“For 500 years, we all have been using a very simple model for thinking about living systems. Which is, if you want to understand something that’s complicated, you break it apart into its little pieces. And once you understand the little pieces and put it back together, you will understand the complex thing. And what ‘Chaos’ (book by James Gleick) (…) shows is… that’s how you fix clocks. That’s not how you fix behaviors. That’s not how you understand behaviors. Behavior is not like a clock. Behavior is like a cloud. And you don’t understand rainfall by breaking a cloud down into its component pieces and gluing them back together.”

— Robert Sapolsky

“In Aboriginal worldviews, nothing exists outside of a relationship to something else. There are no isolated variables—every element must be considered in relation to the other elements and the context. Areas of knowledge are integrated, not separated. The relationship between the knower and other knowers, places and senior knowledge-keepers is paramount. It facilitates shared memory and sustainable knowledge systems. An observer does not try to be objective, but is integrated within a sentient system that is observing itself.

— Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
— Henry David Thoreau

“Whatever the tasks, do them slowly and with ease, in mindfulness. Don’t do any task in order to get it over with. Resolve to do each job in a relaxed way, with all your attention. Enjoy and be one with your work.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

Excerpts from the talk:

• Contrary to the myth of the “primitive Indian” we were not passive observers of nature nor were we wandering bands of nomads looking for a berry to eat or deer to hunt. No. By and large we were active agents in shaping the land to produce prolefic abundance. We expanded and designed grasslands and forests for the benefit of all life.

• We became what the world calls a keystone species, or a species upon which entire ecosystems depend. And our cultures became keystone cultures refined over time.

• [Post pandemic]…the logical leap that many observers seemed to make was that the earth would be better off without humans. I reject that leap. The earth may be better off without certain systems we have created, but we are not these systems. We don’t have to be at least.

• What if I told you that the earth needs us? What if I told you that we belong here? … What if these human hands and minds could be such a great gift to the earth that they sparked new life where people and purpose met?

• 4 important indigenous land management techniques:

  1. To tap into and align ourselves with the forces of nature.
  2. Intententional habitat expansion (many people think that we follow the buffalo when in fact the buffalo followed our fire)
  3. Decenter humans (create non-human centric systems).
  4. Design for perpetuity (what if our systems were designed to last forever).

• …You might say “Oh thats very nice Lyla but, that could never scale. That could never feed today’s massive global population” and to that I say; Contrary to popular belief these continents were actually densely populated by indigenous people, as more and more studies are proving and their food systems still supported them. These systems are even more efficient than industrial food systems because they protect and agument the very thing that give us life instead of extracting and destroying them.

• I would love to see the world adopt these strategies and at the same time, I know its not enough to simply mimic native practices. We must also work to return some of these lands to their original caretakers. for, in addition to healing the soil we must also heal our history as a nation.

• … If we all unite together in courage, in forgiveness, in amends and generosity.

• Hózhó - Is the joy of being a part of the beauty of all creation.

• When we understand that humanity is an expression of the Earth’s beauty, we understand that we too belong.

• Hózhó understands that we have an ecological role. Hózhó understands that our mother Earth needs us. When we become her friend, her confidant, her ally, her partner in life, instead of her dominator, her supirior or her profiteer, we can transform dead systems to living ones.

“The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off.”

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Eating with the fullest pleasure is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.”

— Wendell Berry

Openness is sometimes construed as having no boundaries. And that is a mistake because, open and close have meaning only when there are boundaries.

— rawjeev

Each thing in nature is a question containing its own potential answer.
— Christopher Bamford, Green Hermeticism: Alchemy & Ecology

Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.
— Stewart Brand