JP: It's a great privilege and pleasure 
to be able to introduce our final speaker today,
someone who hasn't graced the 
stage for too many years
and was here in 2005.
My good friend, 
Jeremy Narby.
Now Jeremy is a 
multi-faceted fellow
and I don't have time to 
do justice to all his facets.
But there are two that are of 
particular interest to us at Bioneers.
First, though, he operates quietly 
and behind the scenes,
Jeremy has been one of the 
most effective activists
in the struggle to defend indigenous 
rights of Amazonian Peoples
and to help those First Nations 
in their efforts to develop
their own political, economic and 
cultural institutions and projects.
Jeremy was radically transformed 
by several years he spent living
with the Asháninka people 
in the Peruvian Amazon,
an experience that really marked 
his worldview and really affected
his professional and 
personal trajectory.
He has worked since 1989 
for a Swiss nonprofit
named Nouvelle Planète, 
helping Indigenous Peoples
of the Amazonia 
in land titling,
bilingual education, 
sustainable resource use,
the preservation of plant knowledge, 
and the environmental monitoring
of petroleum companies in 
the resistance to their abuses.
To give you a sense of how effective 
Jeremy’s activism has been,
in 27 years of fundraising, 
of activist fundraising,
he’s been able to assist Indigenous 
Peoples in the Peruvian Amazon
to protect 12 million acres, 
that’s roughly,
to get land 
title to 12 million acres,
roughly the size of New Hampshire 
and Vermont combined.
[APPLAUSE]
That's about 1% of the 
land mass of the Amazon basin.
The other related, distinct but 
related facet of Jeremy’s work
is something he’s more well-known for, 
he studied history at the
University of Canterbury, and he 
got his PhD in anthropology
not far from here at Stanford, 
and Jeremy is a deeply original
but rigorous thinker 
who has taken on
the challenging task of 
trying to reconcile
traditional indigenous 
ecological, psycho-spiritual
and cosmological 
worldviews
which the Western world, 
to its obvious own peril,
has been far too 
quick to dismiss
with the undeniable power 
of modern science.
He has penned several 
provocative classic texts,
The Cosmic Serpent, 
Intelligence in Nature, and others,
and he has also led a few really 
interesting, fascinating expeditions
to the rainforest, bringing biologists 
and medical researchers to examine
indigenous knowledge systems.
So this quest to 
forge a new worldview
that reintegrates the 
indigenous understanding
that humans are not 
above and beyond nature
but totally embedded 
in the web of life
with the best aspects of 
modern scientific thought,
may be the most important 
ideological challenge of our era,
one that the fate of our 
planet might depend upon.
And I can't think of anyone 
better equipped to take on
that formidable task than 
someone who combines
the psychic courage to plunge into 
mysterious dimensions of consciousness
with the unflappable sanity, centeredness, 
and intellectual discipline of a
no-nonsense Canadian and 
Swiss anthropologist.
So please join 
me in welcoming,
all the way from 
Porrentruy, Switzerland,
my dear friend, 
Jeremy Narby.
[APPLAUSE]
How you doing? 
[AUDIENCE RESPONDS]
It's a privilege to get 
up here on this stage
after all those 
dazzling speakers,
and it's a joy to be 
back at Bioneers.
So I'll tell you what 
I think I know.
[LAUGHTER]
A long time ago, I spent a 
couple of years living
with Asháninka people 
in the Peruvian Amazon,
and these are people who know a lot 
about plants and animals.
In fact, they have a name 
in their language
for just about every species 
living in the forest.
But they spoke of 
plants and animals
in a way that 
I found unusual,
as intelligent beings
with personalities 
and intentions,
and to have 
kinship with humans.
They even called 
some species, asháninka,
which was their 
word for themselves,
meaning "our people" 
or "our relatives."
So white herons 
were asháninka.
Manioc plants 
were our sisters.
Small birds were 
our many brothers.
Armadillos were 
brothers-in-law.
[LAUGHTER]
The Asháninka tended 
to personify other species
and to relate to 
them through kinship.
Well it turned out this view was fairly 
common among Amazonian People
but it took me a long time 
to come to grips with it.
I began working as 
an activist and fundraiser
for indigenous initiatives 
in the Amazon
and as an independent anthropologist 
I also tried to make sense
of the Amazonian 
point of view.
And so this led me 
some 25 years ago
to start looking into domains 
like biology, botany, and neurology.
And at the time 
it was already clear
that biology confirms human 
kinship with other species
and that all living beings 
are genetically related.
And scientists were starting to 
document intelligent behavior
in all kinds of 
living organisms.
The more science looked at the 
intricacies of the natural world,
the more intelligence 
it seemed to find.
So this encouraged me to look 
into intelligence in nature,
a subject that concerned both 
science and indigenous knowledge.
So in the early 2000s, 
I interviewed scientists
in different countries who were 
working on this subject,
only to find that there was 
a basic problem with words.
So when a Japanese 
scientist demonstrated
that a single-celled slime mold
could solve a maze,
Western commentators objected 
to his using the world intelligence
to describe the 
slime's behavior.
The problem was that Western thinkers 
tended to consider intelligence
as a human exclusivity
and had defined it over the centuries
in many different ways,
most of which were in 
exclusively human terms
making it difficult for other 
species to qualify, especially
single cells of slime.
[LAUGHTER]
So the word intelligence 
was human centered.
But so was the 
word nature.
The Dictionary defines nature as the 
phenomena of the physical world
including plants, animals 
and the landscape,
as opposed to humans and 
human creations.
The word nature means everything 
that is not human.
And anthropologists 
have pointed out
that this is a concept specific 
to Western cultures.
If you go to the 
Amazon, for example,
and ask people there about 
their word for nature,
for everything that 
is not human,
they say they have 
no such concept.
And on the contrary they tend to view 
most other species as people like us.
Ahh... 
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah.
Meanwhile modern Western thinkers 
have tended to put human beings
in a category of their own, 
above all other species,
arguing, for example, that animals 
are incapable of thinking
because they lack language.
But recent scientific research
has just proved the contrary,
and that even small 
invertebrates like bees
think and handle 
abstract concepts.
And numerous other species have 
systems of communication,
some of which are close 
to human language.
Take prairie dogs.
They have a sophisticated form of verbal 
communication involving high-pitched chirps
that they use to describe 
the world around them.
They can describe intruders 
according to species,
size, shape, 
speed, and color.
A prairie dog 
may chirp:
Here comes a small, thin human 
wearing blue moving slowly,
[LAUGHTER]
or here comes a tall 
yellow coyote moving fast.
Prairie dogs have brains 
the size of grapes,
but they chirp away 
all day long,
and scientists have just 
begun to understand them.
Now there is strong evidence 
that numerous species think,
feel, remember, and plan, 
and have language-like abilities
and systems of communication,
and this has led 
some Western thinkers
to move away from constantly affirming 
the centrality of human beings.
But here I'd like to mention 
a new concept
that would keep humans 
at center stage –
the Anthropocene,
a supposedly new 
geological era
ushered in by human impacts 
on the biosphere.
The word comes from the Greek 
anthropos, human being,
and kainos, new, and roughly 
means the age of humans.
It's not an official 
scientific concept yet
but it seeks to draw 
attention to human activities
like driving species 
out of existence,
poisoning ecosystems, 
deforestation,
warming the climate, and leaving 
radioactive contamination and garbage
all over the place.
But naming today’s geological age after 
humanity hides the importance
of other species like bacteria and 
plants in the functioning of the biosphere.
It also dilutes responsibility 
for ecological damage among humans.
Indigenous People who oppose 
oil extraction in the rainforest
are surely less responsible 
for degrading the biosphere
than most people living 
in industrialized societies.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
The problem is not humanity in general 
but certain humans in particular.
[LAUGHTER] 
[APPLAUSE]
And naming today's geological age after 
our species has narcissistic overtones,
[LAUGHTER]
if only because no previous geological 
age bears the name of a single species.
So instead of affirming the centrality of 
humans for the umpteenth time,
it would be interesting to move beyond 
the anthropocentered frame
that has enclosed Western 
minds for centuries
and build a new, less
destructive relationship
with the other species 
living on this planet.
[APPLAUSE]
You don't have to clap, but ...
The human-centered concepts
of Western cultures 
have disparaged
the other species of this world 
for so long that most existing
legal systems consider plants and 
animals like objects.
The only subjects being humans, 
of course.
But this is starting to change.
In divorce cases some judges are starting 
to consider the family dog
as a member of the family 
rather than as a possession.
If the dog is a possession, 
the answer to the question,
Who gets the dog, 
is the person who paid for it.
But if the dog is like 
a person or a child,
the question becomes, 
What is in the best interests
of this person?
So dogs are starting 
to get a paw in the door of
[LAUGHTER]
personhood in 
some places.
But person is one of 
those human-centered words.
Its first definition is a human being 
regarded as an individual.
And this is one of the reasons why 
critics argue that attributing personhood
to other species 
doesn't make sense.
So it seems that it will be difficult 
for other species to be granted personhood.
Yet at the same time it's increasingly clear 
that considering them as mere objects is inexact.
And here I'd like to point out 
that considering other species
as persons is 
the definition
that anthropologists 
currently give of animism.
And when Amazonian people 
and other animists say
that they consider a plant 
or an animal as a person,
I take them to mean 
that there’s someone home,
a self rather 
than a thing,
a sentient being with
its own point of view.
And even plants qualify.
Now scientists 
have demonstrated
that plants perceive the 
world in their own way.
A plant may not have eyes, 
but it perceives light
through photo receptor proteins 
that cover its entire body
and that are nearly identical to the 
ones inside our own retinas.
It’s as if the plant had tiny 
eyes all over its body.
A plant knows if you're standing next to it 
and if you're dressed in red or blue.
Plants learn and remember 
and make decisions.
They make plans.
Even a blade of grass perceives 
the world around it,
makes decisions and 
acts on them.
And this has led some philosophers 
to start granting personhood to plants
and other philosophers to 
disagree fundamentally.
And here I think Indigenous People 
can help philosophers
think things through,
regardless of whether sisters manioc 
and brother-in-law armadillo
are bonafide 
persons or not,
at the end of the day you 
still have to eat something,
or rather somebody.
[LAUGHTER]
And the animist take on this question 
seems to be that eating other species
means knowing them, 
identifying with them,
and trying to see the world 
from their perspective.
Among Amazonian People the shortcut 
to seeing the perspective of other species
is to ingest 
plant teachers.
These are plants like 
tobacco and ayahuasca,
and they tend to teach 
that other species
have their points of view
which humans gain from 
taking into consideration.
In this view plant-induced trances 
give other species the opportunity
to voice their 
complaints and demands,
which humans can then 
take into consideration
or else risk retribution.
But working with plant 
teachers is tricky business,
as we'll be discussing 
this afternoon.
In animist societies,
considering other species 
like persons often means
treating them like 
relatives or allies.
In the Asháninka case, 
beneficient plants
like manioc, corn, 
or peach palm
are called brothers 
or sisters
because they are 
so good and generous,
whereas species that are hunted 
are treated with more distance,
like brothers-in-law,
and plants like ayahuasca and tobacco 
are considered like powerful
and therefore potentially 
dangerous allies.
But in all cases using 
plants and animals
involves recognizing the 
relationship one has with them.
It turns out that Asháninka People 
integrate into their kinship system
not only plants and animals 
but also visiting anthropologists.
[LAUGHTER]
I can give you 
an example of this kind
of creative kinship based 
on personal experience.
Back in the day I was living 
in an Asháninka community.
Men would introduce themselves 
to me and say,
So how should we 
treat each other,
as brothers or 
brothers-in-law?
[LAUGHTER]
And I’d say, 
Well, I don't know.
[LAUGHTER]
They’d say, Well, brothers, if we 
want to be close and share things,
and brothers-in-law, if we want 
to be more distant like trading partners.
So I ended up with a couple of brothers 
and a whole slew of brothers-in-law,
but the point is that this kind of kinship 
can be practiced creatively on an
individual basis and 
in real time.
Last but not least, the Asháninka 
considered some species as harmful,
in which case they refer to them 
as having once been human,
atziri,
but not as asháninka, 
our relatives.
So poisonous snakes were 
not even brothers-in-law,
[LAUGHTER]
which is not to say the 
contrary, of course.
[LAUGHTER]
Thank you.
Well people who want 
to move away
from the anthropocentered scene
that Western cultures
have upheld for centuries 
can start by moving away
from treating plants and 
animals like objects,
and humans too, 
for that matter.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
Human kinship with other species 
is real and confirmed by science,
but after centuries of treating 
other species like objects
and refusing to have 
relations with them,
people in Western culture will need 
time to think this through.
And here animist societies 
provide a template.
They may treat other 
species like relatives
but just like with relatives 
some are close,
others are more distant. 
Some are beneficient.
Others are problematic.
The nature of the relationship 
depends on both parties,
and prudence and flexibility 
is required.
That's how you treat 
your in-laws, right?
[LAUGHTER]
I don't mean to say that people 
who speak in Western tongues
should become animists
but rather that we can 
learn from animist cultures.
Animists use kinship categories 
to think about other species
but in a Western context, 
other concepts like friend,
neighbor, doctor, colleague, 
may be more appropriate.
People will need to 
think about this
creatively and according 
to their own convictions.
I initially thought I’d end this talk 
with a consideration of respectful living
in the biosphere,
but now I think that 
responsible is a better word
than respectful because 
it's more concrete.
It comes from the 
verb to respond.
I think that living responsibly means 
living in a way that responds
to the situation we’re in, 
and to what we now know.
I think that responsible 
living in the biosphere
means learning to see other 
species as beings like us,
in that they have intentions, 
make decisions,
and they know what they're doing. 
They have points of view.
I think that responsible 
living in the biosphere
means learning to 
take the interests
of other species into consideration 
and allowing them room to live.
And I think it means learning 
to relate to them and to think
through the kinship we 
have with them.
So now to get started, 
I call birds amigos.
[LAUGHTER]
I consider some mushrooms 
as my friends.
[LAUGHTER]
And I think of the blades of grass 
as sisters as I mow the lawn.
[LAUGHTER]
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
