0:02

Hey everyone, this is Jules Bradley. I'm

0:04

one of the co-creators and producers of Inherited.

0:08

Inherited is on hiatus right now, but

0:11

today we wanted to share some beautiful

0:13

climate storytelling from our friends at

0:15

Future Ecologies. I met

0:18

the show's host, Wendell, years

0:20

ago, when I was the babiest

0:23

of producers and Inherited was

0:25

simply an idea. Wendell has been

0:27

such a huge supporter of us since the very

0:29

beginning, so it's just such an honor to

0:31

collaborate on this episode swap with them. Made

0:35

for audiophiles and nature lovers alike,

0:38

Future Ecologies is a podcast

0:40

exploring our eco-social relationships

0:43

through stories, science, music,

0:45

and soundscapes.

0:47

Every episode is an invitation

0:49

to see the world in a new light.

0:53

Future Ecologies is amazing and

0:55

truly one of a kind. Listen

0:57

to this episode and then head on over to their

1:00

feed and listen to so many more.

1:06

You are listening to season four

1:08

of Future

1:11

Ecologies. Welcome

1:14

back. Wendell here, and

1:17

before we get started, I just wanted

1:19

to say thanks for your patience. It's

1:22

been quite a year, and it means

1:24

a lot to have you with us. This

1:27

is the last episode of our fourth

1:29

season, so it's

1:31

time that we listen to you for

1:34

a change. We'd love to get

1:36

to know you better and find out what you'd

1:38

like to hear in season five. We've

1:41

already got a number of stories in progress, but

1:43

your input will help shape how we tell them.

1:46

So please fill out our brief listener

1:48

survey. We'd love to hear from you.

1:52

Find a link to that survey in the

1:54

show notes or click the banner

1:56

at futureecologies.net.

1:59

After this episode, our feed will mostly

2:02

go quiet again for a few months, while

2:04

we're cooking away in the background.

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To do that, we're relying on your

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And of course, if you're not in a position to support

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You know the drill.

2:42

Tell a friend, tell a stranger,

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and please say nice things about us wherever

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you find podcasts. Okay,

2:49

now, on to this episode. What

2:52

you're about to hear comes from a gathering on Clahous,

2:55

Flamen, and Hamalko territory, specifically

2:58

Cortez Island, in the spring of 2022. It

3:03

was a symposium of artists and scholars

3:05

of all description,

3:06

assembled to reflect on, discuss,

3:10

and share their practice. Namely,

3:13

that at an intersection referred to

3:15

as

3:16

Geopoetics.

3:18

The word poem comes to us from the Greek poein,

3:22

meaning to make or create,

3:25

and which would also be borrowed into the word sympoesis.

3:29

Quoting from Donna Haraway, sympoesis

3:32

is a simple word. It means

3:35

making with. Nothing really

3:37

makes itself. Nothing is really autopoetic

3:38

or self-organizing. In that spirit, what follows is not a

3:40

perfectly condensed version of those events,

3:43

nor

3:45

is it

3:51

attempting to be. Instead, these

3:54

many voices have been recontextualized

3:56

and collaged from where I sit, here

3:59

as an

3:59

uninvited guest on the unceded

4:02

and shared ancestral territory of

4:04

the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh

4:06

peoples

4:07

into a stream of consciousness on

4:10

language,

4:11

art-making,

4:12

and more than human interconnection.

4:15

The sound isn't perfect, and

4:17

sometimes you can hear the baby in the

4:20

room.

4:20

Good day. This place.

4:24

In the

4:26

film of environmental education, the anthropomorphism,

4:29

the term anthropomorphism is still sort

4:31

of a dirty word. It's a sort of logical

4:34

fallacy, so it's a formal

4:36

critique, so even the content of whatever comes

4:39

is rendered false. So what

4:41

if you just talk about your experience

4:44

of that and anthropomorphizing

4:46

the ocean, and also ecologizing

4:48

the body, and how you

4:51

contend with that? Yeah, that's a great question,

4:53

and it's so funny talking to a

4:55

room with a lot of poets and artists. And

4:57

I was like, as though qualities like

5:00

this could not be transferred across species,

5:02

but I think that my short answer to that leveling

5:04

of that chart of anthropomorphism

5:07

is always all, why

5:10

do we think humans felt

5:12

those things first,

5:13

or had those things first? We learn

5:16

our feelings, I think, from

5:18

the world around us. We learn sensation,

5:21

we learn inter-relationality,

5:24

we

5:24

learn communication, we learn language

5:27

from all of these things. So then to say, to hold

5:30

all of that stuff close to us and say, no,

5:32

this belongs to humans, and it's ethically

5:34

wrong to consider

5:36

that another kind of being

5:38

would be tired, or

5:40

be angry, or be upset,

5:42

or need a hug, is I

5:44

think even more anthropocentric

5:46

in a way, because it

5:49

hogs all of those great words and feelings and

5:51

sensations as though they just belong here.

5:54

And where did we get them, Frank?

5:56

Something for me that I find really helpful

5:58

recently, particularly being a part of the

5:59

thinking a lot about because I've been working with birdsong

6:02

for a while and something that recording gives

6:04

you access to that just listening

6:07

without recording can't

6:10

is the

6:10

ability to slow things down and speed things up.

6:13

There's this artist called Marcus Coates in the UK

6:15

who did this project called Dawn Corning where he

6:18

slowed down bandsong by specific lines

6:20

by 20 times and got different people to

6:22

learn the song 20 times slower and

6:24

then filmed everything here 20 times slower

6:27

and then spanned them up 20 times. Their

6:30

breath, their head movements, they become

6:33

birds in this really uncanny way. And

6:35

it just makes this really strong point about

6:38

this time, this kind of temporal barrier between

6:40

us and some other living organisms that

6:42

exist on a different timeframe. And

6:45

once you can slow down or speed things up, you

6:47

can somewhat close that gap

6:49

and kind of meet in this weird uncanny

6:52

way.

6:54

It's not so much a statement as a

6:56

question. What is the language

6:59

of ecology? And there's

7:01

an issue here with the word environmental versus

7:03

ecology. People think of the environment as something

7:05

that's out there and we're going to

7:07

fix it or we need it or something

7:09

like that. Ecology

7:12

is something we're inside of. So

7:15

part of what I've experienced

7:18

in the ecology movement over 50 years

7:22

is that we just continually

7:24

get hung up on language and

7:27

that I kind of felt like I've been searching my whole

7:29

life for a language that actually

7:32

speaks ecology and

7:34

speaks of this undivided

7:38

whole of which everything is a part.

7:42

All divisions are arbitrary. We

7:45

cut up the world to describe it and

7:48

someone might say, well, I mean,

7:51

we know the difference between a rock

7:53

and a tree. We know the difference between a tree

7:56

and the atmosphere, do we? And

7:59

we talk about a tree. the soil

8:01

and the atmosphere, but none of

8:03

those three things, tree soil or atmosphere

8:05

or fungi, exist

8:07

independently of the others.

8:10

So when we speak of them, we're

8:13

approximating. Language

8:17

is necessary for useful

8:20

access. Language is useful

8:22

so that we can just talk to each other, and we

8:24

can talk to each other about the tree and the soil

8:27

and the atmosphere when we know that none

8:29

of those things exist independently. The

8:32

real subject here is how

8:34

the earth means. I just

8:36

take for granted that the earth means. It is

8:38

so obvious to me that it has

8:41

never occurred to me that it needed

8:43

exploding. But I hear

8:45

a lot of people say that they are engaged

8:47

in making meaning, as if there weren't

8:50

any until they made some. I

8:55

just don't get it. The ground

8:58

we walked on to get here, the stones

9:01

that got stuck in the soles of my

9:03

shoes and the other ones that are

9:06

big enough to stay, the places

9:08

and the trees and all

9:10

the little plants underneath the trees and

9:12

all the little things way up in the

9:14

trees, they are all meaning

9:17

incarnate.

9:19

This building is not meaningless

9:21

either, but is a hunch compared to the oneself

9:24

there. And

9:26

we are meaning incarnates

9:29

too.

9:32

You and the world are

9:34

real together. You're built

9:37

so that you can understand one another.

9:40

To our animal flesh, to our creaturely

9:42

senses.

9:45

Each thing I encounter is

9:49

always withholding parts of itself, within

9:52

itself. And it also is hiding

9:55

other things behind itself.

10:00

often nothing is ever

10:02

encountered. All explicit

10:05

on the table.

10:07

For me, it's not a source of frustration,

10:10

it's a source of delight. It's

10:12

just the signal that I anima,

10:14

animal, animate in

10:16

my own animal body and inside

10:19

something much bigger than me and

10:22

which things dance

10:26

and play with one another and

10:28

beckon to me and others withdraw from

10:30

my attention entirely and hide

10:32

off.

10:33

What

10:35

that word means is unfolded. Everything

10:37

has been unfolded. Well,

10:41

often what that is is to dissect

10:43

something or to play it or

10:45

to peel it, to expose

10:48

it. A great deal of

10:51

biological life must remain

10:53

implicit for the dead. And

10:56

of course a way to gain

11:00

the bare beginnings of an access

11:03

to the interior of something without

11:06

playing it is

11:08

to ask

11:10

and to enter into conversation. Make

11:13

eye contact.

11:43

How the world is organized

11:45

is a function of belief. For

11:48

example, here are just a few ways

11:50

that climate change is understood or portrayed.

11:55

As an apocalyptic threat to humanity.

11:58

As a national security. issue, as

12:02

an engineering problem,

12:04

as a social and environmental

12:06

justice issue, as

12:09

a hoax,

12:11

as a business opportunity,

12:14

as a crisis of capitalism, patriarchy,

12:17

settler colonialism, racism,

12:19

and or neoliberalism, or

12:23

as an opportunity for radical transformation.

12:27

How climate change is framed then

12:30

has reverberations for how it is approached

12:33

or addressed or ignored. These

12:36

framings also often map onto

12:38

deeper ideologies about human

12:41

environment relationship expressed

12:43

through social, political, economic,

12:46

and land systems.

12:48

When I think about the climate crisis

12:50

from a geopolitical standpoint, climate

12:53

change is about time and materiality.

12:56

Time, the scales of time

12:58

in which we must think to understand

13:01

climate.

13:02

Materiality, minerals,

13:04

fossils, plastic bags, the

13:07

decayed remains of marine life powering

13:09

our machines, in short, organizations

13:12

of matter.

13:16

Scale asks us to measure phenomena

13:18

in terms of close or far, small

13:20

or big, more significant or less. And

13:24

we readily think of scale in terms of things

13:26

like time or duration, minutes, years,

13:29

eons, or in terms of size

13:31

or space, micro, macro, local,

13:33

global.

13:34

It follows that a scale

13:36

of mattering might map onto

13:38

these other scales according to things like

13:41

intensity and heft or sheer

13:43

numbers.

13:44

We need to scale our actions up, we

13:47

say.

13:48

Just a drop in the ocean is

13:50

a figure of speech for a reason, after

13:52

all. But

13:55

despite our desire for scale to

13:57

temper the craft leveling effect

13:59

of analysis, We

14:01

also recognize another kind of brutality

14:04

creeping into these scalar logics,

14:07

where Euclidean geometries assemble

14:10

to measure and mark and value,

14:13

and with these metrics can be fungibility

14:16

of each constituent. This

14:19

is what anthropologists and a saint

14:21

might call the malevolent hegemony

14:24

of precision nesting.

14:26

An expansionist

14:28

logic whereby scaling up means

14:31

that any precisely measurable

14:33

element can be multiplied without

14:35

consequence. So

14:38

here, instead of the violence of analogy

14:40

or equivalence, we face the violence

14:42

of quantification and reduction

14:44

and exchangeability, and neither

14:47

gives us the tools we need for the kind

14:49

of scaling up that we seek.

14:51

Many things in the world are no

14:55

matter of scope.

14:57

The same-tailed cranes are creatures

15:00

whose song is

15:03

within our hearing range,

15:06

and whose bodies are

15:08

large enough and whose gestures are

15:11

large enough that we can see

15:13

them there. And

15:16

so if you are lucky enough

15:18

to hear that sandhill cranes and the

15:20

most

15:21

advanced will

15:24

be changed forever by this experience.

15:28

Another thing that ought to happen is

15:31

that it ought to occur to you that just

15:33

because you can see the sandhill cranes

15:35

dance doesn't mean that nothing else dances.

15:39

What about the bacteria? What about the deer mice?

15:41

What about the lichens? What about

15:43

the other things that are

15:46

outside your range somehow,

15:49

the things whose voices

15:51

are too high or too low

15:54

in pitch for your ears, the things

15:56

that are too small or too large

15:58

for you to see?

15:59

I

16:02

mean, we dance inside ourselves,

16:05

even when we're still.

16:15

Nature, and its description into image,

16:17

whether photo, drawing or painting on plein

16:20

air, has long been conscripted into

16:22

the propagation

16:22

of a historical myth. The

16:24

untouched and glorious earth primed and

16:27

waiting through your eyes and yours alone can

16:29

appreciate, to capture an image

16:31

of your own. A name on

16:33

a map like a contour line, or

16:35

a smudge of green and squiggle

16:37

of blue, can never tell you all

16:40

you want or need

16:42

to know.

16:47

One.

16:48

Note your elevation above sea level.

16:51

What poems occur here? What

16:54

is, what has happened? Who

16:58

cares what Hegel says? What

17:00

has happened? What has happened? What has happened?

17:03

What is, what is, what is, what

17:05

is caught in

17:05

time? Four,

17:09

six,

17:10

eight, five, six, and it

17:12

says that the full reduction of the number is zero. Four,

17:17

six, eight, five, seven, eight,

17:19

nine, eight, seven, eight, seven, eight,

17:21

seven, And

17:24

then you get a small

17:26

number and add all those,

17:28

add all those and then you get one Is

17:40

there a multiplier? An ordinal,

17:42

an ordinal system is zero. And

17:47

uh, the break is just going to be zero. I keep

17:49

getting zero. But

17:53

what stuck with me was the walk, not the

17:55

song. I don't remember the song, but the specific

17:58

walk that I was...

17:59

doing. So then I started playing with

18:02

this walk all over town and

18:04

I had the weirdest thing happen which was

18:07

this temporal effect

18:09

where I started being the slower I walked

18:12

the sooner I would get places.

18:14

I

18:17

was working at a restaurant and I had my

18:19

boss start timing it

18:20

until he

18:22

got super angry and

18:26

he was he stopped he refused

18:28

to do it anymore like he really screamed

18:30

it out he was really angry because it

18:32

was disturbing and

18:35

really deep

18:36

love will take his sense of his sense

18:38

of the way things are

18:40

and

18:42

the question that I had was is time

18:45

incarcerated. I read

18:47

and I read and I was like I can't actually

18:50

ask this question before I ask this other

18:52

question how can we be more intimate with time.

18:55

I need to first encounter

18:58

time before I start asking is it incarcerated

19:00

because there's all these presumptions about

19:02

what is it and I

19:05

was doing the NGO thing unconsciously already

19:07

making the other the object and then trying

19:10

to fix it and solve it.

19:12

So luckily I caught that before I

19:14

started the project

19:15

and said okay

19:17

how can we be more intimate with time and

19:20

then the second question is time

19:23

incarcerated and if so how can we help

19:25

to liberate it. So these zoom

19:27

windows I know I know it can be offensive

19:29

to be like

19:30

I heard David this morning right

19:32

the tone like not on zoom but

19:35

it was different people would sleep right

19:38

they were there were people from all over the world so as

19:40

that entire almost like 15 hour period

19:42

would go by we'd watch the Sun

19:45

we'd watch the shadows you'd hear the birds you'd

19:47

see the dawn you people will

19:49

fall asleep they leave the sound on

19:52

and the video on and sleeping right

19:55

that's it was both the informality

19:58

and the safety but also the study of

20:00

time.

20:02

We are now all tumbling in the circulation

20:04

of planetary exhaustion. The

20:07

tiredness is both different and sure.

20:12

Each has been made of our 24 second neon

20:14

lit late populist culture, the vertigo-inducing

20:17

heat of the sixth extinction, the

20:20

spectacularly swift and perilous

20:22

resurgence of white supremacy

20:24

and deeper fascism, alongside

20:26

the never-resting rising

20:28

heat of the New England. But

20:30

we have thought perhaps less about what comes

20:33

after and with the end of this world,

20:36

the insomnia at once. Our

20:38

bodies can no longer shake it and fall

20:40

down, fall apart, exhausted. We

20:43

need to sleep. And that

20:45

happened

20:46

all the time. It

20:49

was like we were always right on

20:51

time. This is multi-species symposium

20:54

at work in the name of flourishing.

20:57

Although we often speak of heat in

20:59

terms of self-care, paying

21:02

attention to the ocean and its community

21:05

remind us that even speaking,

21:08

the most inward-oriented and powerful

21:10

artistic of heat is usually

21:13

about mutual care. Some

21:16

of the planet's most significant deep- manifestation

21:24

events have in fact occurred underwater. Off

21:27

the east coast of Romania, 95% of the

21:29

giant pet shores that once dominated

21:32

D.C. have disappeared

21:34

in the last two decades. In

21:37

Western Australia, a particularly hot summer between 2010

21:39

and 2013 wiped out 100 kilometers

21:44

of themselves that have been vital

21:46

for

21:46

the formation of habitat

21:47

on reefs around the temper of

21:49

Australia. There are places for hundreds

21:52

of other species of plants and

21:54

animals today. Have

22:00

your body since your

22:14

heart

22:18

screams all around you.

22:23

Why

22:25

is the world always ending? Why

22:55

is the world always ending?

23:26

Why is the world always

23:27

ending?

23:54

Why is the world always ending? So

24:00

it isn't late, but it

24:01

is not too late.

25:00

On that day we will

25:03

be fairly

25:07

equal, born and free.

25:11

Dawn will come, night

25:14

will cease, we'll

25:17

rejoice mindingly.

25:22

For that day we'll work

25:26

and wait, that's

25:29

when we'll cease to agitate.

25:34

As will we. So

25:37

every morning the earth turns and day

25:39

breaks through the horizon and every night we spin

25:41

away eclipsed by the planet's own great

25:43

shadow facing outward and away

25:45

from the center of our solar system until we're

25:48

back in the bay where the light is. It's

25:50

not so difficult to miss the sunset.

25:59

of the line note observations.

26:03

On the other side, write responses

26:06

to those observations. Which

26:08

is which?

26:10

I want to rinse my hands with vinegar before

26:12

lifting away the same new mothers that

26:14

formed on top of the group chamoishe

26:17

every two weeks,

26:18

to tell molds from age spots, and

26:21

to let go, to

26:22

forgive myself for letting things turn

26:24

too sour.

26:27

The process of fermentation presents itself

26:29

almost too easily as a metaphor.

26:32

So we time transform something bitter into

26:34

something

26:35

full of goodness.

26:36

How the mother turns raw materials into

26:39

something entirely new while simultaneously

26:41

replicating it thus. Perhaps

26:44

we can follow in the clip tips that Susan Sontag

26:46

are giving to the illness of metaphor, in

26:48

which she insists that, quote, the illness

26:51

is not a metaphor. And

26:53

that the most truthful way of regarding illness,

26:56

and the healthiest way of being ill, is

26:58

one most curative, most resistant

27:01

to, metaphoric thinking. All of

27:05

those. Whereas, perhaps the most

27:07

truthful, or even the whole musical

27:09

of the same fermentation is as

27:11

it is, the boy that metaphor.

27:15

Rejecting the metaphor applies extending

27:18

our feelings, stretching our

27:20

empathy towards understanding something not

27:22

based on his use in relation to human comprehension,

27:25

but towards attempting to understand

27:28

it purely for what it is. So

27:33

in this case, the mutation has not only

27:35

a metaphor, because at first it can exist

27:38

both to us as metaphoric and natural.

27:41

It's understandable that the naturally occurring process

27:43

with which human is simply celebrated.

27:46

And in this standing lens, which really is

27:48

at this moment of unfamiliar, the

27:50

collection of similar material

27:53

and use, it is merely simply as

27:55

our own existence in the world. Go

27:58

with your gut and repeat.

27:59

repeat after me. I

28:04

am mostly

28:07

microbial flora.

28:11

Great. How

28:13

does that feel? When

28:16

do those molecules of Apple become

28:18

molecules of me? At what point?

28:21

For me, I start to realize, well,

28:25

you don't need to know that because it's just

28:27

this constant flow. And

28:29

that's part of the ecological consciousness

28:32

as well. That we're

28:34

not independent isolated beings.

28:37

And even though we have this scan and how forth

28:39

that nothing about us

28:42

survives or lives without this constant

28:44

flow of energy, food, nutrients and

28:46

all that. From an ecological

28:48

point of view, there are no

28:51

isolated things and everything is

28:53

a process and everything is a process. So it's

28:56

an interesting question, but maybe not that relevant

28:58

to ask, when does the Apple become me? Because

29:01

it was me before and it's me

29:03

after and I'm, you know, it doesn't

29:06

matter. And, you know,

29:08

this sort of ties into this, this whole

29:10

idea of this experiment. In

29:13

human society, there have been many

29:16

movements which have proposed

29:19

that we, that we have fanned

29:22

the idea of self beyond

29:25

the skin. So we have

29:28

these social imperatives

29:32

and there's a social self and

29:34

we're one with our brothers and sisters all over

29:36

the world and we're a family.

29:38

You took your vicar like one.

29:42

But this expanded self doesn't stop with

29:44

the human family. Does it?

29:48

And it doesn't even stop with all sentient beings

29:50

because it's the

29:52

soil and it's the rock and the earth and it's

29:54

the atmosphere. Intellectually,

29:57

we can arrive there. But

29:59

emotionally, and inter-relate

30:02

with you, why? It's very difficult

30:04

because we keep falling back into our language,

30:07

which makes things

30:09

out of

30:10

all this person. Foggies

30:13

are not self-sufficient, zips up

30:15

in some drivers through the skin. Is

30:18

imagining the pain of the body, however,

30:21

and so it's more wise?

30:23

Could you just understand its fatigue? What

30:26

might it mean for us to imagine ourselves

30:29

as human bodies of water, as more H.E.M.?

30:33

What if we understood ourselves too as

30:35

whole equalities made up of component

30:37

bodies and societies and systems? What

30:40

if the borders of ourselves

30:43

were to be a bit dissolved? This

30:46

is not only an ontological question of what

30:48

a body is or even what a body can do, it's a question. Our

30:55

exhaustion can teach us something about the

30:57

uneven distribution of sicknesses

31:00

as an index of other inequalities. It

31:03

can also encourage us to consider

31:05

multi-seating ecologies of these systems and

31:07

what it will take to help

31:10

each other get from us. We

31:12

need each other, we are nothing

31:15

without each other, open

31:17

in to shared vulnerabilities, relying

31:20

on each other. We might help

31:22

old each other with you. Then

31:31

the long-range migrations of certain creatures can

31:33

only be a conundrum. A

31:36

puzzle will try to solve the continually compounding

31:40

and various internal mechanisms that

31:42

might somehow in combination grant

31:44

the creature the power to grapple

31:46

its way across the world. But instead

31:49

of hypothesizing more metaphorical

31:51

details, adding further

31:53

accessories to our cranes, as

31:56

Simon's internal array of tools, what

31:58

if we were to allow that?

32:00

The animal's migratory skin arises

32:02

from a feat of rapport between its

32:05

body and the breathing Earth.

32:12

That a crane's 3,000 kilometer

32:15

journey across the span

32:17

of a continent is built by

32:19

a felt unison between its

32:21

flexing muscles and the sensitive

32:24

flesh of this planet. This

32:26

huge curved expanse, roiling

32:29

with air currents and rippling with electromagnetic

32:32

pulses, and so is enacted

32:35

as much by Earth's vitality

32:37

as by the bird that flies within it. What

32:42

if this dynamic alliance between

32:45

an animal and the animate orb that

32:47

gives it breath? What

32:50

is this? What seasonal

32:53

tensions and relaxations in

32:55

the atmosphere? What subtle torsions

32:57

in the geosphere? How to draw half

32:59

a million cranes so precisely

33:02

across the continent? What rolling

33:04

succession or sequence of earth remains

33:07

helps summon these millions of butterflies

33:10

across the belly of the land? What alterations

33:13

in the olfactory medium? What

33:15

bursts of solar exuberance

33:17

through the magnetosphere? What attractions

33:20

and repulsions? Surely, really

33:23

and truly, these migratory folks

33:25

are not taking readings from technical

33:27

instruments. They are mathematically calculating

33:30

angles. They are riding waves

33:32

of sensation,

33:33

responding attentively

33:35

to allurements and gestures

33:38

in the technological math, reverberating

33:41

subtle expressions that reach them from

33:43

afar. These beings are dancing

33:46

not with themselves, but with the animate

33:49

rendor of the earth, their

33:51

wider flesh, meeting

33:54

between one's creature

33:56

and body. past

34:00

day of the load. Perhaps

34:04

it'd be useful to consider

34:06

the large, collective migrations

34:08

of various creatures as active

34:11

expressions of the Earth itself, to

34:13

consider them as slow gestures

34:16

of a living geology, improvisational

34:19

experiments that gradually stabilized

34:22

into habits now necessary

34:24

to the ongoing metabolism of

34:26

the sphere. But truly

34:28

are

34:28

not these cyclical pilgrimages,

34:31

these huge, freakily

34:32

hegiras, also

34:34

pulsations within the broad body

34:37

of the Earth. Are they not ways that divergent

34:39

places or ecosystems communicate

34:42

with one another, trading vital qualities

34:45

essential to their continued flourishing?

34:48

Think again of the salmon,

34:51

this gift born of the rocky gravels

34:53

and melting glaciers. Above

34:56

here, nurtured by colossal

34:58

cedars and tumbled probes decked

35:00

with ferns, fungi, and moss, an

35:03

aquatic muscled energy strengthening

35:05

itself in the mossed and farthed mountains

35:08

until it's ready to be released into the broad

35:11

ocean. Pouring seaward, it adds

35:13

itself to that voluminous cauldron

35:16

of currents, spiraling in huge

35:18

gyres, shaded by algal

35:20

blooms and charged by faint

35:22

glissandos of well-sawn.

35:25

Until, grown large with the seas

35:27

of abundance, this ocean-infused

35:30

life flows back up the rivers and

35:32

tributaries and spreads out into

35:34

the wooded valleys, gifting the hollows

35:37

and the needled highlands with new minerals

35:39

and nutrients, feeding bears and

35:41

osprey and eagles, ensuring that

35:44

the glinting gift will be reborn

35:46

afresh from the lump of luminous

35:48

eggs stashed under a layer of

35:50

pebble. This circulation,

35:53

this systole and diastole

35:56

is one of the surest signs that this

35:58

Earth is. A love, a

36:01

rhythmic pulse of silvery glacier-fed

36:04

brilliance pouring through various arteries

36:07

into the wide body of the ocean, circulating

36:09

and growing there only to return

36:12

by various veins to the beating heart

36:14

of the forest.

36:16

Grab it with new life. Go

36:18

to a different

36:20

elevation. What

36:24

poems occur here? I'm

36:29

always kind of interested in who's not

36:32

in the room.

36:34

I guess I think about that. Is this a question that

36:37

I'm going to ask you? I'm going to ask you. I'm

36:41

going to ask you.

36:42

I'm going to ask you. Is

36:44

this a space where my grandmother

36:45

would be like, yeah, this is where I should be? Not

36:49

just my grandmother, but so many of the people

36:52

that I grew up with who didn't have the luxury

36:56

of particular kinds of education or

36:59

particular kinds of experience. Are

37:01

they actually less equipped to be able to provide solutions

37:05

to some of the challenges that we're facing? Is

37:08

there a kind of wisdom or a kind of desire

37:11

for the things that we're facing?

37:13

Is there a kind of wisdom or brilliance that is

37:16

overlooked? The mundane

37:18

creativity that's practiced

37:21

by poor folks, by women often,

37:24

and how that

37:26

sits inside of here.

37:31

People

37:31

who would say to me over and over again, I

37:33

don't belong anywhere. I hate

37:35

groups.

37:35

I don't join

37:38

groups. I can't go to school.

37:41

A lot of neurodivergence.

37:43

A lot of children coming and feeling welcome

37:45

to speak and speak their mind and

37:48

be taken seriously. It just really meant a lot, like

37:50

this place

37:51

where people would continuously name, I don't

37:53

belong. I don't feel belonging

37:56

and I come here.

37:57

And there was no here.

37:59

There really is no way to crucify

38:02

what kind of miracle exists inside

38:05

of each and every person. And when we

38:07

look and we think we already know

38:10

what kind of magic exists inside of another,

38:13

we've lost something.

38:15

That's what I mean by intercosmological space.

38:18

These whole, like, sets

38:20

of knowledge could work together

38:23

and come to life and we'd play with them.

38:25

So in Anishinaabe

38:27

way, we have our stories. We

38:29

call them the sacred ones, the ones

38:31

that are informing

38:34

the world to you, the way to

38:36

learn to view the world. And

38:39

we call those sacred stories. And

38:42

those sacred stories morph

38:45

and form our imagination.

38:48

And so the stories people, Anishinaabe,

38:54

the ones who were lowered here,

38:57

were gifted with the capacity for

39:00

language, that the language

39:03

comes from the place.

39:05

And the place is the sounds,

39:09

the

39:09

acoustic.

39:14

And then when our language, respectfully,

39:17

fits the place, and

39:19

the place is singing it and we're ringing

39:21

it, it's a completely different

39:23

thing.

39:27

I too would think you've Dylan Robinson

39:30

and his sighting

39:32

of Leanne Simpson in terms of Anishinaabe

39:36

internationalism. So thinking

39:38

of the language as

39:40

embedded in this web

39:42

of interspecies international

39:45

in terms of relations. And

39:48

then we track the teachings

39:50

of our relatives.

39:52

So when we're tracking them, we

39:54

have to know their names and

39:56

their stories

39:57

and their teachings,

39:59

this mythopoetic landscape,

40:02

what we call the cosmology.

40:05

And we call that wayfinding. We're finding

40:09

the human way, the Anishinaabe

40:12

way of walking in

40:14

this cosmology. And the teachers

40:16

are our relatives.

40:19

In our story, in our sacred story,

40:22

all the teachings that were gifted to the

40:24

beings in the seeds of creation

40:27

were

40:27

also poured into the human

40:30

and overflowed into the body of

40:32

the human being, as well as the mind.

40:35

And so we don't know them only in our head.

40:38

And so right

40:41

across Canada, you hear, and

40:44

I'm sure in other parts of the world, you hear Elders

40:46

say that the language is

40:48

the way the land talks to us. But

40:50

in a sense, it's not our

40:53

language. It's the land language which

40:55

we have learned in order to listen

40:58

better to what it has to say. So

41:01

then when

41:03

the language has faded from

41:06

daily use amongst the people, there could still

41:10

be a sense in which much of

41:12

the language is nonetheless

41:14

embodied relationally in inter-human

41:19

relations and in inter-species

41:21

international relations. And

41:24

also a way in which even where those

41:27

relationships themselves, as is usually the

41:29

case, are also frayed because of

41:31

the same processes of colonization

41:33

and capitalism and so on, this

41:36

possession. Nonetheless, if relationships

41:39

can

41:40

be reestablished with

41:43

the land and a lot of knowledge has

41:45

been transposed into

41:49

English

41:51

and other colonial languages about those practices

41:54

and the practices themselves are

41:56

enduring and carried on and

41:59

passed on.

42:00

Then there's a sense in which the language is also

42:03

present in those things even though it's

42:05

not being spoken as the language

42:07

itself

42:09

at the moment. Robin Will Kimmerer

42:11

says that some of us are the old

42:14

ones. We walk back

42:16

along the path where our ancestors

42:18

left the broken pieces, the

42:21

songs, the dances, the words, the

42:23

ways, the ceremonies.

42:26

And we pick them up

42:27

and we learn how to hold them,

42:30

to carry them. We

42:32

put them in our bundle.

42:34

We have these words, we put them in our bundle

42:36

and they travel with us like

42:39

a lens. They help us interpret. They

42:42

help us to see in ways.

42:44

That's why we use the phrase wayfinding.

42:47

I

42:49

think back to my

42:51

entry into working with

42:54

indigenous people and thinking

42:56

about the languages. My mentor

42:58

at the time, my first mentor in this

43:00

area was a woman called Ruth Norton, who

43:03

was an elder from Manitoba.

43:07

And at one point

43:10

I was doing research on Ruth's behalf

43:12

for the Assembly of First Nations. And

43:15

I had been reading the literature on bilingualism

43:18

and so on.

43:20

At one point Ruth said to me

43:22

gently but very firmly, if some

43:26

of our people don't speak their language,

43:30

it doesn't mean that the language is still not

43:33

deeply part of them.

43:35

I don't expect you to understand that.

43:38

I just want you to accept that.

43:40

So the Haudenosaunee scholar Dan

43:43

Longboat says, how long will

43:45

it take our imaginations

43:47

to naturalize

43:49

here?

43:52

How long will it take to

43:55

morph so that we can carry

43:57

the teachings of the beings

43:59

who You are here as our relative,

44:02

as respectfully as

44:05

they are given,

44:10

not interpreted as

44:13

they are given.

44:16

Choose a species you know little

44:18

about but that lives in your ecosystem.

44:22

Learn everything you can about that species.

44:25

Then go find the species. Write

44:28

what happens. You ask me perhaps

44:30

about the Alcianarian

44:31

plumes that tremble in the pure

44:33

origins of the Southern tides. And

44:36

about the polyps crystall in construction,

44:38

you have without considered one more question.

44:41

Posing it now. Find

44:43

an urban ecotone. Stand

44:46

there. Write a poem from

44:48

the dual space. Walkers

44:50

are sometimes in flight. Have

44:53

orbits that do not recognize the

44:55

idiocy of borders. Imagine

44:58

a rise in sea level.

45:00

How will that affect your elevation poems?

45:02

My dears,

45:06

burglary has always

45:08

been the surest way to get the

45:10

gods to notice and give chase.

45:14

Language, sunlight, the

45:17

list goes on.

45:18

List everything that is natural

45:21

around you. List everything

45:24

that is not natural around you.

45:26

Sky is light grown over

45:28

days. Everything a coast of open

45:30

veins. Commerce winds up

45:33

a braid. Core scripts, shoals,

45:35

dents, blue beans, fuvial strips.

45:38

In the dark green delta

45:41

dust.

45:43

Probably spores. Hung

45:45

in the air. Black

45:48

apple fist, fur, fish

45:51

and lumber. Gray deciduous

45:54

clings, heights all

45:56

logged to stumps.

46:02

Concla'ree and Scoop.

46:06

Scoop, Bloom, Pondid, Hard

46:09

to Boat,

46:09

Her High Key would fly, Flap, Soar

46:11

and Gart. So give me the

46:14

light of stars that strives to

46:16

But can't quite reach us, the one whose

46:18

eyes are struck By the beam of darkness,

46:20

the wings blinding forms beating,

46:23

Piercing all songs singing, fragile

46:26

lights spiraling From every wooden

46:28

window, the time now is for

46:30

pirates And possibly warblers.

46:34

And if I don't believe it when I say it, Sunlight,

46:38

language, fail

46:39

me, if you must, I

46:41

know eventually you will. Divinity

46:45

never forgets what's

46:48

theirs.

46:50

The gods gave us healing

46:54

willingly. We've

46:57

been trying to return it ever

46:59

since. Hand

47:01

waving out front, shooing

47:04

us away.

47:05

They just won't take it

47:07

back.

47:08

Stand up and put

47:10

your arms out. The

47:13

length of your arms is the circle of

47:15

the poem.

47:16

We've learned to read the surface,

47:20

like departed fluff and pollen

47:22

husks. Phantom wings lighten

47:25

up and fly away, wet and

47:27

fall into soil In a success of

47:29

propagation, rest and wedded,

47:31

loose, Trailing roots dangle

47:34

and venture.

47:35

In the absence of the written

47:37

page of the book, The

47:40

land will be the visual mnemonic,

47:43

And it will be speaking stories steadily

47:46

to us In various sight in the landscape,

47:49

There is power, hopelessness, presences.

47:59

constantly writing itself and erasing

48:02

itself and correcting or then erasing

48:04

itself.

48:06

If the phenomenon of the sunset is part

48:08

of the natural, unfeeling world, then

48:11

I find myself to be as well than what

48:13

applies to the sunset and has in part applied

48:15

to me. And if the sunset is beautiful,

48:17

then the world must be beautiful and I, at least

48:19

in

48:19

part, must be too.

48:23

This

48:23

revelation is present in viewing any great

48:26

miracle of a

48:26

random universe that patiently allows us

48:28

to exist at the same

48:29

moment as northern months or

48:32

spring.

48:35

Looking at the practice of defibrillating, the potential

48:37

to find some similarity

48:38

between ourselves and the sunset

48:41

should be enough to sustain, sense, faith,

48:43

and looking.

48:46

So go now and watch this action.

48:48

See it, tell it, and

48:51

see the desire about her eyes and some staying,

48:53

the sky and see the out. Both

48:57

walking to prove.

48:59

But while you love and grow so you might

49:01

feel in watching the sunset has not yet been

49:03

disagreed yet. In

49:06

the fiction of pure individuality, when you are

49:08

loving the world, you have to tell them between yourself

49:10

and everything that is possible. The

49:12

going forms of chemicals and rotations from

49:15

lots of physics and their independence.

49:19

We are so small in the glow of the

49:21

setting sun.

49:24

Nothing left to us but was truly

49:26

for our benefit. Still

49:30

loves those last drives of light and

49:32

our love is reflected there,

49:35

leading us into the quiet miracle

49:37

of loving and being loved with

49:40

no way to go but on. And

49:45

our responsibility says LeRoy

49:47

Little

49:47

Bear,

49:48

our responsibility is

49:50

to give it back through ceremony that

49:54

we're paying attention.

49:59

home that takes place over 4.5

50:02

billion years.

50:30

Home. Thirteen

50:34

body

50:36

and man. Thirteen

50:40

body

50:43

and man. Home.

50:50

Home. Home.

51:02

Home. Home.

51:19

Home.

51:34

Home.

51:58

And with music. By

52:03

Cosmo Sheldrake. And born

52:06

Meredith Buck, as arranged by Vanessa

52:08

Richards. Jonathan Kaczak.

52:11

The Time Zone Collective. Emily

52:13

Millard. Kari McClelland. Ruby

52:16

Singh. And Nathan Schuert. Full

52:19

recordings by Julian Fisher. And

52:21

our theme song by Sunfish

52:24

Moon-Lite. A

52:26

huge thank you to Aaron Robinson and

52:28

Michael Datura, without whom these

52:31

conversations would never have taken place. Thanks

52:34

to Holy Hawk for their generous hospitality

52:36

and support. Thank you to Juliette Bertoldo,

52:39

Megan Yannes-Ahamani, and Vanessa Richards

52:41

for the help recording. And

52:43

thanks to you for listening. Don't

52:46

forget to take our survey, and

52:48

to take care of yourself, too.

52:51

You'll be hearing from us again soon. Thank

52:56

you.