Getting Dirty: An Eco-Erotic Worldview

Have you ever had a relationship with an inanimate object? Or been stirred by the scent of the forest or sound of birds? Are you practicing eco-eroticism and you don’t even know it?

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Melissa K. Nelson, Turtle Mountain Chippewa ecologist, scholar, and author of Getting Dirty: The Eco-Eroticism of Women in Indigenous Oral Literatures. 

Together, we explore ecoerotics—a way of understanding and connecting with the world as kin, not as resource. With laughter and stories, this conversation brings forth Ancestral Intelligence (the true A.I.)–that reminds us of the power of our sensuality and intimacy with the world. There’s sacred activism brimming between skin and soil, driftwood and hand, breath and water.

What awakens when we let ourselves get dirty—when we surrender ourselves and feel deeply with the land? Melissa reminds us that Indigenous remembering and sacred stories of our relationships with plant and animal kin aren’t just myths—they’re real relationships. Living, breathing, co-mingling connections filled with the depth and meaning that we imagine as an antidote to settler colonialism.

Eco-eroticism is a doorway to our bodies and space. So get curious; it’s time to reenter kinship with all our relations.