Planting Sweetgrass - Robin Kimmerer

ucla | Environ M30 | 2023-04-05T22:29

Definitions

Skywoman Falling suggests humanity is exceptional from nature and has “descended upon” nature where the world introduces humanity to nature
reciprocity is crucial in terms of interacting with nature, how can we give back for the resources nature has given us
skywoman creates a garden and eats from it and. provides a blessing unto the world while in Genesis Eve is banished from the garden of eden for eating the fruit
the original indigenous woman upon earth was an immigrant - an exception to nature, and so she must learn to accommodate and reciprocate - the author is a member of an indigenous group and suggests humanity is similarly “thrown into the world”
so, the reciprocal interactions between humanity and nature is nature itself, one and independent - there is no

Great Chan of Being suggests humans had their place in the natural order if God and Angels above them and animals below them
Darwinism and biological explanations ground ourselves scientifically into nature
in pagan and some Christian narratives, humans were originally “natural” - simple, innocent, happy but we then lost that connection when we developed society civilization: got us pat savagery but separated from nature

the study of how organisms are distributed in space/time and why they are that way via they’re abundance and interactions with nature
the 1960’s pushed a movement/narrative that reenforced the idea that ecology s a more holistic synthesis than an analytical microscopy like the other sciences → used synonymously with environmentalism but was not true then and is not now, ecology is more the biological study of the dispersion and interactions of organisms
1980s-1990s “Deep Ecology” Movement
- rejected mainstream environmentalists like Sierra Club and Nature Conservancy
- moved focus away from political push for change but instead focused on a belief system of non-human worth and pushed for human equivalency to nature (not exceptional beings)

a social movement that emerged in thee middle of the 20th century (1960s during Civil Rights alongside feminism, anti-colonialism, etc.)
believe humanity is degrading, destroying, natural environments and aim to halt/reverse degradation
others want to preserve the environment for its own sake → invoke sense of “balance” between humanity and nature and living in harmony
many groups push against modernity, industrialization, capitalism, urbanization, etc. (mostly changed ca. 2000 with ecological modernists)
preceded by Romanticism with the realization that humanity threatens nature

coined by Arthur Tansley in 1955 - a community of organisms and their symbiosis with non-living “neighbors”
BUT they are hard to identify/categorize especially with human developments (”novel ecosystem”)

broad term for natural and/or built environments, physical and meta-physical, etc.
connected to nature since conservationists of the 1960s → frees from the specificity of nature with a more encompassing term
can be a strength or weakness a a unifying term or a weekly defined specification

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