How attaching kinship to land can help biodiversity | Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen | TEDxTralee — Transcript

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1. 0:01[Music]
2. 0:12[Applause]
3. 0:15I grew up in the soft Hills that
4. 0:17Overlook the gulo river valley in
5. 0:20Denmark from where you probably remember
6. 0:22Lego and H Christian Anderson story
7. 0:24about the little mermaid I'm just a
8. 0:26normal Danish guy I have three kids I'm
9. 0:29a cult researcher but my family is from
10. 0:31there so I belong to a group that has
11. 0:34populated this area for a very long time
12. 0:37when I walk out on the fields of My
13. 0:39Father's Farm I find Shards of pottery
14. 0:41that were made around the time when
15. 0:42there was still emperor in Rome and they
16. 0:45were made by a Nordic people who spoke
17. 0:47an ancestor language to Danish that I
18. 0:50speak to my kids that farm was already
19. 0:52there it was just located a bit further
20. 0:54towards that edge of the forest that you
21. 0:56see
22. 0:57there and I want to tell you about a
23. 0:59little animist moment that I experienced
24. 1:03a couple of years ago on that land in
25. 1:05fact on almost exactly the spot where
26. 1:07I'm walking there as a little
27. 1:09boy because of these increasing heat
28. 1:12waves the grass on that field was
29. 1:14completely like dry and brown under my
30. 1:17feet in a way that I'd never experienced
31. 1:19before here in this rainy humid Nordic
32. 1:22region it was in Late July on the day of
33. 1:25St ola's Eve and in the Middle Ages this
34. 1:29St Ola had probably come to take the
35. 1:32role of Thor the God of
36. 1:35Thunder and in later folklore we find
37. 1:37that this was the time of year where the
38. 1:39storage of last year's Harvest was
39. 1:42typically emptied out and people would
40. 1:44be calling for Thunder that they didn't
41. 1:47call Thor anymore but which they
42. 1:48believed ripened the new crops tradition
43. 1:51was to open a specifically made beer in
44. 1:54a celebration of gratitude when the
45. 1:56first of the new Harvest was finally
46. 1:58coming in and as as I was standing there
47. 2:01on that dry grass I saw
48. 2:03something
49. 2:05Thunder dark clouds of thunder came
50. 2:07rolling towards me over the valley and I
51. 2:10could like smell the rain in the air
52. 2:13even before it actually arrived to this
53. 2:15unnaturally arid land and it was just
54. 2:19that you know it's simple blessing of
55. 2:21rain on St Olaf's Eve that was my little
56. 2:24moment of Hope because it was as if I
57. 2:27remembered a bit of an ancient in sight
58. 2:30there like a glimpse of an ancestral
59. 2:33knowledge that we cannot take the world
60. 2:35for granted we have to be in relation
61. 2:38with the world it doesn't just take away
62. 2:40like some huge Clockwork irrespective of
63. 2:42how we treat it we have to call for
64. 2:45Thunder sometimes to come help us you
65. 2:47know keep the world in
66. 2:49balance that is traditional knowledge
67. 2:53the knowledge of being in relation with
68. 2:55that land and this is something that we
69. 2:58need today you know this knowledge of
70. 3:01connectivity which is similar to
71. 3:03indigenous knowledge that we find in the
72. 3:06culture of Aboriginal Australians and
73. 3:09Indigenous Americans and Inu and
74. 3:13others and this kind of knowledge is
75. 3:15today being centered in like culture and
76. 3:19research and policy actually indigenous
77. 3:22or traditional knowledge was mentioned
78. 3:24590 times in a recent un climate report
79. 3:29and uh an often quoted like in fact
80. 3:31totally over quoted Australian state- of
81. 3:34the environment report claims that 80%
82. 3:37of the world's
83. 3:38biodiversity remains on the lands of
84. 3:40those only 5% of the world's population
85. 3:44that are indigenous if that holds we
86. 3:47could symbolize this relation like
87. 3:50this on a very rough global average it
88. 3:53implies that an indigenous person has 76
89. 3:57times more biodiversity around than a
90. 4:00non- indigenous person so obviously this
91. 4:03astonishing number has made us you know
92. 4:05Focus the best of our knowledge our
93. 4:07resources and our highest scholarship in
94. 4:09figuring out how to bring this vast
95. 4:13majority of non-indigenous people in
96. 4:15that indigenous direction
97. 4:17right
98. 4:20right actually we haven't really gotten
99. 4:22around to that the general realization
100. 4:26that indigenous knowledge is really
101. 4:28important seems to conclude in and then
102. 4:32let us not apply it at least not for the
103. 4:3695% and there are reasons for this like
104. 4:39cultural obstacles for instance the word
105. 4:42indigenous is also a legal term that
106. 4:46serves to secure some like access and
107. 4:49protection for oppressed minorities and
108. 4:51that's why it's important that majority
109. 4:54populations don't start sort of leeching
110. 4:56in on that and that's why I talk about
111. 4:59traditional knowledge and not indigenous
112. 5:01knowledge and this is just to say that
113. 5:03this is not about like white people
114. 5:06running around playing at being
115. 5:08indigenous my distinct impression is
116. 5:11that many indigenous people like much
117. 5:14prefer that we refrain from
118. 5:16that um but it's also just to say that
119. 5:21many indigenous voices also do encourage
120. 5:25us to start engaging our own culture in
121. 5:28indigenous ways
122. 5:31so in a sense my idea is just that
123. 5:35indigenous knowledge that everybody's
124. 5:37talking about just also applying it also
125. 5:42for these
126. 5:4495% but in order to do that in order to
127. 5:48follow their uh suggestion and look at
128. 5:51our own culture in indigenous ways we
129. 5:53have to understand what it is about this
130. 5:57indigenous knowledge that makes these
131. 5:59people are enormously less destructive
132. 6:02than the rest of us and obviously there
133. 6:05are probably many different reasons but
134. 6:07one particularly strong candidate for an
135. 6:10explanation is
136. 6:12animism okay so what is
137. 6:15animism many of the 95% non-indigenous
138. 6:19people see the world outside of humanity
139. 6:23as a dead material thing that's sort of
140. 6:27lying around outside the window
141. 6:29kind of waiting for humans to happen to
142. 6:32pop by and make use of it but many
143. 6:35indigenous people are
144. 6:38animists therefore they see the world
145. 6:41around them as a community of persons
146. 6:43that they cultivate like mutually giving
147. 6:45relationships
148. 6:47with often kinship relations
149. 6:50kinship to many indigenous people
150. 6:53all that biodiversity is family you know
151. 6:58and
152. 7:00that probably has something to do with
153. 7:02the fact that they generally want to try
154. 7:04and keep it
155. 7:06alive um some think of animism as a
156. 7:10super spiritual thing and that's fair
157. 7:13enough uh but it's not the only way of
158. 7:15looking at
159. 7:16it let me give you an
160. 7:23example you hear
161. 7:26that I think many of us like Modern
162. 7:30urban hipster people we probably just
163. 7:32think like
164. 7:34bird but um have you ever wondered what
165. 7:38a bird like that might be
166. 7:41saying I once heard that bird in the
167. 7:45bush in the western part of Central
168. 7:48African Republic where my wife was born
169. 7:50into an animist group called The
170. 7:53buer and we were walking there with our
171. 7:55uncle and he was looked back at the
172. 7:57bird and they started with in back and
173. 8:00forth communicating and I was
174. 8:03like what's going on humans mostly don't
175. 8:06speak
176. 8:08bird but here's what happened the bird
177. 8:11led him to a hive of wild
178. 8:13bees and as a little payment he gave it
179. 8:17some of this incredibly Rich intense
180. 8:20Wild Honey that you find in an African
181. 8:23Wilderness that's animism that level of
182. 8:26being connected to Nature and when we as
183. 8:31normal perhaps white Europeans look at
184. 8:35our own cultural symbols and our
185. 8:37cultural heritage then we can find it
186. 8:41like when we just scratch the surface a
187. 8:42little bit then it's just below there
188. 8:45that animist kinship bond with the world
189. 8:47around us so let me bring you back to
190. 8:51The Little
191. 8:52Mermaid which is one of the best known
192. 8:55cultural symbols of Denmark where I'm
193. 8:57from we know her from H Christian
194. 9:00Anderson's famous fairy tale and in this
195. 9:03story The Mermaid falls in love with the
196. 9:05human
197. 9:06Prince but in Anderson's original
198. 9:09version the prince the human abandons
199. 9:13this Bond of love this family connection
200. 9:15with the landscape Spirit we humans
201. 9:19deserted this lonely little Sea Spirit
202. 9:22who's sitting there longing for us to
203. 9:24return to relation with
204. 9:26her um Anderson story story is inspired
205. 9:30by older animist stories where the break
206. 9:33on the animist kinship makes the sea
207. 9:36heartbroken and angry the Sea Spirit
208. 9:39turns on human
209. 9:40communities it almost sounds a bit like
210. 9:42a premonition of these rising sea levels
211. 9:46listen to this
212. 9:57[Music]
213. 10:04[Music]
214. 10:09such old stories they can be warnings
215. 10:13like cautionary tales of rupture in that
216. 10:16kinship that animist glue that keeps the
217. 10:19world together they can also be Tales of
218. 10:22healing that bond that many indigenous
219. 10:25people still practice and therefore
220. 10:28their indigenous thinking can lend us
221. 10:32knowledge and perspectives that we can
222. 10:34turn on our own culture and understand
223. 10:37how it came to reject this animism that
224. 10:39they still
225. 10:41practice I think we need to uh talk to
226. 10:43indigenous people about how to learn
227. 10:46from them like many of them are reaching
228. 10:48out and saying hey stuff isn't turning
229. 10:51out so well is it you know consider
230. 10:53trying to think like
231. 10:54this but I also think that we need a
232. 10:57learning dialogue because how to apply
233. 11:00this kind of knowledge actually isn't so
234. 11:03evident like an angry Sea Spirit that
235. 11:07calls Dusk and darkness on the
236. 11:10lands it doesn't translate so smoothly
237. 11:14into lobbying strategies for influencing
238. 11:16policymaking on biodiversity
239. 11:19protection so when for instance we read
240. 11:22the indigenous American Scholar Robin
241. 11:24wall Kima who describes the honorable
242. 11:28Harvest this culture of reciprocity and
243. 11:31gratitude when receiving food from
244. 11:34Plants then let us look for this in our
245. 11:36own culture and then we find that you
246. 11:39know that there are well-known Danish
247. 11:41songs for instance that I remember from
248. 11:43my upbringing that describe the
249. 11:45tradition of receiving the Rye Harvest
250. 11:48into the farm and greeting the rye as
251. 11:51this honored life bringing
252. 11:54guest so imagine that like gratitude
253. 11:59in fact veneration actually towards food
254. 12:04food it's it's actually the stuff that
255. 12:06gives us life you know imagine that
256. 12:11attitude what that would do to our
257. 12:13consumption today food waste is actually
258. 12:17a major cause of global warming it
259. 12:19accounts for 8 to 10% of global
260. 12:22greenhouse gas emissions it's worse than
261. 12:23airplane traffic and that's just like
262. 12:26one little concrete example that looking
263. 12:29in this way at these parts of our own
264. 12:33culture can potentially impact the
265. 12:35culture of enormous populations and make
266. 12:39it less
267. 12:41destructive so what I want you to take
268. 12:44from here is just that engaging with
269. 12:48that kind of culture is available
270. 12:50actually to all of us and if we can
271. 12:52learn how to listen with an indigenous
272. 12:55ear to our old songs and old stories
273. 12:58then that can lead us back towards that
274. 13:01kinship with the land you know
275. 13:03traditional animist knowledge should not
276. 13:06stay restricted with these indigenous
277. 13:08people these 5% you might say they
278. 13:11already get it you know it needs to come
279. 13:14on the agenda also in the culture of
280. 13:17these 95% who has lost it with
281. 13:20catastrophic
282. 13:21consequences it needs to come on the
283. 13:23agenda in culture communities
284. 13:26legislation research education
285. 13:30systems
286. 13:32because that experience of connectivity
287. 13:35is still there it's just under the
288. 13:38surface in our cultural memory and our
289. 13:40old songs and
290. 13:42stories like I want my children to have
291. 13:45some of that experience of connectivity
292. 13:48that the landscape stops being just some
293. 13:50dead thing that's just lying around but
294. 13:52that it comes alive with relation and I
295. 13:55want our children to live in communities
296. 13:58that reach out towards this sad and
297. 14:02lonely Little Mermaid that we have so
298. 14:05carelessly
299. 14:07abandoned then we can find that kinship
300. 14:10with the world that literally keeps the
301. 14:13world
302. 14:14alive thank you
303. 14:19[Applause]
304. 14:24[Music]