Thank you.

I think this also touches on some of the previous questions. The rights of nature.... On the face of it, it seems to contradict western science to afford the rights of a person to something that we don't consider to have personhood, but if we look at the data, we can find examples of this resulting in more effective protection of a natural area.

One of our partners, the A'i Cofán in Ecuador, were using both systems in their recent project to map their territories. They used GIS technology to map their indigenous territory, which has been encompassed by a national park. They showed over the years that deforestation and encroachment by miners, poachers and loggers has continued throughout the park—except within the boundaries of their territory, where they monitor their land according to their own methods, which are based in their belief system. They were able to use this data and these maps in Quito in court to prove their case for more tenure over their land and for stronger protections for their resources and territory. This is just one example. I think you can find similar examples in other countries around the world.

For me, the biggest difference between the western approach and one that's often found in different indigenous communities is just the individual and reductionist point of view versus the community and the social point of view. This is also relevant to the use of psilocybin or psychedelic-assisted therapy in medicine. The western model is based on individual healing, versus social and community models. The idea is that we're part of a community that isn't just other human beings but also non-human beings, which would include the land and the different components of the land and other beings that we share the land with.

This holistic perspective actually has a better yield, and you'll find it reflected just by looking at environmental metrics like carbon storage or species richness. Certain things that are contradictory just on the face of it are actually not. The word for plant spirit, for example, in the Shuar language in Ecuador, actually can also be translated as the pith or the heartwood. It's the innermost part of a plant. There are many examples like this.

There's even the idea that there's an intelligence at the level of the resource that we're depending on. In therapy there's a new phenomenon called the “inner healing intelligence”. It's empirical and being used in MDMA-based and psilocybin-assisted therapies. On the surface it seems contradictory with western science, but as we learn more and more, we find that it's actually less contradictory than it seems. I think that also goes for environmental management and land management. There are many other examples.

Transcript

Discussions (0)