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Countravāl l’Aigo / Against the Current

By learning how to swim against the current like salmon do, a woman finds her way back to the source of her language and identity. Daniela Boccassini   As our times’ bewildered becoming keeps unfolding, two simple words from a French medieval poem have accompanied me every step of the way: contreval l’iaue. They sank

The Obvious Mirror: How Biocultural Diversity Is Reflected in the Natural World

Reflection of the natural world

WORDS AND IMAGES Nejma Belarbi “All things in creation are sacred and have a diversity much beyond our understanding.” ―My grandmother, Fakhita Jazouli “Get on your hands and knees on the side of the dirt road and look down to find medicinal plants. A square foot will do.” I immediately felt that would be all

Listening to Our Ancestors: Biocultural Diversity through the Indigenous Lens

Evenk reindeer herder

WORDS Jon Waterhouse IMAGES Mary Marshall We are now living in the digital era, when practically every component of our lives appears to be moving at an ever-increasing, unstoppable pace. In many instances it is clear that we humans are not capable of keeping up with the technology we are creating, even as access to

Mirroring the Land: Biocultural Diversity Embodied

biocultural diversity

WORDS AND IMAGES Sonja Swift When it rains in California I rejoice. I see the land drinking. I see grass blades emerging, shining jade green where there was only thatch, brittle and crisp, next to a stone-dry cow patty. I know the dusty taste of summer here, and the dread of summer prolonged. I know

Cornerstone of Resilience: Reflections on the Diversity of Species and Cultures

Life’s traces

WORDS Olga Mironenko IMAGES David Rapport Our planet is populated by an incredibly wide variety of creatures. Coming in different sizes and with different sets of adaptations to their respective environments, they inhabit the so-called planetary envelopes: hydrosphere, cryosphere, lower layers of the atmosphere, and upper layers of the lithosphere, creating a unique envelope, the

Flourishing at Twenty-Five: On Context and Foundations in the Rise of the Concept of Biocultural Diversity

biocultural diversity

WORDS AND IMAGES K. B. Wilson In his essay “Biocultural Diversity: Reason, Ethics, and Emotion” (this issue of Langscape), David Harmon traces the emergence of the field of biocultural diversity as a call for an engagement with the beautifully rich complexity of life. In my own take on biocultural diversity, I ponder the rise of

Biocultural Diversity: Reason, Ethics, and Emotion

Community in Zimbabwe

David Harmon A few years ago, Luisa Maffi shared an email with me. It was from a writer, well-traveled and worldly, with a background in both anthropology and biology. He had spent considerable time in Mexico walking the countryside, thinking in the open air, trying to unlock aspects of his experience that were eluding his

A Few Short Journeys along the Nature-Culture Continuum: Reflections on Community-Led Conservation

by Jessica Brown In late 2016, I made my first visit to the sacred forest that belongs to a village in the Togo mountain range of eastern Ghana, hiking up a small mountain to the forest accompanied by a dozen or so people from the community. The sun was beginning to set over the Volta

The Obvious Mirror: How Biocultural Diversity Is Reflected in the Natural World

Reflection of the natural world

by Nejma Belarbi “All things in creation are sacred and have a diversity much beyond our understanding.” ―My grandmother, Fakhita Jazouli “Get on your hands and knees on the side of the dirt road and look down to find medicinal plants. A square foot will do.” I immediately felt that would be all but impossible.

Never for Sale: Listening (or Not) to the Language of the Land

Sarah Lambert

by Page Lambert John and I are driving down an unfurling ribbon of highway en route to the Black Hills of Wyoming and the small town of Sundance, population 1222. I’m doing battle with the State’s Department of Transportation, which has decreed to realign a major state highway through the pristine heart of the ranchland

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