Chanting Spring: Reconnecting with Indigenous Wisdom and the Sacred

In this episode of Embodied Pathways, I had the pleasure of speaking with Fernanda Gebara, affectionately known as Fe, a Brazilian scientist, writer, and lecturer with a profound connection to the Amazon rainforest and Indigenous cultures. Fe's extensive experience living and working with the Yawanawá people has deeply informed her work, culminating in her forthcoming book, Chanting Spring: Indigenous Wisdom for Ancestral Futures. This title resonates with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, as Fe explores the critical question of how we can reconnect with the natural world amidst the ecological and spiritual crises of our time.

We began our conversation with an introduction to the Yawanawá people, who have worked tirelessly to recover their culture and spirituality after facing significant exploitation. Fe shared how they have embraced a more international presence, choosing to share their wisdom and practices with the world, which is an usual approach among Indigenous groups.

A central theme of our discussion was the concept of the sacred. For Fe, the sacred transcends spirituality; it encompasses a profound quality of presence that invites reverence and respect for all beings and elements of nature. This understanding of the sacred is deeply relational, emphasizing our interconnectedness with the world around us. This leads us to explore the idea of animism, which Fi describes as a way of perceiving life as relational and communicative, extending beyond humans to include trees, rivers, and even objects. This perspective challenges the dominant Western narrative of separation and encourages a more participatory understanding of existence.

We then consider the sacred dimension of oxytocin, the "love hormone". Fe highlighted how this hormone, released during childbirth and breastfeeding, symbolizes the sacredness of nurturing and the continuity of life, linking us to a broader biological inheritance.

Storytelling and myths emerged as vital pathways for reclaiming our place in the natural world. Fe emphasized that stories shape our understanding of ourselves and our values, and changing the dominant narratives of separation and domination is essential for fostering a more reciprocal relationship with the Earth. Imagination, too, plays a crucial role in connecting us to the spiritual and more-than-human realms. Fe shared insights from her experiences with the Yawanawá , illustrating how imagination serves as a bridge to deeper understanding and connection with the world around us.

As we discussed embodied knowing, Fe emphasized the importance of rituals, ceremonies, and practices that engage the body and senses. These experiences cultivate a different kind of intelligence that is often overlooked in Western culture, where rational thought predominates. We touched on the significance of ayahuasca in Indigenous traditions, where it serves as a sacred medicine for community healing and connection. Fe cautioned, however, that as Western society increasingly engages with such practices, it is vital to integrate this knowledge respectfully and meaningfully. This led us to explore the differences between Western and Indigenous consciousness. Fe articulated how Indigenous awareness is more attuned to relationships and community, contrasting sharply with the individualistic and often exploitative mindset prevalent in Western culture. 

Finally, Fe highlighted the potential for harmonizing Indigenous wisdom with modern technology, emphasizing that technology should be guided by the intelligence of the heart and ancestral knowledge. As we wrapped up our conversation, Fe shared her hopes for the future, emphasizing the need for unlearning and relearning as we navigate the complexities of our time. Her book, set to be released in September, promises to be a significant contribution to this ongoing dialogue.

I invite you to listen to this enlightening episode, where we explore the intersections of Indigenous wisdom, ecological consciousness, and the sacredness of our relationships with the world.

More about Fernanda Gebara:

https://fegebara.com/

Transcript

Chanting Spring: Reconnecting with Indigenous Wisdom and the Sacred

Adrian:
Embodied Pathways is all about exploring connection, and today's guest has spent her life doing just that. Fernanda Gebara, or Fe as many of us know her, is a Brazilian scientist, writer and lecturer who spent over 17 years living and working in one of the most extraordinary places on earth, the Amazon rainforest. She grew up between the Atlantic Forest and the city of Rio de Janeiro, and it's in that in-between place, between wild nature and urban life, ancestral wisdom and modern science. This is where Fe really lives. Fe holds a PhD in Anthropology, Institutions and Development, and has lectured at Oxford, Harvard, and universities across the whole of the world. But what sets her apart is that she's never let the Academy limit her. work expands out into something deeply aligned with this podcast exploring indigenous and scientific knowledge integrating the consciousness of other than human beings and understanding how relationality reciprocity and trust might offer us a way through the ecological and the inner crisis of our times. All this has come together in Fe's forthcoming book, Chanting Spring, Indigenous Wisdom for Ancestral Futures. That title echoes back to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, that landmark call about our disconnection from the natural world. And Fie takes that forward, drawing on years of personal experience and research to ponder that most crucial question. How do we find our way back? I first met Fe when she visited Exeter with key members of the Yawanawá people from the Amazon. She spent years living and learning with the Yawanawá and their wisdom deeply informs their book. Fe, it's wonderful to see you again and to talk to you about your new book. Welcome to Embodied Pathways.

Fe: 
Thank you very much, Adrian. Thank you for this beautiful introduction. I'm very grateful for being with you in this inspiring and thoughtful podcast. And it's an honour to give you some words about my work.

Adrian: 
Lovely, grand. I've just mentioned the Yawanawá and your work with them, and they're going to come up, I would imagine, quite a bit in this podcast. Could you say a little bit about them so that the listeners have a sense of who we're talking about?

Fe:
 Yeah, the Yawanawá indigenous people, they are a group of indigenous people coming from the Brazilian Amazon and their territory which is in the Gregório River indigenous land. It's in Acre and they are basically hunters and gatherers and they've been working a lot in the past let's say 15 years to recover their culture because they were, as many indigenous groups colonized, they were victims of a lot of exploitation, especially from rubber tappers. and from the rubber barons that run the rubber boom in the last decade because of the automobilistic industry. But in the past years, they've worked their way back, let's say, and they managed to get their lands demarcated and they started to recover their traditions, their spirituality and they are also very international nowadays. They are traveling around the world to take their spirituality, their practices and their knowledge to other people around the world. So that's very special about them as well, because a lot of indigenous groups, they don't want to do that. They want to keep their knowledge restricted to their groups. And the Yawanawá decided that it was a time in the world that they needed to come out of the forest and bring this knowledge out there.

Adrian: 
Yeah, it was so wonderful to have them come to Exeter or to come all the way to the UK and to speak to us. And for those that want to listen to it, I spoke to Shenehu Yawanawá for an earlier version of the podcast. So you might want to check that out afterwards. So today we're going to be focusing on your new book and it's a response to the current, I don't know, not just ecological crisis, but it's a, it's a, someone talked about polycrisis. So it's a symptom of, to quote, a deep rupture, rupture between humanity and the earth. And you write just a quote from the book. The ecological crisis is not only a technological crisis, it is a crisis of relationships, of imagination, of sacred value. We'll be exploring imagination later today, and I expect that relationship will weave through much of what we're going to be talking about. But to begin, I want to focus in on that idea of the sacred. What does the sacred mean for you?

Fe: 
Since I began working with Indigenous peoples, not just the Yawanawá , I have been learning to perceive the sacredness of everything around me, to be honest. And I do not mean sacred only in a spiritual, religious or even institutional sense. But this quality of presence, a kind of force, mystery, beauty, or a depth that asks us to relate with reverence. And to me, something becomes sacred when we recognize that it is part of what allows us to be who we are. So, a river is sacred because life depends on it. A plant can be sacred because it heals, it teaches, it nourishes, it connects us to ancestors. So, the sacred is actually that magical and profound quality in a being, a place, an act, a relation or even a moment that calls us into respect. And it reminds us that we are dependent, that we are held by forces larger than ourselves, and that life is not something just to be taken for granted. For someone, I think, to perceive this quality, it is important to remember that the world is made of presences that deserve this attention, this gratitude and care.

Adrian: Yeah, so that's lovely. So it's about relationship, fundamentally, is that fair to say?

Fe: Yeah, yeah.

Adrian: 
We're edging into the era of animism, this idea that rivers and trees and the forest itself is alive, it's a being that we have a relationship with. I was talking to Graham Harvey about animism in the previous podcast, but for those that aren't familiar with the term, how would you explain animism to somebody who hasn't heard of it before?

Fe: 
Well, to me, animism is a way of sensing and moving through the world in which life is understood as, as you said, relational and communicative. and animated by many forms of presence. So it begins from this recognition that the qualities of being alive or even being animated by life are not restricted to humans. So as you said, like trees, animals, rivers, rocks, songs, dreams, and even objects, they all participate in this field of relationship. And they are beings as well with their own sort of like forms of agency, intention, memory, and participation. And they are together with us in making the reality of the world. But when we think about the etymology of the word, it comes from the Latin anima. which is often translated as soul, as spirit, as breath, or even as vital force. So coming back a little bit to my experience with indigenous peoples, what I observed throughout this year is that there are many groups that name it in different ways. So, for example, for the Pano-speaking worlds which the Yawanawá are from, but also the Huni Kuin, the Katukina, they often spoke about Iyushi, and the Yawanawá, they talk about the Iyoshi, which is a very similar concept, and the Kayapo, which belongs to another group, a language group, they call it Karom. So, it's very difficult to say that they are all the same thing, you know, that all corresponds to this vital force, this anima, because of course there is a diversity among these groups. But they kind of go back to this same concept that understands existence as participation rather than separation. So humans are not only the subjects and the rest of the world is not like this collection of things you know, so is this sort of like living field of communication that help us widen the meaning of intelligence as well. And I think we have a lot to learn from these groups as well in terms of going back to this animistic way of being and relearning how to listen, how to respond, how to respect so we can actually have some reciprocity with these other beings.

Adrian: 
I do think there's so much richness in animism and so much that we can learn from it. And this, as you say, this sense of participation and reciprocity. And I think if we can grasp that in our Western industrialized crazy culture, I think it would really shift things in a positive way. I was really struck by your reference to the hormone oxytocin. Now, I'm imagining oxytocin is something more and more people have heard about, which is great, but for those who haven't, it's a powerful chemical messenger that plays a key role in human bonding. And interestingly, you talk about oxytocin in terms of the sacred, which I thought was a really interesting way to frame it. Could you say a little bit more about how you've used that?

Fe: 
Yeah, I started to think about the sacredness of oxytocin through what I learned with my Yawanawá teacher, Nani, about breastfeeding and mother's milk. He taught me that they do not have a word for sacred in their language. When I asked him, how do you say sacred in your Yawanawá language? And he said, we don't have like a specific word for that. For us, sacred is the act of breastfeeding and the milk itself, the mother's milk itself, because it is what nourishes the child and keeps the flow of life moving. And for them, it's not like simply food, it's care, it's relation, it's protection, continuity. and love made bodily. And as a mother of three, I could not help but think about the fact that during childbirth and breastfeeding, the female body releases oxytocin and that this hormone, as you said, plays a central role in labour lactation, bonding, reproduction, and also social connection. And it is often called the love hormone, right? But I think perhaps it is much more than that, because it's also an ancient chemical language, to name it, let's say. through which life learns to attach, to nourish, to protect and to continue. So its evolutionary history reads back hundreds of millions of years, linking us not only to mammals, but also to much older beings, including ancestral aquatic creatures. So in that sense, to me, oxytocin carries the memory of life. And it reminds us that bonding, reproduction, care and continuation of life they are not only human experiences, they are part of this much deeper biological inheritance. And that's where for me oxytocin becomes sacred, because it is part of this sort of like mystery of existence, you know, the movements through which life cares for life. and then it comes to us in the form of milk, touch, attachment, but it's also something very ancient, very old, that helps to transform vulnerability into relation. So yeah, I think it's basically this continuity of life that the hormone cares that makes me feel that it's one of the clearest meanings for sacred that I mentioned before, like when we realize that other things sustain life.

Adrian: 
Wonderful, so that makes so much sense that oxytocin is about connection and relationship and reminds us of how we are part of a ancient history of evolution, that we're part of this whole thing. I want to turn now to storytelling and myths, and in your book you write about the importance of these two, suggesting that storytelling and myths are a key pathway to coming back and reclaiming our place in the natural world. Can you say a little about how these practices can help to guide us out of the mess that our Western culture is in?

Fe: 
Yeah, so stories, I think they are never just stories. They shape how we understand ourselves, what we value and what kinds of future we believe is possible. And for a long time, the dominant story of modernity has told us that humans are separate from nature, superior to other beings and entitled to extract, to control, to dominate the Earth. That story has brought us to climate breakdown, mass extinction, ecological grief and deep spiritual disconnection. So, If we want to change the direction of our culture, we also need to change the stories that guide it. In fact, as a scientist, of course, I trust that facts are essential, but facts alone, they rarely transform people. Stories work through emotion, through memory, imagination, identification. They help us feel what is at stake. They can actually open something in us that data alone often cannot reach. And this becomes especially important in moments of rupture, when the familiar story stops holding. For example, through grief, illness, birth, or even collective experiences like COVID-19. So when we go through these moments, we enter this sort of like kind of liminal space and these moments can function as a type of rite of passage that will actually help us to change as well. So we sort of like get this disturbed moment that will crack a little bit the old order, but at the same time will create the possibility of seeing things differently. And myths are also powerful because, again, they carry meaning across generations. And I think the myth of human supremacy has taught us to dominate. But there are other myths that can teach us other things, such as to be in reciprocity again and humility, kinship, belonging. There are many stories, indigenous and traditional stories that remind us of these things. So storytelling can guide us out of this mess by helping us, let's say, unlearn the story of separation and move us from conquest to care, from domination to reciprocity, from human exceptionalism to participation in a living world. And we need more stories that are actually honest enough to face the crisis, but imaginative enough to help us dream another way of being human.

Adrian: 
Lovely, which kind of leads us into this whole very rich topic of imagination. I've become more and more interested in imagination and the imaginal over the last couple of years, I suppose. So lovely to see it playing such a rich part in your book. One of the things you write is, quote, imagination enables us to connect deeply with the spiritual and more than human realms. Could you say more about how that can happen?

Fe: 
When I wrote that, I was thinking of imagination as a form of perception, a sort of like a bridge between what is visible and what is usually hidden from our ordinary consciousness. And again, I learned this with the Yawanawá , because during their traditional ceremonies, in the beginning especially, because now I learned more, but I would often wonder whether the images and sensations and colours and beings and even the whispers I was experiencing were only my imagination or whether they were part of the spiritual world communicating with me, this ancestral world. And then there was a moment that one of their very special Pages, which is Shaman, he's not alive anymore, but he once said to me, imagination is like a bridge, without it you cannot listen. And that sentence to me changed a lot of things that I used to believe because it helped me to understand that imagination can be the very faculty that allows us to listen to what the rational mind alone cannot access. And I think because for many indigenous peoples, the spiritual world is not elsewhere. It's not like outside you. It's present in dreams, in chants, in plants, in the forest. And to connect with it requires this attention, this humility, and sort of like you willingness to let the ego become quieter. And I think it is in these moments that your imagination can rise, that you can actually see a plant as a teacher, a dream, as a guidance, a chant, as a language. And I think a lot of people think about imagination as fantasy or as escape from reality. And for me, it's also the opposite. It's a way of deepening reality. It allows us to perceive the world as, again, relational, communicative, alive. And we can then begin to remember who we are as humans and our place within this world and within this larger community of beings and intelligences.

Adrian: 
This reminds me of David Abram's work. You both tapped into the vitality of imagination as a, not as some sort of fantasy world, but actually as a, like as you just said, as a capacity for perception, a different way of sensing into the world that's powerful and can somehow transformative. Is that resonance with David Abram's work, is that in the mix there somewhere?

Fe: 
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, exactly. It's like this sort of like becoming with the other beings and for that to happen, you need to imagine, right? You need to be able to open this realm of imagination so you can actually sort of like be able to listen what these other beings have to teach you and also be able to learn other languages apart from, you know, just our rational mode of speaking and perceiving as well.

Adrian: Western culture, we're very obsessed with the rational mind and making sense of things in a particular way. But then when we open into the imagination and the imaginal worlds, this new way of perception comes in, an embodied way of knowing, feeling body has a different way of knowing. Is that something that resonates with your work?

Fe:
I think this sort of like embodied knowing central to the book because I don't think we can understand these other types of intelligences and what I've been calling ancestral intelligence only through the mind. and through our language and even through belief. So much of what I have learned with Indigenous people begins actually in the body, in the sensation, in the dreams, in the stomach, in the breath, in the skin, the song, the rhythm. in the way that the body responds before thought. In Western traditions, we often separate it, we separate the mind from the body and knowledge is treated as something rational, cognitive, something that can be explained, can be written down. But many indigenous peoples have always known that the body is actually a site of perception and intelligence. The body listens, the body remembers, which is very important. Like we were talking about the The home for example and the body knows when when something is right or wrong when when the place is safe or not for example for hunting. when a plant is powerful, when a ceremony is moving something inside us. And sometimes it happens even before we can give words to it, we can explain what is happening. And this is one of the reasons why Ritual is so important for many groups, because the ceremony, the songs, the fasting, the dancing, the chanting, The communal practices, they all transform your body, and by transforming your body, they transform your perception. they bring the body into a different state of attention that we are really far from in our modern society. And in those moments, knowing is not produced by thinking about the world, but by entering into relationship with the world. And we come to know through experiencing, through moving, through breathing, and purging and crying and singing. These are other ways of knowing. And in the book, I try to connect this with enactive cognition - that it's exactly what you said that challenges this idea of the mind as this machine processing information. And from this perspective, again, we are always in relationship and knowing through that relationship, we engage with the others. And this is at the core of indigenous ways of being. And I also write about the gut. In our culture, we are always talking about the gut feeling. What is your gut feeling? And somehow this became a bit of a metaphor, but it's actually very true. And there is a lot of scientific work around it. And again, I will never forget when my teacher, Nani, he told me that, you know, the gut is responsible for clearing sickness and transforming our state of being. I think we have a lot of evidence about it now in the scientific world. it's very important to pay attention to the body, as many say, you know, and the gut as our second brain. But this, just to conclude, this requires a lot of humility, you know, to admit that not all knowledge comes as explanation. They can also come as discomfort, as intuition, as illness, you know, a lot of the learning from indigenous people it comes from the illness as well you know they say that we are starting to heal when we get sick because the body is telling us something through the illness so it's not always through concepts but also you know through this other types of languages So when we speak about embodied knowing, we are speaking again of a form of intelligence that in our modern society has often been numbed or dismissed. And to recover this knowing in many ways, it's to remember that we are not minds floating above the world, but we are bodies together with these minds. And I risk even saying we are spirits within these bodies. And it's important to pay attention to what the body is telling us.

Adrian: You use the phrase the divine within in the book, which I think is a lovely one.

Fe: Yeah, exactly.

Adrian: 
This kind of brings us to the question of what practices are there that help us to access this embodied knowing? And you talk about rituals, chants, ceremonies as ways to calibrate attention, some of the pathways in, some of the ways in which we might enhance our embodied way of knowing.

Fe: 
Yeah, exactly. I think experience is for sure the first word that comes into mind. And I'll never forget when I was in a call with a startup that is trying to develop a pill for ayahuasca and I was mediating the call with some indigenous and the first thing like they were explaining the pill and everything and the first thing one of the indigenous asked when it was open for them to talk was, have you tried ayahuasca? And then neither of them, like the CEO, the scientist who was developing and they haven't tried. And everyone was sort of like silent because from an indigenous perspective, you cannot know something if you have not experienced it. But from their perspective, they knew everything about it because they were extracting the molecules, they were studying the plants in the lab for many months, and they were seeing the effects in the brain of some people who were taking them. Anyway, so for me, experience is something very important, but to go back to the practices, as you said, ceremony, chanting, dreaming. I think we lost our ability to dream as well in our modern culture. We have so many things in our mind before we go to bed, you know, and we have like the cell phones and all the social media and all the information that we absorb with it that dreaming, for example, became something difficult in our society. And it's a very important practice that facilitates this knowing from an indigenous perspective. And also like fasting, dieting, storytelling, body painting, dancing, plant medicines and other traditional medicines, walking in the forest, caring for the territory, learning from elders. We just miss our elders in our society. And for these groups, they are everything. You are very lucky if you get to be close to your grandparents until they die. So I think we're very disconnected from these practices. And also observing as well. We don't have much time to observe anymore in our society. And with the observation, the listening as well, you know, the listening to the movements of the seasons and the elements of nature. So it all can help to circulate voices that go beyond the human voice, that actually protect memories and connect communities and make visible the knowledge that has too often been silenced and marginalized. These practices are very important as well in moving on to these ancestral futures that I talked about in the book.

Adrian: 
This reminds me of the significance of ayahuasca in the traditions that you've been working with. I'm sure that's something that people listening to be interested in. Could you say a little bit about the role that ayahuasca plays in their ceremonies and in their lives and spiritual practices?

Fe:
 Ayahuasca is central medicine to many of these indigenous groups that I've been working with. And it's a very sacred one. A lot of these groups, they see ayahuasca as the mother of the plants, as one of their oldest ancestors. And it's something that they also trust is important in moving on to better futures. Because in the past, ayahuasca would be just taken by a pajé, a shaman, And in many cultures, it would be taken to identify what is needed for the community, what is needed for someone that is sick. So it is very different in the way that it's being used now by our modern society because a lot of people are using it to heal themselves. which of course is a part of it, but it was something to help the community. So they still trust that very original use in terms of moving on to the future because they believe that as a teacher and as an ancestor, the medicine can show us the way to move out of this mess, as you said, and on to a better future. But yeah, I think we need to be also very careful of how we use it and pay a lot of attention exactly because we are in this very disconnected society. So if a lot of people are using it and then coming back to their real lives, there is this completely different ontology and reality in which animism is not like the rule. So you may get a bit frustrated as well because you get in touch with another completely different learning and experience through the medicine and then when you are back to your reality, it doesn't really correspond. So it's also very important to think about ways of integrating this knowledge in our modern society. And I think the practices that we talked about are very good ones in terms of integrating as well.

Adrian: 
something quite early on in your book, you write about the ways in which indigenous peoples have a quite different form of consciousness from those of us in the West. It's almost like they've developed a different way of seeing the world that in some way creates a different consciousness and a different awareness. I wonder if you could say a bit about how Western consciousness differs from that of indigenous peoples.

Fe: 
Yeah, that's a very important point that relates a lot to what I was saying about coming back to our realities after a ceremony and after having a meeting like Ayahuasca. And to be very clear, when I speak about indigenous consciousness, I'm not suggesting that all indigenous peoples think in the same way or that there is one single indigenous worldview. They are incredibly diverse. And what I'm trying to point is, it's a different orientation of consciousness. One that in many indigenous worlds is less centred on the isolated individual and more attuned to relation, to community. As I was saying that in the past, the whole of Ayahuasca was for the community and not for the individual alone. And I think in Western consciousness, especially in its modern form, we have often been shaped by, again, separation and we are taught to experience ourselves as individuals standing apart from the world. This separation of mind, body, human nature, culture, ecology, this actually changed a lot the way we feel and connect with the others. And also our dominant institutions like schooling, science, law and even medicine have often trained us to perceive the world as something outside us, something to study, to manage, to own, to improve or extract from. And indigenous peoples begin from a different premise, a consciousness for them if they call it consciousness, because a lot of the times they talk about spirit and intelligence and force. So they have other names for it. But let's say consciousness is not located only inside the human. It's again, it's distributed and ecological. It extends through land, through ancestors, to spirits and memories. And for them, when they are in the presence of these other beings, it's very sacred. And it's not simply that they have a type of thinking that is theirs. It's not like this is my thinking. It's something that is constructed in participation with these other beings. And that's why, as well, I use this language of ancestral memory in the book. Because I think it actually refers to this form of awareness that is cultivated through long relationships with the territory, with more than human beings. And then this consciousness remembers that we are animals, that we belong to Earth, and again that the knowledge does not come only through abstract thought. I think the difference then is that it's not really that all indigenous people are more spiritual than western people. This would be too simple, because a lot of people think like that. And there are many indigenous people nowadays that are not very spiritual as well, you know, so we cannot really romanticize a lot about this. But I think in Western societies, we are trained to narrow reality to what can be measured, to what can be represented, to what can be controlled. We really want to be always like controlling things. and for them is actually this thing that it's much stronger, that keeps reality more porous. And I think because they are in touch with this porosity and all these relationships that they have with these other beings from the land to the medicines and so on, they also have a completely different neurological system than us. So So they are inserted in these other contexts and in touch with these other beings all the time that actually help them to see what is visible, but also what is invisible, to see the human and the more than human, and to have also the past and the future in conversation, not something to be constructed and dominated and explained, which is what I think we are all the time trying to do in our society.

Adrian: 
Oh, that's fascinating. Just listening and trying to understand that other way of being and another way of consciousness, I can feel my consciousness shifting a little bit, which is quite exciting. It's like just even making the imaginative effort to think, how would it be to have porosity instead of enclosure? How would it be to have relationship instead of this individuation? It's very, very liberating. My sense is this kind of brings everything together. We've got this different consciousness or what struck me was the way that you said it's more thinking about forces or awareness and it's like the imagination and the ritual practices and the medicine and the relationship with the land. It all comes together and does this wonderful thing which enables this different state of mind which is much more relational, which we've lost.

Fe: 
Exactly. It comes naturally when you are inserted in this sort of context. It's actually the opposite. It's very difficult not to think like this in this animating way of being.

Adrian: 
So the whole way of life, well for both of us, our entire way of life, ways of living, create a particular consciousness or worldview and then that worldview or consciousness then of course feeds back into how we live and we get this cycle of either reciprocity and growth or what we've got, which is unfortunately just the opposite.

Fe: 
Yeah, exactly. And I think we don't need to go really far in terms of like, you know, all the indigenous groups in the Amazon. And I think animism is present in many other traditions. And we've been in touch with it for, you know, centuries. And it was the prevailing way of seeing things until, you know, there was the scientific revolution and the dominance of Christianity, many different things that actually erased this context and this way of seeing and also taught us other things. And it was very important. Some of these things were very important at that time. to sort of like, you know, to help us again, understand and construct other ways of knowing. But I think we went too far. We killed it completely. And we didn't know that we didn't need to do that. And, you know, I think this was the problem. And I think now we are trying to go back to that through the traditions and through the peoples and the communities that still carry that way of being and way of relating and understanding the world. And hopefully, we are going to find the balance again. But yeah, it's definitely a process of unlearning and relearning. what we knew at some point and hopefully is still attached to our cells and memory and all hormones.

Adrian: 
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I would describe myself as a practicing animist and it's very much part of the tradition of this land in what is now England and Scotland and Cornwall and Wales, all of this land. and especially in Ireland still, it's very, very much still there, this animist tradition, it kind of comes naturally to us. And I think it's, my feeling is that it's coming back, it's something we can talk about much more now, even in academic circles, it's kind of becoming something that we're going, oh, there's something here for us all. It's really, really exciting.

Fe: 
Yeah, that's what gives me hope to be very honest, to see how it is growing because when I used to present some of these ideas when talking about indigenous cosmologies and so on and how they could help us move into this sort of like better future, a lot of people would raise their hands and say, you know, that's very romantic. That's like, that would never work. And I've got a lot of criticism, especially from universities in England, you know, and where I lived, as you know, for 11 years, and I worked in different organizations, so I was always trying to bring this idea forth. And in the past, let's say, when I started with these ideas, bringing them to the university, was, what, let's say more than 10 years, like 10 years ago or something, when I was finishing my PhD, and it was a completely different setting, you know, so I guess in one decade a lot of things have changed. To me they should have changed faster, you know, especially with my climate background thinking that, you know, we need to act and unlearn these things really quick. But still, I feel much more hopeful to see that they are entering all these arenas and not just like the, you know, the indigenous anthropologists or the hippies or, you know, the spiritual thinkers or whatever, you know, now it's something being debated in all, almost all disciplines, you know, when we think about it.

Adrian:
 Yeah, it does bring some hope, doesn't it? This kind of brings on to a part later in the book which kind of really surprised me. Your Yerevan teacher was talking about Western technology, and of course I'm reading it and going, oh yes, Western technology, this is a bad thing. But no, he actually talks about the Noah intelligence that gave birth to the machines. And he says, these technologies that you are discovering are important in moving forwards. They helped us to be connected with you, they help us to spread our medicines, our cosmologies and our spiritualities quicker. So really interesting for me to hear his quite positive take and that if we can bring this Western way of understanding together with the more ancient indigenous ways of understanding, something really special can emerge from that.

Fe: 
Yes, exactly. So, just to give a little bit of explanation, Nawa is the name that many of the Panum language speakers, which they are now again are part, they call the non-indigenous. So, whoever is non-indigenous is a Nawa. And it's interesting because it's a part of their name as well, right? Yawanawá . So it's also like a sort of like we are the same but not exactly the same, you know? And anthropologically, there is a lot of interesting things to tell about it. But yeah, I'm not gonna go on this right now. But yeah, when I asked him about the future and how he envisions the future and his advice in terms of, you know, what would you say for us, what I think surprised Me as well in his answer was precisely that he was not rejecting Western technology and practices. He was not saying that all machines are dangerous because I think now with artificial intelligence, of course, it's very good on one side, but we are also very worried about how this is going to unfold in the future. That indigenous wisdom and technological intelligence must stand side by side for me was something very inspiring to write the book because he was saying something very hopeful that, you know, this technology, this intelligence, it has a place, but it cannot be led alone. What he was saying that, you know, it also was what allowed indigenous people to communicate across distances, because if we think that until the late 90s, they were very much isolated, and this is not a long time ago, you know, like, this is, we're talking about, you know, 30 years ago, that they would not, you know, you would not know what was going on with them if you would not risk yourself to go there. as you said, you know, he was saying that this is what allowed them to share that knowledge and their cosmologies, their spirituality more widely, and also to build these bridges with people who might never otherwise have access to those teachings. And so in that sense, technology becomes like a partner, a messenger, and it can help circulate their voices, protect memories, connect communities and make visible knowledge that has too often been silenced and marginalized. He says that, but he also says that we need to be careful. So he says that technology needs to be guided by the intelligence of the heart and also by what I've been calling this ancestral intelligence. To him, the intelligence of the heart teaches care, affection, empathy, responsibility, so the capacity to love all beings. And then we can actually go back a little bit to the oxytocin thing, right? And on the other side, ancestral intelligence teaches us to listen, to listen to the plants, to the animals, to the fire, the ancestors and all these other beings that actually allowed us to be here in the first place. Without these two forms of intelligence, the Nawa intelligence can easily become another force of extraction, of speed, of distraction, of control and of ways of telling stories that can actually be harmful to us. Yeah, I was very inspired by him to close the book with the harmonization of these intelligences. And a lot of people, especially again in the climate context, think that we are going to be saved by technology. But I think the future actually depends much more on how we are going to relate to these technologies and their respect, because also in the end, they are also made by our ancestors, right? So the minerals that make these technologies possible, they are the very same minerals that come from the rocks that formed our planet. So it's very important to understand how to relate with these technologies in a way that they can actually be helpful to create these new stories that we are looking for in terms of moving on to the future.

Adrian: Yeah, so bring together these different ways of knowing, the wisdom of the heart and the understanding of the head, we might say.

Fe: Exactly.

Adrian: 
There's much, much more that we could explore, but we've pretty much run out of time. But I really wanted to give you, talk a little bit about when the book is coming out, because that's the really important next piece. Have you got a date for publication?

Fe: Yeah, I'm going through the last final editing round, hopefully the last one. You know how these things are, right? But let's see. I'm hoping to have it out there in September. This is my target.

Adrian: 
Brilliant. Brilliant. Look forward to seeing that on the shelves. So look out for that, folk. I'll be putting it out on my social media when that's released.

Fe: 
Thank you. Thank you. It is an honour to share a little bit about it with you. And of course, I also want to thank the indigenous peoples I've been working with because, yeah, without them, I wouldn't write this book. I think, you know, without them and without the forest and all, I was lucky to learn from all these different beings that the forest hosts. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Yeah.

Adrian: Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for coming on and sharing all that wisdom with us. It's been a delight.

Fe: Amazing. Thank you.

Adrian: Okay. Until next time, bye bye to everybody.

Adrian: 
If you'd like to find out more about the Yawanawá, listen to my episode on indigenous voices from Peru and Brazil. If you're interested in animism, the previous episode to this one, where I talk to Graham Harvey, is well worth a listen. OK, till next time, bye bye.