Co-Creation with the More than Human: Knowing Place - a Key to Survival

Pre-amble about the sandbox

Calls for an economic model that is more equitable, sustainable, and responsive to the complexities of the 21st century are increasing, thereby challenging traditional mainstream economics, including the notion that nature (eco-logy) and the eco-nomy are separate from each other.

If the economy is a nested system within nature and taking place within the realms and boundaries of the natural environment, then it makes sense that in our rethinking of the dominant economic model, we ought to better understand what actual co-creation with nature and the more-than-human looks like; what challenges and opportunities arise when we implement this in our contemporary world; and how far we are in our understanding and ability to apply this in practice. For this purpose, we can take clues from the rapidly expanding 'field' of approaches and methods to engage with and represent or involve nature and the ‘more-than-human’.

To this end, Kincentric Leadership in association with The Repatterning Collective is organising a series of learning sessions as part of a Co-creation with the More-than-Human sandbox. Rather than webinars, the learning sessions create a collective space for semi-structured dialogue & discussion on a bespoke topic, with each session featuring an expert practitioner who takes us on a mini deep dive into the workings, developments, (im)possibilities & directions of a particular approach to engage with, involve, represent or connect with the more-than-human.

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Knowing Place: a Key to Survival

Indigenous people throughout the globe have a unique understanding of the place they live in. This understanding is grounded in deep relationships with their surrounding environment.

Our speaker, Michael Kotutwa Johnson, is a member of the Hopi Tribe in Northern Arizona. Michael is a Hopi dryland farmer with a PhD in Natural Resources, and a faculty member at the University of Arizona. His primary work is with the Indigenous Resiliency Center, and he has a keen interest in Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge with an emphasis on Indigenous conservation and land management techniques.

He also champions the restoration of the American Indian Food System by integrating Indigenous conservation stewardship principles with modern science and policy. Most importantly, Michael continues to practice Hopi dryland farming, informed by several millennia of practice by his ancestors.

In this learning session, we'll look at the importance of place, using the Hopi Tribe of Northern Arizona as an example whose members have lived in the exact same location for millennia. The Hopi "Ways of Knowing" allows its people to raise crops like corn, squash, beans with just 15-25 cm / 6-10 inches of annual precipitation and no man-made irrigation. Within this, corn is considered the mother, having sustained and nourished the Hopi for thousands of years. The Hopi believe that as long as they keep taking care of the mother, they will be here for a long time.

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