Synopsis: The ecologist’s “Plant Baby Plant” project connects people to the Earth and each other. Description: When was the last time you listened to the plants? Plant ecologist Robin Wall Kimmerer, a self-proclaimed “student of the plants,” has dedicated her life to helping people of all ages understand the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. Her latest initiative “Plant Baby Plant” does exactly that, by mobilizing communities to restore plants while building collective power for the Earth. “I think it is so important that we embrace ecological grief rather than look away . . . When we recognize that pain we feel for our relationships with the natural world is also the measure of our love for the living world. It's that love which is mirrored in the grief that makes you get back up and say, ‘Not on my watch.’” - Robin Wall Kimmerer Guest: Robin Wall Kimmerer: Plant Ecologist, Writer, Professor; Founder, Plant Baby Plant; Author, Braiding Sweetgrass Full Conversation Release: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation. Watch the episode released on YouTube; PBS World Channel Sundays at 11:30am and on over 300 public stations across the country (check your listings, or search here via zipcode). Listen: Episode airing on community radio (check here to see if your station airs the show) & available as a podcast January 7th, 2026. These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters. Become a member today, go to https://Patreon.com/LauraFlandersandFriends.
Synopsis: Plant ecologist Robin Wall Kimmerer, a self-proclaimed “student of the plants,” has dedicated her life to helping people of all ages understand the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. Her latest initiative “Plant Baby Plant” does exactly that, by mobilizing communities to restore plants while building collective power for the Earth.
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Description: When was the last time you listened to the plants? Plant ecologist Robin Wall Kimmerer, a self-proclaimed “student of the plants,” has dedicated her life to helping people of all ages understand the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. Her latest initiative “Plant Baby Plant” does exactly that, by mobilizing communities to restore plants while building collective power for the Earth. Kimmerer is a distinguished professor, MacArthur Fellow, mother and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Her 2013 book “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants” emerged as a surprise bestseller with almost three million copies sold across 20 languages. In this enlightening episode, Robin Wall Kimmerer and Laura Flanders explore how nature can inform our language, our economy, our movements and more. As you’ll hear, our survival depends on it. Plus, a commentary from Laura on what it took to separate people from nature. Hint: it wasn’t peaceful.
“. . . We have to kind of decolonize our minds from this industrial revolution concept that the Earth belongs to us as a source of nothing more than belongings, natural resources that are our property . . . There is this notion in many Indigenous worldviews that human beings play a critical role in maintaining balance, that the way we take from the living world can actually be regenerative.” - Robin Wall Kimmerer
Guest: Robin Wall Kimmerer, Plant Ecologist, Writer, Professor; Founder, Plant Baby Plant; Author, Braiding Sweetgrass
*Recommended book:
Bookshop: “The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World” by Robin Wall Kimmerer: Get the book* And to accompany the book:
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Watch the episode released on YouTube; PBS World Channel December 4th, 2026 and on over 300 public stations across the country (check your listings, or search here via zipcode). Listen: Episode airing on community radio (check here to see if your station airs the show) & available as a podcast December 7th, 2026.
Full Episode Notes are located HERE.
Full Conversation Release: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation.
Music Credit: 'Thrum of Soil' by Bluedot Sessions, 'Steppin' by Podington Bear, and original sound design by Jeannie Hopper
Support Laura Flanders and Friends by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/c/lauraflandersandfriends
RESOURCES:
Related Laura Flanders Show Episodes:
• Survival Guide for Humans Learned from Marine Mammals with Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Watch / Listen: Episode Cut and Full Uncut Conversation
• Ecology: The Infrastructure of the Future?: Watch / Listen: Episode Cut
• Peter Linebaugh on International Workers' "May Day" Origins. Plus, Commentary: 19th Century Anarchist Lucy Parsons, Listen
• Yellowstone at 150: Can Indigenous Stewardship Save Our Parks?: Watch / Listen: Episode Cut
Related Articles and Resources:
• Speaking of Nature: Finding language that affirms our kinship with the natural world, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Orion Nature and Culture
• Watch: Gifts of the Land: A Guided Nature Tour with Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Commons KU
• The Braiding Sweetgrass’ Author Wants Us to Give Thanks Everyday, by Alexander Alter, November 29, 2024, New York Times
• Fishing in a superfund site: Onondaga Lake’s road to recovery, by Bee Kavanaugh, SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry, January 2, 2025, Planet Forward
CHAPTERS:
Welcoming Robin Wall Kimmerer and Plant Baby Plant
00:00:00
Redefining Botany: Learning From, Not Just About, Plants
00:02:02
Integrating Indigenous Wisdom with Western Scientific Knowledge
00:04:18
Shifting Worldviews Through a Grammar of Animacy
00:06:19
Biomimicry: Learning Nature's Circular Economic Principles
00:08:48
Reclaiming Reciprocity: Nature's Gifts and Human Alienation
00:11:02
Decolonizing Our Minds: Humans as Healers for the Land
00:14:09
From Cultural Burning to Regenerative Yards: Acts of Resistance
00:18:23
Mobilizing Urban Communities with Plant Baby Plant Initiatives
00:23:02
The Power of Process: Success, Giving Back, and Challenging Misuse
00:26:57
Nature's True Laws: Cooperation, Mutualism, and Moss Wisdom
00:29:59
AI's Limits: Beyond Intellect to Holistic Indigenous Wisdom
00:33:41
Ecological Grief as a Catalyst for Love and Action
00:36:40
The Next Generation's Gift of Compassion and Imagination
00:40:26
Practices for a Regenerative Future: Gratitude and Remembering Kinship
00:42:28
0:00
123.
While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offered to our members and podcast subscribers the full, uncut conversation.
These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters.
0:24
Human beings, we all know by now that we can be a menace to the natural world, but can we also be medicine?
With her latest project, best selling author Robin Wallkimer are not only answers in the affirmative, but describes how restoring plants can restore our sense of reciprocity with the land, each other, and the earth.
0:47
Kimura is the author of the runaway best seller, Braiding Sweetgrass.
Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants as well as Gathering Moss, A natural and cultural history of mosses and the service Berry.
1:03
Abundance and reciprocity in the natural world.
She doesn't just study plants, she listens to them.
And with her brand new initiative, Plant Baby Plant, she is heeding a call to mobilize communities to restore plants in a way that, as she puts it, transforms love of land into social change through acts of creative resistance.
1:26
Kimura is the Sunni Distinguished Teaching Professor at the Sunni College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, NY, and the founding director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.
She's also an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.
1:44
Regeneration starts with seeds, stories and remembering what it means to be a good relative, she says.
So let's get to it.
I am very honored and happy and excited to welcome Robin Woolkimera to Laura Flanders and friends.
Welcome friend, glad to have you.
2:02
Thank you for inviting me.
Talk about being a botanist.
What does it mean?
Well, rather, let me start with the question I often start with just to kind of settle us, which is what's at the top of your mind, the top of your heart.
As we begin this conversation, we are all coming from someplace and going someplace to just kind of root us here.
2:20
Who or what are you thinking about?
I am really deeply enmeshed in this moment at getting plant baby plant off the ground and trying to consider what does it mean to create community when we have only virtual tools.
2:38
My favorite way to come creating community is working with people in person outdoors.
But this is a whole new skill set for me, a whole new approach to creating community.
So I'm I'm thinking a lot about how can we act big in a microcosm?
2:59
Beautiful.
Great.
I'm so glad I didn't forget that question.
But I'll ask you what you mean by a botanist.
I mean, a lot of people don't really know what that means, and you've learnt a lot about how to expand the definition over your lifetime.
Well, the, the science of botany, of course, is the science of plant biology of, of naming, understanding, wondering at plants.
3:27
But you know, I'm the kind of botanist who is more interested in learning from plants than learning about plants.
And, and so some of my projects around that, listening and learning from plants is learning how they heal land.
3:45
I am actually a plant ecologist.
I study the relationships between plants, between plants and soil and microclimate and all of those things.
So I'm deeply interested in in relationships and, and not only relationships between plants, but relationships between plants and people because I'm also an ethnobotanist.
4:10
Just finished teaching my class in Plants and Culture which is all about about human relationships to plants.
You talk a lot about intersections, and you just did that intersection between science and Indigenous knowledge, listening and learning.
4:29
Was there?
Was there a moment where you realized that these two types of knowledge could be, as you've put it, sort of braided together?
Was there a plant teacher involved?
You know, this has been a long journey for me to bring these things together in an academic setting because most Western science dismisses indeed a racist indigenous knowledge and dismisses it as unscientific.
4:59
And so for a long time as a as a professor and as an academic scientist, I've had to be a bit of a snow plow in clearing the way for Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous perspectives to be heard within Indigenous science.
5:18
So no, Laura, there was no moment, just a long process of listening to other leaders and writers and teachers in the field who are having the same struggle and learning so much from them.
5:36
And, you know, learning so much from my students because they are so often the the spark for this hunger for looking at the world in a different way, for engaging Indigenous knowledge.
And so my students really helped me see what can help clarify and light people up with this, waking up to the fact that there's a whole nother kind of science out there, Indigenous science.
6:06
And, you know, to me, the best scientists are the ones who are looking for all kinds of different evidence, all kinds of different theories and hypotheses.
So why have we erased Indigenous knowledge?
Our goal at the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.
6:25
And and much of my work is really designed to illuminate the wisdom and the guidance of Indigenous knowledge.
One of the things that I've learnt from your work is that I think, if you'll forgive me, that if, if plants and animals had a preferred pronoun, it wouldn't be it.
6:46
And that in your language, the potamotomy language, it's not it that grammar is different and that changes us.
Can you talk about that and have you seen it change people's lives?
I sure have.
And you know, as a scientist, you know, here I am spending my life literally on my knees before plants, learning from them.
7:09
And then when it comes time to write about them, the English language not only gives me permission, but indeed a sort of a mandate that I have to refer to them as it, as if they were objects, These, these, these wise, brilliant teachers of mine.
7:26
And I found the solution to that problematic objectification of other living beings as I was beginning to learn my own indigenous language, Anish Nabemuan, or the Potawatomi language.
7:43
And what you're referring to is that in our language we speak a grammar of animacy.
And so it's impossible to say it about plants or animals or indeed any other living animate being.
8:02
And so there was a powerful moment and understanding the lens shift, the whole frame shift that happens with a different language, with a different worldview to view the plants, the animals, the waters as our relatives, not as our possessions, as our, as our objects.
8:25
And so I've been writing and working quite a bit in this field of thinking about how can we change language to reflect a worldview of relatedness rather than a worldview of of human superiority and therefore extraction from the earth.
8:48
That relatedness comes up a lot in the service Berry too.
And I have to say that many of the sources that you cite in that book, which is a lot about economics, really the economics of nature, are economists.
We've had on this program, people like Kate Rayworth and and Elinor Holstrom and and others.
9:06
You bring, or maybe the berries bring another sort of perspective.
Do you call it a kind of economy of nature?
What do you call it and how does it add to our picture of of our relationship to the world?
Well, my thinking in the service, Barry, because I am a botanist, I'm not an economist.
9:27
I greatly admire the the new thinking that's emerging from just the folks you're talking about.
But I do know something about the economy of nature.
I do know something about how ecosystems work and provide goods and services, if you will, to all members of a natural ecosystem.
9:48
And so my project in the service very was as an ecologist to ask the question of why is it that we have created this human market capitalism, extractive capitalism economic system, which is so at odds with the way that nature works?
10:10
Nature doesn't promote scarcity, nature and and hoarding of, of capital or, or resources or private property.
Nature is, is is much more around circular economies.
10:26
So there's no such thing as waste is that the resource, if you will, is constantly in motion, being shared among all sectors of the natural economy, IE different species.
And so service barrier is really an inquiry into a kind of bio mimicry.
10:48
Could we engage the principles of bio mimicry to think about a different kind of economy which doesn't destroy nature and human community, but in fact enhances it?
Well, this is exactly where you're going with plant, baby plant and we're going to get right there next.
11:06
But before we do, I just want to share with our audience this beautiful guided nature tour that you took the People of the Commons at the University of Kansas on when you were giving a speech there.
The Clark Reservation State Park is in Jamestown in Jamesville in New York, and you went out into the forest there To illustrate exactly what it is you're talking about, especially in relation to the gifts nature gives us.
11:32
Here's a clip.
Just standing in this.
Place I see the food of the Hickory.
The food.
Of the maples, the string of the basswood and I see medicine right here in front of us that black flaky bark is a black cherry and.
11:49
Did you ever wonder?
Why cough drops?
Almost.
Always come in black cherry flavor.
It's because black cherry is a cough medicine.
And the the bark.
Of the twigs of that tree boiled down.
Make a really good soothing cough medicine and so yes you.
12:04
Look at the world as full of biodiversity.
And these amazing beings living their lives, but they also are in relationship with us.
And you see the.
Cedars really good.
Respiratory medicine, We'll get close.
To one later.
We came by a hemlock.
12:20
Which is super good.
For a cold that has tons of vitamin C in it.
So there are medicines there.
There are medicines all around us to be honored, to be respected.
In fact, in our Potawatomi language, the word for plants is meshkaquin, which means the medicines.
12:44
But it also means if you take that word mushkaquin apart, it means the strength.
Of the Earth.
There in that clip, you talk, Robin, about the gifts of nature.
And as you talk about your new project, your coupling or braiding into that message, a message of our gifts as people back to nature.
13:08
And I think that's so important because I don't know, I was, I'm not indigenous, probably Celtic of some kind.
Who the heck knows from Europe.
I've was trained in the kind of Marxist tradition and Marx should be said, was very adamant that natural words like growth should not be applied to the man made capitalist economy.
13:31
He was very clear that there was a conflict there and that the language of nature shouldn't be applied to these man made systems.
And as I thought of your work, I thought how all of us, in fact, have been.
Marx would use the word alienated from that natural world, from our relationship to it.
13:49
And for a lot of us, we've felt like, well, the best thing we can do is just leave it alone.
Not go there, not touch, not pick, not dig.
But you're offering us another way to return to a reciprocal relationship, and that's a good long way of asking you a question about.
14:09
You framed that, Laura, because it's really a very active choice and decision that we have to decolonize our minds from this industrial revolution concept that the earth belongs to us, is a source of, of, of nothing more than belongings, natural resources that are our property, that we're there to, to take the vision of human beings as apart from nature and our sole role really is to take.
14:40
I mean, heck, our own government doesn't call U.S. citizens anymore.
We're called consumers as if that is the only thing that we do.
But in the indigenous worldview, there is this beautiful notion that of course we have to take from the living world because regrettably we can't photosynthesize.
15:04
But we have to take in a way that does honor to the living world and keeps the living world living and, and in in motion and in balance.
There is this notion in many indigenous world views that human beings play a critical role in maintaining balance, that the way that we take from the living world can actually be regenerative.
15:34
Some of my own research with sweetgrass has shown that sweetgrass left alone declines.
Sweetgrass harvested in a respectful, sustainable way double S its population.
There are many plants that that respond very positively to human intervention.
15:58
And so this idea that human people can be medicine for the land, I mean quite literally that we can be healers after all.
We have made a tremendous mess of this beautiful paradise that we have been given to live in.
16:17
We have made a mess.
Isn't it time that we do dishes in Mother Earth's kitchen?
We have had the feast.
We have taken and taken and taken, and now is our opportunity to give back.
That's how natural systems work.
16:34
You cannot relentlessly take without giving back.
And that's been the missing piece.
We just take.
We don't give back.
But when you think about human beings as agents of environmental healing as opposed to environmental destruction, that invites us back into the party, doesn't it?
16:54
Instead of saying the best thing you can do is, is get out of here.
No, no, no.
The best thing you can do is, is be a healer.
And you know, let me tell you that there's some really good science supporting this.
17:10
One of the big studies out of the UNAUN biodiversity report and a couple of years ago and what it documents is the heartbreak of biodiversity loss all over the planet, right?
We know this.
We see it outside our windows.
17:28
But in this study, what they showed was that there are places on the planet where biodiversity is not crashing, and those places are in land stewarded by indigenous peoples, using the indigenous worldview of people integrated with land and being medicine for land, not people outside nature, where we wreck it over here and put a velvet rope around it over here.
17:59
That doesn't work.
We have shown that doesn't work.
But but this study suggests that this indigenous worldview of reciprocity and kinship has very tangible practical outcomes for biodiversity.
18:23
Give us some examples of this sort of creative resistance, especially in the context of kind of ecological restoration.
I know you've worked at the Onondaga Superfund site.
Are there other examples you want to lift up where human?
18:41
Has made a difference within ecological restoration.
Our ability to apply scientific tools, engineering tools, design tools to heal ecosystems has been practiced now all over the planet.
19:00
It is not nearly as as widespread as it needs to be, extraction still outweighing the healing, but we know that we can do this.
So here's an example that is been is very timely and that is human intervention and restoration using cultural burning.
19:23
We know that forest health in this country declined when colonists came and suppressed indigenous fire, made it illegal to to take care of the land using fire.
19:39
My own ancestors could be jailed, were jailed for setting cultural fires that are good for the land, that renew the land.
And of course that fire suppression under the colonial agenda led to forest situations that were ripe for wildfire or catastrophic conflagrations, right.
20:04
So there are so many examples now of the return of cultural indigenous burning in this country and all around the world.
And it is renewing biodiversity, renewing forest health and and healing A.
Relationship between people in place that say we have to take care, we have to play an active role in caring for our for our land.
20:30
So that's a very big and timely sort of newsworthy way of thinking about human intervention.
But it can also be as as small as, as replacing lawns with wildflower meadows.
20:49
This is something that we can do.
We we somehow bought the notion that our our domestic landscape should be a monoculture of Chemlawn treated grass.
Like, where do we get that idea?
Well, we got it's a colonial idea, right?
21:06
It was imposed.
Let's decolonize our our yards and say, you know, that lawn is actually emitting greenhouse gases.
People don't know that.
They say I'm concerned about climate change and greenhouse gases will start with your own domestic landscape.
21:28
When you convert a lawn into a wildflower Meadow or perennials or native plant landscapes at an orchard for you and your and your neighborhood, suddenly you shift that balance.
You're now sequestering storing carbon in soil and in plant biomass.
21:50
So you take an active step to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the choices of of your landscaping.
So it is from landscape level to backyard level.
As we say on this show, this is the place where the people who say it can't be done take a backseat to the people who are doing it.
22:14
From our recent conversations with Dolores Huerta on courage, or with the federal workers blowing the whistle at HUD, or with the congresswoman and the Marine veterans standing together against the militarization of our cities, we seek out stories that can inform and even inspire.
22:31
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22:50
And thank you for standing with us at Laura Flanders and Friends and for helping to keep independent journalism like ours alive and kicking.
I mean, you've got Donald Trump out there talking about drill, baby, drill.
23:05
Here you come with plant, baby, plant.
And I get the reference.
What do you want people to do?
You've mentioned a few things there, but what about people in the cities?
I have one idea, but I'm not sure that it works.
But but I am curious what you would like urban people to see as their role because we can often feel very removed from.
23:30
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm so glad that you're asking that because so much of our population is urban and there's a great deal in sustainability solutions that tells us that's the energy efficient, water efficient, resource efficient way to to, to, to live.
23:48
So what do we do?
Well, in the plant baby plant movement, we recognize that not everybody has the the privilege of caring for a piece of land.
So one of our goals in plant baby plant is to heal land.
But one of the other acts of creative resistance is to build community.
24:10
And the third one is to build power.
And building community and building power are, I think, the gifts of urban communities, right?
The, the dialogue, the, the resources, the activation that can happen there to hold our leaders accountable to, to direct resources to, to land care and to just political and green action.
24:42
So we're absolutely mindful that that this care for land doesn't just happen with seeds and a shovel can happen with a laptop and, and a ballot box and, and talking to your neighbors.
Now, that's not to say that there aren't on the ground solutions in urban landscape.
25:04
There are, Oh my goodness, community gardens, community urban farming that does all the things that heals land.
It builds community and, and builds power as well.
So supporting community gardens is, is huge.
25:21
There's a wonderful movement called the tree equity movement, particularly focused in our urban and, and to some extent suburban landscapes, which looks at the distribution of the benefits of nature of a tree canopy.
25:38
And when you look at that distribution in cities, what you find is not surprising that it follows redlining, right?
There is a huge justice gap between the access to trees and demographics in our cities.
25:55
So there is a move and and this is something that that that urban neighbors can, can, can agitate for and indeed build in their own communities is high quality nature within a 10 minute walk of every citizen of, of the city.
26:16
That these gifts from the natural world are, are, are not just meant for the wealthy.
They're these are gifts that are there for all of us.
So the tree equity movement is one in the community garden movement are ways that that urban folks can participate.
26:34
Oh, it's even been shown that the small act of pollinator gardens built on your fire escape create resources when magnified over a whole block for pollinators and for birds.
26:51
I'm a big advocate of potlucks.
Very simple, very pollinating of ideas and power and connections.
Works for me.
And there's another story that I was struck by as I looked at the history of Braiding Sweetgrass, your book, that sort of speaks to this as well.
27:07
The book was published in 2013.
You took it to a small independent publisher, Milkweed Editions in Minnesota.
It was picked out of a slush fund, as I understand it, by a staffer and and brought into publication.
It didn't get any major reviews, but seven years later, because of booksellers and buyers and word of mouth, it is a worldwide best seller.
27:32
You've got like 3,000,000 copies sold, 20 languages.
It's been translated into.
To me, that's sort of a lesson of reciprocity of a certain kind people power.
And with your new with your with your most recent book service, Barry, you're taking an action in the publishing too.
27:50
When I got to the end of the book, I realized, oh, you're donating your your advance royalties.
To what extent is what you're doing, how you're doing it also important to the message that you're bringing?
28:06
Thank you for realizing that, Laura.
Exactly right.
You know, we don't have to be complicit with these structures that that are exploitive.
It's and, and, and I love that.
28:23
I love that the process by which we create community and share stories and, and try to catalyze a kind of cultural transformation to a reciprocal worldview rather than an extractive worldview.
28:39
It matters how we do it.
And I love, love, love your notion of a potluck to me.
Implant, baby plant.
That's the vibe.
That's what we want to create is to say let's come together, build a community which builds resistance in a time when we are increasingly in this hyper individual, highly polarized environment and very frightening.
29:10
One, I have to say, I do have to ask you about some of the other people who draw on laws of nature or rules of nature as they call them, because it's not just you.
I wish it was.
But we also have eugenicists and white supremacists and Malthusians and people who preach A doctrine that they say is a natural doctrine of, of survival of the fittest and culling the herd.
29:38
You've got broligarchs out there now saying that they're going to create a new planet and that's what, a new future species or, you know, cultivate a new planet with enough science.
How did they just get it wrong?
Or are we in a contentious dispute here over the laws of nature?
29:59
The politics thing to say would be that we are in a contentious dispute.
I think they Plano got it wrong, as has happened so many times when people hijack science in order to to support a political agenda.
30:17
You know, when I first began my training as a plant ecologist 50 years ago, more than 50 years ago.
What we the the notion that competition and individualism were the primary forces that structured the natural world were pre eminent.
30:41
And those are exactly the notions that you that you're drawing on in your examples.
But there has always been a debate within ecology about whether that's true or not.
And over the last several decades, the research into cooperation, into mutualism as repeatedly shown that mutual benefit, that cooperation, can be selected for by evolution, by natural selection as well, and often is.
31:20
And so this notion of nature read in tooth and claw is very much being replaced by this more, much more balanced framework to understand that all flourishing is mutual.
31:36
An individual cannot thrive unless their neighbors thrive because we're all dependent on each other.
Well, that gets to those Mosses, those brilliant, super small, super smart, best survivors of the millennia.
31:54
Absolutely.
Thanks for invoking my favorite plant.
Why would they get so much of your attention?
And maybe they should get more of ours.
Oh, the well indeed, as plant teachers, mosses are are quite extraordinary let and you know your your listeners probably walk by them every day and think if it's just like some green wallpaper.
32:21
I'm off the side.
Of it, right?
But in fact, they're extraordinary.
Mosses are so ancient.
Mosses have endured every single climate change that has ever happened to the terrestrial environment on this planet. 95% of all species who have ever lived have gone extinct.
32:44
But the mosses are still here.
Doesn't that tell you that they, they've got something going on here, that they have this, this ability to, to not only to survive, but to thrive?
33:00
They're like 70,000 different species of, of mosses.
What is it?
They work primarily through cooperation, by sharing resources, by not trying to control and dominate their landscapes.
33:18
They can't.
They're only this big, but they work with natural processes.
They meet their needs, which are few, in simple and really, really elegant ways.
Mosses give more than they take.
33:35
They create life around them.
And then I just think they are are models for how we could be.
Mary, perhaps a very good teacher.
I, I do want to get back to plant baby black plant before we go, but I also have to ask you one more question that's been tormenting me and others too.
33:57
And that's the place of AI in all of this.
Obviously we have had technology help when it comes to climate tracking and hurricane watching and DNA decoding and probably plant breeding and cross species observations.
34:14
And yet it's also very frightening because as you have started many times by talking about the values and caring in the kind of knowledge that you believe in as opposed to that kind of objectifying cold science, I got to say, AI seems to be the epitome of knowledge without values and caring.
34:37
So what are you perhaps?
What are you hearing from the plots about AI?
You know, I think your characterization of both the potential power and the very real risks of, of, of AI are tied up in that notion that it's all about the intellect.
34:56
And, you know, in the Western scientific approaches especially, we say that that is our highest capacity, that that's where we get truth.
In the indigenous worldview, there's this notion of this holism that says in order to find our way through any problem, we need to use all four gifts of the human mind, which are the intellect for sure, but also the knowledge of the body.
35:23
Those things we can observe and sense and measure as good scientists do, but we also honor emotional intelligence and our engagement with mystery, spiritual knowledge, those things we don't understand with the humility to know that there are things way bigger than we are and that we have to use all of those tools to solve complex problems.
35:48
And I think you're exactly right.
AI does not have the capacity to use all of those tools.
So.
Keep it as a tool, but one of many and don't let it take over.
Is that what I'm hearing?
AI as a tool to not well certainly it is being used as such, but the caution that it is a tool which amputates certain kinds of knowledge and yet we're being told that it is the source.
36:20
You know this compiled knowledge because it can't engage with subjective knowledge.
We have to be very, very careful that it that it doesn't and acknowledge that it doesn't reflect our values, our ethics and our responsibility for knowledge.
36:40
Well, that takes me back when I check in with my emotional knowledge.
My emotional knowledge is pretty sad these days.
And even at the level of thinking about the natural and animate world as relatives, I take a drive 2 hours pretty much, you know, many, many days of the week I'm driving on the highway and in the course of two hours, I see a dozen, at least a dozen deer and Groundhog and squirrels and sometimes a cat or a dog.
37:14
And I've been practicing.
We're all relatives.
And there they are.
And she and he is heartbreaking.
And I hear that a lot from people that they do believe that we will come back from the brink of disaster with respect to fascism and democracy.
37:30
They have quite a lot of confidence that we will pull back from the worst of our political environment at this moment.
But there is a sinking suspicion that it's, as some people say to me, too late for the planet, that that clock is ticking.
37:47
And for somehow in my heart, that's mixed up with my sense of I can grieve each of these creatures as I go by, but I'm still grieving them, and what am I doing?
And so that's my question.
How do you also grapple with the grief that comes from that kind of heartfelt connecting to the world?
38:08
Yeah, I'm reminded so often that Elder Leopold quote of the consequence of an ecological education is to live in a world of wounds.
Because we see, right?
I think it is so important that we embrace ecological grief rather than look away.
38:28
We have to embrace it.
And the reason I say that is not only to ground us in the reality of what we are doing, but when we recognize that that pain that we feel for the natural world, for our relationships with the natural world, is also the measure of our love for the living world.
38:51
And it is that love which is mirrored in the grief that makes you get back up and say, not on my watch, I love this land.
I love these beings, my relatives too much to stand idly by.
39:11
And, and Laura, that's where Plant baby Plant came from.
I give more than 100 talks every year, and at the end of those hours people are weeping because they love the world so much.
39:28
There is this longing to say, well, what can I do?
What can I do with this love?
And it is out of carrying that away from every audience that I thought we have to push back against a worldview of drill, baby, drill that will continue to lead us down that path and replace it with the notion of regeneration, of no, I am going to resist.
39:58
I am going to ally myself with the plants who build biodiversity, who take carbon out of the atmosphere, who help us bring and build community.
That plant, baby plant, grows directly from that grief, from that love, and from that longing, and offers an invitation to be in a more just and reciprocal relationship with land.
40:26
You've also written a book for young people.
Bud finds her gift.
What do you think is the gift that this generation has to offer US and previous generations at this moment?
40:42
Oh, that it that I hesitate to name anyone because as a college professor, I am surrounded by idealistic, smart, hard working, dedicated young people who are working on these these these problems.
40:59
But one of the, the one of the gifts that I want to name is not just in their brilliance and in their problem solving, it is in their compassion.
What I really see in my students is this really deep compassion for, for other beings and for members of their, their own human communities as well.
41:22
And to say, how do we take that respect and compassion for one another, understand it as a gift that we carry, and extend that gift to the natural world?
It is a gift of an interspecies gift.
41:43
How do we create just interspecies neighborhoods and, and that orientation coupled with extraordinary imagination of the future that we want to have is is is the gift.
42:00
And I just want to say that again, it's imagining a different future.
We are met with so many dystopian scenarios of how life as we love it and live it will disappear.
42:19
We need to counter that with these creative, regenerative ways to say how can we be medicine for the land?
So leave us with one thing.
We can practice, perhaps not get right the first time, but practice.
42:37
We always end every show by saying stay kind, stay curious.
And and I try to cultivate those qualities, but sometimes I wonder, what does it actually take?
And you've said attention.
I think your language, what your line was, attention is the doorway to wonder.
42:53
I love that so.
So name one practice perhaps that we could all get better at as we try to implement what you're talking about.
I want to name 2 practices 1 An internal practice of gratitude of of being actively grateful for the gifts of the land.
43:15
To name them.
To name them at this big inventory of the abundance of the natural world that has tremendous practical as well as spiritual and community value.
43:31
Because gratitude makes you want to give your gift back.
And so the first is gratitude and when activated to reciprocity by by gratitude to say what could I give back to the earth in return for all of these gifts plant.
43:50
Something so thank you to the lettuce before you eat it and plant a seed for next year's crop.
Good call.
Something like that.
Love it.
Well, you're the perfect person to ask our closing question, which is about the story the future will tell of now.
44:09
You've alluded to it, but what do you think is the story that the future, I don't know, 2550, a hundred years will tell about us in this moment?
That this is a time of remembering when we cast off the stories that industrial colonialism told us of who we are as people, and we remembered that we can be givers to the land we remember.
44:40
That word is so important.
I'm not just casting my mind back, but forward because remembering our kinship with the living world and acting out of that kinship is this is is the nature of this moment, the potential of this moment to be in the age of remembering who we are as humans.
45:05
Robin Wolcamera, thank you so much for all your work and for Plant Baby Plant.
I encourage people to check it out.
It's been really a pleasure and an honour having you with me here on Laura Flanders and Friends.
Thank you, Laura.
Thanks for taking the time to listen to the full conversation.
45:24
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