Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations
In this optional (but encouraged!) book club, we'll be exploring Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations, a series that delves into our deep interconnections with the living world. The four Kinship volumes we'll cover are Place, Partners, Persons, and Practice, each offering essays, interviews, poetry, and stories of solidarity, highlighting the interdependence that exists between humans and nonhuman beings. We will use these volumes to ground our conversations and as a framework for building Indigenous science into classroom curriculum.
Stipends will not be offered to participants, however, registrants will be supplied with the Kinship series and additional recommended books to supplement each topic area. We expect that you try to participate in each of the four discussions. Book club meetings will be scheduled based on registrant availability. Registration is limited to the first 25 participants.
Reach out to Seth Thompson at sthompson@freshwater.org with questions.
Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations
Place
It has been said that we are “place-lings” before we are human beings or earth-lings. It has also been suggested that the scale of a global consciousness is too broad a scale of care, given the place-based circumstances of human evolution. To what extent does a deeper connection with our bioregions reinvigorate a sense of kinship with the place-based beings, systems, and communities that mutually shape one another?
Partners
How do cultural traditions, narratives, and mythologies shape the ways in which we relate to other beings as kin (or not)? How do these relations between and among different species foster a sense of responsibility and belonging?
Persons
Kinship spans the cosmos, but it is perhaps most life-changing when experienced directly and personally. What experiences of yours expanded your understanding of being human in relation to other-than-human beings? How can we respectfully engage a world full of human and nonhuman persons?
Practice
From the perspective of kinship as a recognition of nonhuman personhood, of kincentric ethics, and Kinship revolutionized into kinning, how are we to live? What are the practical, every day, and lifelong ways we become kin?
Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR). The Trust Fund is a permanent fund constitutionally established by the citizens of Minnesota to assist in the protection, conservation, preservation, and enhancement of the state’s air, water, land, fish, wildlife, and other natural resources.
This work is supported by a University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment Impact Goal grant, 2023-2026, titled “Delivering Culturally Integrated Sustainability Education Through Supported Teacher Professional Development.,” under Grant No. IG 72.