I hope to raise some serious questions about the future of natural landscaping. But we’ll begin with an illustrated romp through past versions of natural landscaping, including some of the revolutionary changes in our ideas of “nature” and what constitutes a “landscape.” This part of the program will include some beautiful illustrations, and maybe a few that are mildly shocking.
One of the themes I’ll be developing is the idea of restoration—the restoration of something that has been lost or is being lost. In western cultural history, beneath and behind all the changing images of “nature” and the landscape garden, lies the yearning to restore and return to what has been lost—some version or another of “paradise.” Where does the mission of Wild Ones fit into that continuity?
I’ll touch upon what seem to me some of the major changes and challenges we face, now and in the future, including climate disruption, our growing awareness of plant intelligence, and the artificial “nature” of artificial intelligence.
I’ll offer some thoughts on what seems to me a major problem with Doug Tallamy’s Nature’s Best Hope: his indecision as to whether his project of converting half of America’s turf-grass properties to “natural landscape” and a Homegrown National Park is truly revolutionary, or nothing more than a superficial change of taste easily accommodated within the confines of our current middle-class culture. Are we counter-cultural subversives? A threat to the values and standards that made America great? Or just a bunch of happy, harmless gardeners hoping to rescue a few bees from replacement by AI drones? This program will provide, insofar as I can manage it in 45 minutes or so, something of what my 25 years of Wild Ones experience and my 91 years of life have taught me. It will be a very personal vision that will include some fun, some stories, some eccentricities, and maybe some challenges. Please join me.
Tom Small is co-founder of Kalamazoo Area Wild Ones and co-author of Using Native Plants to Restore Community. He is a retired Professor of English Literature and a retired professional actor. He currently writes and edits for Quaker Earthcare Witness, the Quaker environmental organization for North America.
The program tonight is called when is natural Landscaping truly natural and um Tom small is a philosopher at heart so I think we’re all looking forward to hearing his thoughts on this subject um Tom is the co-founder of our Kazu area chapter which is celebrating its 25th
Anniversary next year and he’s also the co-author of using native plants to restore Community this book here it’s wonderful if you haven’t had a chance to look at it and without further Ado everyone give a warm welcome to Tom small qu wanted me to show you the
Forward and back for your slides just listen and that one okay thank you Mel and thank you all for being here what wonderful faces and hands as well yes thank you well um when is natural Landscaping actually natural I’m not sure that’s the basic question that I will be addressing
Tonight but I will be addressing some questions that are related to that um you may at some point feel that you’ve stumble stumbled into a lecture on art history but bear with me and the chances are fairly good that by the end of this we will be more or less together
I’m going to deal with Wild Ones how we got Here how we understand the term natural and the term Landscaping if we do and I’m going to try to deal with change the challenges that we are faced in terms of change the upanishads tell us that everything is changing in this everchanging world and everything is changing and will change for Wild Ones Ruth and I have just come back from a 4-day conference at Pendle Hill near Philadelphia with Quaker Earth care witness and it was an exciting time because we met the new new general secretary for Quaker Earth care witness who delivered a kind of Manifesto on rewilding Quaker earthcare
Witness and maybe that’s kind of a subtopic of my talk tonight rewilding Wild Ones we’ll see let us Begin by recognizing that the land we are meeting on is ancestral land of the anishinabi Nations the Buddha admi parami the Ojibwe or Chipawa and the Odawa or Ottawa we acknowledge their many centuries of care and stewardship for these their homelands let us honor them and their spirit in our nurturing and restoring of the land they love and on which they still reside the soil the native plants and all our relations We Are One let it be
So I’ll begin with some of the challenges the diagram is of the planetary boundaries as defined in 2023 this year by uh major scientists from the world over working through the Stockholm resilience Center there are six of the planetary boundaries that we have already transgressed where are beyond the safe
Limit in six out of nine of those boundaries which are the support systems for planet Earth and for us as the human species we don’t know says one of the directors how long we can keep transgressing these key boundaries before combined pressures lead to irreversible change and
Harm and you see the diagram of the planetary boundaries down there on the right corner in 2009 we had transgressed three out of n 2015 6 or I’m sorry four out of nine now six out of nine in 2023 including climate change novel entities such as radioactive materials Plastics synthetic chemicals and so forth biosphere Integrity the land biogeological flows nitrogen and phosphorus primarily Way Beyond the boundaries and V smal one of the foremost scientists on energy flows tells us that what we are doing to the nitrogen cycle is probably
Ultimately more dangerous to us than what we’re doing with the carbon cycle and that has a lot to do with chemical fertilizer challenges to us and yet permeating and underlying all of these interactive categories is the dis disintegrating force of a culture and a world viw and it’s that culture that I’m going
To try to outline for us tonight or at least a couple of different levels aspects of it another challenge that we face is the re ution that’s taking place in our view of native plants themselves and of all Plants the emergence in scientific thought of the notion of the wood Wide Web a communicative web whereby plants trees all plant species communicate with one another in an intelligible kind of language and signaling that there is in those networks those webs underneath the soil and in the air a system of communication
That indigenous peoples were long aware of in past Millennia and which we tend to have forgotten we for gotten the language but as Robin wal kimmerer tells us the plants remember when the people have forgotten so the plant intelligence the elders is something we will be Reckoning
With over the course of the next few decades something that I’m aware of I think most of you are aware of it I don’t know that we’ve adjusted to it yet I don’t know that we’ve really begun even to touch the surface of the changes that might be coming and that
Are inevitable and that we must deal with as we become more and more aware of the intelligence and the kind of elderhood of the plant species who precede us on this Earth language and culture also present a challenge we’ve forgotten the language of the plants and Native Americans such as Jeff
Grean the regenerative Forester of the monom nation in Wisconsin and Robin wall kimmerer scientist mother member of the citizen nation of poaty both agree that we need a new grammar we need a grammar of animous of the Living Earth and its intelligence and its communication for us and with
Us that as we become aware of this plant intelligence we’re going to be shifting from a sense of the control that we have or that we seek or that we have had over the plant world and what was formerly to us the inanimate part of our
World as we become more and more aware we are going to have to change language and culture in particular the English language which is largely a language of nouns it’s a language that characterizes the world in terms of things rather than in terms of verbs and actions most Native American languages
Are at least 75 to 80% verbs the English language is about 75% nouns it makes a big difference it’s a limit a serious limitation to the way we see things and what we see when we look and Indigenous peoples in general Native Americans with their different language their different sense of the ACT
Of living beings see a different Landscape when they look at the world from the landscape that we see and we’re just becoming again aware of that too and that’s another challenge to us and a challenge to the way we do and the way we see there are other challenges artificial intelligence the loss of Commons privatization and commodification of
Every virtually all a kind of cultural mindset or worldview which we’re confronted with and in a way Boxed In by uh most of the time but when I want to move on to is a dream a dream that our culture has had from time immemorial a dream of order and
Control and also of restoration of restoration of what is lost it’s a Timeless Dream It’s taken many many forms and I’m going to deal with only one or two of those forms tonight but they’re kind of the root of my theme and my talk the first image that I’m presenting
Of that dream of order is uh dating from the 15th century and it’s the Garden of Love This is a miniature for the Roman De La Rose which culturally had a tremendous influence on the whole of European and Western culture combining the biblical theme of the hortus conclusus the Walled
Garden one aspect of which is of course the Garden of Eden but another of which is the Pagan Garden of Love that became so powerfully imagined in the culture of the Renaissance that htis conclusus and the phrase comes from the Song of Solomon the Walled Garden and combination with classical
Amus Locus Locus amus the pleasant place of relaxation of comfort of peace and that’s what the Garden of Love is in this depiction it’s the Garden of Love it’s the garden of Venus recovered from the Pagan world in the classical world of the Renaissance and it’s a secret garden
There’s a key to it and a lock and a woman Bears the key and opens the door to the courtly lover but it’s a Walled Garden with raised walled en closed beds one thing that you will recognize is the lawn the mow of wild flowers that is the basis of this Garden of
Love and that is of course natural in all this midst of this kind of what we would see as artifice there is a constant that idea of of the lawn of What U the poet and playright Christopher Marlo evokes in his play Edward II from the end of the
16th century my men like sers grazing on the lawn shall dance the antic hey a rewilding in itself on on the lawn the meow the green Wildflower meow uh and the satar with their goat feet there’s going to be a lot about goats in this talk so prepare
Yourselves all right The Garden of Love next another kind of garden that we feel we have gotten Beyond The Gardens of v and of Versa both designed by famous landscape architect of the time Andre benot and through tricks of perspective he made the vistas from The Chateau the Royal
Chateau and the Order of the landscape appear to rise and stretch to the Horizon and Beyond so beyond this closedness there is an openness a reaching for Infinity a reaching for a kind of freedom and there are other images of it as well in this kind of Garden beyond the immediate confines of those geometrically designed Vistas is what they call the Wilderness and the border to the Wilderness is Evergreen because this is a garden which does not change in the seasons it’s always the same it’s the recovery of what was lost the order the unchanging ever unchanging order of
Nature nature before the fall and all of that disorder that came with the fall Louis the 16th the progenitor of this Garden took over in six um yeah 1661 when he reached his majority took over from the queen Reg and declared himself the Prime Minister I am in control now on the Law and Order ticket sound familiar well we’re still there aren’t we we’re kind of coming back it’s always recurring and that vision of the Lost Garden is a
Constant in our culture next 18th century Vision something rather different a garden park is designed by Lancelot capability Brown called capability because he would look at somebody’s estate and say that landscape has capability and in would come the army of workers with their shovels and their sides and their Manpower Earth
Movers and change that landscape into one of beautiful order and what was that order clumps of trees and a meow basically a Savanah and that image that vision is still with us it’s still a very powerful one in our culture because in 1755 when this place was designed the maintenance was done
Largely by sheep 1830 the invention of the lawnmower the maintenance chain Ed from sheep power to human power and then motor power different notion of the landscape and its maintenance but to the same end and a different vision of Nature and what it was like and what restoring it
Would be like but basically one of control still of order the difference between Versailles and Chatsworth is that in Chatsworth the immense labor and expense is all concealed Louis the 16th wants you to see it the Dukes of devire want to conceal it oh no no effort involved this is just nature right
The dream of restoration involves of course a sense of loss this is the Golden Age by Lucas krak the Elder 1530 this image of nude people dancing in a circle is a recurrent one for the last 500 years we’ll see it again uh later in the 20th century uh nude couples All In
Relaxed wonderfully meditative or active uh poses and again a wall a Walled Garden with a kind of rugged Wilderness like mountainous uh World Beyond but one that’s there but excluded boxed in boxed away away from this old garden with its Wildflower Meadow again the image that I’m going to
Concentrate on for a while now is the image of Arcadia which is again the Lost green world and it’s the Lost world of shepherds of goat herds of Pam the god of nature Arcadia is a place a district in the pelonis in Greece and it becomes a place to reckon
With In classical times and again in the Renaissance and we’re still Reckoning with it and you’ll recognize it as we go on here is the her Man by Claude Lorraine one of the major painters influencing our notion of landscape and what a landscape is and how we relate to
It and this is titled the herdsman and it’s typical it’s a typical Vista opening out into a kind of golden Beyond a golden beyond that suffuses the whole landscape with its light and its pleasant kind of tranquility and yet energy and here is the herdsman reclining resting while his goats graze
On the lawn if you will and that uh image is constant really from the time of theocritus Greek 3rd Century BC and uh Virgil first century Roman author this uh Slide the top left is from a fifth century manuscript and is an illustration of the opening lines of Virgil’s first eock the
Opening line of which is oh melas a God has made this lure hours this wonderful land of song of Love of repose of comfort and of goats and sheep and cattle and herds and lovers and the same pair of melus and tus in the lucon Masters version of
1410 in Francis Clan’s version in 1654 and arist May’s version in 1926 all versions of that first the first opening lines of Virgil’s first and that’s taken up by subsequent authors and the uh notion of Arcadia is just an absolute constant as uh I’m going to go
Back sorry back to the herdsman and the quote from Jim Corbett one of my favorite environmentalists I’ll say more about him time in a little bit from the time man and woman tasted the fruit of knowledge and becoming self-conscious stepped out of nature into history we
Have red of the age when we were or will be at peace with all that lives the place before and Beyond Exile has many names in the poetries of the western world it is Arcadia here’s Thomas Cole the American painter 19th century founder of the Hudson River School of painting one of
The predominant influential schools of painting in uh American history and art history generally Thomas Cole The Arcadian or pastoral State a painting that he did in 1834 depicting a kind of moment of balance between nature and Humanity freedom and Order Liberty and power when everything was
Balanced of course that was in the past that’s lost and that painting was part of a series there we The Arcadian or pastoral state is the second in the series the first is the Savage State what we would Now call the hunter gatherer state or condition the third after the Pastoral or Arcadian
State is the consummation of Empire followed by the fourth state destruction fire Storm Conflict violence destroying from within and from without all that that whole process had developed and finally desolation where all is gone and nature comes back and takes over again and you’ll notice that in all five of those
Paintings it’s the same landscape the same mountain in the background merely transformed in those five separate distinct and yet processional stages we’ve kind of gotten beyond that a little bit now that’s the stadial view of things we no longer regard the barbaric and the Pastoral States as
Primitive maybe they knew it better than we did we’re getting back to that dream of Arcadia and there it is Thomas Cole’s painting of 1838 at the dream of Arcadia and what’s really interesting about that particular painting to those of you who are Star Wars fans is that it was
Demonstrably a model for nabo the ideal planet of Star Wars home planet of Padme Amidala advocate for peace and preservation or restoration of the Republic at the time of Empire whether it’s the Star Wars Empire or the Roman Empire of Virgil’s time or the Elizabethan Empire Of the time of the popularity of The Arcadian myth or our own Empire now the problem with Arcadia of course is that it can’t last and here’s another famous painting by Nicholas pan titled at in Arcadia iGo I also am in Arcadia and there are the Shepherds again always the
Shepherds always the same kind of landscape but at in Arcadia and they’re looking at this Monumental gravestone on which is inscribed I also am in Arcadia death it’s more explicit in an earlier painting by guino called the Pastoral Shepherds or Arcadia or at in Arcadia ago uh where they’re looking at a
Skull and that’s the inevitable Decay and death of the dream and the place here’s another version from the early 19th century 1802 uer the uh landscape architect for uh the park atovi in France one of the more popular and widely known and widely imitated imitations of Arcadia versions of Arcadia
And in this one there is the tomb of Jean jaac rouso the author of the social contract and of probably his most famous phrase men are born free but everywhere they are in chains that sense again of the loss of what was once there what we were born with what we have lost
Arcadia and this is a version of Arcadia and the Cent cal part of it is the tomb of Jean jao on the a of Pops there in the center of the landscape and that’s the place where those who are disillusioned fed up with civilization and all its
Corruption go to recover their souls and their sense of freedom and their life in Arcadia here’s another Claude Lorraine and this is the beginning of a little sequence about pictures replacing Nature images replacing quote nature unquote this is a landscape titled with the rest on the flight into Egypt
And the the holy couple are down there in the right at rest in this picturesque landscape and these Landscapes by Claude became an immense influence on the picturesque and people saw them as pictures virtually as paintings and uh one of the dictionary definitions of landscape as a matter of effect is a
Painting in the upper right corner you see a man with a clawed glass and that drawing by Thomas Gainesboro dates probably from about uh 1780 somewhere around there tourists went around with claw glasses a convex mirror tinted kind of pinkish and golden and they held it up to the
Landscape and made a picture of it like a clae painting and they were known as clawed glasses and they were very popular clawed glasses looking at the world through or with clawed glasses as a series of pictures of landscapes here’s a something a little closer to home Albert beer the Rocky Mountains Lander’s
Peak but there is no such place as Landers Peak uh beer imagined it created it out of whole cloth this is not a painting of any particular place it’s a painting of an imaginary world the Rocky Mountains a landscape complete with Native Americans and their encampment and all the ingredients of an idealized
Landscape and what uh beer says about that painting is to me more significant even than the painting itself upon that very plane where an Indian village stands a city populated by our descendants may rise and in its art galleries this picture may find a resting place the nature
Imaginary that is depicted in that painting becomes for bead a picture which will be hanging in an art gallery in the very place he painted all of it purely imaginary but nonetheless a picture a Landscape and this is another step in pictures replacing Landscapes Landscapes replacing nature Landscaping replacing nature you see where this is going let it’s it’s I’m sorry I’m sorry about it yeah I apologize go get coffee if you need to picture replaces nature here’s another instance on re
Matis Joy of life you recognize this it’s an Arcadian landscape complete with Venus and the circle dancers and the shepherd playing on the flute and the sheep and another uh young woman here playing on a double pan flute and lovers all of the ingredients sea Forest Meadow
Sky the lawn is yellow but it’s a lawn it’s a wild flower lawn of course but here matis has declared his independence of you know natural color he’s depicting an inner State and the whole thing is set up in a curious as some critics art critics have noted
It’s a kind of stage picture with its own pictorial space and perspective like a looking through the the side curtains and through a prenium arch into a stage set and uh the audience for this painting when he exhibited it in 1906 were scandalized by the Liberties that he
Took the Liberation from classical form and from appear es the mere appearances of nature itself kind of final stage of pictures replacing nature is I think Rene mre’s The Human Condition of 1933 and if you look carefully you see that we’re looking out through a window through a
Frame and that part of the landscape out there is obscured by a painting of that landscape which is a painting that is continuous with the landscape itself so we’re seeing a picture of a landscape through the ultimate clawed glass the window of a house which frames with its curtains and
Its stage setting the landscape itself and reproduces it as a picture and Rene MCR says of this title painting The Human Condition this is how we see the world he wrote to Andre bon in 1934 we see it outside ourselves and nevertheless we only have an image of it inside us we are
Alienated it’s the ultimate CLA glass and kind of alienation from nature a picture replaces nature or what remains of it the manicured lawn out there which gives way of course to the Wilderness the trees Beyond and the single Lone Tree there in the landscape the ghosts of Arcadia they’re all around you you live with them every day of your life the Arcadia neighborhood Arcadia Al Al last no longer with us among the Lost Arcadia Festival site Arcadia Ballroom in the hotel downtown
Arcadia Creek oh my God within our lifetimes Arcadia Creek was liberated it used to be that the only place you could see Arcadia Creek downtown was through a hole in a bar on East Michigan Street a hole in the floor you could go in there oh now it’s liberated right no no it’s
Still boxed in it’s still contained it’s the nightmare of Arcadia not the dream of Arcadia but it’s there along with the Arcadia dental office and the Arcadia Pharmacy and the Arcadia post office and all those wonderful places all around you here in kalamazo and its immediate environs the kalamazo area
Wild Ones that’s kind of where we are Folks at least on one level it’s not all of it but that’s part of where we are the ghosts of Arcadia oh and the neighborhood I think it’s wonderful the Arcadia neighborhood contains the Walden Woods well I’ve only known one man in my
Life who really wanted to live in Arcadia and that was Jim Corbett I quoted him earlier on I met Jim Corbett in 1995 at a conference in uh Cuba New Mexico a Quaker conference where he was the keynote speaker and got to know Jim a little bit um saw himself as as Don
Kote a dreamer out on a mission of night errantry to save Dela and break the Enchantment under which she and the rest of the world labored and uh that’s what Jim saw his mission as being to recover Arcadia and he used to tell people who were meeting him in airports and had never met him just look for donot with glasses and there’s donot with glasses
And there’s without a beautiful Olivewood carving of donot that my stepson brought me from the Canary Islands uh without Glasses but kot’s last dream in cantes novel is calling myself the herdsman quick and you the herdsman Panino we will wander among the Peaks the forests and The Meadows singing Here lamenting there drinking of the Spring’s Crystal Waters or from polluted Creeks or from rushing Rivers we will be provided with
Sweet fruit in abundance by The Oaks chairs by the trunks of Hardy cork trees breath by the clear and pure air light in the night’s darkness by moon and stars it’s the dream of Arcadia and they will be the herdsmen of Arcadia like my men with sers their goat feet
Uh the new kind of wild ones if you will and Sano panza’s response is I think uh significant Sano Panza to kot on his deathbed says look don’t be lazy get up out of bed and let’s go to the country dressed as herders the way we decided maybe behind some Bush we’ll
Find the lady DSA disenchanted will just have to look and there’s the dream again phrased a little differently but it’s the same recovery of Arcadia Corbett was the founder of the sanctuary movement he herded goats in the desert for several years just finding out whether he could live that way and he
Did and then he devoted much of his life to traversing the Mexican desert in Search of Lost Immigrants trying to get North and many of them died in that desert but Corbett knew how to survive in that desert and he would find the ones who did survive and he would lead
Them and there’s a wonderful picture if I have time I’ll show it to you I’ve got it sort of at the end of Corbett leading a family of immigrants across the real grand he’s up to the water he’s up to his chest in the water and they’re carrying their Bel belongings on their
Back and he’s carrying the baby leading those immigrants across the Rio Grande and when I met him he had given that up he couldn’t do it any longer suffering from arthritis and he had taken to what he called the Saro Juniper Reclamation project and he would buy up leases of
Government land for grazing and then graze the absolute minimum of cattle they had to graze some in order to fulfill their contract and go about restoring the land restoring the desert restoring the grazing lands restoring The Meadows restoring The Creeks restoring the rivers restoring the land and that was the most radical
Vision I’ve ever encountered of restoration of Arcadia and it was right close to home and Corbett um is no longer with us but probably the most remarkable person certainly the most remarkable Quaker that I’ve ever met just a few minutes more I want to touch on some other aspects of recovery that are
Ongoing around us and that I think we need to be in touch with we need to be in touch with the spirit of of Jim Corbett in these Changing Times these times of in Arcadia ego uh and we need to to recognize as I suggested at the beginning uh the intelligence of Nature
And finally the rights of Nature and the leaders in this it seems to me are mostly the indigenous peoples and Native Americans not entirely but uh they’re certainly among the foremost leaders and the foremost activists in the rights of nature movement and I’ve included just a a poster and a couple of
Instances the uro tribe in the Pacific Northwest recognizes the rights of the clouth river the historic rights of the river itself which is their home and not only the rights of the river but the rights of the entire Watershed as a living being and the word used by Robin wall
Kimra in the slide that I showed you earlier onaki living beings or the word used by Jeff Gan PES which is life but not just life sacred life that kind of Rec recognition uh and here on the lower left is uh members of the Panka nation of Oklahoma defending the rights of of
Mother Earth and one of my culture Heroes Casey Camp horon PKA Elder who when the pka were considering how do we go about recognizing and affirming the rights of our home Rivers the Arkansas and little salt Rivers uh how do we uh how do we do that she led a delegation to New
Zealand where the mai or the wanganui iwi had recently recognized the rights of the wanganui river and the whole wanganui Watershed and so they came back and try to model what they were doing with the Arkansas and little salt Rivers after the New Zealand thing and you can you
Can uh do a search on any of these kinds of things the wangi the pka and come up with all kinds of really interesting information about the rights of nature movement as the uh nations of North America are viewing it and acting upon their as they see it Heritage
Uh in southern Latin America there are similar movements and in many ways they’re way ahead of us here in North America in being in recognizing the rights of nature in the constitution of Ecuador and Bolivia um recognizing the rights of the whole Amazon Watershed in Brazil acting upon those rights is
Another question of course but they’re ahead of us by a long shot in the recognition and the legal recognition and personhood of those livingi living beings another aspect of that same thing the land back movement and it’s taking hold we are to one extent or another turning land back to the Native
Americans the first nations from which we stole it the Bison Range is in the middle of the Flathead Indian reservation in Montana 18,500 Acres Teddy Roosevelt took it away from the reservation unilaterally and declared it a nature preserve and the Native Americans weren’t even allowed to work there they were totally excluded fenced
Out of the nature preserve took them aund and some years they’ve got it back they own it now outright it’s been given back to them with the help of some Foundation monies of course but they’ve got it back and they’ve got got full control of it their land the Blackfoot Bison
Range and it’s U an actual Bison Range it has in effect been returned to the commons because it’s open to the public it’s open to everybody but what’s being restored there is bison and an entire culture not just the land an entire culture that includes human beings and bison and the whole cultural
Way of life that goes with that the Great Bear Rainforest Is Now co-managed by a large number of tribes in the Canadian Pacific Northwest 15 million Acres of rainforest green Peak peace and nature conservancy and Quakers and all kinds of organizations helped that along contributed to that but the leaders
Finally are the Native Americans the First Nations themselves and they’re the ones who are taking over 700 square miles of Pacific Coast the uro and two other tribes have declared this a person and we declared it to be alive and we’re going to take over stewardship
Of it and we’re going to act upon it because the governments are moving too slowly sorry Folks we’re going to do it so there are all kinds of levels operating here and bears ears National Monument restored to its full boundaries by the Biden Administration after a lot of the monument was taken away by the Trump Administration um problem the problem with that kind of thing is one
Administration says one thing in the next Administration says no and then yes and then no and then yes and you never know uh but now five tribes have co-management of bears ear’s National monument and that’s a real step for that’s a wonderful thing okay I have two conclusions here and I
Couldn’t decide between them so you get both of them kind of a bonus and the first one is is is Native American the words that come before all else that’s the true translation of what we’ve come to know as the Thanksgiving address of the of
Shi uh whom we have come to know wrongly as the iray they call themselves The huni and they are the six tribes the CE six tribes of of Peace uh descended from the great peac maker uh High which has nothing to do with long fellow’s hawaa long fellow’s hawaa was actually named
Njo and although nanab Bojo is okay for uh the rhyme scheme and the accentuation uh long P didn’t like the sound of njo which is anabi uh name uh so so he substituted the name Ha which actually is so it it all gets mixed up that’s Nei here nor there
Anyway those words of the Thanksgiving address are for the Nani the words that come before all else and they’re words of thanks they’re prayers of thanks greetings of thanks greetings to all the elements greetings to all the animals to all the plants the domesticated plants the food plants the wild plants the
Stars the moon the Sun all those living beings P all those living Beings in the words that come before all else are thank and the final thanks is my conclusion my first today we have gathered and these are words from the Thanksgiving address and see that the cycles of Life continued continue we have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each
Other and all living beings so now we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people now our minds are one my second conclusion is is from the book using native plants to restore Community uh and it’s an illustration that I
Commissioned for the book from a Quaker artist Liz Henderson and I told Liz the story of the Celtic world tree and I told her the story of Indra net the net over indra’s Palace one of the Lords of the Universe it’s a great web it’s the entire universe and at the intersection of each strand of the web there is a pearl and every Pearl reflects every other Pearl in a kind of infinite regression so that all things are contained everywhere at all times and Alfred North Whitehead in science in the modern
World and David Bal the nuclear physicist tell me that that’s true that everything is everywhere at all times really not just imaginary really in a way that we cannot ordinarily Perceive because we’re Boxed In by the wall Garden a version of Arcadia not really Arcadia well I gave that commission to Liz not knowing what would turn out do me a drawing that’s kind of a combination between the world tree and indra’s net okay said
Liz and she went away and a few days later she came back with this drawing thinking I really wouldn’t like it this drawing of a tree spiraling upwards and outwards with the branches interconnected all with one another and people by birds and children and nestlings on the ground and up in the
Tree and I looked at it for a few seconds I didn’t know what to say and was that oh he doesn’t like it and I said that’s it you got it that’s a miracle that’s wonderful so I used it in the book and I put it together with one of my favorite
Poems with which I will conclude by Gary Snider for the children the rising Hills the slopes of Statistics lie before us the steep climb of everything going up up as we all go down in The Next Century or the one beyond that they say The Valleys pastures we can meet there in
Peace if we make it to climb these coming crests one word to you to you and your children Stay Together learn the flowers go light find Arcadia thank [Applause] you