
00:55:16.440And maybe the earth is telling us through this virus, you know,
00:55:20.800this world might be ending pretty soon.