So would you read to us from the introduction from your book, please?

Sure, yeah, I'd be happy to.

I mean, this passage is describing the notion of tree thinking, which is a concept I ran across in the work of an evolutionary biologist named Robert J. O'Hara, who's talking about evolution and how, you know, when you think about evolution as a narrative, as a linear narrative, that really is unhelpful because it leads to what philosophers call a teleology, right? That everything started out as these little microbes and it was all leading to us.

It was all leading to human beings, which sit at the apex of all creation.

Of course, we all know that's wrong.

He says that the better way to think of it is as a tree.

You know, life is branching out in all different directions and then it's paring away, it's pruning away those things that don't work and the things that do work are kind of being gnarled into place.

Were the protesters at Ferry Creek aware of the ELF and their tactics? And what are your thoughts on how we should be approaching environmentalism today?

Yeah.

Because I think part of you knows deep down it's wrong.

And maybe that's just because I'm a writer, and I'm extremely finely tuned when it comes to language and the nuances of language.

But I think that also that sense of rootedness is something that we pick up on, that as, as humans, I don't know where this resides in us, but I think that we pick up on it in other ways before AI.

And when it comes to the, the creepy communications of corporations, for example, w- and things, advertising, things that they don't quite feel human.

They don't feel situated in place or community, and yet they aspire to a sort of surface level humanity.

We can s-- we can feel it.

Yeah

How magnolia trees hold so much water that when chainsaws are used to cut them, they will occasionally spray a thick, red, tannin-rich liquid that eerily resembles blood.

One of the things that I find fascinating about trees is that they seem to reside right on the boundary line between what we can empathize with and what we can't.

You know? It, it, it gets very easy to empathize with a dog or even a, you know, a bear or a squirrel or, or maybe even a spider, right? Some people don't like to kill spiders.

They shoo them outside.

I do that.

My, my husband does that.

And yet on the other side of that line is, like, moss, right? Like, moss is a living thing.

[laughs]

Uh, the work that cultures that have been disconnected are doing to choose to not be disconnected, as opposed to grasping after something that's still intact or continuing to sort of mine- ... cultures that have relationships like that? Like, what is the advent of new relationships that could carry forward in a healthy way?

Yeah, that-- I mean, that's a really, that's a really, really tough one.

That, that-- 'cause that question of-- [clears throat] first of all, that, yeah, that term two-eyed seeing comes from a man named E-Elder Albert Marshall, who's a, a Mi'kmaq elder.

And that idea is that you can, you know, Indigenous cultures are alive and thriving in the present, right? They're not frozen in the past.

And, and part of that means that they have many ways of seeing simultaneously, and they, they're going off to university and learning, you know, s- biology just like everyone else, and they can hold that in mind at the same time as they can maintain their ancient traditions, and they can use both of those lenses at once or, or maybe i-in an alternating fashion.

Um, the hard part, the question of, like, appropriation is a really tough one because it, it is, y-y-you know, it is r- often very thin.

Like, the way that we, um, as settlers engage with Indigenous cultures, even when it's sincere, is like, can feel really thin and kind of just, uh, like a, it's like a colorful scarf.

There's a sense of truly being held by something bigger than you-