Reseed

What does wildness mean to us when it is defined not by a few people, but rewritten for all of us?

This episode of Reseed revisits the history of conservation to explore its dark corners, going beyond nipping off the buds and leaves to dig at its roots, unearthing information about those who are credited with founding Western conservation. A new conservation can be inclusive and accessible to all people while also protecting ecosystems and animals, like birds.  

Guest J. Drew Lanham is an ornithologist, wildlife ecologist, poet, professor, author, and lover of birds. He is the author of Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts and The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature, which received the Reed Award from the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Southern Book Prize, and was a finalist for the John Burroughs Medal. He has published essays and poetry in publications including Orion and Audubon.

Poetry, birds, soil, conservation, and deep questions braid together in this thoughtful and lyrical conversation, which looks at how care for humans, nature, and animals are all connected and embedded into our humanity.   

~

This is part of a series of replays from the archives, in which we are sharing some of our most beloved episodes. Listen to all episodes at reseed.ca.

Times are dark. It is hard to imagine beauty, peace, or even the future. But we need to dig deep into our imaginations, and remind ourselves that expansive ideas and abundant dreams abound: rethinking climate activism, reorienting economic growth, climate reparations, rethinking conservation, and repairing place-based relationships. These themes are all explored in this thought-provoking conversation from the archives. Amidst a cacophony of doom and hopelessness, Kamea Chayne invites us to dream and imagine the possibilities, recalibrate how we measure abundance, and rejoice in the celebration of our renewed paths forward. 

Guest Kamea Chayne is a creative, writer, and the host and producer of the Green Dreamer Podcast. With hundreds of episodes, her podcast explores our paths to collective healing, biocultural revitalization, and true abundance and wellness for all. Her sustainability newsletter UPROOTED is rooted in deep ecology and is a decolonial thought-in-progress. She brings critical thought to her writing and her vibrant community of tens of thousands of people. With her guests and in her writing, Kamea delves with grace and courage into complex topics and encourages people to seed dreams of a regenerative world. 

This is a conversation about thinking critically, planting seeds for regenerative futures, and dreaming of the green possibilities that could be tomorrow’s reality in each of our respective places on this wounded and wondrous planet. 

~

This is part of a series of replays from the archives, in which we are sharing some of our most beloved episodes. Listen to all episodes at reseed.ca.

Consuming stuff is embedded into our identities and our culture. We are told that we deserve to buy things, and that ownership defines our worth. For the sake of our planet’s health and our own freedom, it is well worth the hard work of dismantling our addiction to stuff and asking ourselves questions about who we want to be. 

Aja Barber joins Reseed for a fascinating and frank conversation that delves into intersections between fashion, justice, and climate, wildest dreams for remaking the fashion ecosystem, and how to balance individual and collective action. She digs into her book Consumed - The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism. Aja is a highly respected writer, stylist and consultant whose work deals with the intersections of sustainability and the fashion landscape. She writes for outlets like The Guardian and CNN, and for her thriving online community. 

Consuming less is not easy, and sometimes our stuff threatens to consume us. Our rites of passage, rituals, celebrations, hard times, boredom, and life changes are marked often by the accumulation of more things. Consumption is deeply intertwined with colonialism, is built on unjust labour conditions that keep people in poverty, and fuels climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution. 

Buying less can be frustrating, emotional, and - ultimately - it can be liberating. In the words of Aja, " I want the big brands to lose the power and the chokehold that they currently have on all of us". 

~

This is part of a series of replays from the archives, in which we are sharing some of our most beloved episodes. Listen to all episodes at reseed.ca.

How do we courageously face our eco anxiety and grief, and find the resources we need to cope with the climate crisis? How do we cultivate the emotional resilience that we need to weather ecological crises? How do we take care of our own mental health, so we can take care of each other and our Earth? 

Britt Wray joins Reseed for a conversation about climate change, emotions, and mental health. Britt is an acclaimed researcher, science communicator, author and TED speaker. Her Gen Dread newsletter, TED Talk with 2.4 million views, and writing in outlets like TIME and the New York Times all share wide-ranging ideas for supporting emotional health and psychological resilience in ecological crises. Her forthcoming second book Generation Dread merges scientific knowledge with emotional insight to show how these intense feelings are a healthy response to the troubled state of the world. 

Experiences of anxiety and grief can cause us to give up. They can interrupt our ability to cope with the breakdown of the natural world, and limit our ability to protect and save all that we can. Learning to feel, acknowledge, understand, and express our climate emotions will allow us to be more whole as human beings, and more able to be the stewards of this planet that we need to be. This conversation invites emotion into science, climate activism, and the halls of power. 

Embracing our climate emotions - in all of their messy, human complexity - can free us to move out of an anthropocentric frame, navigate the vast uncertainty of it all, and cope with feeling the fragility of the interconnected web that is our home. 

~

This is part of a series of replays from the archives, in which we are sharing some of our most beloved episodes. Listen to all episodes at reseed.ca.

Parents have the formidable task of providing care for their own children while also caring for a planet in crisis - all while questioning how to raise the next generation to be caretakers. This episode of Reseed looks at the unique role that parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and other guardians can play, with specific actions that we can take as people who are raising children at an exhausting and intensive stage of life. We explore how to guide children to be active stewards and activists, without imposing too heavy an emotional burden that lessens their resilience or their ability to be active cultivators of a healthier planet. 

This conversation is not just for parents, but rather is for all of us who are contemplating what role we want to play as stewards and ancestors at this moment in time. This conversation is for people who want to explore how systems of care can dismantle the systems of dominance and extraction that have brought us to this convergence of climate change, war, and inequality. If we take a birds’ eye view of this era that is fraught with crisis and sorrow, how do we want to show up? What can we do with our own hands and hearts - with love, conviction, and courage - regardless of how everything turns out? 

Reseed is joined by Elizabeth Bechard, a climate activist, mother, and author of Parenting in a Changing Climate: Tools for Cultivating Resilience, Taking Action, and Practicing Hope in the Face of Climate Change. Elizabeth is a coach, former research coordinator, and graduate student in public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. After becoming a mother, she became passionate about the intersection between climate change and family resilience. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband and young twins.

At its heart, Remaking Parenthood for the Anthropocene is a deeply spiritual conversation. It examines awakening as a critical part of being a human right now, and how we all awaken to climate change in different ways. This episode looks at how environmental action is a spiritual calling for each of us, and how the Earth is rising up and speaking through us in our actions, in mysterious and wondrous ways. 

~

This is part of a series of replays from the archives, in which we are sharing some of our most beloved episodes. Listen to all episodes at reseed.ca.

Music can help us make sense of, and deeply feel, our climate grief. Tamara Lindeman’s acclaimed album Ignorance about climate grief struck a chord with citizens and critics. Performing as The Weather Station, Lindeman’s 2021 poetic, thoughtful, and highly danceable album was named album of the year by The New Yorker and Uncut. Tamara joins Alice Irene Whittaker, the host of Reseed, for a conversation that starts with climate grief before spanning to art, selfhood, rootlessness, connection, and the heartbreaking beauty of birds.   

Tamara Lindeman emerged from Toronto’s vibrant folk scene, and as The Weather Station, she has released five albums and toured extensively across Europe, the US, Canada, and Australia.  She has been nominated for a Juno, a Socan Award, and shortlisted for the Polaris Prize, and garnered extensive praise from Pitchfork, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Rolling Stone and The New York Times. 

Our climate change narratives are often overfull of information and despair. Our human souls also require art and stories, and our climate movement needs storytellers and artists. Art, stories and music don’t need to have the answers to the climate breakdown we are facing - there are other mediums for that, and we need to push for those answers and solutions - but art, stories, and music do have this role to play in helping us process, dream, imagine, feel, connect, release, and grieve. In a time of climate chaos, art can help us to dream of a different world while connecting with each other. 

~

This is part of a series of replays from the archives, in which we are sharing some of our most beloved episodes. This episode was featured on CBC's Podcast Playlist. Listen to all episodes at reseed.ca.

How do we find freedom from the relentless demands of capitalism? How do we cultivate rest as a radical act of resistance and revolution? How do we learn from, centre, and support Indigenous sovereignty? How do we learn from Black organizing and resistance, and see Indigenous and Black liberation as coexisting side-by-side? How do we avoid the co-opting of grassroots movements, and stay clear headed about who we are in solidarity with?

Poet, scholar, and community organizer Erica Violet Lee joins Reseed host Alice Irene Whittaker for a powerful conversation about freedom, resistance, and belonging. Erica is a two-spirit nehiyaw writer from inner-city Saskatoon and Thunderchild Cree Nation. She is a Steering Committee member of Indigenous Climate Action, and she has worked with Idle No More, the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, and the David Suzuki Foundation among others in the pursuit of Indigenous feminist freedoms. She has spoken around the world for people in universities and community organizations alike. She has been published in outlets like The Guardian and the CBC. Erica’s work relates to Indigenous freedom, governance, law, sovereignty, feminism, love, and joy.

At its heart, this conversation is about the pursuit of freedom. It is about relationships to land, and to each other. It is about safeguarding the integrity and authenticity of grassroots movements, instead of branding and absorbing them into the dominant order by celebrating only their most palatable and non-threatening aspects. This is a conversation about the power of words and poetry to change the world, and feeling the rage and love of this moment at which we are alive - and remembering that our rage is a form of love. 

~

This is part of a series of replays from the archives, in which we are sharing some of our most beloved episodes. Listen to all episodes at reseed.ca.

How do we redefine environmentalism so that it includes everyone? How do we embed justice and belonging into our relationship to the natural world? How can we include cities and modernity in our definition of nature? What is the role of our ancestors in environmentalism and activism?

These questions are explored in a conversation between Reseed host Alice Irene Whittaker and Chúk Odenigbo, an expert in climate justice, oceans, anti-racism, public health, and decolonization. 

This beautiful conversation about big ideas and complex intersections delves into using one’s power and influence to dismantle oppressive systems, while planting seeds that grow a vibrant, fair way of life. 

~

This is part of a series of replays from the archives, in which we are sharing some of our most beloved episodes. At the same time, we are excited to be creating season four of Reseed, and we are curious about your insights. Please go to reseed.ca/survey to provide your perspective in a short 8-question survey, so we can learn from you, the Reseed community.

Economic models can operate in support of life on earth, rather than at the expense of the living world. Listeners of this episode can dip their toes into a variety of economic approaches that are available to us, from doughnut economics to the circular economy to the well-being economy to the regenerative economy to degrowth.

Don't worry if economics is not your thing. This really is about our home, and how we structure society and our economy so that they operate in service of our life support system, our nest.  

This episode explores the migratory restlessness of robins, and follows host Alice Irene Whittaker as she goes on her own restless journey to Finland, to learn about economic models, as documented in a chapter of her new book, Homing: A Quest to Care for Myself and the Earth. Her personal story and extensive research weave together, and ask: How much do we love the current economic system? Will we resign ourselves to capitalism and sacrifice everything for “endless growth”, or will we take a courageous leap in a new direction?

Listen at reseed.ca. 

A small hummingbird flew over 1,900 kilometres, and ended up in a Saskatchewan backyard before a cold winter. The hummingbird – later called Yosemite Sam in national news stories – had performed something called reverse migration, a phenomenon where a bird migrates in the wrong direction. Sam ended up in the care of today’s guest, who protected the Californian bird through a Canadian winter, while she puzzled over how to rehabilitate the bird to the wild. 

Jan Shadick is a wildlife rehabilitator, and the Executive Director of Living Sky Wildlife Rehabilitation. Jan has spent decades advocating for wildlife rehabilitation, and she trains and encourages new rehabilitators. She is a founding member of a provincial organization that runs the wildlife hotline and provides rescue services for wildlife across the province. 

Animal rehabilitation and care are a beautiful example of how humans can resist our hubris and become more humble with our relationships with nature. As Silent Spring becomes a reality, and as birds migrate across continents, this episode looks at the heartbreaking loss of birds and animals. The conversation also explores how to refuse to accept the continued destruction of biodiversity, by recognizing that we ourselves are animals, and we can be a force for good. 

Listen at Reseed.ca.