Theoretical Apparatus

In 1708, German physicist Georg Stahl theorized that an element he dubbed “anima” was the source of vitality in all beings. This idea, shaped by the anthropologist Edward Tylor’s philosophical musings, gave rise to the concept of Animism (Harvey 3). Animism can be simply defined as the attribution of conscious life to objects in nature or to inanimate objects. However, the notion of animism, through centuries of philosophical and empirical exploration, has proven not to be encapsulated in a singular, refined definition. Furthermore, Animist religious traditions have been prevalent long before any philosopher has pinpointed it as a term of concern, and this rabbit hole of historical background further complicates the term(Smith 1). Animism is regarded as the oldest form of religion and man's first attempt at philosophical and explanatory thinking. These ideas developed in a world devoid of intercultural and intercontinental connections, curating distinction and uniqueness across all animist religions. To understand Animism to its fullest extent, it is first and foremost vital to address the evolution of the term and differentiate the two contrasting branches. Because animistic thought has been taken up by a myriad of Western Philosophers across centuries, their respective definitions of the term “animism” alone do little to distinguish between intellectual traditions. The real divide lies in their underlying assumptions. The split is constituted by modernists and post-modernists. Modernist thinkers tend to frame animism as a primitive or childish misinterpretation of the natural world, a stage to be outgrown. Postmodern scholars, by contrast, reinterpret animism as a meaningful relational framework, one that encourages respect, reciprocity, and ethical engagement with the more-than-human world(Smith 2).

Around half a century after Stahl's alchemical deliberations, what scholars now refer to as Modernist Animism was born. David Hume’s “A Natural History of Religion” published in 1757, contains an eloquently expressed passage that constructs the foundations of old or modernist Animism: “There is a universal tendency amongst mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious”(Hume 29). In this account, animism is not a philosophical idea that nature possesses spirit; it is psychological evidence that the human mind instinctively projects its own interior life onto external reality. This framing of Animism as an inevitability, a natural response to being confronted with an unfamiliar phenomenon and unexplainable event, casts the idea as an error born from primitive thought. Contemporary Philosopher Graham Harvey interprets the quote: “This imaginative faculty or tendency is beautiful as poetry, but as religion and philosophy it is absurd, vulgar, and ignorant”(Harvey 4). Hume's sentiments, although relevant, do not explicitly cite the term “animism”. The father of Anthropology, Edward Tylor, takes Hume's ideas of human nature into the lens of Animism. He believes that Animism was not only the earliest and most primitive form of religion, but also remains definitive of the concept of religion itself (Tylor 2016). Tylor believes Animism not only to be a mistake, but the first one ever committed in the history of Human intellectual thought. He dramatically states that: “Everyone who has seen visions while light-headed in fever, everyone who has ever dreamt a dream, has seen the phantoms of objects as well as of persons”(Tylor 2016). From this psychological confusion, Tylor argues, arises the idea of the soul. Once the soul is posited, it becomes easy to extend that concept outward: if humans have spirits, perhaps animals do; if animals do, perhaps trees, rivers, and storms do as well. Tylor Claims: “Animism does not arise from objective scientific observation, but relies too heavily on the senses supported by dreams and visions”(Tylor 453). Tylor frames the history of religion as a gradual correction of the idea of animacy, a progression from animism to polytheism to monotheism, and eventually toward Western scientific rationality. Taken together, Hume and Tylor solidify what would become the modernist understanding of animism: not as a legitimate ontology, but as a cognitive misstep. This form of thought reduces complex Indigenous cosmologies to misinterpretation and treats spiritual worldviews as intellectual immaturity. Despite their belittling ideology, it is important to acknowledge that these Modernist thinkers still laid the foundation that contemporary scholars build upon, and their dismissal would not go unchallenged.

Breaking away from the prejudiced modernist ideologies, social and scientific exploration of Animism bloomed into a period of renaissance in the late 20th century, and a whole host of philosophers headlined post-modernist thinking(Smith 5). These post-modernists differed in their definitions of animism, but together were adamant that the study of this term served to build a more interconnected, relationship-oriented world. Postmodernism seems an ironic term, but it simply represents the rejection of radical Enlightenment ideals, ideals that seem modern and innovative, namely that scientific inquiry was the only valid viewpoint in the world of ontology and anthropology(Smith 5). Postmodernist thinking removes this constricting lens and expands the possibilities in our intellectual interpretations of the world. This mode of inquiry gave rise to three separate interpretations of animist ideology(Smith 6). Tim Ingold champions an active and experiential interpretation. He writes that animism is “a condition of being alive to the world, characterized by a heightened sensitivity and responsiveness, in perception and action, to an environment that is always in flux, never the same from one moment to the next”(Ingold 2005). Ingold shifts Animism from a belief to active participation. He does not assert that non-living objects possess vital spirits; instead, he reminds us to engage with the world as if this were true. The world is a construct of our perspective; it is what we choose it to be. Ingold embraces postmodernism, rejecting the scientific model of a stable reality and establishing a world in flux. This idea fundamentally expands our community, extending the preconceived habits of interpersonal relations into our treatment of the world at large. Writers such as Annie Dillard build upon this “enactivist animism” through perspectivism, recognizing relationships as mutual and reciprocal. Instead of the classic thought experiment: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it really make a sound?” she chooses to ask: “What if I fell in a forest: would a tree hear?” (Dillard 89). Whether intentional or unintentional, writers such as Dillard continue to forge a world characterized by the recognition of relationships. This leads into the next branch of Animism: the social-relational. This is the interpretation most deeply intertwined with and inspired by Indigenous studies conducted by Irving Hallowell. This approach has been championed by Graham Harvey, who summarizes the animist’s belief as the position that “the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others”(Harvey 1). In his definition, Harvey avoids the use of the terms “spirits” and “souls”, which may be misconstrued as acts of metaphysical confusion. He centers his ideologies on the word “persons.” This word may, in turn, confuse his efforts with Anthropomorphism(the attribution of human characteristics to animals or inanimate objects), yet he is deliberately utilizing persons instead of the grammatically correct people. In this framework, he is redefining the idea of personhood. People, homo sapiens, are fundamentally just a subset of persons, as in, under his definition, any being capable of entering a meaningful relationship. Gift-giving plants, the flowing rivers, the landscapes we are all tethered to, they can all form relationships. Scholar Nurit Bird-David builds upon Harvey's and Hallowell's ideas; not only does she continue the struggle against modernist intellectualism and the notion that indigenous wisdom is inherently erroneous, but she also irons out some of the cracks in Hallowell's work. She promotes the use of the Nakya term Devrau, which, in Graham Harvey's eyes, “illustrates how radical a challenge indigenous notions offer to Western culture whether its views are taken-for-granted or theorized” (Harvey 20).She refuses to translate devrau as spirit or soul, as an adamant act of rejection of modernist and colonialist ideologies. From this dismissal, she birthed the idea of “superpersons” in contrast to Hallowell’s “other than human persons,” in an attempt to rebuff the implication that only humanity is definitive of personhood (Harvey 2014). This brings the idea of perspectivism, as used in Anna Dillard's literature, back into the picture, as Bird chooses to consider that from a tree’s perspective, humanity should, in turn, be considered “other than tree persons.” This idea of perspectivism bridges the gap between Social relational animism and the last major form of postmodernist interpretation, the ontological perspective (Smith 5). As investigated by Viveiros de Castro, perspectivism is the notion that “Jaguars see the blood they drink as beer, while vultures see maggots as grilled fish. They see their fur, feathers, claws, beaks, and so forth as cloaks and jewelry. In addition, they have their own social system organized in the same way as human institutions are”(Harvey 110). This is a largely radical idea that seems to posit that animals have a level of intellectual maturity similar to that of humankind. These interpretations fit only the ideologies of the cultures studied by Castro and represent a more extreme version of the widely discussed idea of interiority and exteriority: For theorists in this school, such as the writer Phillipe Descola, objects and subjects may differ in their exteriority (physical states), but share universal interiorities (subjective or private states of experience). Logically, this interiority extends to participation in social systems and even in ethical codes, thereby underscoring an undeniable need for kinship (Harvey 111).

These postmodernist schools of thought were all, at some point in their development, inspired by rich and complex cultures of religion and history(Smith 6). When resources were abundant, and our Earth was happy, these cultures were only slaughtered, but those who survived were subjected to marginalization, cultural erasure, and called out for participating in laughable intellectual pursuits. Yet now, as the world is crumbling before our eyes, we find ourselves crawling back to the ideas they have held for millennia. Yet it is always better late than never, and I want to participate in this glorious renaissance of progressive thought. Not only can the study of Animism provide a multicultural lens that restores appreciation for forgotten but still existent cultures, but these different perspectives can also converge on the common goal of fostering a more respectful and uplifting engagement with the world around us. The study of animism is a fight for environmental justice in every way. Environmental justice is typically framed in political terms: an equitable distribution of environmental burdens and harms. The fight for Environmental Justice focuses on protecting vulnerable communities, who contribute less to environmental issues, from ecological harm. The key to Environmental Justice, however, lies in the recognition that Environmental and Cultural degradation are not separate struggles. The same colonial movements that extracted resources from the land shunned the knowledge of the people who understood it best. The same ideological fallacy that classified nature as a commodity classified indigenous cosmologies as primitive superstition. The destruction and dehumanization of the land and its stewards were driven by the same logical missteps. Engaging with animist thought seriously, then, is not just to return dignity and some semblance of righteousness to the Indigenous communities, but also to begin to remedy the long string of mistakes that led us to a planetary state on the brink of ruin. These different animist cultures have given rise to a wide variety of literary and cultural texts, and through the study of these primary sources and a secondary analysis of other scholars' work, this creative portfolio contributes to spreading the ideas of Animism. I fully recognize that, as a pupil of Western Scholarship, my work could include inescapable biases, but through extensive and substantial research, as well as a year immersed in non-traditional environmental education, I aim to remove as many of the flaws that come from my inherent positionality.

One of the most illuminating entry points into animist thought is indigenous linguistics. The idea of animism within language is one that is not substantively explored by Western frameworks, and can only be fully explicated by diving into the wonderfully complex indigenous languages. “Animisms are not carefully constructed philosophical systems. They are messy, evolving attempts to live well in particular communities, in particular places at particular times” (Harvey 2014). This quote is exemplified by the case study of Ojibwe grammar and traditions. Namely, the ways they are able to cultivate relationships with “other-than-human-persons” through speech patterns and customs. In the 1930s, Irving Hallowell asked an unnamed old man among the Ojibwe of the Beren’s River in Manitoba, ‘Are all the stones we see about us here alive?’ He reflected a long while and then replied, “No! But some are” (Hallowell 1960) When studying the linguistic and cognitive patterns of Ojibwe animism, it is first and foremost important to recognize that it presents formal differentiation between animate and inanimate nouns through suffixes(Hallowell 1960).There is a clear set of rules for this grammatical division, yet the objects participating in this variance seem to lack any sort of logical consistency. This is represented thoroughly in the entries of “Concise Dictionary of Ojibwe.” While ‘rock cliff, aazhibik(oon) is grammatically inanimate, a ‘rock for sweat lodge’, madoodoowasin (iig) is grammatically animate. The sweat lodge itself, madoodiswan, is inanimate. Sweetgrass, w iingashk, is inanimate while tobacco is animate. A canoe, jiimaan, is inanimate, but a canoe rib, waaginaa, is animate. All trees are grammatically animate, but an interesting example is that of birch, wiigwaasi-mitig, which is animate, but its bark, wiigwaas, is inanimate. Even the act of removing the bark is considered an animate transitive verb. Furthermore, variance in logical consistency also extends across different regions of the Ojibwe language. Palms are inanimate in Minnesota, as ninagaakininjiin, but animate in Lac du Flambeau, as ningaakaninjiig(Nichols and Nyholm). These seemingly objective errors in language construction are explained by Irving Hallowell as the fundamental piece of Animist construction in their culture. He hypothesizes, “Obijiwa are not animists in the sense that they dogmatically attribute living souls to inanimate objects,” and “It does not involve a consciously formulated theory. The crucial test is experience”(Hallowell 25). These animate and inanimate distinctions do not arise from carefully executed and planned systems. Instead, they are slowly developed through generations of deeply connected interactions with nature, an interweaving system of passion and daily experiences. Animacy in the Ojibwe culture is an ever-evolving structure, active in its construction. It is not deliberately curated to establish a stronger connection with their land, but it bloomed from this inseverable attachment and attentive observation of the world around them. The process itself is organic, in and of itself an animate, almost living framework. The Ojibwa recognize a “priori”, the potential for objects to take on life and soul if certain characteristics are observed(Harvey 26). The deeper lesson of Ojibwe animism is not that one should simply pretend objects are alive, nor that personhood is casually granted to whatever surrounds us. Rather, it is that relationship precedes classification. To draw inspiration from this framework, then, is not to romanticize nature or to impose spirituality on objects. It is to practice attentiveness and active engagement. This animist framework encourages people to slow down, interact with nature through observation and appreciation. The framework suggests that life in the natural world is not projected onto it by flaws in the human psyche, as Hume and Tylor insisted, but discovered through the quality of one's engagement with the objects. An object does not become animate because we decide it should be; it reveals its animacy to those patient and attentive enough to observe it over time. This simplifies the idea of animism, from a fantastical, almost mystical power of attributing life, it becomes a simple, tangible act of observation. Our adamant cognitive foundations, born of the Western Enlightenment, can not be corrected through a mere rewording or the addition of a gender to distinguish animacy. As evidenced through Irving Hallowell's field experience with the Ojibwa, they are not even particularly aware of the grammatical choices they are making; it becomes organic and natural through their engagement with nature. From Hallowell's work, the application of animistic ideas to creative literature becomes increasingly clear. There are already myriad examples of novels in which characters' engagement with natural objects is central to the narrative, and even more in which certain flora transform stories as motifs. This characterization technique is becomes clearer when examined through a novel such as The Pearl by John Steinbeck. The pearl is, by all definitions of the word, not alive. It does not speak, think, or move of its own accord. Yet it governs the entire trajectory of the narrative. Kino’s identity, which at the beginning of the novella is rooted in family, rhythm, and inherited practice, becomes gradually reorganized around this single object. As the novel continues, the pearl becomes increasingly animate, not through its physical or cognitive characteristics, but by the presence and pressure it exerts. From an animist-influenced perspective, the pearl demonstrates how a seemingly inert object can function as a crucial participant in a narrative arc. However, there are still ways of how the story could be more rooted in the ideas of Ojibwa animism. One might imagine scenes in which the protagonist begins to perceive anthropomorphic features in the Pearl. This narrative point would echo the ethnographic accounts simplified and transcribed by Irving Hallowell, in which the Ojibwe chief describes particular stones as exhibiting recognizable facial characteristics: “It had contours that suggest eyes and mouth. When my great-grandfather was a leader of the Midewiwin, he used to tap the stone with a new knife; it would then open its mouth”(Hallowell 24). A comparable development in the novel could involve Kino gradually discerning increasing “aliveness” in the pearl, shifting from regarding it as an object of exchange to engaging it as a presence, mirroring the Ojibwe habit to “speak with animate stone persons”(Harvey 26). Kino could also begin hearing the Pearl speaking to him, as he taps it against a table, for example, this is parallel to the Ojibwe treatment of the stone persons near Bell Rock, where they “invoke the power of the stones by striking them”(Hallowell and Brown 56) in an attempt to hear them speak. Crucially, these episodes should remain narratively ambiguous. The text should not confirm whether the pearl’s animacy is a psychological projection, a thorough hallucination, or a magical realist transformation. This destabilization could extend linguistically: Kino might also begin slipping up in his language, changing pronouns and sentence structures when he talks about the pearl to others, signaling a shift in relational stance that mirrors Ojibwe grammar. These can all be plot points that complicate his descent to greed and corruption. Finally, a central feature of an Ojibwe-informed animist narrative should be that engagement with the natural world functions as a source of relational balance and flourishing, contrasting with the psychological and moral untangling presented in The Pearl. This narrative pattern is to ensure loyalty to Ojibwe ideals and reasons for ecological engagement. The principal goal of the Ojibwe lifestyle is worded pimadaziwin: live life to the fullest(Harvey 48). In their eyes, this goal cannot be achieved without a communal relationship with other-than-human persons. To construct a narrative in which these relations are primarily destructive rather than generative not only departs from foundational Ojibwe commitments, but also undermines the very function of the narrative itself. I do not want my creative portfolio to be filled with neutral literary pleasures; instead, I want it to be an active tool for cultivating attentiveness, responsibility, and connection to the natural world. By analyzing this literary classic in this way, I am not attempting to participate in the erasure of Indigenous ideology, but rather to show how we can transform traditional English texts into ones that uplift Indigenous animist traditions. I want to bridge the gap between traditional Western literature and Indigenous forms of thought, laying the foundation for seamlessly incorporating animist traditions into mainstream literature. By using The Pearl as a medium for this transition, I am not only helping myself better understand how to write Animist-inspired literature, but also beginning to debunk the idea that Western and Indigenous ideas cannot overlap.

Under the Weight of snow is a piece that explores the development of a bond between a human and natural object. The river’s animacy is built up through repeated interaction, and even at the conclusion of the story, the ambiguity of the true nature of the river still stands strong. The impact of this relationship was ultimately positive for the protagonist, convincing her to return to her troubled life and face the consequences that were weighing down her psyche. The use of language was also explored as a representation of animacy as the narrator stumbles with pronouns in her letters, with these moments being a key indicator of the development of the animistic relationship. These characteristics of the story were all derived from the Ojibwe animist tradition, drawing on the traditions from a more thematic than spiritual standpoint.

In contrast to the Objiwe’s relationality, the Runa animist culture originating from Ecuador’s upper Amazon is rooted in perspectivism. Anthropologist Eduardo Kohn lived amongst the Runa people for four years to immerse himself in their rich and unique ontological view. Kohn’s book, How Forests Think, which breaks down these interactions, opens with an experience that reflects the core animist belief of the Runa people. His Runa companion, Juanicu, warms him: “Sleep faceup! If a jaguar comes he’ll see you can look back at him and he won’t bother you. If you sleep facedown he’ll think you’re aicha [prey; lit., “meat” in Quichua] and he’ll attack”(Kohn 1). The Runa people live in what Kohn deems “an ecology of selves”(Kohn 2). They face head-on the reality that seeing, understanding, and thinking are not exclusively human traits. They believe in a world of different kinds of selves, where animals can perceive, misperceive, and have their own unique points of view. This worldview stems from the idea that life is constitutively semiotic, a construct from the interpretation of signs. Every organism interprets signs, interacts with them, reacts with them, and in doing so constructs a self. Kohn believes that: “Appreciating life and thought in this manner changes our understanding of what selves are and how they emerge, dissolve, and also merge into new kinds of we as they interact with the other beings that make the tropical forest their home in that complex web of relations”(Kohn 16). They believe ontologically that they live in this web of relationality, and then logically, they try to uphold their obligations of kinship. The root of the Runa people’s animism, then, is not spiritual or religious, but simply a shift in perspective, and also fascinatingly enough, necessity. They transform themselves from the primary subjects in the rainforest they live in, to just one group of many. Kohn describes it: “We are not the only kind of we”(Kohn 17). Losing the ability to see the world in this manner would sever the Runa from this reciprocal web. Employing Western civilization's exploitative perspective would not only be disrespectful but also catastrophic for the Runa people. Kohn believes that: “It would be impossible for people in Ávila to hunt or to relate in any other way within this ecology of selves without treating the myriad beings that inhabit the forest as the animate creatures that they are” (Kohn 118). This observation is extremely fascinating when compared with the other animist cultures mentioned in this paper. The Runa’s beliefs do not stem from an innate spiritual connection with nature, like the Khasi, or from intimate observations and interactions with nature, like the Objiwe; they stem from a place of survival. This is also illustrated by the first story Kohn describes, if the Runa people were not wary of the jaguars' perspective, there would likely be many casualties in these encounters. This interpretation could explain why Kohn’s fieldwork yielded mostly results pertaining to the relationships between humans and animals. However, from this ontological necessity arises an inherent respect and care for the forest around them. This acknowledgment then produces respect for plants and the environment as a whole, which might not display interactions with signs as explicitly as animals do. Kohn notes that, within the Runa animist belief, “selfhood is not limited just to animals with brains. Plants are also selves” (Kohn 75). They are capable of interpreting signs, reacting to them, and thus capable of participating in the web of relationality. Plant communication is more than just a Runa cultural belief; it has slowly become a well-established field in modern science. With a history of colonization of culture and traditions, Western civilization has finally reached a stage in scientific development that rivals the ancient beliefs of forgotten people. In an attempt to participate meaningfully in the forest community, the Runa people altered their language to engage, however subtly, with the world around them. Maxi, a Runa teenager, tells a story to Kohn: “The wounded animal ran off toward a little river and... “tsupu.”” Kohn deliberately leaves this word untranslated, since it reveals a crucial aspect of the Runa language. The boy explains that: “Tsupu, or tsupuuuh, as it is sometimes pronounced, with the final vowel dragged out and aspirated, refers to an entity as it makes contact with and then penetrates a body of water; think of a big stone heaved into a pond or the compact mass of a wounded peccary plunging into a river's pool”(Kohn 27). In essence, it is remarkably similar to the English onomatopoeia. Kohn offers a unique understanding: words like tsupsu transcend the boundaries of language; they are instead signs, ones that can reach beyond human selves. This bypassing of the human language system is simply a way to communicate with the community beyond their own, with the forest’s complex web. There are numerous examples of these words in the Runa language, with far more variety, flavor, and the ability to convey much more than their English counterparts. Pu-oh, for example, covers the entire arc of a tree falling, from the snap, the swish, and the thump. These icons are imperfect in many ways, but their extensive use within the language is an acknowledgment that there is animacy beyond humans, that human language should not only aim to allow other humans to understand, but also to invite in other-than-human selves.

The ecology of selves, perspectivism, and the marked shift in language are all components that could contribute to a creative writing piece. A direct interpretation could be a perspectivist memoir, a story told from the standpoint of an other-than-human self. It could be a reimagining of a classic, a familiar story unfolding from a brand-new point of view, a story full of shifting perspectives, with each member of the web pulling their pieces together to build a complete picture, or short and sweet poetry. Crucial characteristics would be to hold perspectives without hierarchy and impose a self onto animals or plants that are fundamentally different from their human counterparts. This distinguishes the Runa beliefs from the perspectivist ideology of Viveiros de Castro, in which all subjects and objects share the same interiority. This distinction ensures animism doesn’t become personification, so as not to preach that only human-like consciousness is respectable or considered alive. Finally, I want to apply the idea of icon-focused language as a tool with which more-than-human selves attempt to communicate with one another and with the human world. This idea of perspectivism and the way the Runa frame animism are so crucial to creating the respectful and uplifting portfolio I am aiming for. It is so important to reflect the idea that not only human consciousness and perception define aliveness, and the Runa culture does just that. If reflected accurately within the Creative portfolio, it can be a tool to dispel inaccurate yet justifiable thoughts such as: “How can plants be alive if they are so different from Animals and Humans?” The Runa-inspired creative writing piece must reflect a certain level of scientific accuracy in plant communication and response, while also creating a key distinction between the narration of a plant and that of a human. The Intruder is a haibun that tells the story of a visiting human from the perspective of a tree. I tried my best to create narrative differences between human and plant, with the tree only perceiving things that a plant can logically perceive. Throughout the haibun, the narrator displays no signs of human like intellect or understanding subtly, and communicates and responds to iconography and mycorrhizal network signals. Through the interaction of The Intruder and in the natural cove, the narrator slowly accepts the person as part of the web of life, and is not indifferent when the intruder no longer returns to that same spot. These interactions mirror the Runa situating themselves within the web of life inside the Amazonian rainforest. Although I couldn’t particularly figure out how the human could communicate in iconography to the tree, except through the unintentional vibrations sent through the ground with each heavy step. That limitation is definitely worth exploring.

While the Runa soften the barrier between human and natural communities, the Aboriginal traditions of central Australia, including those of the Warlpiri, Arrernte, and Pitjantjatjara dismantle the distinction completely. Within these cultures, Animism is embedded in the structure of the land itself. There are two main modes of Aboriginal animist understanding. First, the land and landscape themselves are animate because they can act on and interact with human and animal ecologies. This proactive perspective is only a simple shift, requiring no spiritual or religious backbone. It is an idea that can be easily adopted without flipping the very basis of the Western Scientific worldview. Graham Harvey opens his case study with the declaration: “Everything begins and ends with land. More precisely, particular lands place everything, everyone, and every happening in relation to and communion with one another” (Harvey 66). In Aboriginal tradition, the land is alive due to its formative properties. It interacts directly with the human and animal worlds, creating opportunities for connection. Unlike Western narratives, they do not view landscape as a backdrop to stories or scenery in the traditional sense; the land is part of the “drama of life.” More specifically, Harvey attests that, in the Aboriginal view, “Lands erupt into life and fully engage with the emergent and proliferating diversity”(Harvey 66). This is similar to the Ojibwiwe ideas of relationality, of how objects transform into subjects when they present themselves capable of acting upon and participating in the world of the living. However, unlike the Ojibwe, in which Animacy has to be almost earned and proven by each individual object, the Aboriginal people believe that the land itself, including the rocks, trees, and so on growing from it, is inherently animistic, a more direct and radical ontological perspective. “In all of this, what is certain is that the lands are alive. Places are active participants in everything that happens on or in them. Indeed, most of what happens at particular places is because those places are acting”(Harvey 73). Where does this assumption come from? One of the most defining aspects of Aboriginal animistic culture is the idea of what is loosely translated as Dreaming Persons. This second mode is by far more challenging, and even after extensive fieldwork, select Western scholars still originally misinterpreted the idea of Dreaming persons. Scholar Nancy Munn argues, in her paper “The Transformation of Subjects into Objects,” that the objects produced by the process of Dreaming Persons are “thought to contain something of [the ancestor] himself within it, and the various creative modes all imply a consubstantial relationship between the ancestor and his objectifications... The number of distinctive ancestors is indefinite, and the objects they create constitute, in effect, the total, non-sentient environment as epitomized by the country itself ” (Munn 145). She explicitly states that these objects only contain something of the ancestor, not a direct transmission of interiority. Furthermore, she directly refers to them as objectifications, dismantling the framework of relationality that the Aboriginal people are trying to facilitate. It is the Aboriginal reinterpretation of spirits and consciousness within inanimate objects. This interpretation directly contradicts the continued fieldwork and analysis provided by John Bradley and Graham Harvey. Differentiating them from the Khasi spirits is crucial to understanding the nuances of this aboriginal ideology. Dreaming Persons are not simply synonymous with ancestral spirits; they are the form in which all Aboriginal ancestors live on. The exterior is lost, but the interior remains the same. Harvey is explicit: “Dreamings transform themselves without ceasing to be themselves. They become rocks, stories, humans, kangaroos, boards, and so on at the same time — or, rather, in the same place — that they express themselves in any of the many alternative transformations open to them”(Harvey 74). From an Aboriginal ontological understanding, objects of nature are not merely vessels but are simply a different expression of their ancestors before their time. They transform into the landscape without ceasing to be themselves. One revealing Aboriginal account of Dreaming Persons in scholarly literature comes from the fieldwork of Anthropologist John Bradley who relays the words of Mussoloni Harvey, a Yanyuwa man from the northeast sector of the Northern Territory.

“ White people ask us all the time, what is Dreaming? This is a hard question because dreaming is a really big thing for Aboriginal people. In our language, Yanyuwa, we call the dreaming Yijan. The Dreamings made our Law or narnu-Yuwa. This Law is the way we live, our rules. This Law is our ceremonies, our songs, our stories; all of these things came from the Dreaming... The Dreamings are our ancestors, no matter if they are fish, birds, men, women, animals, wind or rain. It was these Dreamings that made our Law.

All things in our country have Law, they have ceremony and song, and they have people who are related to them” (Bradley 50).

The quote not only reinforces Harvey's interpretations of Aboriginal Animism, but it also reveals the extent to which animist ideologies govern the rules of Aboriginal society. Rules and customs cannot be altered by time, colonization, or new governmental structures. The reverence the Aboriginal people place upon the ontology of Dreaming Persons is not only unshakeable but inclusive. It has become an undeniable feature of their ecology, inscribed in both the rules of law and the principles of science. The way Dreaming Persons bring inanimate objects into the fold means people treat them not just as equals but almost as superiors. Rose further develops her own concept of country, extending this animistic understanding to its full implications: “Persons are located in country, and country too can be conceptualized as a person in the sense that it is self-organizing, sentient, autonomous, and interdependent with other countries” (Rose 38). Countries, in her definition, become an intimate community interconnected by the travel of Dreaming persons and are also autonomous through their interactions with the human world. “People say that country knows, hears, smells, takes notice, takes care, is sorry, or happy. Country is a living entity with a yesterday, today, and tomorrow, with a consciousness, and a will toward life”(Rose 40). These conclusions raise interesting academic questions: if countries are indeed persons, can they not feel, can they not take on the same biases of xenophobia? Questions like these are explored by the study of sentient ecologies and can be connected to these Aboriginal ideologies, providing an interesting layer for the creative piece. Alexandra Cotofana, in the introduction to Sentient Ecologies: Xenophobic Imaginaries of Landscape, poses the challenge: “The central question of the volume is how can we think with sentient landscapes without just romanticizing them as pure, kind, Gaia-like”(Cotofana 5)? If a country can indeed be recognized as a person, the majority of scholars believe that human traits cannot be selectively applied. Personhood carries certain innate flaws to counterbalance its virtues; the country must then be imagined as having the full range of possibilities. Cotofana states plainly: “To be Indigenous or to be a sentient landscape does not mean to always be good. We must extend the argument to recognize the fullness and complexity of all sentient beings”(Cotofana 12) This is a completely valid interpretation, since stripping away this complexity may indeed diminish the humanity of the land itself. However, it is important to note that animation should not be defined by humanity; landscapes and countries do not have to mirror human traits exactly to be considered animate in all contexts, but within aboriginal animism, displaying a full range of human emotional capabilities would be suitable. This is why I believe that this xenophobic interpretation of sentient ecology is not the most ideal inclusion within my creative portfolio. Not only does attributing undoubtedly human flaws to landscapes undermine the argument that human interiority is not the only form of aliveness, but it also invites misconstruing these flaws as invitations to continue disruptive behavior towards the land. If we only cared about the land we have a physical or national connection to, what happens when interests clash or pull in completely different directions? We need to construct the mindset that all land is equally worth preserving and protecting.

The Aboriginal animist framework presents a unique challenge for the creative writer. In conventional narratives, the manipulations of settings are often underappreciated as an art in creative writing. The location a character is placed in could be a reflection of their interiority, a driver of their emotions, or even simply a physical obstacle. Reinterpreting the importance of setting in creative endeavors from an Aboriginal animist perspective, Western authors have already given these landscapes life; they have endowed them with the ability to interact with and change the course of a story. However, I want to push one step beyond this trope in order to fully explore the potential of Aboriginal culture developing within creative writing. The challenge arises from the attempt to remove the setting altogether, transforming it into a proactive agent capable of feeling, hating, and loving. Furthermore, on top of this dramatic shift of backdrop, an Aboriginal-inspired narrative should acknowledge the Dreaming Persons. In the case of the creative portfolio, it would be fascinating to track the journey of such a spirit, from human to more-than-human persons. These leaps, the shifting perspective towards people, and also the lack of setting, are difficult to execute with traditional prose. Poetry, with its concision and ambiguity, would be better suited to capture these nuanced and unexplored narrative methods. The Aboriginal idea of dreaming persons is another interesting aspect of the Runa culture that can have a myriad of applications in creative writing. The difference between Dreaming Persons and traditional animist ideas of souls is that Aboriginal people believe most inanimate natural objects are simply vessels for their ancestors, whereas other animist cultures attribute a unique interiority to them. This distinction is crucial to the creative writing portfolio because it offers opportunities to explore the interconnection between humans and nature. The idea of a dreaming person characterizes all natural subjects or objects in Aboriginal land as possessing the same inherent human interiority, that nature and humanity are one and the same, just occupying different shells. If this interpretation is accepted and adopted, it could remove the damning human-nature gap entirely, more effectively than even the Runa ideas of the web of life. These implications indicate that it is of utmost importance that I show common interiority between humans and inanimate objects, without forgetting the obvious physical limitations imposed by a different outer shell.

The Endless Dawn tracks a soul's journey throughout different forms and across different generations. I try my best to maintain the same interiority of the love for the sun, but experienced through the lens of three different outer shells with different abilities to perceive and experience. The last paragraph encapsulates the Aboriginal Animist tradition, and the whole poem tries to create seamless transitions to show that each one of these lives bleed into one another, and are inseparable. One idea I couldn’t replicate within the writing was completely removing the idea of a setting, it is extremely difficult to reinvent writing conventions and removing the need for a backdrop entirely. It would be extremely convoluted to treat each aspect of the backdrop as a distinct character.

One continent has been left out of the Animist conversation within the apparatus: Asia. The traditions examined so far share a common assumption: that the relationship between humans and the more-than-human world is or should be grounded in love, kinship, and reciprocal care. This animist tradition complicates this picture in a way that is essential for the intellectual integrity of this portfolio. This section outlines case studies from the book Animism in Southeast Asia. Timo Kaartinen's chapter on animist ontology in Maluku, the Indonesian Archipelago, arrives at a question that sits at the center of every tradition examined in this portfolio: what makes something a person? Not what is a person, but what makes something one, what activates personhood in a being that might otherwise be treated as an object or a force. This perspective on the basis of animism has proven the most digestible, mirroring Kohn's analysis of the Runa's iconography. Kaartinen's interpretation of the Maluku’s animism is that a spirit object possesses a spirit when relationships can be successfully developed with it. Maluku's definition is that “A relationship with a spirit means that one gets a predictable response when one repeats a certain act or gesture in the spirit's presence. This response — imagined or not — is a sign of the spirit's awareness of rules, or positive schemes of action, an awareness which is one hallmark of human consciousness”(Kaartinen 220). This relationality-based Animism seems to overlap with the Objiwe ideals, but the Maluku’s understanding of relationships makes them a unique subject of analysis when pitted alongside the Objiwe culture. Similar to the Objiwe, consciousness is not attributed without cause, and similar to the Runa, there is a key identifying factor that distinguishes the inanimate from the animate. However, this Maluku idea of a predictable and consistent response outlined by Kaartinen is an interesting differentiating factor, redefining the concept of animated personhood (Kaartinen). Logically, different cultures and scholars view behavior as a fluctuating attribute, and animistic relationships are usually marked not by consistent behavior but by a mutual sense of respect and recognition. These stringent ideals stem from their intensive rule system, defined by the existence of Guardian spirits in Maluku Ontology. The Guardian spirits, the tuan tanah, are believed to have owned the land long before humans set foot, and, as in the Objiwe culture, animacy is not assigned by humans but rather discovered through repeated encounters and the development of consistent relationships. Kaartinen observes that: “Eastern Indonesian places and landscapes are always already owned by spirits and people. A similar notion of spirit ownership is found in the highland societies of Papua New Guinea, and Janowski reports it among the Kelabit of Sarawak. An imagined chain between present and former landowners extends beyond village boundaries and historical memory and connects particular groups and places to each other” (Kaartinen 221). The guardian spirits act almost like a landlord, temporarily passing ownership to a family and allowing them to inhabit parts of their land. Before house-building, a family must perform a ritual in which they graciously accept the land as a gift. Kaartinen has observed this in his field work, and he describes it in detail: “The residents of the new house present betel leaves and areca nut to the spirit owner of the land where their house will stand, and smear each house-post with the blood of a young chicken offered on the site. After this, they raise the central pole that will hold up the roof”(Kaartinen 221). With the pre-existence of spirits come pre-existing, ironclad rules. These rules, as defined by Kaartinen, are almost a sort of stability, an obligation that generates the very structure of Maluku society. These rules are not abstract moral principles, such as reciprocity, but a series of local, non-transferable obligations. It is crucial to understand that these laws are not universal moral codes; each place has its own guardian, and each guardian dictates both the rules, their enforcement, and the punishing agents. Kaartinen asserts that: “Social conventions exist against the background of a non-human world more powerful than the human one. (Kaartinen 232)” This idea is powerful because it rejects the assumption that human communities should define our relationships with the more-than-human world. If a culture recognizes other agents within nature, then they should not then constrain their relationships with them within the confines of human-to-human interactions. It is essential to remember the simple yet elusive fact that the very nature of animism dictates that one does not have to be human-like to be perceived as a subject. Relationships with nature need to be treated with the same kind of open-mindedness. However, the relationship with nature that the Maluku people develop differs significantly from that of the other cultures covered in this apparatus, and it illuminates a key distinction between Amerindian and Asian animist cultures: “Where Amerindian animism expands its notion of humanity to the entire lived world, the Eastern Indonesian societies discussed in this article are concerned with maintaining a differentiated social humanity”(Kaartinen 232). The Eastern Indonesian societies possess a fear of spirits residing in nature that Amerindian cultures do not. The Maluku ideals of animism cause them to tread cautiously, living in fear of overstepping their boundaries and inviting the wrath and punishment nature is dictated by the stringent rule of law; it is emotionless, characterized by a lack of care and empathy, and contrasts starkly with the other cultures covered in this apparatus. These key distinctions need to be reflected not only in the content of the creative piece but also in its form. A parallel to this relationship can be found in Western civilization: the landlord and the tenant. The landlord holds unequivocal power in this dynamic, just as guardians hold power over humans; they also own the property before the tenants arrive, with the tenants' stay being only temporary and of short duration compared to the landlord's ownership. This mirrors exactly the relationship between the tuan tanah and people, one that is constructed not by respect or care, but by binding legal documents. Modified prose and poetry are unable to fully capture this sense of formality and professionalism; only a legal document could faithfully illustrate the Maluku animist culture. In this case, the creative writing piece would be a dramatized version of the Notice to remedy breach of tenancy documents that is used to settle legal disputes between tenants and landlords. The complainant would be the spiritual guardian of a specific plot of land, and the respondent would be those humans living within those boundaries who have breached the rigid balance of human and more-than-human interactions. This legal document, in all its rational and emotionless tone, would be a suitable representation of another face of animism, one much colder and less heartwarming than the others explored within this apparatus, offering a unique perspective of animism that does not foster the brand of empathy and care toward nature that Western civilization is aspiring to achieve. This is extremely important to highlight in the portfolio because, first, it shows that not all animist cultures view the relationship between humans and nature as pure and rosy, providing academic integrity. Second, it raises genuinely interesting questions: Does the motivation behind environmental respect matter? If a culture treats the land with reverence out of fear of punishment rather than love, does the land benefit any less? Is fear-based environmental ethics still better than the Western extractive model? Exploring this unique form of Animist interpretation could provide a platform to sway different kinds of people to the cause of environmental justice, those who are not moved by grandiose expressions of love and kindness but are driven by respect and fear.

The notice to replicate breach of tenancy was the boldest piece in my portfolio, and it successfully stood out, mirroring the inherent differences between the Maluku animist traditions and every other animist culture. I was able to translate this formal, contractual feel between the guardian spirits and the people residing upon the land, and capture moments of utter coldness and harshness. However, I don’t feel as though I was able to pair this legal document with an entertaining story, and I was lost within the formality of language and form.

Where the Maluku tradition grounds its animism in law and obligation,, the Khasi animist belief system of Meghalaya, India, falls into a more “stereotypical” framework that most non-scholars would associate with the idea of Animism, as it aligns with the Tylorian ideology. However, what makes their case compelling is the decolonial context in which such cultural forms are diminished yet still persist in the face of colonial modernity and oppression. At the core of Khasi cosmology is a pantheistic philosophy in which the divine, U Blei Nongthaw (the Supreme Creator), is inseparable from the natural world. In this worldview, nature is not merely a resource but the primary manifestation of the divine. From this ideology, the cosmological premise that all entities, living and unliving, are imbued with rngiew, their concept of soul, is born. This force is thought to animate them beyond physical embodiment, extending the Khasi community to include other-than-human persons. In addition to Rngiew, humans were thought to possess Ka Mynseim, differentiating them from other animate beings through the existence of an ethical constitution. From a Western modernist perspective, this could be interpreted as an attempt to establish superiority. However, extrapolating from the Khasis’ reverent customs regarding nature, it is more reasonable to translate this idea as an attempt to establish animism and life as not strictly human attributes. It acknowledges the undeniable differences between humans and their more-than-human kin, yet still establishes a sense of communal recognition. One of the customs that embodies these animist ideals is Ka Nguh ka Dem (the bow and homage), which precedes cutting down even a single tree. The bow and homage are a ritual verbal supplication acknowledging the tree's agency, explaining the human need, and asking for the tree's forgiveness and blessing: “Look here, that I have come to cut you down is not because I detest you or want to destroy you without cause. I have a great need for you. Therefore, allow me, obey me, bend to my will, so I may fell you with a machete or an axe, for even though you may fall now, yet your fame shall rise and grow before God.” This mirrors the enactivist animism described by Tim Ingold, while drawing on the ontological perspective of Post-Modern Animism.

Creative writing that thematically incorporates beliefs from the Khasi framework is conceptually simple. Instead of a gradual attribution of animism to certain objects, as in the Objiwe culture, a short story inspired by the Khasi belief system takes place in a world where humans and non-human persons already exist in a lateral relationship. The narrative will not build toward the animism of a certain object; it begins with this idea as part of the world’s ecology. This is both the most fascinating and the most challenging part of writing within a Khasi-inspired framework. Objects are not described as if they might be animate; they simply are, and the prose must treat this with the same concrete register that realist fiction uses to describe a normal landscape. This form of writing, in which magical elements exist in an otherwise standard reality, may be equated to the common trope of magical realism. Although there are many similarities, including a matter-of-fact tone of voice when magical elements are described or revealed, there are crucial distinctions in how magical realism can portray animist beliefs and how they should be represented. Understanding which literary mode a Khasi-inspired creative work belongs to is not merely a question of classification; it has direct consequences for how the work is written and what it asks of its reader. Given that this creative portfolio is focused on impact, even slight differences in structure should be considered to maximize effectiveness. Scholar Harry Garuba explains that magical realism implicitly places a realistic, rational, and disenchanted world as the baseline, and the magical elements seem to be introduced as more of an intrusion. The genre’s entire pull and charisma comes from this tension and clash between the magical and the realistic. This source of friction, however subtle in the writing, still differs ontologically from what a Khasi-inspired fictional world should be. Using Magical realism situates Khasi Animism as encroaching on reality rather than constituting the consensus reality itself. He summarizes that magical realism “is too limited a concept in its scope to accommodate and describe the literary compositions underwritten by an animistic conception”(Garuba). In an attempt to fill this literary gap, Garuba developed a literary form while studying African indigenous traditions that better serves the creative portfolio. He deemed it “animist realism”, which he describes as the broader subset in which magical realism exists. In an animist realist piece of literature, the world is not just visited by, or invaded by, animist ideas; it is inherently, continuously animate. To be faithful to animist realism and Khasi culture is to construct a world in which relationships with other-than-human persons, as well as enactivist rituals, are the norm, and other narrative elements extend from that fact.

Now that the general framework for the creative piece is established, it is important to iron out crucial details by analyzing existing literature that attempts a similar endeavor with the Khasi culture. One example of this kind of text is Boats On Land, a collection of short stories by Pariat Janice, which is directly influenced by the rich ontology of the Khasi people and draws upon elements of Animacy. The collection's opening story, "A Waterfall of Horses," begins not by kickstarting a plot or introducing characters, but by building an ontology. “Say it. Out loud. Ka ktien. The first is a short, sharp thrust of air from the back of your throat. The second, a lift of the tongue and a delicate tangle of tip and teeth”(Pariat 1). The instruction is pointed directly at the reader. It is an attempt to teach the reader how to inhabit or at least imagine themselves in the world they are about to enter, to establish animacy as deeply rooted within the structure of the world. This is extremely important to recognize: even in professional spheres of writing within the Khasi animist structure, authors struggle to directly implant the ideas of animist realism into the story, and they are not afraid to break literary conventions to establish the world they have constructed. This book doesn’t explicitly focus on the creative endeavor of fostering relationships that I have undertaken in this creative portfolio, but rather the deconstruction of colonization within the animist culture itself, to reveal the true Khasi animism that has been diluted and twisted for such an expansive period of time. Like many indigenous cultures, the Khasi religion has been deeply undermined by colonial agendas. Scholars Mishra and Swaraj recognize that: “Colonialist distortions demonized Khasi animist rites and rituals as malevolent, supernatural, and indicators of native psychopathological afflictions while imperialist Christian proselytizers’ attempts at cultural assimilation brought reformist dispensations” (Swaraj and Mishra 137). This political encroachment doesn’t contribute to a glamorous melding of cultural identities. Instead, because of the contradictory beliefs about exploitation versus relationality, this clash, taking place under unequal power dynamics, leads to the deterioration of the rich animist belief. Those rituals and ideologies that persist are misconstrued, misinterpreted, and misbranded. Therefore, there is an undeniable need to engage in“ epistemological decoloniality of the Khasi animist worldviews”(Swaraj and Mishra 125). One way scholars like Swaraj and Mishra have participated in this endeavor is by drawing parallels between traditional Khasi beliefs with Western Posthumanist notions such as Agential Realism and Vital materialism through expanding the scope of literary criticism. It is just as important, or maybe even more so, to recognize the power of Decoloniality at the creative front, the bold retelling or restorying of indigenous beliefs and narratives. The short story “Dream of the Golden Mahseer” within Boats on Land, for example, participates in this decolonial work through storytelling. The story is told in the first person by Aaron, a man looking back on his childhood in a large, multigenerational family home in Shillong, in the Khasi hills of Meghalaya. It outlines his experience with water spirits and the explanations he was told as a kid regarding one of his mentor's constant disappearances. The story pushes aside animist realist ideals and places two opposing views of animism side by side: the inherent animist ontology, and the Christianized, westernized worldview. First, the incomplete rejection of these ideologies is evident in the younger generation through Dream of the Golden Mahseer. “Only old people believe in all that”(Pariat 46), one character says, in response to the protective mantra left at the door. The Khasi hold the strong belief that mantras are a means of communicating with the more-than-human world. Swaraj and Mishra conclude that: “There are mantras that hungry travelers can chant for an animal to appear before them so they can feed, and to bring clean water from a river, or fruit from a tree” (Swaraj and Mishra 139). Traditional beliefs would hold mantras in reverence, not words to be spurned and looked down upon. Swaraj and Mishra argue that this dismissal is not innocent skepticism but the internalized voice of colonial Christianization, which reframed the puri from complex beings capable of multiple temperaments, benevolent and malevolent, into purely demonic forces The creative writer working in a Khasi-inspired framework must resist the same reductions: the more-than-human world in animist realism is not uniformly kind, and to portray it as such is to commit the same ontological flattening that colonialism did, only in reverse. This inclusion may seem to contradict the exclusion of Xenophobic sentient ecologies, but the ideas from the article were not explicitly stated to be part of the Aboriginal animist culture; it was simply a Western academic extension. On the other hand, the malignant nature of Khasi spirits are encoded within their animist framework, and ignoring them may help build an uplifting portfolio, but it would also participate in the colonization of knowledge that the creative pieces are trying to defeat. The story's closing image is the animist realist answer to this erosion. The narrator, now old, sits by the river fishing. He reflects: "At first, I was steeped in sadness. Then I notice how the air fills with cicadas, the trees cast their trembling shadows on the water, the reeds bow in steady reverence. I realize that no one is truly ever gone. All voices are heard in a river's murmuring" (Pariat 78). Swaraj and Mishra read this as an attempt to show the persistence of animist ontology; the world has not stopped speaking, and is not less alive, simply because a generation has stopped believing (Swaraj and Mishra 144). This is another crucial point that must be mirrored within my Khasi-inspired creative piece. This tension between perception and reality further strengthens the existence of Khasi Animistic ontology and actively participates in decolonization, as readers see throughout the story, as the misplaced beliefs of the Khasi are infiltrated by Western oppression.

Nongriat, tells the story of a town in ruin, unexplainable by science but easily captured by superstition. I wanted to create a classic encroachment between modernity and tradition, a town literally halfway through urbanization, but the rural farming traditions still not far from the mind of the older generation. This clash between older and younger generations was taken directly from Boats on Land and the colonial history of Khasi animism. The most important part is that Animism is a deeply entrenched part of the ecology, and stories inspired by such a culture should always have this ontology prevail above all else. Creating opposition for the confirmation of animist ontology only builds it up. This system of tear down and build up is also taken from Boats on Land, just twisted in a brand new direction.

Across the five animist traditions examined in this portfolio, one argument emerges: the way we speak about and write about the non-human world is not merely a stylistic choice but an ontological one with real consequences for the state of planetary ecology. The Western literary tradition's long habit of staging the natural world as a backdrop and resource is a foundational error that has culminated in centuries of ecological and cultural destruction. What each of these traditions insists, in their distinct ways, is that this gap between the human and the more-than-human is not natural; it was constructed, through the same ideological frameworks that Tylor deployed when he called animism a cognitive error, through the same colonial infrastructure that performed cultural erasure. If it was made, it can be unmade, not only through academic argument but through the irreplaceable and influential work of literature. These five traditions draw upon five distinct perspectives to reach the conclusion that nature is animate, providing separate pathways for varied belief systems to start treating nature with more respect and care. The creative portfolio I created doesn’t serve to convince readers that Animism is the correct religious answer, but that all interpretations of our world inevitably lead to the conclusion that nature deserves respect, and by extension, love and care.