Reader’s Guide

Reader’s Guide: Discussion Questions and Further Resources

Entering the Terrain: Chapters 1 – 4

1. How do you think you formed your worldview? Where did it come from, and how has your culture or society contributed to it?

2. The chapters in this section invite us to engage in diverse knowledge systems and transformative action. What kind of human beings do we need to be to navigate the Anthropocene?

3. Who are the Indigenous Peoples of the land on which you live, and what do you know about them? Are their ways you can support and amplify their voices and rights, and center them as the original stewards of the land?

• • This website will show you whose Indigenous land you are on and provide information about languages and treaties: https://native-land.ca/
  • This website provides suggestions on how to learn about and support Indigenous Peoples beyond land acknowledgments: https://nativegov.org/news/a-guide-to-indigenous-land-acknowledgment/
  • Learn about the Coast Miwok, one of the original peoples of what is now Northern California, here: “Theresa Harlan’s Fight to Protect the Last Coast Miwok Structures on Tomales Bay,” Emergence Magazine, February 14, 2022.

4. How can we better understand and change our worldviews? Does your worldview recognize an animate, living Earth? What does it mean for a worldview to recognize an animate Earth?

5. Through the powerful concept of Sankofa from the Akan peoples, we learn that, in order to move forward with purposefulness and wisdom, we must also look back into the past. Why is this important to societal transformation?

• • Listen to a TED Talk by Pandora Thomas and Zakiya Harris, in which they discuss the Vision of Sankofa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmFXVkfZcFM&ab_channel=TEDxTalks

6. Chapter 1 provides several examples of grassroots climate and social organizations that are transforming their communities. Who is doing this work in your local community?

7. Examples were given in this section demonstrating that it is not too late to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis. How do keep hope alive as we face crises?

• • See the following Facebook page and articles for ideas: https://www.facebook.com/NotTooLateClimate
  • Mitchell Beer, “‘Buried’ Science Shows Fast Carbon Cuts Can Stabilize Temperatures in 3-4 Years,” The Energy Mix, February 18, 2022
  • David Herring and Rebecca Lindsey, “Can we slow or even reverse global warming?” NOAA Climate.Gov, October 18, 2022.

8. Chapter 1 includes a description of a transformative childhood event. Is there an experience from your youth, or later in your life, that dramatically shaped your way of seeing the world?

9. Thomas Berry said that the universe is “the most radical thing that a person can think about.” Why do you think this is?

10. We are literally descended from stars through the elements comprising our bodies. What does this knowledge mean to you?

• • Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era—A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos (New York: HarperCollins, 1994).
  • Hear a Blackfoot Elder tell her People’s origin story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLh4K7V1guA&list=WL&index=30&ab_channel=IndigenousProgramming

11. Have you ever been in nature and learned something from a tree, river, or animal that made you reflect on how we can live more in balance with nature?

12. Warning stories show that there are consequences for opposing the natural laws. How can we bring this kind of storytelling into our modern lives to help us and our children reflect upon living in harmony with nature?

13. What can we learn from Mother Trees?

• • Read more about Mother Trees by Suzanne Simard: Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021)
  • Mother Tree Project: https://mothertreeproject.org/

14. Most of our antecedents come from cultures that carry traditions that honor a World Tree, or Tree of Life, representing the whole of the cosmos. Do you know your own ancestral World Tree story?

• • Read about Yggdrasil, the Norse World Tree: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/yggdrasil-the-sacred-ash-tree-of-norse-mythology
  • Read about the Celtic Tree of Life: https://www.chalicecentre.net/celtic-tree-of-life.html
  • Read about a World Tree of the Turkic peoples: https://woodwidewebstories.com/2021/04/23/trees-in-tengrism-and-turkish-mythology/

15. How can we, as individuals and as a culture, process what happened to our once-sacred relationship to trees and work toward healing that bond?

16. What is your understanding of the intersectionality between Indigenous Rights, forest protection, biodiversity protection, and climate mitigation?

• • Read more on how Indigenous Peoples care for forests: Gleb Raygorodetsky, “Indigenous Peoples Defend Earth’s Biodiversity—But They’re in Danger,” National Geographic, November 16, 2018.
  • M. Kat Anderson, Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

17. Why are carbon offsets a false solution to the climate crisis?

• • Hoodwinked in the Hothouse is a report that describes in detail the range of false solutions to the climate crisis: Climate False Solutions, Hoodwinked in the Hothouse: Resist False Solutions to Climate Change, 3rd ed. (2021).
  • The Need for Real Zero Not Net Zero: Shifting from False Solutions to Real Solutions and a Just Transition, WECAN report https://www.wecaninternational.org/net-zero-real-zero (2023)

18. How can we learn more about the plight of forest protectors and how to support them?

• • Read the Living Forest Proposal from the Sarayaku people of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and explore the wealth of information and beauty included throughout this website: https://kawsaksacha.org/

19. Are you familiar with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples? Why is Free, Prior, and Informed Consent so important—first and foremost to Indigenous Peoples, but also to multiple crises of our time?

• • Read the declaration here: https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html

20. How are policies such as the Escazú Agreement important to understanding that environmental rights must include human rights?

• • Read about WECAN’s Escazú Agreement Campaign: https://www.wecaninternational.org/amazon

More resources for Entering the Terrain

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 2012).

Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies (Las Vegas: Central Recovery Press, 2017).

Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990).

Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (New York: Bell Tower, 1999).

Jeremy Lent, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find our Place in the Universe (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2021).

Jaime Yazzie et al., “Diné kinship as a framework for conserving native tree species in climate change,” Ecological Applications 29, no. 6 (July 2019).
Heidi Toth, “Indigenous knowledge offers new approach to help forests adapt to new conditions,” Phys.org, August 16, 2019.

Listen to Indigenous Peoples of the Tongass Rainforest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BpVs09UGxI&list=TLPQMDMwMTIwMjPPPBST2Ds8sw&index=1&ab_channel=Women%27sEarthandClimateActionNetwork%28WECAN%29International

A Dayak Iban person from West Kalimantan, Indonesia, describes his relationship with the forest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXef-YU9IZI&list=TLPQMDUwMTIwMjPs4yfaWVC_wQ&index=2&ab_channel=IfNotUsThenWho%3F

Explore the official website of the Sarayaku community: https://sarayaku.org/

Numerous Amazonian women discuss the Living Forest Proposal: Osprey Orielle Lake, “The Voices of Amazon Women and a Visionary

Declaration to Protect Indigenous Lands,” Common Dreams, November 18, 2018.

Read more about Berta Cáceres, a heroic forest defender who was murdered by extractivists: https://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/berta-caceres/

Valentina Figuera Martínez, “Being a woman means resistance, to fight for the conservation of forests,” Global Forest Coalition, August 5, 2022.

Read more about WECAN and women leaders in all their diversity organizing for climate justice here: https://www.wecaninternational.org

Dismantling Patriarchy, Racism, and the Myth of Whiteness: Ancient Mother and Women Rising, Chapters 5–8

1. Why is it so important to understand the root causes of interlocking crises such as climate, racism, patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism ?

2. What are some examples of environmental racism in your community?

3. How is gender inequality disproportionately impacting women, in all their diversity, in ecological and social issues?

4. How and why is women’s leadership so crucial to mitigating the climate crisis?

• • “Why Women” from WECAN: https://www.wecaninternational.org/why-women
  • “Women Speak: Stories, Case Studies and Solutions from the Frontlines of Climate Change”: https://www.wecaninternational.org/womenspeak
  • Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson, eds., All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis (New York: One World, 2021).

5. How is violence against the Earth and violence against women connected?

6. Why is it so important that we understand our Goddess-centric past, as outlined by Marija Gimbutas and others? What does it mean to reclaim our pre-patriarchal past? What does it mean that the Feminine Principle was silenced? What does it mean to reclaim the Feminine Principle on a daily basis?

• • Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
  • Marija Gimbutas, The language of the goddess: Unearthing the hidden symbols of western civilization (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989).
  • Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (New York: HarperCollins, 1987).

7. Why is it important that we not erase the history and impact of the witch hunts as we work to understand and dismantle the dominant culture and its attitudes toward women? How has this history influenced how women are treated in the dominant culture?

• • Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2004).
  • Silvia Federici, Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2018).
  • Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (New York: the Feminist Press at CUNY, 2010).
  • Watch The Burning Times, a documentary directed by Donna Read: https://www.nfb.ca/film/burning_times/
  • Read more about the Silver Spoons Collective, who are working to heal these wounds: https://silverspoonscollective.org/about
  • I AM WITCH – Tales from the Roundhouse Exhibition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVofV4u7eQ&ab_channel=CaliWhite

8. In what ways does patriarchy harm men?

• • Robert Bogenberger, “How patriarchy and toxic masculinity hurt men,” Therapist.com, September 30, 2022

9. In which ways has the broader feminist movement neglected Black, Brown, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, poor, and disabled women? In which ways has the feminist movement improved? What steps can be taken to rectify any exclusions?:

• • Rachel Elizabeth Cargle, “When Feminism Is White Supremacy in Heels,” Harper’s Bazaar, August 16, 2018
  • Rafia Zakaria, Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2021)
  • Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot (New York: Viking, 2020)
  • Maile Arvin, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill, “Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy,” Feminist Formations 25, no. 1 (2013).

10. How can we center the leadership of Black, Brown, and Indigenous women in all aspects of movement building, politics, the arts, and society?

• • Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” BlackPast, August 12, 2012.
  • Resources for Black Frontline Climate Leadership: The Chisholm Legacy Project, https://thechisholmlegacyproject.org/

11. Why is the leadership of Black, Brown, and Indigenous women, and women from frontline communities central to addressing interlocking crises?

• • Adrienne Maree Brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (Chico, California: AK Press, 2017).
  • Leah Thomas, The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet (New York: Voracious/Little, Brown and Company, 2022)
  • Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, ed., The Black Agenda: Bold Solutions for a Broken System (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2022).
  • Vandana Shiva, Terra Viva: My Life in a Biodiversity of Movements (New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2022).
  • Vandana Shiva, Reclaiming the Commons: Biodiversity, Traditional Knowledge, and the Rights of Mother Earth (Santa Fe, NM: Synergetic Press, 2020).
  • Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, Remembering Our Intimacies: Mo’olelo, Aloha ‘Aina, and Ea (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019).
  • Jessica Hernandez, Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2023).
  • Tori Tsui, It’s Not Just You: How to Navigate Eco-Anxiety and the Climate Crisis (London: Gallery UK, 2023).
  • Vanessa Nakate, A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis (New York: Mariner Books, 2021).
  • Catherine Coleman Flowers, Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret (New York: The New Press, 2020.)
  • Dina Gilio-Whitaker, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock (Boston: Beacon Press, 2019).
  • Ingrid R.G. Waldron, There’s Something In The Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous & Black Communities (Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing, 2018).
  • Wanjiku Gatheru, “Want to Be an Environmentalist? Start With Antiracism,” Glamour, July 30, 2020.

12. In which ways can it be beneficial to connect with your ancestral spiritual traditions that honored the Feminine Principle, Goddesses, and a living Earth, both at the individual and societal level?

13. How can we work to dismantle the myth of whiteness? Why is it important to dismantle white supremacy, personally and politically? How do we do this? Who is already doing this work in your area? Is there space in your community where people can speak about white supremacy, racism, and colonization?

• • Learn more about the myth of whiteness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppvbBY3ce8Y&list=WL&index=3&ab_channel=WORLDChannel
  • lRoxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Not “a Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion(Boston: Beacon Press, 2021).
  • Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (New York: Random House, 2020).
  • Layla F. Saad, Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2020).
  • There is a wealth of information online to guide conversations about racism. Here is a list of resources from the National Museum of African American History & Culture: https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race
  • Teaching about Race, Racism, and Police Violence, from Learning for Justice: https://www.learningforjustice.org/moment/racism-and-police-violence
  • Resources for White People to Learn and Talk about Racism: https://blog.fracturedatlas.org/resources-for-white-people-to-learn-and-talk-about-race-and-racism-5b207fff4fc7
  • A list of resources from Decolonization in Action: https://www.decolonizationinaction.com/resources

Other Resources for Dismantling Patriarchy, Racism, and the Myth of Whiteness: Ancient Mother and Women Rising

Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture (New York: Avery, 2022).

Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist

Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, No. 1 (1989).

Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2007).

Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986).

Read more about the Black Lives Matter movement: https://blacklivesmatter.com

Michele Goodwin, “The Racist History of Abortion and Midwifery Bans,” ACLU, July 1, 2020.

Jessica Merino, “Women Speak: Ruth Nyambura Insists On A Feminist Political Ecology,” Ms., November 15, 2017.

V (formerly Eve Ensler), Reckoning (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023).

Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1987).

Esther Jacobson, The Deer Goddess of Ancient Siberia: A Study in the Ecology of Belief (Leiden: Brill, 1992).

James J. Preston, ed., Mother Worship: Theme and Variations (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1983).

Constance Tippett’s,  Goddess Timeline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th0gEh1xpjg&list=WL&index=34&ab_channel=ConstanceTippett

The hosts of Fate & Fabled, Drs. Moiya McTier and Emily Zarka, have several good videos about Goddesses, such as this one about Gaia, the Earth Mother: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4njsy_VrhE&list=WL&index=32&ab_channel=Storied

“How Ancient Mythologies Defy the Gender Binary”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxeyqjEkbr8&list=WL&index=33&ab_channel=Storied

Reciprocity: A Thousandfold Act of Responsibility and Love, Chapters 9–11

1. Are there stories from your family traditions that can support you in building a reciprocity practice, whether those stories are found in foodways, songs, literature, experiences, or otherwise?

2. How can we explore and experience ourselves as intrinsically intertwined with the ecosystems where we live? Do we know where our water comes from and the way of the changing seasons?

3. Why is Traditional Ecological Knowledge so crucial?

• • Melissa K. Nelson, ed., Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future (Rochester, VT: Bear & Company, 2008).
  • Trinity A. Minahan, “Integrating Indigenous Perspectives in Forest Policy through Traditional Ecological Knowledge,” American Bar Association, January 12, 2023.
  • Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim talks about TEK and climate change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3d_UsYgt1c&list=WL&index=35&ab_channel=TED

4. What does it mean for humans to be a keystone species?

• • In a TED Talk, Lyla June discusses how to live as a keystone species: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH5zJxQETl4&ab_channel=TEDxTalks

5. What can we learn from the animal world about living in harmony with ecological systems?

6. How do we become good ancestors? What paradigms must be in place for us to become good ancestors?

7. What measures are being taken in your area to protect forests, rivers, and other natural systems? To what extent is Indigenous leadership respected and implemented in these endeavors?

8. What does it mean to practice reciprocity in your daily life?

9. What are some ways to approach our economy that do not involve endless material growth?

10. What have been the effects of capitalism on the world? What have been the effects of colonialism? How have these institutions shaped worldviews globally?

• • Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014).
    Jack D. Forbes, Columbus and Other Cannibals (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2011).

11. What is your idea of degrowth? What about gift and care economies? What about feminist economics?

• • Jason Hickel, Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (London, Windmill Books: 2021).
  • Genevieve Vaughan, “Theory and Practice of the Gift Economy,” Gift Economy, July 7, 2011.
  • Riane Eisler, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2007).

12. What areas of growth are represented by Buen Vivir?

• • Eduardo Gudynas, a Uruguayan expert on Buen Vivir, links his many publications to his website: http://gudynas.com
  • This one is particularly relevant: Eduardo Gudynas, “Value, Growth, Development: South American Lessons for a New Ecopolitics,” CAPITALISM NATURE SOCIALISM, July 27, 2017.
  • Juan Francisco Salazar, “Buen Vivir: South America’s rethinking of the future we want,” The Conversation, July 23, 2015.
    Natasha Chassagne, Buen Vivir as an Alternative to Sustainable Development: Lessons from Ecuador (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021).

13. What is your understanding of a Just Transition? What are some steps that can be taken in this framework?

• • “Just Transition: A Framework for Change”: https://climatejusticealliance.org/just-transition/

14. How does capitalism devalue women’s labor and perpetuate violence against them?

15. How does capitalism perpetuate patriarchy?

16. Why is it “easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism”? What is stopping us from imagining another way?

• • Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Winchester: Zero Books, 2010).

17. How would the world look if the “honorable harvest” were followed?

• • Robin Wall Kimmerer explains the honorable harvest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEm7gbIax0o&t=205s&ab_channel=Bioneers
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013).

18. Are there Indigenous groups in your area calling for Land Back? How can you support this effort?

• • NDN Collective: https://ndncollective.org/

19. What does reparations mean for Black communities or individuals in your area?

• • Thai Jones, “Slavery reparations seem impossible. In many places, they’re already happening.,” Washington Post, January 31, 2020.
  • Rodney Brooks, “How reparations would work today,” Quartz, October 6, 2020.

Other Resources for Reciprocity: A Thousandfold Act of Responsibility and Love

Leah Penniman talks about her ancestral connection to the land and Soul Fire Farm: https://bioneers.org/leah-penniman-farming-black-uprooting-racism-seeding-sovereignty-zstf2101/ Visit the Soul Fire Farm website: https://www.soulfirefarm.org/

Watch Green Gold by John Dennis Liu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBLZmwlPa8A&ab_channel=PermacultureDay

“Press Release: Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus Opening Statement,” International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change, November 3, 2021.

The Bioneers website contains numerous videos, podcast episodes, and articles on Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Here is just one good podcast: https://bioneers.org/the-path-home-restoring-native-lands-and-traditional-ecological-knowledge-eriel-deranger/

Read the Fossil-Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty: https://fossilfueltreaty.org/

Read about a Feminist Green New Deal: https://feministgreennewdeal.com/

Dallas Goldtooth and Alberto Saldamando, Indigenous Resistance Against Carbon (Washington, DC: Oil Change International, 2021).

Read A People’s Orientation to a Regenerative Economy: https://climatejusticealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ProtectRepairInvestTransformdoc24s.pdf

Martín Prechtel, Long Life, Honey in the Heart (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1999).

Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (New York: HarperOne, 2020).

The Bioneers website contains a wealth of information about biomimicry, including several videos: https://bioneers.org/biomimicry/

On WECAN’s YouTube channel, you can find many interviews and speeches by Black, Brown, and Indigenous women activists, and women on the front lines. This video features Neema Namadamu and other women from the WECAN DRC forest program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVF65uhzips&ab_channel=Women%27sEarthandClimateActionNetwork%28WECAN%29International

The New Economy Coalition: https://neweconomy.net/

Via Campesina: https://viacampesina.org/en/

Global Ecovillage Network: https://ecovillage.org/

The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust: https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/

Living in Balance with the Natural Laws of the Earth, Chapter 12

1. What does it mean for nature to have rights?

• • Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN): https://www.garn.org/

2. Why is it so important to move from property-based environmental laws to a framework where nature has rights?

3. The Māori see the Whanganui River as a relative. What does it mean to see nature as a relative?

4. How do Rights of Nature help to shift our worldview and relationship to the places we live?

Other Resources for Living in Balance with the Natural Laws of the Earth

Read the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth: https://pwccc.wordpress.com/programa/

Cormac Cullinan, Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice (Claremont, South Africa: Siber Ink, 2002).

The Land Is Speaking: Language, Memory, and a Storied Living Landscape, Chapters 13–15

1. How do the words we use every day shape our worldview?

2. How has your worldview been shaped by the stories you know about the land where you live?

3. Are there certain words that make you feel connected to a landscape?

• • Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney, Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2006).
  • Robert Macfarlane, Landmarks (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2015).

4. What would it mean to develop an Earth-loving language that reflects the awe-inspiring reality of existence? What would it mean to develop a language that is decolonized and anti-racist? What would it mean to develop a language that affirms the equality of all genders, all peoples, and all beings? What would it mean to develop a language of animacy and care to convey our stories?

5. How can we support Indigenous leadership and protect dying languages?

6. If you say “this land carries me” rather than “I am from this land,” how does the meaning change for you?

• • Martín Prechtel, The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun: A Mayan Tale of Ecstasy, Time, and Finding One’s True Form (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2005).

7. How does naming something help us form a relationship with it, as Robert Macfarlane noticed when learning about the word “smeuse”?

8. How do the maps that we use, whether for navigation or display purposes, influence the way we think about a place? How can we produce and look at maps differently? How can changing our maps influence the worldview of where we live?

• • Kelsey Leonard, “Putting Indigenous Place-Names and Languages Back on Maps,” Esri, Winter 2021.
  • Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder, “Counter Mapping,” Emergence Magazine, February 8, 2018.

9. Most modern maps display the Northern Hemisphere at the top. What are the worldview implications of this, politically and culturally?

10. If you were to create your own map of the area where you live, what would you include and exclude?

Other Resources for The Land Is Speaking: Language, Memory, and a Storied Living Landscape

Leanne Hinton, Flutes of Fire: Essays on California Indian Languages (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1994).

Manchán Magan, Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape (Dublin: Gill Books, 2020).

Mary Isabelle Young, Pimatisiwin: Walking in a Good Way (Manitoba: The Prolific Group, 2005).

Duane W. Hamacher, “The Memory Code: how oral cultures memorise so much information,” The Conversation, September 26, 2016.

Lynne Kelly, The Memory Code: The Secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and Other Ancient Monuments (New York: Pegasus Books Ltd., 2017).

Wade Davis, Shadows in the Sun: Travels to Landscapes of Spirit and Desire (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1998).

Wade Davis, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2009).

Listen to people talk about how they are preserving their endangered languages:

“The Fight To Save The Dying Languages Of Alaska”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn7mkEsxybw&list=WL&index=20&ab_channel=VICENews

“N.Y./Region: City of Endangered Languages”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiW59UUivc0&list=WL&index=21&ab_channel=TheNewYorkTimes

“The Last Speaker: South Africa’s dying language”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vviiDznj5QA&list=WL&index=22&ab_channel=AlJazeeraEnglish

“Thailand’s Dying Languages”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OdkCV2llFc&list=WL&index=24&ab_channel=MaxMediaAsia

Learn more about Ogham: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8X_S6RB8J0&list=WL&index=30&ab_channel=WatchLimbo

The Ogham Alphabet: https://ogham.ie/history/ogham-alphabet/

Indigenous Australian artists demonstrate songlines at the Sydney Opera House: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33O08xrQpR8&list=WL&index=21&ab_channel=SydneyOperaHouse

An Indigenous Australian Elder explains the Dreamtime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuzqofEBhM8&list=WL&index=24&ab_channel=EVOLVEIndigenousCulturalAwareness