Abstract
Keywords
Studies of trees have historically been confined to such disciplinary perspectives as botany, earth sciences, and resource management, with a quantitative view of trees as senseless, bio-mechanical matter to be controlled and used for human consumption. Similarly, programs such as environmental sustainability and sustainable development largely base ecological value in economics and the well-being of humans (Berenguer, 2010; Johnston et al., 2007). Studies of trees and plants as entities with moral standing 1 are rare (Hall, 2011), especially when compared with the proliferation of attention to the moral consideration of animals. Since the last decades of the 20th century, the nonhuman and ontological turns have been gaining momentum in the humanities and social sciences, “decentering the human in favor of a turn toward and concern for the nonhuman” (Grusin, 2015, p. vii). By 2017, science-based papers on plant research reached a 5-year average ratio of 1:2 compared with papers on animal research (Gagliano et al., 2017). Still, most people with Western-based views tend not think of trees as individual beings with sentience, consciousness, and the capacity to communicate, let alone that “plants and humans share a basic, ontological reality as perceptive, aware, autonomous, self-governed and intelligent beings” (Hall, 2011, p. 12). Trees and plants are purposive, deliberative, innovative, agential entities controlling their own existence (Mancuso, 2017; Trewavas, 2014). Their ontological realities must be intentionally and respectfully approached and recognized. Qualitative, ethnographic inquiry can support and enrich research practice and engagement with vegetal beings through mindful, interrelational approaches to deepen knowing of, with, and within nonhuman ontologies.
Based on a broader, interdisciplinary project, this article outlines select reflections on the methodologies and methods I used to study the sentient, intelligent relationality of trees as agentic, conscious entities in their own right, with their own perspectives and unique ontologies that respond to and impact their surroundings. My overarching research questions guided a consideration of how tree ontologies can be represented through ethnographic inquiry, and what an ethnography of trees can reveal about humanity. The complimentary attributes, values, and approaches of Indigenous research methodologies and public ethnography led my inquiry and were integrated with ontological emergence theory, plant science, philosophies of plant and nonhuman knowing, and interspecies communication. Moreover, drawing on my experience as a filmmaker and to share my research with public audiences, one of the project outputs was an ethnographic film. An overall aim of my research was to enhance environmental empathy in people to in turn inspire more eco-centric viewpoints and ethical responsibility toward nature. In this article, I focus on how knowledge of the sentient agency of trees can be perceived and practiced ethnographically.
It was obvious and natural for me to turn to Indigenous epistemologies and methodologies for this research, but the topic itself was unexpected. I am an Indigenist, “politically aligned non-Indigenous” (Churchill, 1996; MacDonald, 2017, p. 371) scholar. Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies, values, issues of colonialism, and efforts toward decolonization have been a part of my life, work, and research for close to 20 years. My settler ancestry descends from England, Scotland, Ireland, and an Indigenous great great-grandmother from the east coast of what is now Canada. I grew up moving between a small town on unceded Native territory in Quebec, and Calgary, Alberta, located in Treaty 5 territory, before living in several other Canadian and international places. I have now lived in Treaty 4 territory, Saskatchewan for more than 16 years. At age 30, I learned I have Indigenous heritage through my paternal grandfather. His wife, my paternal grandmother, participated in the attempts to erase Indigeneity from the country by the Canadian government and White settler society by keeping this family history a secret. My life, work, and worldviews continually expand through the teachings and activism of descendants of the original peoples who inhabited and moved across Treaty 4 territory—the Nêhiyawak (Cree), Anihšināpēk (Saulteaux), Lakota, Dakota, and Nakoda, and, later, Métis nations—as well as Indigenous cultures and allies/accomplices from across Turtle Island 2 and around the world. Indigenous ways of knowing are essential to respectful research with the lifeways and perspectives of trees and nonhumans. It would have been rude and disrespectful of me not to include Indigenous methodologies in this study (Gullion, 2018; Smith, 1999). My awareness of metaphysical phenomena has grown since childhood, alongside self-awareness, mindfulness, and meditation through yoga and Tibetan Buddhism for the past 23 and 15 years. I believe it was trees who suggested my doctoral research topic, literally, when together the words and sound “an ethnography of trees” suddenly came into my internal field of awareness as I looked up at a forest of Douglas-fir trees on a walk to campus one morning. This was not my thought: I would never, ever, have considered this idea. When I told one of my doctoral professors I had a new topic, he sensed my hesitation and asked if I thought he would think I was crazy. I nodded. After I shared the idea, he eagerly told me of new academic developments on the intelligence of plants and the ontological turn that advocate for the aliveness and agency of nonhumans. This was the first I had heard of such things.
Echoing long-time biosemiotics scholar Favareau (2010), my broader study pursued ontological and metaphysical phenomena of trees because of my and others’ understanding that such phenomena exist. To inquire and write honestly within this topic pushes traditional edges of “respectable” and “sane” Western academic and scientific research modeled by such patriarchs as Plato, Aristotle, Newton, Descartes, Bacon, Locke, and Popper. So doing necessarily makes “metaphysical assumptions explicit [and] exposes exclusions on which” (Barad, 2007, p. 205) conceptions of reality are based, transcending the propensity of science to frame, value and objectify only “what can be known and seen” and thus limit “what and how we think” (Bolt, 2004, pp. 22 and 23). Inquiring and writing honestly and openly within a framework of metaphysical relations with nature embodies and (re)news ancient ways of knowing that are vital to responsibly shifting the paradigm of human progress and anthropocentric treatment of the Earth and its inhabitants that have resulted in irrevocably dire environmental, ecocide, and climate crises. In the case of trees, a study published in 2015 (Crowther et al., 2015, p. 201) indicates more than “15 billion trees are cut down each year, and the global number of trees has fallen by approximately 46% since the start of human civilization.” Since then, the clearing, fragmentation, or degradation of forests has been accelerating (Kinver, 2019). At the time of writing, 350- to 800-year-old Eucalyptus trees, with decades of generations of cultural relations with first peoples in Australia, are being chainsawed to make space for a 12.5 km highway re-routing (Malins et al., 2020; Perkins, 2020). Eurocentric paradigms of understanding and being in the world must open to a “kincentric ecology” (Salmón, 2000) to make space and time for the aliveness, intersubjectivity, and perspectives of trees and all nonhumans and for the knowledge systems of natural laws and design in which “all living beings co-operate and co-create” (Moran et al., 2018, p. 73) to thus enable “the return of space-time (chronotope) of a healthy past to that of a healthy future,” as called for by the Quichua concept
Nonhuman Realms: Theoretical Advances
As Grusin (2015) outlines, the nonhuman turn has been “understood variously in terms of animals, affectivity, bodies, organic and geophysical systems, materiality, or technologies” (p. vii). By “nonhuman” herein, I refer to all organic and inorganic entities who are other than human, including trees, plants, insects, stones, mountains, land, and water—all of “nonhuman nature” (Abram, 2017). Many synonyms for
Unlike Western epistemologies, there is no dichotomy of human and other beings in many Indigenous ways of knowing. “Everything in nature, including humans, enjoys equal status,” write Aikenhead and Michell (2011, p. 78). A community consists “of many nonhuman persons—the four-leggeds, winged ones, plants, and even landforms” (Pierotti, 2011, p. 30). The line between humans and nonhumans “is so lightly drawn . . . it ceases to exist at certain points” (Pierotti, 2011, p. 30; see also Hallowell, 1960). “In Earth-centered traditions,” Cajete (2000) avers, each part of the Earth is a manifestation of the spiritual centre of the universe. Stones, trees, animals, or plants may be venerated as expressions of the sacred and representations of the greater family of life from which they come. . . . [Each] have ritual ways of interacting with one another, and each has a personhood, a sense of purpose, and inherent meaning expressed in many ways . . . There is a fluid and inclusive perception of animal nature that makes less of a distinction between human, animal and spiritual realities.” (pp. 109, 178 & 150)
Salmón (2000) terms this “kincentric” ecology, wherein humans and nonhumans comprise “an ecological assemblage that is treated as an extended family who share ancestry and origins” (Pierotti, 2011, p. 31). “Recognition and respect for the equality of all elements of life,” Lyons (1984) writes, necessarily “brings us into perspective as human beings. If all life is considered equal, then we are no more or no less than anything else” (p. 6).
Acknowledging the differences in Eurocentric and Indigenous approaches to being in the world, as well as the ecological, social, and political implications of imagery and words (Dunayer, 2004; George & Schatz, 2016),
The ontogenetic concept of biosocial becoming (Ingold & Pálsson, 2013) regards nonhuman and human life as evolving equally and intrinsically through social and biological influences that are mutually conditioning via emergent, intra-active “fluxes and exchanges” (Ingold, 2013, p. 9). This “qualitatively transformative” (Santos, 2015, p. 430), nonlinear, and relational understanding of phenomena is at the heart of ontological emergence theory and Indigenous epistemologies. As McClaslin and Breton (2008) state, the reality of interrelations is the most fundamental factor of Indigenous law. By extension, Cajete (2006, p. 250) knows nature as ‘the creative centre from which we and everything else have come and to which we will always return.” From a perspective of ontological emergence, “no relatum exists without being related to something else, and no relation instantiates without relating some relata” (Santos, 2015, p. 440). Humans and nonhumans are fluid beings, with flexible, porous boundaries; they are necessarily embedded in relations, neither purely biological nor purely social; . . . their essence is best rendered as something constantly in the making and not as a fixed, context-dependent species-being. (Pálsson, 2013, p. 39)
Nonhumans, and humans, are conative entities, meaningful to themselves in their unique efforts to survive and actualize their inherent potentials (Mathews, 2008). They are “deeply embedded in their own life force, purpose, and interconnections with the environment(s) they interact with as home and community” (Abbott, 2020, p. 224). Their interconnected, “intersubjective world of life” (Abram, 2017, p. 40), or
Nonhuman Realms: Methodological Advances
Indigenous Research Methodologies
Although research for my broader study was not situated “with and within Indigenous communities” (Windchief et al., 2018 p. 533), Indigenous methodologies were essential for their protocols and frameworks of interrelations, nonlinear knowing, respect, reciprocity, and modes of understanding and being with nature and metaphysical phenomena. As Navajo Elder Donald Hughes (1983, p. 64) indicates, “plants are alive. You must give them a good talk.” The cultural protocol of offering Tobacco when requesting knowledge for assistance, counsel, and/or participation of Elders and Knowledge Keepers extends to nonhumans. Offering Tobacco is “the beginning of a respectful relationship” while acceptance of Tobacco acknowledges “that a relationship has been formed” (Aikenhead & Michell, 2011, p. 80). Through “proper offering and prayers” (Cajete, 2000, p. 111) of Tobacco and/or other medicinal plants, people honor and understand their reciprocal relationships with nonhumans. The herbs “provide a metaphorical and practical physical example for understanding human relationship to the order of nature, [and act] as intermediaries between humans and the spirit world of nature” (p. 119).
The cultural worldview and experiences of Cree Elder Doreen Spence innately reflected the importance of Indigenous epistemologies to my research during our interview in Alberta: I don’t see myself as separate from a tree person. . . . They’re our relatives, and they’re there for a reason. . . . Everything in the universe has intelligence. . . . We have stories and legends about [communication between trees and the people]. . . . The people never looked at a tree as an inanimate or animate object. It was part of them and part of their universe. For us, it was the teachings and you just went about talking with whatever was there, whether it was an animal, you know, a tree, a rock, it was just part of the natural environment. . . . As a child growing up, you learn how to live and cohabitate with them so that you had that communication, that energy with them. . . . So in terms of the trees, you know, you just walk up to them and you just become a part of them, you aren’t separate from them,
“The intelligence of living environments is essential to our world,” Moran et al. (2018, p. 75) write. Indigenous worldviews as epistemological “design [have] always been nurtured and informed by this natural intelligence” (p. 76). In addition, “spirituality is not separate but is an integral, infused part of the whole in the Indigenous worldview” (Wilson, 2008, p. 89). Indigenous knowers and knowing are “intimately and personally interconnected with what it is they know” (Aikenhead & Michell, 2011, p. 68). “Coming to know” is an ongoing journey based in time and process toward “wisdom-in-action” (pp. 69 and 70) rather than destination endpoints. “The colonial idea” that knowledge is discovered “situates knowing as an entirely human possession [and] allows us to systematically undermine knowledge if we choose” (Moran et al., 2018, p. 77). In this Western approach, “when nature is conceptually taken apart into discrete elements, it becomes necessary to postulate causal laws [which are] discovered a posteriori rather than through any inherent intelligibility” (Mathews, 2008, p. 60), inferred and theorized, rather than directly observed as part of a whole (Galton, 1892). The “known” is then fractured, misunderstood, and easily conceptualized as inert. Similarly, Dolphijn and van der Tuin (2013), as cited by Gullion (2018), note the difficulty “for scholars to see differences, diffractions, and entanglements when knowledge is cordoned into separate, hidden realms” (p. 20). In Western “objective” science, there is “little, if any, discussion of the obvious reciprocal relationship between investigator and subject, [and] the responsibility scientists owe toward study organisms” (Pierotti, 2011, p. 17). Reciprocal relations are fundamental to relational accountability (Wilson, 2008), and “to understanding the basis by which knowledge has been acquired” (Pierotti, 2011, p. 17).
In Western colonial fashion, academics writing about nonhuman philosophies do not always recognize the ancient, finely tuned, scientific knowledge systems of Native cultures that emerge from “a direct relationship with the Earth as a source of knowledge and meaning for human life and community” (Cajete, 2000, p. 109). The ontological turn, Gullion (2018, p. 31) notes, is “influenced largely by quantum philosophy and Indigenous science.” Overt recognition of Indigenous influences on Western scholarly work is crucial to righting and stopping the injustices of appropriation, discounting, and exclusion of Native ways of knowing (Gullion, 2018; Smith, 1999) in and beyond the academy. As Lyons (1984) indicates, humans are born with intellect, the gift of making choices, and “original instructions” to guide our responsibility for the Earth, but “many non-Indians have tried to destroy the original instructions because they view them as detrimental to progress” (p. 6).
Ethnography in the Nonhuman Field
Historically, ethnographic consideration of nonhumans has been suppressed and “sidelined by human-centered theoretical pursuits” (Lien & Pálsson, 2021 p. 5). Attention to traditional perspectives and methods of ethnographic inquiry for the study and representation of trees or other nonhuman ontologies shows up anthropocentric biases and limits to understanding and presenting other sentient beings and their unobservable dimensions. Because ethnography is a human-developed “social practice concerned with the study and representation of [human] culture” (Van Maanen, 2011, p. 150), for purposes of human understanding, inquiries, analyses, interpretations, and representations of trees have largely only been through a human lens. By extension, ethnographic constructions of nature are based on human, cultural contexts (Oetelaar, 2014). A heightened reflexive awareness of these influences is key to moving past Western and anthropocentric limitations to more deeply know trees through trust, respect, and allowance that other–all–beings are conative with their own unique ontologies. Ethnographic inquiry and (re)presentation with nonhumans is possible. It requires a shift in perspective alongside the same rigor and ethics as research applied for human subjects. Researchers must be mindfully sensitive and accountable to the perspectives, spaces, ways of being, needs, and realities of nonhuman participants. Traditional tenets of ethnography, such as those outlined by Yardley and Bishop (2008), can be engaged for research with nonhuman participants: ability to access habitual and non-verbal aspects of behaviour (through observation); more naturalistic; offer a means to focus on dynamic processes involved in behaviour; focus on meanings, experiences and concerns of individuals within a specific context; can situate analyses of behaviour in the broader socio-cultural context. (p. 363)
Approaching nonhumans from a relational understanding of ontological emergence and biosocial relations acknowledges “the becoming of every constituent” as well as the ways in which each constituent “conditions and is conditioned by the becomings of other constituents to which it relates” (Ingold, 2013, p. 8). This is the essence of ethnography with nonhumans. As is approaching inquiry and (re)presentation in ways that disrupt representationalism and its blinders that maintain “a system of thought that fixes the world as an object and resource for human subjects” (Bolt, 2004, p. 12). Engaged presence, practice, and perspective at work in Heidegger’s concept of handling or “handlability” as it relates to representation are ideal for qualitative inquiry with ontological understandings of nonhumans. Handlability, Bolt (2004) writes, “involves our concrete dealings with things in the world, rather than our abstract thinking about the world” (p. 13).
When Heidegger talks of understanding, he is not referring to understanding as a cognitive faculty that is imposed on existence. Understanding [emerges from] the care that comes from handling. . . . This relation of care is not the relation of a knowing subject and an object known. It defies the logic of representationalism. (Bolt, 2004, p. 49)
Researchers must be open to new possibilities, allow time for processes of coming to know, attuned to different realities, ready for change and innovation, flexible, and always cognizant that nonhuman participants as members of different species are not and cannot be well known by human researchers. Whitten and Whitten’s (2013, p. 256) discussion of ethnography, in which “processes of intersubjectivity, expanding hermeneutic horizons, and sustained reflexivity are central,” can be extended to ethnographic practice with nonhumans. As such, “ethnography may offer insights of potential empowerment” for nonhumans via the task of ethnographers to set forth sociosymbolic processes in unfolding, transculturating, and transforming spaces-times to facilitate understanding across, within, and beyond national [human/nonhuman] borders. . . . To the extent that projections from Western modernity such as “acculturation,” “deculturation,” or “assimilation” are painted on the palette of peoples’ [and nonhumans’] lifeways, the processes and patterns of life themselves are diminished, ethnography is thinned, and people [and nonhumans] themselves are omitted from the discourses of continuity and change, hegemony and resistance, reproduction and transformation.
Expanding on Marder (2017), to hear and (re)present nonhumans ethically, “we must learn to listen to the lacunae and silences in [their] language, leaving plenty of room for the untranslatable (and, hence, the unspeakable) in . . . practices of translation” (p. 105). As Abram (2017, p. 14) avers, humans cannot “precisely experience the living sensations of another form. We do not know, with full clarity, their desires or motivations; we cannot know, or can never be sure that we know, what they know.” Because the vast and intricate realm of nonhuman worlds is largely impenetrable by humans, blocked further by Western and anthropocentric blinders, problematic presuppositions, and assumptions regarding the existence of others, or the “Other” (Denzin, 2014) can arise in studies
Tree Realms and Research Process
The field-based methods of my broader study primarily included attending workshops; interviews with people; visitations and communication with trees; embodied observation, inquiry, and reflection; working with film in these contexts; and giving public and academic talks on research findings. Taking place in eight countries on three continents 3 in English and Spanish, these experiences informed an international mobile, multisited ethnography, a “light” form of participant observation, and rich experiential knowledge—my own and others’. The knowledge I developed of tree/human communication through the workshops and my “tree talks” became active as both ethnographic data and study methods. I attributed the term “tree knower” to human participants who know trees and/or plants through their life and work experiences; they included Indigenous Elders, academics, scientists, foresters, an arborist, an agronomist, an independent farmer, and interspecies/nature communicators. My interview style was conversational, guided for consistency by a set of predetermined questions on participants’ interconnections with trees and ways they understand “the ways [trees and] plants feel out their worlds” (Myers, 2015, p. 35). Prominent trees in my research were Ash, Beech, Elm, Eucalyptus, Cacao, Cedar, Douglas-fir, Kapok, Oak, Pine, Palm, Palo Santo, Poplar, Willow, and Yew.
Relaxed times prior to the 22 formal interviews with people were essential to letting them know they could actively engage and feel at ease discussing metaphysical topics without concern of judgment, or “the demon of ridicule,” as Canadian/Scottish nature communicator and study participant Judy McAllister calls it (November 6, 2016). For Eric Horstman, an American managing a forest in Ecuador at the time of our interview, ridicule “often came from family members and peers [and] led me to shut up and internalize a lot of things” (March 13, 2020). Tree whisperer Jim Conroy commented at the close of our interview in New Jersey that it’s a lot tougher to talk to a non-believer . . . if they don’t believe in the work, you can feel that. And then you somewhat censor what you say, okay? And the minute you start censoring things, then a lot of things don’t come out. But the fact that you’re open to it . . . I didn’t have to worry about what I said or what I was saying. I could just be. (June 8, 2016)
Several challenges and tensions affiliated with problems inherent to representationalism emerged in the field regarding connection with trees and representing them through film. Aligning with Abram’s (2017) experiences with animals, in which “the more [he] spoke In order to express what is really not that easy—well, express the unexpressable—in In order to put all that into words, y’know, and having to engage that side of my brain, I don’t feel quite in the right state of being and presence to make the essence today. I could make it, but [
The more I came to know—and not know—trees and the complexity of their inner and outer lives, the more difficult it became for me to film and (re)present them in ways respectful and meaningful to them and their lifeways. Cinema is limited as a human-centered device and form of representation and communication. The abilities of the camera, I felt as I engaged different filmmaking styles and compositions of trees in their parts, entireties, and groups, pale in relation to the complexity of trees’ inner workings, lifeworlds, and community connections. Another tension of ethics emerged regarding the co-constitutive effect/affect of humans entering nonhuman environs. To understand nonhuman worlds as nonhumans experience and shape them without interference on the part of humans is impossible. Whatever the level of presence on the part of researchers and filmmakers, there is always invasiveness, a residue, a “cinematic footprint” (Bozak, 2012), no matter if nonhumans are the focus or contributing to the setting. As any gesture of observation is felt by humans, so it is by nonhumans, perhaps even more so. While navigating these research challenges, however, I did make a short film, gestures toward
Tree/Human Communication Methods
In what follows, I reflect on particular approaches I engaged during my research with tree realms to advance methodological approaches for research with nonhumans: cultivating tree/human communication, fostering sensitivity, and embodied knowing. Gestures at the heart of these approaches include offering Tobacco to trees for acknowledgment and reciprocity, attuning to interconnections with trees and their communities, and becoming increasingly sensitized to tree and other nonhuman perspectives.
Tobacco, Permission, Connection
In addition to offering Tobacco to Indigenous Elders who participated in my study, I offered Tobacco to trees I connected with, individually and as forest, to acknowledge and give thanks for their presence and work on the planet, as well as for their participation in my research via conversations with and about them, and during filming. Each time Tobacco was offered to trees, a palpable sense of peace and acknowledgment arose. Three experiences emerged that speak to the importance of this gesture and method for trees, human participants, research processes, and researchers. On a Vancouver Island forest walk, Al Cool, a former logger, author, and non-Indigenous participant in my study, decided to offer Tobacco to a huge Douglas-fir who had recently fallen over, likely due to intense wind. This was Cool’s first time making an offering. (During our interview the day before, he expressed desire to connect with a particular pair of trees so I gave him a pouch of Tobacco.) Cool took the pouch from his vest pocket, then moved to where the Douglas-fir’s trunk base meets its mostly exposed, now-vertical massive root wad, 4 which Cool estimated was 18 feet high and 36 feet in diameter. “That’s for you, old son,” Cool said, sprinkling his offering. “You did a good job.” He patted the tree, paused, stepped back, reflected: “That is a good thing to do.” He was visibly moved by the experience. I asked if he felt any energy shift. Cool let out a long breath, then said the feelings he sensed were “deep and amazing.”
In Maryland, prior to the formal interview with Mare Cromwell, Gaia communicator and priestess, author, and healer, Cromwell offered a smudge ceremony
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for two large stones, an Elm tree estimated to be born between 1660 and 1700, and two of her nearby offspring. The 350-year-old Elm had been part of Cromwell’s childhood on her grandparents’ farm. Due to the sale of the farm decades ago, the Elm is now surrounded by extensive lawns, upper middle-class homes, and the incessant drone of a major highway. Several years before our interview, Cromwell, of settler ancestry dating back to the 1600s, brought her long-time Cherokee teacher to visit the Elm and they learned from the Elm that local Indigenous people considered the tree very sacred and ceremonies were done at its base. When we were with her, Grandmother Elm (Cromwell’s name for her) spoke to/through Cromwell of the significance of ceremony for her and her two nearby Elm children: We’ve been part of sacred ceremony for a long, long time and so we, we were happy to see Mare come back just today and do a little ceremony with the smudge and the Tobacco. . . . It’s about bringing the sacred energy back up again right here. . . . The people here, they take care of me and they will, you know . . . you know, look at me and admire me and bring their friends to see me, but they don’t do ceremony. They don’t raise the spiritual vibration. They’re just too disconnected. I like them, but they could take it a lot further. So we miss the ceremonies. Yeah, we do. We really, really do. (August 11, 2016)
Raised and educated in the Western paradigm, it continues to be a practice for me to consistently remember to ask permission of trees and to offer Tobacco when entering their communities. A story shared by Spence during our interview is the third example of the importance of offering Tobacco to trees and stands as a good rule of awareness when stepping into nonhuman territories. Spence had been asked by German acquaintances if she would take them into an Alberta forest: We got out of the car and this old guy puts his backpack on and he was going to go in. And I said to him, “No. It’s not our right just to walk into the forest and just do what we do.” I said, “No, you have to ask permission,” and those trees just went still, like very still. And then as soon as I asked for permission, gave my offering, their little leaves started clapping and they were just very happy that we asked permission to go into the forest, that we wouldn’t harm anything, that we wouldn’t be taking anything. We were just going to enjoy the breath and the beauty and their experience
As these experiences show, for research with nonhumans, it is essential that researchers make and allow time, perhaps a lot of time, to de-center their human selves to connect with tree and nonhuman participants both as individuals and as complex, lively communities. Introducing oneself, making an offering, and asking permission to connect with nonhumans are key to respectful, ethical relations. As is being prepared to accept and make changes if permission is denied. There may be surprising responses, such as desire on the part of nonhumans for privacy (Mills, 2010). Just as greetings, offerings, and asking permission are important, so too are gestures of farewell to nonhumans, for closure, gratitude, and respect. After preparations for one of my public tree talks, I realized that making this extra effort is the last thing we humans would think to do, or want to do, when we’re tired after a day’s work. [Yet we] say goodbye to the people in our midst. . . . Saying goodbye is part of the relationship, the thread of connection that continues past the . . . time of physical contact—it closes this time and extends [connection] into the future. (fieldnote, July 11, 2018)
Fostering Human Sensitivity and Embodied Knowing
In-depth observation with both trees and tree knowers during my fieldwork involved the interconnected, sensual, and embodied methods of open inquisitive engagement, engaged meditative presence, deep listening, and intuitive perception. These approaches cultivate “subtler sensitivities” for “attunements to other sentiences” (Myers, 2017, p. 76). Being in the field in this way helps researchers give “ourselves over to another in order to hear another” (Beeman & Skuce, 2019).
To access tree ontologies and communicate directly with trees, an abiding “expanded awareness” (Rhyon-Berry, 2015) is necessary. This requires moving perception from the mind and head to the heart and belly—from mental loops, linear thinking, judgment, and preconceived ideas to open, sensuous, nonlinear sensitivity that welcomes the unexpected. Patience, mindfulness, and practice cultivate stilled presence, receptivity, and rigorous, reflexive discernment. With discerning attention, this quietened inner space can become ground for telepathic interaction with nonhumans, a research tool in itself. Interspecies telepathic communication is an “innate ability [that] lies dormant in all of us” (Getten, 2006, p. 6).
I came to call this inner space “the intuitive field” because, for me, it comprises a palpable sense and inward gaze/act of feeling through almost-tangible layers of inquiry and knowing in receiving and discerning the sensibilities and messages of trees. This aligns with Cajete’s (2000, p. 73) description of “the inner sensibilities of humans, or the inner ear, which hears the subtle voice of nature” in Native science and knowing. As Kulick (2017, p. 363) writes, for communication with nonhumans, “the kind of language that interests linguists and psychologists [is] only a tiny band on a vastly broader spectrum of communication. [Intuitive/ telepathic] language encompasses images, smells, emotions, sensations, and feelings—phenomena that cannot necessarily be put into words.” These language forms can present singly or in combination (Cameron, 2016; Conroy & Alexander, 2016). As Alexander (2017, 6:00) explains, “even if you think it’s your own thoughts, realise that the tree’s intelligence is overlapping its messages with your [individual] sensory system.” The message exchanges occur through overlapping bioenergy fields (Alexander, 2017), or spatial, non-local aspects of morphic fields within and around entities (Sheldrake, 2006). McCrone spoke during our interview of her careful practices of discernment, and commented that, for her, “the capacity to connect with nature, with trees, . . . seems to be a continual, gradual process” (November 7, 2016). Poncelet (2014) writes of skepticism as an important ongoing tool: “to keep searching, to confirm and reconfirm, to question even [our] own direct experience” (p. xxiii).
In my experiences, the tree and plant communications I received have been in the form of arising or sudden inner energetic/emotional and/or textual and/or vocal and/or visceral imprints in my intuitive field. Over time, the texture of these messages fluctuated in levels of subtlety; they came to feel almost haptic and unlike the regular feeling and flow of my conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings. I constantly hold “watchful doubt,” as I call it, when communicating with trees. After a message “lands,” I engage a gentle process of self-questioning to check against imagination or projection: “Did I think that?” It is important not to be too cerebral in this part of the process because messages do not appear at that level; “cerebralizing” quickly saps them of their essence. As Conroy and Alexander (2016) signaled during a workshop involving communication with trees, messages that surprise us are usually a sign they come from outside of ourselves. As I move to speak or write received messages, there is a felt sense of processing them through my brain to translate them, to put words to them, to understand them. Engaging with a single tree alongside one or more people verified similar sensations and messages we each received.
Communication with a Young Elm
In preparation for the aforementioned public tree talk, which was part of a larger fundraising event, I met Aura Lee MacPherson, the woman in whose backyard my talk would be held. There was a central, prized Oak in the yard, a rare tree to be growing in southern Saskatchewan. After an initial chat, I guided MacPherson on how to connect with and attune to trees before we visited the five prominent trees in her backyard to formally greet and ask them for permission to participate with their presence during my talk. We both sensed similar qualities that were unique to each tree, and it gave me confidence in my research to witness someone who had never attuned to trees in these intimate ways have immediate connection experiences. When we came to the fourth tree, a relatively young Elm, I sensed it was shy, withdrawn, introverted. These are the feelings that came to me; as I stayed with them, I became aware that the tree lacked recognition and attention. The tree indicated it would observe rather than participate in the tree talk. Aura Lee commented that she also sensed some introversion from this Elm. I asked her, of the five trees in her yard, which tree she paid the least attention to: this Elm! (fieldnote, July 11, 2018).
This Elm, I realized, was the furthest from the entrance into the yard, and the closest of the other trees to the prized Oak.
Four days later, I arrived early for my talk to greet and offer Tobacco to the trees, to honor and thank them for their presence. MacPherson was excited to show me how she had decorated the house and yard for the occasion, including tying a homemade banner around the young Elm. At first glance, I did not think this banner was a good idea because I had heard from the tree communicators in my study that tying anything around a tree was an impedance to its growth. I left these thoughts as my own: I did not want to assume or project anything onto the tree. Besides, the decorated yard looked lovely. When I arrived at the Elm: This Elm was not happy, it was grumpy. I was quite surprised to feel this. I got from the tree that it did not like wearing the banner around its trunk, which I been calling a bib before I heard Aura Lee call it a banner later. I think the feeling of the term “bib” may have been used by the tree so I used [the word unconsciously] because I picked up that it felt infantilized. The information I’m writing here came in layers because I was somewhat resistant to accepting that the tree was saying what it was; I thought I may have been imposing the feeling. How could a tree be grumpy, and upset about the bib? This didn’t align with my understanding of trees not holding onto emotions and being objective (Conroy & Alexander, 2016), but it did align with what Mary Getten (2015) said about trees having likes and dislikes. I stayed open to what I was getting and told the Elm that Aura Lee had probably put the bib on it to give it some attention, that the banner looked really good and was part of the garden decorations. I even walked to the place where people would see the whole corner as they entered the garden and assured the Elm that it could still be seen. The Elm was having none of this. I remembered, or was reminded, that this Elm had said it just wanted to observe the comings and goings in the backyard, not participate. I told it I would talk to Aura Lee about it. This challenged my Canadian politeness; I didn’t want to offend Aura Lee after all the effort and happiness associated with her decorating. But I’m also comfortable being direct with people, and at least I could ask. After I did the rounds with the trees, I went to look for Aura Lee out front. I asked her if I could speak with her about something in the backyard. When we were back there, I told her what I had been getting from the Elm and asked if she could check in with it. She was keen and took no offence. As soon as she put her hand on the tree, she felt “moving, vertigo, dizzy” and said, “This tree is not happy.” As soon as she removed the banner, she sensed a huge energy shift, noting that her husband is shy and does not like any attention given to him. For this introverted tree who had just wanted to observe, suddenly having a banner around its trunk was probably like going from zero to one hundred on the attention scale. Aura Lee said she had wanted to give it attention so that’s why she tied the banner around it, “like giving attention to a child.” It was then that I shared that I got that the tree felt infantilised—validating it for me. This was a WOW experience. (fieldnote, July 14, 2018).
MacPherson is included as an one of many informal participants in my study. Four and a half years after our time together with the trees, she told me she has been regularly greeting the trees in her life “out loud with a thank you and tell them how strong they look. Would not have done that prior to meeting you. . . . My trees do respond back—with love” (A. MacPherson, personal communication, December 2, 2020).
Conclusion
“Indigenous laws stress that humans must journey through life in conversation and negotiation with all creation,” the commissioners of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015, p. 18) state. This is also a step toward conciliation (see Skinner, 2018) with Indigenous people, culture and knowledge systems that have been disregarded, belittled, and pilfered by the West’s oppressive colonial systems and standpoints. Ethnographic inquiry together with Indigenous research methodologies offer ideal frameworks and methods through which to approach and come to know nonhumans, their ontologies, and life-worlds. It encourages and develops ethical, empathetic, empathic, and relational recognition of nonhuman realities beyond positivist, reductionist, and human-centered views, thereby empowering nonhuman concerns, perspectives, and planetary roles. Ethnographers can bring awareness to exclusionary perceptions and insist “on accountability . . . to perpetually contest and rework the boundaries” (Barad, 2007, p. 205) that have separated humans from the life-worlds they share with nonhumans. As Kortenkamp and Moore (2001) note, “it is clearly more difficult to take the interests of the environment into consideration if those interests and the effects on them are either not known or not salient” (p. 268). “Respectful Design,” or worldview approach, Moran et al. (2018) indicate, “is ancestral and alive . . . [As an] ontological framework based in an intelligent world . . . we can state that design is simply
One of the findings of my broader study is that trees want to collaborate with humans to bring Earth’s the environment and climate back into balance. While filming and communicating with Conroy and a very old Ash tree, I asked the Ash “if it has any message for people of the world in terms of how we are as a human species.” Conroy, translating an internal image received from the Ash, said, It’s almost like a choking person. And he/it said, “That’s the way it’s getting to be for us. ‘Cause we’re big and we need to breathe, too. . . . Beings of nature are very stressed. And they need lots of help right now.” (June 7, 2016)
Recognizing this is new territory for ethnographers, this article offers simple, practical approaches that can lead us to broader methods of knowledge-making, keeping in mind that building ability in these approaches takes practice. These steps include learning about Indigenous ways of knowing and being with nature; participating in interspecies communication workshops; practicing meditation and mindfulness; attuning to and deciphering the qualities of our inner atmosphere and intuitive field; spending time in nature; sensitizing ourselves to the sensual complexities of nature communities; and practicing heartfelt communication and deep listening with beings of nature. With consistent mindful practice, a stronger, finer-tuned embodied and empathic connection with nonhumans develops. When I began communicating with trees, I received repeated messages from them to meditate more. This was initially disappointing because I wanted messages that were more dramatic, insightful, and ego-pleasing. But I came to see the trees were right. Regular meditation practice helps us clear our mental scape so we can more readily clear our minds and connect with our body—also a part of nature—when in the company of trees and nonhumans to be open to their different, subtle modes of communication. With all approaches, ethics and reflexivity are essential to deeply and properly knowing and (re)presenting nonhumans. If all people moved back to this way of understanding and relating with nonhumans, our personal, embodied experiences would fortify and deepen our knowing that we are infinitely entangled in very alive webs of relations, connections, and reciprocity (Kimmerer, 2003; Wilson, 2008). By listening to and engaging Indigenous epistemologies, researchers can better advance methods for research with nonhumans and shift Western-minded paradigms to awaken consciousness of our responsibility for the health of our planet that makes a home for us.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
Funding
ORCID iD
