Relational Ecology

May Your Wingspan Be Wide

Dear friend, we are called by Elders of Indigenous Nations around the world to consider how we are living in relation with one another, with all beings of Earth, and with Earth herself. Many generous Indigenous teachers have been sharing their voices to teach cultures of reciprocity, earth-respecting Wisdoms, ceremonial healing and medicines, and our interwoven relations with All beings, including Water, living Earth, and Air. We are in the midst of escalating harms to Earth and Life. We must listen to the call and gather around the sacred Fire of creativity, of Life, of living Earth.

I grew up through an individualistic culture; perhaps you have also? I was taught world view and life practices through an individualist ethos, a culture carrying stories of the individual hero, a psychology of individual health, and a disembodied relation with the Land where Earth is the inert backdrop for human activity.

A psychology teacher once said to me: “You can’t go around saying the plants are alive, no one will take you seriously”. Yet, we all know plants are indeed living beings. And we all know that it is because plants are alive and breathing that we humans are able to breathe and without the life-giving oxygen that the plants of Earth create we would quickly die. When we breathe we are in a participatory call and response with all the plants and all the animals of Earth, a call and response that is creating the nourishing elements of Air of this planet. It is reality that we are woven into very intimate relations with all Plants of Earth, all animals, and with the Waters; even if we have lost our awareness of that reciprocity, those reciprocal relations continue and are the foundation of our capacity to Live. What we do to the Water, to the Air, to the Earth we do to ourselves and all other beings of Earth.

Birds are generous in moving large amounts of nitrogen back and forth between the marine and the terrestrial ecologies. Nitrogen is crucial for plant life. Therefore, birds are part of the wise web of relations supporting our ability to breathe. Bird populations are declining due to our polluting of land sky and water and through our destruction of Bird habitats like wetlands and killing of Bird prey through pesticide use. We harm our own ability to breathe when we harm the Land. This is a form of serious cultural dissociation from our relational ecology. We are all part of one diverse interwoven ecology of Earth, and this is the foundation of our health, of our survival and our flourishing.

Many of us humans have forgotten our relational interwoveness with the land, and feel a sense of loneliness and of notbelonging. Robert Macfarlane and Edward O. Wilson refer to this time as the Age of Loneliness, the Eremocene - loneliness related to our disconnection from Earth’s web of relations, disconnection from our fundamental interwoven belongingness.

In our forgetting of our relatedness we use the word ‘the environment’ to speak of Earth - placing Earth as an inert backdrop to human egocentrism. We use the word ‘It’ to speak of the more than human world, rather than they, he, or she. In colonial speaking we say The Tree, rather than Tree, though we would not say “the Katrina.” Using “The” in this way and “It” in this way separates us and others Earth, objectifies Earth. This language usage is part of our dissociation from our kinship relations. Language both reflects our values and also contributes to shaping our values, describing and maintaining particular world views.

Relational Ecology is a name that I wove together to express my experience of being woven with the land and all beings, to give a name to the dance of relationship that is always and only within our ecological webs. An ecosystem is a web of relations that are rooted in reciprocity. and interbeing. Everyone effects everyone else. Health and wellbeing is collective, human and the more than human world - all beings, all of Earth, are woven into relations with one another. Ecology is not separate from my health, your health, from the health of our friendship, from the health of relations in our school settings, from the health of relations among Nations… We are woven together.

Relational Ecology name speaks of the nestled relationships of infiinite, collective, community, small gatherings, coupling, and solitudes. Solitudes are within ecology. Dyads are within the wider web. What we do in our solitudes and communities ripple to impact others in all manner of ways. The stressors of Earth impacts everyone’s wellbeing.

Indigenous Elders speak of Earth as Mother. This kinship language reflects a deeply relational and respectful understanding of the web of life. For example, in Cree, Elders share the teaching of Wahkohtowin - a fundamental current of awareness of kinship: all beings are interwoven in relations with one another: All My Relations.

Indeed the forests where I live were well-cared for by the Indigenous families and communities and First Nations for over 10,000 years. Beginning in the mid 1800s, Settlers with colonial perceptions of reality began logging and polluting the land, and breaking treaty agreements. European settlers to Canada looked down upon the ties between Indigenous First Nations and the Land, naming this “primitive.” These settlers worked very hard to annihilate that relation through a government process of cultural genocide.

However, these relations are resilient and have persevered through immense systemic harms, carried by knowledge keepers, hidden from those who sought to destroy those wisdoms. These relations and the health of Indigenous communities are regenerating through deep tending from within. As Lee Maracle writes: “find freedom in the context you inherit”.

To be a settler in Canada is to be part of this Relational Ecology, part of the shadow of genocide and stolen land, broken promises and broken treaties, and a project of systematic annihilation of relations with Earth. To be a settler in Canada is to be part of the Relational Ecology of healing in one way or another, whether by disconnecting from that generative current, denying its continued relevance, or engaging meaningfully in the process of healing in direct and indirect ways - to listen, learn, and practice being a treaty relative in a good way. Part of that process is learning to dismantle and disarm the disconnection and violence of domination culture within colonial world view.

Here is a lineage story of how the name Relational Ecology emerged for me.

In 2020 I moved to a little town by the Salish Sea, known as Qualicum Beach. This is the unceded Ancestral and Traditional Territory of the Qualicum First Nation - a Land of Temperate Rainforest, part of the ‘Maritime Coastal Douglas-fir biogeoclimatic zone.’

The Forest is old in Qualicum, with Tree beings who are 500- 800 years old. The forests of Qualicum are lush and pungent: Vibrantly Alive in the understory, moist with Rivers, Rain, and Ocean. A fertile ecotone, where the Marine and Terrestrial collectives intermingle and influence one another. A place where Salmon are eaten by Orca, Eagle and Bear and whose bodies then rest into Earth and Waters again. Whale, seal, sea lion, as well as seabirds, Raven, Hawk, Wolf, and Mountain Lion make homes in this ecotone.

When I close my eyes and imagine the exuberant Forest, my breath deepens. Body releases into Gravity. Something in me, a tension, feels unburdened. I sense again the cool lively quality of air on my cheeks - oh, those deep fern-filled Cedar and Douglas Fir river gullies of filtered sunlight in the Qualicum water shed.

Walking the soft trails in this area, over several years felt like a homecoming to a place in my being that is more supple and connected, able to play my range of exuberance and calm with much more calm. I had spent many years in noisy urban environments in the time before landing in Qualicum. The guietude of the Forest by the Ocean was a living quality that seemed to heighten my perception of colour and taste. Urban sounds were substantially reduced and their absence was astonishingly relieving for my Unilaterally Deaf being.

The Forests of Qualicum are a very humbling aliveness that is not individual. The Forest is a creature of many Relations of Reciprocity, a place of layered and powerful sensory learning.

“Everything in an ecosystem is connected. A tiny sapling relies on a towering ancient tree, just like a newborn baby depends on its mother. And that forest giant needs the bugs in the dirt, the salmon carcass brought to its roots by wolves and bears and the death and decay of its peers. It thrives not in isolation, but because of dizzyingly complex connections with other trees and plants through vast but tiny fungal networks hidden below the forest floor.” (Marc Simmons in conversation with Suzanne Simmard)

As a First Generation Canadian I am an uninvited guest in Indigenous Lands. I also feel deep solidarity and soul friendship - Anam Cara - with this Land. When walking the wide open beaches at Dawn or in Twilight I felt a sense Land Kinship. A familiarity. A welcome from the Land. Something about the changing of the light and the quality of the air and changing seasons — the rhythms and textures spoke to me deeply.

Feeling so immensely connected to this land and light, I learned that latitude impacts the angles and movement of light through a day and the wheel of the year, and influences our perceptions of light and colour. Qualicum Beach sits at a very similar latitude to where my ancestors lived. Whether this was part of the kinship I felt, or whether that sense was related simply to how very powerfully compelling the call of the vibrant Forest is, I felt a deep love and kinship with this land. I had lived here before, worked in Indigineous communities here for a number of years as an art and play therapist, and was born in the north of this province.

Metis Elders Grandmothers Dr. Fyre Jean Graveline and Jean Taite generously invited me to participate in a Learning Circle through L.I.F.E. (Lived, Indigenous, Feminist, Ecologcial) as Medicine - within an Expressive Arts Therapy Indigenous Learning Cohort at the Winnipeg Holistic Expressive Arts Institute, as a participant treaty-ally. I was fortunate to voyage with this cohort and my mentors for 1 year of deep learning about Indigenous Healing Rhythms and wisdoms that center kin relations with Land, learning about colonial violence and our shared work of healing the ongoing wounds from Genocide, learning about decolonizing and Indigenizing Healing Arts, Learning our Interbeing with Land, all beings, All Our Relations, and sensitizing my kin relations with Earth.

I was eating wild salmon berry, huckleberry, strawberry, blackberry, wandering in the Forest every day for hours soaking in the teachings the Land shared, gazing at mushrooms upclose, immersing myself in the cold waters of the rivers of the watershed, leaning on Cedar and Douglas Fir, watching ferns unfolding and Trilliums emerging, while immersing myself in the intertidal relations of the land, Ocean, and Sky.

I wove the learning running through me into my improvisational practices of somatic movement-based expressive arts psychotherapy work, as well as my own movement practices, art making, photography, and voice/sound play.

Through learning about and practicing Relational Ecology I have become less afraid and more present. I am more soft within myself and more soft with my beloveds. I am a deeper listener and I am more improvisationaly curious and supple. I feel more aware of the colonial imprint in my psyche and deeply curious in unfolding through decolonial methods, practices, movements, and relations with Land.

I am a student and practitioner of Relational Ecology. Through listening into this current, I have gathered some ongoing pathways for inquiry, for unlearning, shedding, releasing, and looking beneath that colonial domination culture of disconnection, for innovating improvisationally together in collective creative embodied arts practices.

Today less than 2% of the ‘Maritime Coastal Douglas-fir Forest remains. This is a fragile and very precious Forest. Global heating is amplifying and we are all suffering. We must wake up from our dissociated state of disconnection and rekindle and reaffirm our awareness of Whakohtowin, our inherent interwovenness, our kinship, our belongingness in Life, in this ecological web of relations that is being harmed. Given the nature of harm to the web of Life of Earth, it is no wonder we feel anxious, overwhelmed, depressed, suicidal, compulsive, and angry. We have lost our way collectively through this dissociation and waves of violence that have injured the web of our relations with one another.

There is an organicity in Life, a healing current, a relational beauty way, that is resilient and ever-present and that supports our movements, our growth, and our healing. We can accompany and encourage and strengthen our relations with this generative lifeforce of Earth, and unlearn disconnection, remember and practice inclusive respectful reciprocal relations.

I have found in my practice that when we rekindle our sensory awareness of our relational interweave with Earth and Sky our bodies relax, our minds feel less cacophonous, and we experience a sense of less efforting, and more belonging, in place, here and now. Most people in these practices also report feeling gratitude, relief, awe, and deep love of Earth, as well as more compassionate with oneself and others. More whole. More part of the whole. It is a privilege to witness this unfolding happen in so many people through this form of practice, through time. It feels both restorative and hopeful to me, to experience to witness the collective longing for relations with Earth through so many sessions with others, and to witness the shared experience of nourishment that unfolds through practicing these relations.

Relational Ecology as a name also describes processes and practices of healing and tending places of hurt, places of contraction, places of freeze or shame. Relational Ecology is a way for redressing harms, taking accountability, becoming response-able, growing our capacity to disarm our aggression, repairing together what has been frayed or twisted or hurt. Relational Ecology is a name for loving, a name for how we can support one another to unfold after frightening overwhelming experiences, a name for tending the web of relations of Earth, a way to tend our collective.

“We need these old-growth forests, like at Fairy Creek, for their ability to store carbon [and] for species at risk that live there….And these old-growth trees…the genes of those trees, the seeds, have seen many, many climates in the past. We need that legacy in order to deal with climate change in the future.” (Suzanne Simmard).

We are part of Earth’s wisdom and Earth’s processes of relationship.

The Haudenosaunee, the Six Nations, presented the Basic Call of Consciousness of the Sacred Web of Life, to the NGO of the United Nations in 1977. In this call the Haudenosaunee ask us all to question “the roots of the exploitative and oppressive conditions forced upon humanity…and break with the narrow concept of human liberation and begin to see liberation as something that needs to be extended to the whole of the Natural World. What is needed is a liberation of all the things that support life - the air, the waters, the trees — all the things that support the scared Web of Life” (Basic Call to Consciousness). They call on us all to develop a consciousness that views Earth and Life as Sacred, and care for this planet and the renewable quality - life force - of Earth not as a commodity but as a sacred Web of Relations.

Relational Ecology is a name I am carrying to deepen my learning and my commitment to this web of Life who is Earth, and a way to practice that helps other folks to weave into deeper reciprocal loving relations with Life, with Earth and Sky.

To honour my teachers who have shared with me textures of wisdom teachings that are part of my understanding of Relational Ecology, I want to name some Elders who I have spent time learning with over the years on Cortes Island: Rev angel Kyodo williams, in Radical Dharma Camp; Rhiannon, vocal improvisation and circle songs: David Abram, sensitizing sensory relations with this animate Earth magic; Margie Gillis, movement from the Inside Out, and interwoven spirituality studies with Atum O’Kane, who was a deep student of Buddhist Vajrayana master, Terton, scholar, poet, teacher, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. I am also grateful for my studies with Elders in experiential anatomy and authentic movement - Body & Earth Practitioner Andrea Olsen and Resources in Movement Practitioner Caryn McHose; a deep apprenticeship for 10 years with Vincent Martinez Grieco in Soul Motion, contemplative improvisational dance; experiential studies in opening of voice and song receiving with Song Weaver Sorah Nutting of MaMuse; while deepening into my own Nordic lineage spiritual teachings with Nordic Shaman Chris Lüttichau.

All of these lineages of learning inform my understanding of Relational Ecology.

We humans have many skillful and kind pathways for remembering and repairing relations and tending the Sacred Web of Life. As I root myself here, as I widen my wingspan, I’m happy to share these currents with you. May we heal and restore and unfold relational beauty magic together.