Weather, Trees and humans…on the radio!
Click play to enjoy this excerpt from a December 5, 2018 live radio interview with The Stories Trees Tell presenter, Erin Everett, a tradition-holder in the Nahua quiatlzques tradition of the Central Highlands of Mexico.
Excerpt:
…What would forest conservation be like if we were engaging with the natural world as beings that we're related with? Many people have heard, for example, that some Native people who live in this country now, refer to the natural world as "all my relations." Oren Lyons, a great Onondaga teacher, has said that "What you people call your natural resources, we call our relatives."
So, what would it be like if we were relating with the natural world, not as statistics (like, "if we cut down trees, then we won't have enough oxygen"), but more as, we have a relationship, not theoretically, but in actuality to the forests, and the weather, the trees in our backyard, and the mountains we live in.
The question is, how does one start to cultivate a relationship like that? We can talk with each other and say, I want to see this tree as my family. But, how do we actually engage in that way? This event is one way to take a first step or two into that realm of the mystery of "all our relations. …
Click the audio link above to hear the interview.
Initiated as a tradition-holder in the Nahua/Mexican weather worker lineage in May 2003 by don Lucio Campos de Elizalde of Nepopualco, Morelos, Mexico, Erin Everett is a weather worker, ceremonial leader, and traditional healer. She is known in Nahuatl as a quiatlzques and in Spanish as a tiempera. As are many in this tradition, she was struck by lightning in her youth, which is a known calling to this path. A native of western North Carolina, she and her colleagues work with weather in the Asheville, NC geographical region. More information about their work, tradition, and teachers can be found at seedsoftradition.org.