Agenda
- Quiz
- Kinship
- What is the moral status of an eagle or a tree?
- What principles govern the way we treat an eagle or a tree?
- What is OUR relationship to the eagle or the tree?
- philosopher at Michigan State
- Native American, Potawatomi (pot -a -WOT - a - me)
- draws on ideas from Robin Kimmerer, also Potawatomi, a botanist, and author of Braiding Sweetgrass and The Service Berry.
- Potawatomi -- one nation in Oklahoma, four in Michigan
- Whyte talk at the UN
- kinship (today)
- kinship-based account of environmental justice (module 3)
- colonization -- removal from original lands (module 4)
"In general, kinship refers to qualities of the relationships we have with others--whether others are humans, plants, animals, fishes, insects, rocks, waterways, or forests" (p. 267)
"Kin relations are like ideal family or friendship bonds, and are composed of types of relationships and qualities of relationships. In a good friendship, the friends may be mutually responsible, for example, to support each other's wellbeing. Mutual responsibility is a type of relationship--that is, a general category of a relationship. But what makes this relationship truly a kinship relationship is if the mutual responsibility has certain inherent qualities. Qualities are dimensions of relationships like trust, consensuality, transparency, reciprocity, and accountability." (p. 267-268)
"Reciprocity is an important kinship quality. A bond has the quality of reciprocity when each relative (or freind) believes the others to be in a long-term gift-receiving and gift-giving relationships." (p. 268)
Kinship relations can be with ... corn (Potawatomi), reindeer (Sami people in Siberia), potatoes (Quechua people in Andes) (p. 269)
"Robin Kimmerer, speaking of ecosystems as 'the living world,' says that 'the living world is understood, not as a collection of exploitable resources, but as a set of relationships and responsibilities. We inhabit a landscape of gifts peopled by nonhuman relatives, the sovereign beings who sustain us, including the plants' (Kimmerer, 208, p. 27)." (p. 270)
"One way to understand environmental injustice is as an assault on kinship relationships." (p. 270).
Maori (mow-ree) people of New Zealand -- Waikato river -- river is used for power, diverted, warmed, pumped -- disrupting the kinship relationship to the river