Traditional Knowledge Archives - ClimateCultures - creative conversations for the Anthropocene

A Cosmology of Conservation: Ancient Maya Environmentalism

Anthropologist Lisa J. Lucero shares a talk she recorded specially for ClimateCultures, drawing on her extensive archaeological research into how ancient Maya culture adapted to environmental change, and whose non-anthropocentric cosmology can help us rethink our own worldview.

1,190 words: estimated reading time = 5 minutes + 42 minutes video

I have spent over 30 years studying the ancient Maya, and I have learned so much from the Maya, past and present. The book I am working on — Sacred Maya Forests, Ancient Environmentalism, and Our Future — shares what I have learned about the Maya world and the insights we can draw from that are relevant today.

Both the archaeological record and Maya foremen and field assistants (the guys), some of whom have worked with me for over 20 years, have taught me much about their way of life. I have seen their children grow, get married, and have children of their own. Even though I have been working in central Belize for decades, I still would never go into the jungle without the guys — Mother Nature only laughs at high tech toys. Nothing is better than their knowledge and experience. They not only help me teach students archaeology, but they also provide lots of the gear we need. They make ladders from trees for taking photos and for getting in and out of deep excavation pits. They also make unit stakes, screen racks and tables using branches and vines. To protect us and excavations from sun and rain, the guys use corozo leaf and logs to make palapas — open-sided dwellings with a thatched roof. Cleofo, a Mopan Maya and one of my foremen, uses bamboo to make tools to excavate human remains since they don’t scratch bones like metal tools do.

I only hope I get to go to Belize in May 2021 for a six-week field season. I have a three-year National Science Foundation Grant to fund a rescue archaeology project in recently cleared areas that have exposed hundreds of ancient Maya mounds/structures. There is so much more to learn.

A cosmology for sustainability

Together, the archaeological record and my Maya foremen and assistants provide the means to address major questions, the key ones being: how have the Maya been able to farm for 4,000 years without denuding the tropical landscape? What insights can we draw from the Maya that are relevant today? I begin addressing these questions in my presentation here, ‘Ancient Maya Environmentalism: A Cosmology of Conservation’, which you can watch below.

The Classic Maya (c. 250-900 CE) are famous for their jungle cities with temples, palaces, tombs, ballcourts, exquisitely carved monuments, inscribed jades, and painted ceramics. Maya farmers, who supported this urban system, lived before, during, and after the emergence and demise of Maya kings between c. 200 BCE and 900 CE because of how they lived, which itself was informed by their non-anthropocentric worldview. This worldview, a cosmology of conservation, resulted in sustainable practices and was expressed in their daily life — rituals, farming, hunting, forest management, socializing, etc. As a case study, I highlight the pilgrimage destination of Cara Blanca, Belize.

Ego vs ecocentrism in Maya cosmology — Ego vs. Eco: the former resulted in the Anthropocene, the latter in sustainable practices. Generated by J. Gonzalez Cruz and L. J. Lucero, 2020

The traditional Maya worldview espouses that humans were one of many parts (animals, birds, trees, clouds, stone, earth, etc.) with mutual responsibilities to maintain the world they shared. Everything in Classic Maya society was animated and connected via souls. The Maya worked with nature, not against it. Nor did they attempt to control it. Such a view promoted biodiversity and conservation, allowing the Maya to feed more people in the pre-Columbian era than presently.

Adapting to a changing world

The Classic Maya lived in hundreds of cities, each with their own king, surrounded by rural farmsteads. This low-density agrarian urban system integrated water and agricultural systems, cities, farmsteads and communities, exchange networks, and resources. Rural farmers depended on city reservoirs during the annual five-month dry season — the agricultural downtime. Cities exerted a centripetal pull on rural Maya through markets, public ceremonies, and other large-scale public events — and the massive reservoirs. In turn, cities depended on the rural populace to fund the political economy in the form of labor, services (craft specialists, hunters, etc.), agricultural produce (e.g. maize, beans, manioc, squash, pineapple, tobacco, tomatoes, etc.), and forest resources (wood, fuel, construction materials, medicinal plants, chert, game, fruit, etc.).

Showing an abandoned Mayan city, Tikal — Tikal – abandoned Mayan city
Photo: A. Kinkella

The Maya relied on rainfall to nourish their fields and replenish reservoirs during the annual rainy season between about mid-June to mid-January. The relatively little surface water due to the porous limestone bedrock, topography (e.g. entrenched rivers), and dispersed resources discouraged large-scale irrigation systems. The Maya began building reservoirs in cities c. 100 BCE. A growing population resulted in increasingly larger and more sophisticated reservoirs (e.g. dams, channels, filtration, etc.). Urban planning and layout increasingly became interlinked with reservoir systems, creating anthropogenic landscapes still visible today. Further, maintaining reservoir water quality would have been crucial to curtail the presence of waterborne parasites and diseases, such as hepatic schistosomiasis, and the build-up of noxious elements such as nitrogen. The Maya kept water clean by creating wetland biospheres through the use of certain surface and subsurface plants, as well as aquatic life.

A series of prolonged droughts struck between c. 800 and 930 CE. When reservoir levels began dropping, water quality worsened and water plants died, along with Maya kingship. Maya abandoned kings and cities, dispersing out of the interior southern lowlands in all directions. While this response was drastic, it was an adaptive strategy — one that worked, as evidenced by the over seven million Maya currently living in Central America and elsewhere.

Maya farmers survived because they relied on sustainable agricultural practices and forest management, both designed within the constructs of their worldview. The insights I have gained from the archaeological record and my Maya crew are a roadmap for a more sustainable future for us all. By the end of my presentation, I hope to convince you rethinking how we view and interact with the world is the first step for a sustainable future.

Click on the screenshot below to view Lisa’s presentation.

Click on image to link to Lisa’s ClimateCultures talk, ‘Ancient Maya Environmentalism: A Cosmology of Conservation’ https://mediaspace.illinois.edu/media/1_b0f1i6fj

Find out more

Lisa has shared some suggested reading from her research, for you to explore beyond her presentation. You can also read her earlier ClimateCultures post, Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Maya Kings.

Larmon, Jean T., H. Gregory McDonald, Stanley Ambrose, Larisa R. G. DeSantis, and Lisa J. Lucero (2019): A Year in the Life of a Giant Ground Sloth During the Last Glacial Maximum in Belize. (Science Advances, 5:eaau1200).

Lucero, Lisa J. (2017): Ancient Maya Water Management, Droughts, and Urban Diaspora: Implications for the Present, pages 162-188 in Tropical Forest Conservation: Long-Term Processes of Human Evolution, Cultural Adaptations and Consumption Patterns, edited by Nuria Sanz, Rachel Christina Lewis, Jose Pulido Mata, and Chantal Connaughton (UNESCO, Mexico).

Lucero, Lisa J. (2018): A Cosmology of Conservation in the Ancient Maya World. (Journal of Anthropological Research. 74:327-359).

Lucero, Lisa J., and Jesann Gonzalez Cruz (2020): Reconceptualizing Urbanism: Insights from Maya Cosmology. (Frontiers in Sustainable Cities: Urban Resource Management, 2:1).

Lisa Lucero

A professor of Anthropology focusing on how Maya and other societies dealt with climate change: the emergence and demise of political power, ritual and water management.
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Towards an Erotics of Place

Filmmaker James-Murray-White shares his experience of some of the world’s desert places, and what the book Desert Quartet – an Erotic Landscape offers as a way into explorations of these places, of our sense of connectedness and self.

1,750 words: estimated reading time 7 minutes

“There is no separation between our bodies and the body of the earth.”
— Terry Tempest Williams, Desert Quartet – an Erotic Landscape

My partner Lucy is a child of the desert — indeed, we met in the Negev eleven years ago on a tour of Nabatean ruins (but that’s another story), and she’s recently returned from a top-up desert visit. Lucy has put me on to an extraordinary collection of writings and drawings: Desert Quartet – an Erotic Landscape, by Terry Tempest Williams and artist Mary Frank. A noted American nature writer, Williams — invoking the sensual lure and drama of the Colorado Plateau — dares to explore “what it might mean to make love to the land”. I’ve not been to the Colorado Desert, but reading this book took me back to the Joshua Tree, the Gobi, the Negev, and my waking dreams of the Sahara…

Desert Quartet - the cover of the book by Terry Tempest Williams and Mary Frank — Desert Quartet – an Erotic Landscape, by Terry Tempest Williams and Mary Frank

Desert Quartet is a short, beautifully illustrated hardback book, and probably quite rare: the sort of gem we stumble upon in a second-hand bookstore. Through it, we are taken on a wild journey of erotics — a quartet of them, in fact, connecting with earth, water, fire, and air. Terry Tempest Williams writes in a spare and intense word-by-word engagement with these elements, the place, space, and sensory feeling, and with herself: identifying, touching, and loving landscape and all within it.

It’s a book to read with a lover, or to take alone on a desert hike. If you are in the UK, Dungeness in Kent is our nearest thing to a desert — although not classified as such by the Met Office. It’s certainly a wonderfully wild place, and worth visiting to see the cottage and garden created by visionary artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman. If you’ve not been, do go. This book would be a useful companion: a wild guide to rewilding your soul and yourself.

Dungeness, southern England’s ‘shingle desert’
Photograph © James Murray-White sky-larking.co.uk

Desert Quartet — desert life

Rewilding is an opening up: allowing growth, listening and looking deeply — getting to the depths of the soil and loam. As Williams writes, “The wind becomes a wail, a proper lament for all that is hidden. Inhale. Exhale. This is the dreamtime of the desert, the beginning of poetry.” Rewilding is us as humans seeking genuine and open authenticity — and then connecting that with the outer wild!

Desert life is raw, tough, not for the fool-hardy. I identify with the bunch of British travellers and writers who have gone out and lived in, crossed, or tasted in some way the deserts of our world. T.E. Lawrence, famously, ‘became’ a desert dweller, deeply identifying with desert life and its peoples, and then was ultimately caught up in the military wargaming of the First World War (and came back to try to instil the desert culture within himself as a mystic hermit in the New Forest). Wilfred Thesiger crossed the ‘Empty Quarter’. And, most recently, Rory Stewart openly identifies with both these figures and this has shaped his ends politically. Deserts do have an extraordinary impact upon the human psyche, however we taste them, and it is not to be taken lightly. So Desert Quartet is in many ways a primer to know how to take both our psyche and our physicality into such a harsh environment.

My desert time has taken me to the Gobi in Mongolia, the Negev in Israel, and the Mohave in California, and still I crave more. The Gobi opened my eyes to the truly vast — the endless savanna and the liminal changes across a space: from the snowy high tops of the Altai mountain range, to the coarse sand and temperate climes of the middle regions. The Negev seems harsher: it is a six-month no-go region if you can’t stand relentless heat. In both these deserts I was drawn in by the peoples — by the nomads of Mongolia and by the Bedouin of the Negev, also nomadic but now politically forced to settle by political structures and states. It is crucial not to get sucked into romantic notions of indigeneity amongst surviving nomadic peoples: yes, their lineage is long and deep, and there is great wisdom, but there is the harsh reality of everyday life. Such groups can survive and sometimes thrive, but it is against the ever-creeping modernity of capitalism and catastrophic environmental damage: mining and river pollution in Mongolia, and military exclusions, creeping cities, and extremist land laws in Israel are examples that come instantly to my mind.

Mongolia
Photograph © James Murray-White sky-larking.co.uk

No ancient, passed-on knowledge equipped nomadic peoples in our current age to deal with the insipid hostility of modernity: theirs is a hard-edged living in present-day reality, wondering how their children will cope with feet in both camps. Most Bedouin and Mongol nomads I’ve met would laugh at the notion of us sensation-seeking Westerners going out to desert spaces to connect with land, to connect with the ‘erotics of nature’, and ultimately with ourselves. For desert-dwellers, this world is already within. Just as many nomads are forced — by the capitalist economy, by bitter harsh weather and changing climatic conditions, or by political threats or force — to move to the cities, imagine if the situation were reversed and we had to flee our urban territories… Like the wandering Mormons off to the brave new lands, we might find our call to desert lands before those external forces might prevail upon us.

My 2012 film Steadfast is an exploration of Bedouin life in the Negev, looking at the pressures these tribal peoples face, and how their interaction with the ‘new world’ cuts many ways.

A desert calling

Deserts are, in essence, the deepest place of our calling. If we are not of that place, the desert, we may — if we are lucky in our human lifetime — feel called there and experience the otherness of the place. Many have gone to deserts to meditate, to be humbled, and even to die. Terry Tempest Williams went there to feel into her most erotic landscape. I’ve been called to deserts to walk and look, and chiefly to meet nomads and desert dwellers. This is an amalgamation of the ecological parts of the entire spirit of a desert.

At Extinction Rebellion Rewilding (gathering on Facebook as the ‘rewilding’ wing of Extinction Rebellion), we have recommended an exercise explored in Mick Collin’s book The Visionary Spirit, of identifying yourself with a tree as a form of life-review and engagement with presence: imagining ‘your’ tree, feeling your roots, trunk and branches — anchored, flexible and spreading out — and noticing your sense of flourishing, connection and resilience. In a similar way, I recommend using Desert Quartet as a total mind/body guide to engagement with place. It maybe offers an opportunity to reflect upon place/self, the wild edges between these, and (if you choose, within a Buddhist dialectic) no self; and an example of how we might want to reflect and record that through words, art, and more.

Desert Quartet - showing a page from the book by Terry Tempest Williams and Mary Frank — ‘Desert Quartet – an Erotic Landscape’, by Terry Tempest Williams and artist Mary Frank

I’m just starting on another Terry Tempest Williams book, Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert, which switches into the politics of land use and land rights in American deserts: after the sensual, deep inner wild, out now into the boxing ring of human ecological scenarios and ego and squalling…

“I strike a match and light the shreds of kindling I have cut with my knife. I fan the incense toward me. The smoke rises, curls, coils around my face. It feels good to be in the desert again. Home — where I can pause, remain silent. There is nothing to explain.” — Terry Tempest Williams, Desert Quartet — an Erotic Landscape.

Find out more

Desert Quartet – an Erotic Landscape, by Terry Tempest Williams and Mary Frank, was published by Pantheon Books, New York (1995). You can read an extract here, and in a piece for High Country News on 3rd June 1991, Williams says “Let us get out and love the land. Let us be intimate. The most radical act we can commit is to live well. There is no defence against an open heart and a supple body in dialogue with wildness. Internal strength is an absorption of the external landscape. We are informed by beauty, raw and sensual. Through an Erotics of Place our sensitivity becomes our sensibility.” (Yellowstone: the Erotics of Place, High Country News, 3rd June 1991, page 16).

You can explore Dungeness, situated next to Romney Marsh in Kent and one of the largest expanses of shingle in Europe, at Unusual Places. And there is more to discover at Romney Marsh – the Fifth Continent. “It has been said that Dungeness is like Marmite, you either love it or hate it. The landscape certainly divides people – a broad, echoing flatness with the nuclear power stations on one side, the shingle dipping into the sea on the other and railway carriages turned into quaint and strange looking dwellings. The stark wild beauty and distinctive character of this shingle desert engenders feelings of awe, wonder and curiosity.”

The Visionary Spirit: Awakening to the Imaginal Realm in the Transformocene Age by Mick Collins is published by Permanent Publications, UK (2018). Mick talks about his previous book, The Unselfish Spirit, in this 2014 podcast and you can watch his recent talk at the Into The Wild Festival, Summer 2019, introduced by James.

Extinction Rebellion Rewilding is the Facebook group exploring how rewilding can also be seen as not only the regeneration of natural biodiversity but also as the respect and rediscovery of indigeny and balanced relationship within the diverse ecosystems of the earth. “All acts of rewilding are Rebellion.”

You can watch James’ film Steadfast, and more of his films, on Vimeo. And don’t forget to check out Finding Blake, the website for James’ most recent film project, reimagining William Blake for the 21st Century. In one of his previous ClimateCultures posts, “Summon the bravery!” Encounters at Small Earth, James describes taking part in the Small Earth conference in 2018, where psychotherapists, ecologists, economists, philosophical and spiritual thinkers gathered to address hope for future living within the ecosphere.

James Murray-White

A writer and filmmaker linking art forms to dialogue around climate issues, whose practice stretches back to theatre-making.
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Susan Holliday

A psychotherapist and writer committed to the rewilding of human nature, exploring the correlation between despoiling our natural world and the desolation of the human spirit
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Rising Tide: A Weekend with Extinction Rebellion

Artist Linda Gordon was invited to lead a land art workshop using natural materials at Extinction Rebellion’s Rising Tide Festival in North Devon. She describes an experience of co-operation and natural harmony: “In other words, a sane community.”

1,940 words: estimated reading time 8 minutes

The Rebel Rising, Rising Tide weekend — organised and hosted by Extinction Rebellion Southwest, at Tapeley Park, North Devon — was characterised by fun and relaxation, underpinned by some important and serious talks: some covering aspects of the gathering climate and ecological crisis we are facing; others giving guidance on how best to bring about change, and on the role of XR.

There was some great music throughout, both live and recorded — and a huge range of relaxing activities: family yoga, meditation, massage… And a number of craft workshops and nature-related activities, for example, forest school bushcraft, permaculture and nature and forest therapy.

A range of authoritative speakers were on hand to give expert talks, including Jozette Kimba of Stop Ecocide — an organisation committed to getting the law changed, and making large-scale destruction of our natural environment a crime. MEP Molly Scott Cato spoke about the Green Party and Green economics, and how this aimed to address social and economic inequalities around the world. Other talks and workshops covered practical information and strategies that the audience could, if they wished, put into action: for instance, ‘How to speak with the Media and present yourself as a spokesperson’.

A gathering place

I hadn’t the faintest idea what to expect, never having attended an XR event before, but as the weekend drew nearer, it slowly dawned on me that there was going to be A LOT of people, and A LOT would be going on.

I stepped out of the car high up in the grassy field of Tapeley Park and gazed out over the wide expanse of gentle green Devon fields, bordered with trees, and down to the quiet Torridge Estuary below. Soft blue sky, wisps of white cloud, warm breeze, sunshine.
 
Exploring and preparing for the workshop, pacing and fretting: ‘Where do I find more contrasting and varied materials? Shall I take people for a walk? How many will turn up? five or 55? What age groups? And does anybody really want to hear my memorised notes on ‘how trees support our lives’? Meanwhile, my friend and helper, Jann went off to a talk on fossil fuels and came back looking worried and concerned.

Of course, I knew perfectly well at the back of my mind that everything relating to the workshop would work out brilliantly, once I relinquished control — and of course, it did. Participants dived into making a beautiful mandala artwork and nobody needed to hear from the likes of me how to connect with the Earth!

Rising Tide - making the mandala. Photograph by Linda Gordon — Making the mandala
Photograph: Linda Gordon © 2019

Throughout the rest of the day, and all Sunday, people stopped by to take photos, or to add to the work with leaves, grasses, cones and flowers. The intention was to use the mandala as a gathering place for starting off the procession at the closing ceremony the next evening.

I relaxed in the peaceful atmosphere of congenial company, the spacious surroundings of Tapeley Park, and the mild, tranquil weather. At the Mandala art site faint scents of barbequed vegetables reached my nostrils. A few yards away, at the pop-up Green Library, a group of children sprawled on the grass under its awning, playing a board game. A few adults were relaxing in chairs, reading magazines, whilst another couple played at a small Subbuteo table.

A rising tide

On Sunday I took in a couple of talks. I listened to ‘Social Justice and the Green Movement’ by Dr Ed Atkins, from the University of Bristol, who spoke of the Green New Deal, with its aim of justice and fairness for all — that is, a complete restructuring and reform of our economic system, and urgent action to address the climate crisis we are all facing.

He gave some examples of appalling social and environmental abuses in other parts of the world, particularly relating to our society’s massive demand for sand in order to build our towns and cities — leading to very lucrative and often criminal sand extraction enterprises in faraway countries.

Closer to home, in the light of what we all know — that our economy is driven by the richest sector of society — he spoke of the need to keep social discussion going: to protect the vulnerable, to respect workers’ rights and the right to work. I very much liked that on inviting questions at the end of his talk, he was also able to give people helpful tips on their individual local or family concerns.

I must have been in a geological mood that day, for the second talk I chose was titled ‘Resource Exploitation and General Climate Q&A’ by Professor Jon Blundy, from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. He talked of the role of earth scientists in addressing and resolving current climate and environmental problems.

Professor Blundy, an expert in the processes of magma beneath the earth’s crust, began by explaining the creation of minerals in the magma, then went on to discuss the unfettered extraction of copper, iron, coal and rare earths by unscrupulous mining companies in various countries. He gave examples of the environmental damage and human suffering caused by such activities.

He also explained the vital importance of copper as a conductor in electrical systems and how it has the potential for massively reducing carbon emissions. Unfortunately, when it comes to extracting materials of great value for whatever reason, an increase in scale can cause devastation to local populations around the mining areas and add to the already known global effects of climate change.

I must admit, I was previously fairly ignorant of much of what I heard from these two speakers, and the distressing implications of it all, but now I am glad that I am more aware of it.

Stop Ecocide Photograph by Linda Gordon — Stop Ecocide
Photograph: Linda Gordon © 2019

Their observations and information struck me of great importance to life as we know it, drawing our attention to social and environmental suffering and injustices around the world; in encouraging others to take action on some of these issues (for instance, speaking at XR events), and in pointing the way towards possible solutions to some of the problems. And certainly we are going to need to make radical changes in our economic structures and industrial practices if we are going to avert what looks like rapidly approaching disaster for many species, including our own.

However, I doubt that science alone, although a wonderful tool, will necessarily resolve all our social and ecological ills. It all depends upon how the science is used. My current personal view is that time is indeed running out. Unless we humans can wake up fast to the realisation that life is all one, and we are all interdependent — then things don’t look too good.

A sane community

Later, I had a good look around the area, at the many stalls and signs of earlier activity. I wandered among the people quietly relaxing on the grass in the Sunday afternoon sunshine. And I spent some time in the huge marquee enjoying music and singing by the Southwest based female trio, Boudicca’s Child.

Back at the Mandala, where my workshop had been held, and which by now had accumulated further additions of flowers and woodland materials, I met with the four people who would be leading the Closing Ceremony. They represented the elements Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Instead of gathering everyone together around the mandala as originally planned, they decided to prepare themselves around it, with a quiet ‘smudging’ ritual. Smudging is a method of purifying and cleansing one’s energy with smouldering sage smoke, practised by some North American Indian tribes and also by some other cultures. I believe sage smoke has been found by science to have beneficial effects on our stress levels. It certainly has a very pleasant scent!

Rising tide - gathering with the oak. Photograph by Linda Gordon — Gathering with the oak
Photograph: Linda Gordon © 2019

Shortly before 5pm people from all over the Park gathered together in the high open field, ready to walk in procession to an area of woodland — to an ancient oak tree, reputed to be 1,000 years old, where the ceremony was to be held.

Perhaps the most moving part of the festival for me, was walking with several hundred others through the trees, slowly and in silence (apart from a single repeating drumbeat) — with the late afternoon sunlight dancing off the leafy canopy and shining through the soft colours of the XR flags.

Rising Tide of XR flags. Photograph: Linda Gordon — Rising Tide of XR flags
Photograph: Linda Gordon © 2019

An uninvited thought flitted through my mind: ‘All this is what we stand to lose’.

Then followed the solemn moment, around the ancient oak, when we all pledged to love and care for the Earth to the very best of our ability.

A slow quiet walk back to the place where we had started, and then I was back again to the mandala, to begin the process of clearing everything away. It was necessary to leave the site as we had found it, as Tapeley Park would be open to the general public the following morning. I returned the woodland material to the woods, and someone took the bunch of flowers she had contributed, and went to place them under the ancient oak tree.

People were beginning to leave now, to catch trains and buses or drive long distances home. But many stayed on to enjoy a Great Feast and music, which brought the Rising Tide Festival to a close.

Being tired and a little overwhelmed with new thoughts and experiences, I didn’t stay for this. However, I did take a large bag of tin cans home to recycle!

This was a successful and very well organised event, run on mutual goodwill, with volunteers working on everything from cooking, manning the carpark and the forest of tents, running the information post and the sound system, organising the clearing up and dismantling stuff at the end, the laying on of buses to meet trains from Barnstaple station, to the massive amount of background organisation that must have been needed beforehand.

I felt a comfortable and mutually supportive balance between the many relaxing, earth-related activities and the serious nature of the talks and educational workshops. Both are important, I think, in strengthening the XR movement in its purpose as a protest movement committed to compelling governments to act effectively on climate and ecological turmoil. Indeed, one of the workshops offered was on staying calm, centred and connected with oneself and others, at XR Actions.

Mandala XR Photograph by Linda Gordon — Mandala XR
Photograph: Linda Gordon © 2019

I can’t speak for others, but it seemed to me the atmosphere throughout the weekend was one of co-operation and trust, and a natural harmony with the immediate surroundings — in other words, a sane community. I was pleased to be one of this large number of people, drawn together largely by sadness at the state of our world, and a willingness to put things right and act in whatever non-violent way required.

Find out more

The Rising Tide Festival was held from 6th to 8th September at Tapeley Park, North Devon, and was organised and hosted by Extinction Rebellion Southwest. You can find information on the local XR group at xrfrome.org

Stop Ecocide is run by Ecological Defence Integrity (EDI), a small UK non-profit founded by the late Polly Higgins with a team of international criminal lawyers, diplomats and evidence experts working to advance a law of ecocide at the International Criminal Court.

Linda Gordon

An environmental artist making temporary works in the landscape as a way of re-connecting with life’s endless processes and essential unity and sharing this with others.
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‘What You Need Will Come to You’

Environmental artist Laura Donkers follows her initial post on eco-social art engagement with her experience as Visiting Doctoral Researcher, moving to Aotearoa New Zealand from July to November 2018 to expand her research by exploring Kaupapa Māori approaches.

1,600 words: estimated reading time 6.5 minutes

In her previous post, Laura introduced the form of eco-social art engagement she’s developed in Uist in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, working with communities’ embodied knowledge to help develop climate literacy.

***

My research journey led me to undertake a period of research in Aotearoa New Zealand. It came about through a chance discussion with a New Zealand artist I had met while at a DRAWinternational artist residency in France. She introduced me to the research practice of Māori artist and scholar Dr Huhana Smith, who in the mid-2000s developed a PhD project at Kuku Beach, Palmerston North, working with her local tribe to reinstate the river, estuary and beach ecosystem according to traditional cultural principles. I was fascinated to read how the community had responded to the project, but also was intrigued to find out what the term Kaupapa Māori — literally ‘a Māori way’ — actually meant. I knew that Māori were the indigenous people of New Zealand, but was not really familiar with their culture of interconnectedness. However, it became apparent from further research that their understanding of their embeddedness in the natural world was similar to something I had recognised in the Uist community, but due to my own incapacities had felt unable to express.

Perhaps a greater knowledge of Kaupapa Māori might give my research the underpinning framework that I felt it was missing? So I expanded my project methodology and combined artistic methods with a modified version of Participatory Action Research that drew from Kaupapa Māori Theory, an academic approach that retrieves space for Māori voices and perspectives, particularly where it affords new perspective into community-led collective thinking and action. My hope is that by including Kaupapa Māori Theory my research can help other communities understand how to address issues of universal concern, such as climate change adaptation, and help restore an understanding of sustainable living.

Kuku beach Photograph by Laura Donkers — Kuku beach
Photograph: Laura Donkers © 2018

Understanding Kaupapa Māori

I wanted to learn first-hand how Kaupapa Maori is realised in a community. Through university contacts, I approached Elam School of Art to propose a period of research. I met with the Head of the School and learned that Kaupapa Māori praxis underpins teaching and support of their students within the contemporary art framework. Given that I was a trained artist, I felt this would provide a context to experience Kaukapa Māori in an accessible way, and hoped to learn from practitioners, lecturers, and students how mutual trust, respect, reciprocity and kinship manifest in the art school situation.

Over the course of my five-month residency I came to appreciate that I was expecting much more than was possible from a relatively short period of research. Not least, my minimal understanding of the practice of Kaupapa Māori left me unable to articulate what I had hoped to find. And I had the feeling amongst the people that I spoke to that Kaukapa Māori was not really practised in the school in the way I had understood. However, the uncertainties that arose through my questioning slowly led to helpful suggestions of other outlets where I might find answers, and eventually I found my way to groups and individuals in the wider community who were able to share with me their experiences.

Meeting with weavers

I found the process of searching for points of contact and connection to be difficult and disheartening at times. Initial meetings with academics and practitioners were straightforward to arrange, but they did not seem to go anywhere. I often found the experience more like an interrogation than a discussion and it was hard to pin down whether I was speaking to someone who was interested in my research or just checking my motives. Follow-up discussions never materialised and this left me without the necessary dialogue to explore the subject of Kaupapa Māori in practice. It seemed that the more questions I asked the less clarity I gained, and I wondered how I could achieve the outcome of the research I was seeking. I had arranged to meet a renowned master weaver who was a friend of my supervisor but also, by chance, of a neighbour in Uist. I looked forward to this meeting but had no idea where it would lead.

We met at Auckland’s Memorial Museum where a number of master weavers were gathered in the ‘Te Awe’ Project Room. ‘Te Awe’ is a vast stock take and digitisation exercise being carried out by Auckland Museum to examine 10,000 Māori Taonga — highly prized objects or natural resources. The women had been selected from across the country for their supreme expertise and worked together to agree on specific definitions for the different techniques present in the Korowai (ceremonial cloak) laid before them.

Members from the Taumata Mareikura and Auckland Museum Staff view a few examples of taonga Māori textiles in the collection
Source: www.aucklandmuseum.com

They graciously came to greet me, and despite my ignorance, the gravitas of the occasion was palpable as I observed the reverent manner in which the Korowai were examined, and the quiet discussions amongst the weavers as they approached a consensus. And then it was time for tea, further discussion and an unexpected invitation to attend a marae (a communal and sacred meeting ground of Māori people) at the weekend, which I eagerly accepted.

This extraordinary encounter marked a turning point, and I went on to meet a myriad of people who welcomed me. Through quiet explanation and discussion, I slowly began to understand Kaukapa Māori in practice, and its comparability to practices I was all too familiar with from the years spent living in Uist. The gentle acknowledgement of each other’s rights through principles of mutual respect involving face to face encounter; looking, listening and then speaking; sharing and hosting; caution; and not trampling on the rights, personal prestige and character of each other.

‘What you need will come to you’

However, it was a phrase conveyed to me by an artist-weaver that most sums up my research journey in Aotearoa New Zealand. She recounted her experience of having to learn to overcome frustration as she developed her weaving skills by eventually accepting the premise of her weaving teacher that ‘what you need will come to you’. A simple mantra that perhaps all researchers should hold to — that over time and with a little humility you will find what you are looking for. 

From our contemporary perspective, it can be difficult to trust that you will find what you need. Will there be time to allow that process to happen? How will you know this is what you needed? Is this a valid methodology?

An extraordinary opportunity opened up for me just as I was preparing to leave. I followed up a chance introduction at Auckland Council’s climate change workshops and was invited to meet with some of the team at the Kaipatiki Project to discuss potential ways of working together in the future.

As part of my SGSAH AHRC Creative Economies scholarship, I could propose an artist-in-resident placement with a non-academic institution, and the Kaipatiki Project’s regenerative approach to working with community and environment seemed to offer an ideal location. SGSAH accepted my proposal for a three-month artist residency, which would further develop my understanding of Kaupapa Maori Theory, this time at community organisation level.

So, for three months, I am exploring how my creative approach relates to and can contribute towards the organisation’s underpinning objective to help communities live more sustainably, and together we will develop ways to unleash the creativity of the community to identify opportunities to solve local environmental challenges.

I am just beginning this residency and am keeping a diary of my experiences. I’ll be happy to share these in future ClimateCultures posts!

I wish to thank my host Associate Professor Peter Shand, the tutors and students at Elam School of Art and other Professors at Auckland University who helped me on my way, as well as many other artists, weavers, practitioners, and members of community groups who listened, questioned and advised me during my all too brief sojourn in Aotearoa New Zealand. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank my funders Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities for their Visiting Doctoral Researcher Award that made this visit possible.

Find out more

Laura’s previous post, introducing her artistic practice and research, is Eco-social Art — Engaging Climate Literacy.

DRAWinternational caters for fine artists, applied artists, musicians or writers in pursuit of new and dynamic form, in preparation for exhibition, publication or postgraduate qualification.

Dr Huhana Smith is a visual artist, curator and principal investigator in research who engages in major environmental, trans-disciplinary, kaupapa Māori and action-research projects. She is co-principal investigator for research that includes mātauranga Māori methods with sciences to actively address climate change concerns for coastal Māori lands in Horowhenua-Kāpiti. Huhana actively encourages the use of art and design’s visual systems combined in exhibitions, to expand how solutions might integrate complex issues and make solutions more accessible for local communities.

You can find out more about the principles and practice Kaupapa Māori research at the website of Katoa Ltd, a Māori – Indigenous research organisation.

‘Te Awe’ is a vast stock take and digitisation exercise being carried out by Auckland Museum

Kaipatiki Project has, since 1998, been inspiring communities to live sustainably by restoring local bush reserves with community and developing environmental education programmes for all ages.

Laura Donkers

An ecological artist and researcher connecting people with ecology through community projects and outdoor art workshops to inform more creative and sustainable ways to live.
Read More

Eco-social Art — Engaging Climate Literacy

Environmental artist Laura Donkers works with the embodied knowledge of communities, through a form of eco-social art engagement, to help develop climate literacy. Laura describes her approach and experience with local communities in Uist in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides.

2,300 words: estimated reading time 9 minutes + 6 minutes video

This is the first part of two, and in her next post Laura discusses her move to Aotearoa New Zealand to expand her research as part of her final year of a practice-led PhD at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design at Dundee University.

***

For the last thirty years, I have lived on the southern island chain in the Outer Hebrides, known as the Uists, where I work as a horticulturalist, artist and researcher. The population of fewer than 5,000 people is largely indigenous and is widely spread across several islands, with between four and fifteen people per square kilometre inhabiting small, close-knit townships of all occupations needed to sustain a community. The archipelago’s economic activities are reliant on the primary industries of tourism, crofting, fishing and weaving and dependent on the environment for continued livelihoods.  

I feel I belong to this place; I both know and am known by my community. Without this social embeddedness, I could not have undertaken the sort of research I do, which relies on mutual trust and understanding, as well as a familiarity with the way that individuals and societies work at a local level. It’s a community that is interconnected across several planes of knowledge. Connected to the land, sea, seasons and with strong intergenerational and societal bonds, people exhibit a broad skills base extending across several identities; and, with shared spiritual connections and an interest in heritage and genealogy, people continue to pass knowledge on through generations.

It is natural then that I am interested in how eco-social art can be used strategically to promote sustainability in small island communities. Through the process of research for my PhD, I have come to understand that this is done best by working with the community’s own embodied knowledge, and I want to be able to show the importance of this.

My practice-led thesis aims to show that a specific set of knowledges accumulated through lived experience can help to improve ecological and social regeneration. My research reveals the role and value of this community embodied knowledge as a method for reengagement. Together with an eco-arts approach, this can bring local people, community organisations and national partners together into an open learning environment to develop ways of adapting to climate change.

Embodied knowledge, eco-social art

So what is community embodied knowledge?

I have found it to exist where people know each other through familial and experiential ties, are attached to their place/environment/land and utilise intergenerational knowledge to understand their own existence. It is also a practical form of wisdom, or practical reasoning, that is about individual ability to make good choices, based on understanding what is the right thing to do in the circumstances.

So, embodied knowledge helps us get to the deeper kinds of change that are needed at this time of climatic upheaval. When faced with challenges, practical rural-based people do not have it in their nature to just sit back and wait for others to act, but instead use their lived experience and inherited bank of knowledge to make decisions about what to do. However, in this new climatic regime, changes at a local level can be subtle (while still ultimately catastrophic) as they creep into everyday experience and become the new norm. While rural people are well placed to adapt to change, they share wider society’s lack of experience in understanding what irrevocable changes they will need to adapt to. In my opinion, it’s here that valuable reengagement opportunities lie, where ordinary practical people, local organisations and national bodies should come together and share knowledge and practices that may achieve solutions for local survivability. 

And socially engaged art practice?

This is anchored in community-led development and uses art to draw the community into talking about and acting on social, political or environmental issues. It involves people and communities in debate, collaboration or social interaction, and this is, at some level, where the art lies. It is led by artists who recognise that the community is the expert in their own lives, and works with them to cultivate that understanding more widely.

Reimagining place

So, place-making led by artists can revitalise communities: art and cultural activities involving local individuals and groups in collaborative activities with national organisations to develop meaningful public spaces where people can meet, celebrate and identify with each other. This kind of arts engagement can provide critical reflection and an alternative to the dominant social developmental discourse that can exclude the less vocal, less confident, less certain members of society, especially where historically these indigenous knowledges have been suppressed.

Many of the examples of this kind of ‘place-making’ are carried out by artists working in urban communities: Jeanne Van Heeswijk’s skills building projects develop the community’s capacity from ‘communication to construction’, to transform their roles into co-producers rather than merely consumers. However, I feel that the extensive productive capacities already present in rural communities require artists to take a different approach here.

A more rural approach begins with recognising the importance of the characteristics mentioned earlier regarding communities’ valuable interconnected knowledge and deep links to their places, and how they make use of their environments to sustain their livelihoods. So, finding a way to work that respects and upholds embodied knowledge is key to developing a good working relationship before even thinking of trying to shift mindsets for a changing climate. This is as much about showing the community the value of their own knowledge as it is about conveying how this form of knowledge can help other communities and wider society to re-think how to act locally elsewhere.

An example of my work is the Machair Art project. Machair is one of the rarest habitats in Europe: a fertile low lying grassy plain that only occurs on exposed western coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Machair Art was a collaboration between myself and artist Olwen Shone for the Conserving Scottish Machair LIFE+ project. It encompassed the year-long cycle of the machair in the form of four field trips to various crofting locations, exploring the themes of harvesting, seaweed, ploughing and wildlife. Students also attended drawing and photography sessions after school.

machairart film short from Laura Donkers on Vimeo.

As part of my work combining embodied knowledge with eco-social art practice, therefore, I develop practical and theoretical engagements that rekindle old tacit knowledge and skills to help communities reimagine their places as ‘climate change prepared’. My eco-social arts activities centre on developing climate literacy through social, intergenerational activities and range from drawing and photography days-out, to long term strategies that establish community food growing sites. Planned actions, shared vision, co-intelligence and co-management strategies help build a deeper understanding and potential for assimilation into everyday life, with actions informed and underpinned by the local embodied knowledge of crofters and contractors, as well as local specialists and advisors.

Another short film I made, Tha Mi a Bruadair — I Have a Dream, shows the possibilities of rural education. In this case, through the Crofter Course run at the local high school, Sgoil Lionacleit, Isle of Benbecula, we engaged young people in land stewardship in their communities.

This video project was part of the ‘I Have a Dream’ Global Art, Farming and Peace project for Vancouver Biennale 2014-16, and was shown as part of Raising Farmers’ Voices for ArtCOP21 in Paris — an initiative by artist Shweta Bhattad, ‘Faith in Paris’.

Climate literacy: knowing and not knowing

A community’s embodied knowledge develops through its approach to change. While changes come about in all societies — alterations in population, climate, prices, policies, availability of healthcare, schools provision, and so on — tiny communities feel these much more acutely than larger populations. In places like Uist, they have learned that adaptation is always possible. There is no choice but to find a way to overcome challenges, and this produces resilient, adaptable people who can transform and sustain their lives as they need to.

The mindset of communities in places like Uist involves a very different experience of living than in the urban context. Understanding this means appreciating that these communities exist between knowing and not knowing. I will attempt to explain this and how I think my eco-social art abilities can work with these forms of knowledge to include climate literacy.

Rural knowledge is based on communities’ own capabilities to make and produce something to live from. Knowing the materials they require and how to access them calls on acute observational understanding and an ability to wait for the right signs. Counter to this runs not knowing whether they will achieve their goal this year. They cannot know for certain whether the materials (e.g. seaweed) will be available or sufficient, whether the right conditions (e.g. gales that bring the seaweed inshore) or signals (e.g. rainfall or lack) will appear, and finally whether these will enable the task (e.g. harvest) to be completed in time. Of course, they will achieve something of their aims, but they strive always with the hope that this year will be a good one that they can celebrate: that they can have some reserves, can feel a little satisfaction. This ability to live within these two states of knowing and not knowing comes through intergenerational knowledge, developing skills to source and make materials, and engaging deep durational and seasonal knowledge as well as acute capabilities to observe and to wait.

My eco-social arts process draws attention to wider issues of concern brought on by climate change and encourages reflexive reassessment via new thinking and doing that draw on the community’s existing materials, methods and processes. Our relationship develops through a collaborative process that respects existing knowledges and hierarchies, but introduces an alternative mindset that references climate change knowledge. While this is not at odds with a society dependent on the environment for its livelihoods, the way it is introduced needs sensitive handling in order for it to be considered rather than rejected. I occupy a different space, from another perspective, and can draw links to relevant information that can translate into local understanding.

Making space for climate conversations

I wish to activate and expand the potential of art as an agent of social intervention, community building, and cultural change. I have found the best way to do this is through an open-call process where participants self-nominate. What follows is built around close listening and dialogue and, importantly, showing this through projects that reference the participants’ experiences, concerns and ideas.

Essentially, what we create together is a space for the community to enter, influence and direct themselves. They start to have ‘climate conversations’ that make sense and lead on to transformative climate-aware actions that they take themselves. The artistic aspects help with visualisation and the creation of new spaces (e.g. Community Food Growing Hubs) to reconsider and reflect on recent local changes, whether increasing levels of social isolation, poor diet or mental health issues, as well as the potential climate change impacts of sea level rise, and increased food costs. The visualisations offer another view on the situation, enabling participants to see and hear themselves speaking and acting.

Eco-social art - Berneray Community Polycrub, 2016 — Berneray Community Polycrub
Photo: Laura Donkers © 2016

The creation of these spaces fits in with the community’s inherent qualities of knowing and not knowing. It feels true and believable, and sets parameters that are achievable and, in the end, self-determining.

Looking beyond the west

My work is about understanding mutuality through an artform that’s concerned with human interactions and social context acting in spaces of the everyday: negotiating the personal, social and political — in place. It’s about working with each other to gain new understandings of how to live in a changing world.

I contend that community embodied knowledge is a valuable resource that is not properly understood at present, and so cannot be truly valued. During my studies, I have come to appreciate something of the cultural disparities between the Western disregard for this knowledge and indigenous societies’ world views. These are based on interconnected environmental and spiritual values, and recognise human dependence on ecosystems and our influence on them through the use of land, water and air. As with the island community in Uist, this knowledge has come about through extended processes of observation and interpretation. But in non-western societies, the interconnected world view influences how they value their knowledge, affording a context for understanding from an embodied perspective that references the natural world, its materials, and conditions, in a natural state of co-existence.

To explore this point, I have been undertaking comparative research in Aotearoa New Zealand to gain perspective on the role indigenous communities with long-standing interconnected relationships with their natural environment can play in highlighting the importance of practical local knowledge. Māori see themselves as integral parts of ecosystems, and know that their basic necessities such as materials, health, good social relations, security, and freedom of choice and action are provided directly and indirectly by ecosystems. Knowledge of this interdependency supports their ability to care for their land and their people.

This part of my research — which I will turn to in my next post — focuses on learning how regenerative practices can influence the governance of resources and help to develop flourishing communities. And I am also looking at what maybe limits how we can transfer such a model to other places and contexts.

Find out more

The term ‘Eco-social Art’ was first coined by artist-researcher (and ClimateCultures Member) Cathy Fitzgerald as part of her PhD by practice The Ecological Turn: Living Well with forests to explain eco-social art practices.

The Rotterdam-based artist Jeanne Van Heeswijk’s work engages with the setting up of ‘collaborative production’ between people involved in processes of urban development.

Laura Donkers

An ecological artist and researcher connecting people with ecology through community projects and outdoor art workshops to inform more creative and sustainable ways to live.
Read More