(c) The Los Cedros Cloud Forest

[asakiyume]

There are rivers whose personhood has been recognized--in New Zealand, Colombia, Bangladesh, Canada, elsewhere too. And now, on the occasion of COP16, the 2024 UN Biodiversity Conference currently underway in Cali, Colombia, there's a legal petition to have Ecuador's Los Cedros cloud forest recognized as a co-copyright holder for a song, created by writer Robert McFarlane, musician Cosmo Sheldrake, mycologist Giuliana Furci, legal scholar César Rodríguez-Garavito--and the forest.

In this Guardian article, McFarlane says,

It wasn’t written within the forest, it was written with the forest. This was absolutely and inextricably an act of co-authorship with the set of processes and relations and beings that that forest and its rivers comprise. We were briefly part of that ongoing being of the forest, and we couldn’t have written it without the forest. The forest wrote it with us.

The organization they're working through is the More Than Human Life (MOTH) project, which describes itself as "an interdisciplinary initiative advancing rights and well-being for humans, non-humans, and the web of life that sustains us all." They have a book, MORE THAN HUMAN RIGHTS
An Ecology of Law, Thought and Narrative for Earthly Flourishing, edited by Rodríguez-Garavito, which is free to download on their site (link here), as they want people to have access to the ideas and thinking.

In other news, an owl perched in a lilac right by our door this morning, looking for all the world like a person in a parka with a fur-lined hood. Her feet were invisible where she perched, her eyes were black and only black when she swiveled around to look at Wakanomori and me. We had come to see what the disturbance was--crows were making such a racket. Apparently they don't like Madam Owl.

Comments

[raven]

So I have mentioned my friend Elly to you before because the two of you really remind me of each other! I wondered if you'd be interested in Elly's writing and art for the River Wandle.

[asakiyume]

Oh yes! I follow her on IG now. But I hadn't been following her blog--I will read some of her posts--thank you!

[light_of_summer]

Thanks for posting about this! I have downloaded the book (and will try to remember to actually start reading or listening to it).

[asakiyume]

Hurray! I'm so glad!

[(Anonymous)]

I started "reading" the MOTH book, yesterday (mostly listening to my phone read it to me using the @Voice app).

It's very interesting, so far, and in such a positive way—thanks again for the rec and the link!

[asakiyume]

Hi Light-of-Summer ^_^

I'm really glad you're enjoying it--yes, I find it very heartening too (I've only dipped into one essay so far, but I like what I'm finding)

[light_of_summer]

I just tried to put an update-reply here, not realizing that I'd been automatically logged off.

So, hopefully you'll find an Anon comment to be screened, just above this one, and now you'll know for sure that it's from me.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[asakiyume]

Yes indeed I did--thank you!

[squirrelitude]

Madame Owl knows what she did.

(Well, what her ancestors did.)

[asakiyume]

Hahaha, it's true! It's true.

[sovay]

a legal petition to have Ecuador's Los Cedros cloud forest recognized as a co-copyright holder for a song, created by writer Robert McFarlane, musician Cosmo Sheldrake, mycologist Giuliana Furci, legal scholar César Rodríguez-Garavito--and the forest.

I hope they win!

I look forward to hearing the song.

[asakiyume]

I heard snippets of it during a CBC story on this last night, but yeah! I'd like to hear the whole thing.

[kore]

This sounds like a Le Guin story.

[asakiyume]

I know she has a novel called The Word for World is Forest but I haven't read it! But I believe it you when you say this sounds like one of hers.

I am kind of charmed by the juxtaposition of the legalist approach--the jargon, the courts--with the immanent presence and reality of a forest (or a river, etc.). It's very imperialists' tools and all that... but I think speaking that language helps some segments of humanity *notice* and think about a thing. And if it has a benefit--if it helps preserve and value--then all the better.

[kore]

That book is actually a pretty grim novella about the Vietnam war -- I was thinking more of her later short stories.

[asakiyume]

What sorts of things happen?

[smokingboot]

Lilac Tree Owl sounds adorable. But yes, as far as I know, owls can pray on crow chicks and crows never let anyone forget it.

[asakiyume]

Yeah, after posting this I went and read up on crows and owls--I had no idea. It still seems a little strange to me, though: surely other animals also prey on crow chicks? Do crows mob those things too? I know songbirds, even, will mob a hawk--maybe crows do too? ... Or maybe I'm wrong in my assumption and not many other creatures *do* eat crow chicks?

[smokingboot]

I know crows will mob falcons and hawks. But they do seem to have a particular issue with owls. Strange!

[amaebi]

That owl sounds Choice.

When I was going though ordination ordeals I kept having questions about whether I was an animist/panentheist. (I don't know if everyone was getting this.) And I never know how peopler sure what is and isn't a conscious entity (nor why non-conscious entities shouldn't be respected, and why it doesn't seem like a preferable error to treat non-conscious or even non-living entities with respect....

[asakiyume]

It's a conundrum. I have typed words and erased them! We need to be in good relations with things; we need to interact with things in good faith and in ways that respect their nature, but our sense of what all that means keeps changing.

There's a Japanese kids story about a poor old man, a seller of straw hats, who gives his leftover wares to jizō statues he sees getting covered in snow--even his own, since he doesn't have enough for all of them. It's lovely. But he doesn't do this for boulders. And yet a boulder can be a god and honored in a shrine, with lightning-bolt papers and twisted rope around it. I think ... it's a Mystery.

[amaebi]

Definitely a case in which mere humans operate in ineluctable ignorance— and prefer to operate on the side of being Masterly.

[med_cat]

:)

[asakiyume]

^_^