John Grim explores how Crow/Apsaalooka peoples in Montana practice kinship with the Earth community, offering insights for human flourishing alongside, rather than destroying, the natural world.
About this event
In this Hope & Joy gathering, John Grim will describe Indigenous perspectives on “Lifeways, Cosmovisions, and a Giving World.” In keeping with his research work, John will describe ways in which the Crow/Apsaalooka peoples in Montana understand and practice these values in their search for balance in a fragmenting world. Despite more than a century of colonial efforts to subvert Indigenous communities, these groups continue to teach ways of cultural survival. Survival for these people is based on kinship with the community of life that reaches into the larger cosmos. With such perspectives, perhaps the rest of us can think about, and break through to, ways of human-Earth interaction that acknowledge a deep-time dimension of reality. The larger question for us all hinges on the human capacity to flourish alongside – rather than destroy – the larger Earth community.
Dan Quinlan, moderator
Dan Quinlan is the founder the non-profit SolaVida. His focus is on working with people who are passionate about making the world a more humane and healthy home for all people. His advocacy work revolves around reducing carbon pollution – through projects in advocacy, communications, and finance – mostly in collaboration with health professionals. Dan has also spent years wandering (formally and informally) around ideas about wisdom and joy – across neuroscience, psychology, wisdom traditions, philosophy, sociology, the arts and more.
John Grim, co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology
John Grim is co-founder with Mary Evelyn Tucker of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. With Brian Thomas Swimme, Grim and Tucker created a multi-media project “Journey of the Universe” that included an Emmy Award winning PBS film, a book, and a series of podcasts. John is the author of The Shaman: Patterns of Religious Healing and is the editor of Indigenous Traditions and Ecology. With Tucker, he has authored/edited numerous publications – including the books Ecology and Religion, the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology, and Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor. Grim and Tucker also edited works of the cultural historian, Thomas Berry (including The Great Work and a book of his Selected Writings). The pair also published a biography about Thomas Berry. John has received numerous awards with Tucker, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture.
