Wolves, with their extensive distribution from North America to Eurasia, are ecologically important as a keystone species, playing a critical role in maintaining ecosystem fitness and balance by regulating prey populations. Its influence extends to the expansion of biodiversity and the reshaping of landscapes, thus encouraging greater physical biodiversity. Powerful and varied herbaceous environments.
Culturally, wolves hold a unique place in the human imagination, revered and mythologized across various cultures for their intelligence, resilience, and spirit of freedom. In many Indigenous communities, wolves have a prominent role in folklore and spiritual beliefs, often revered as ancestral figures, spiritual guides, and symbols of the untamed natural world.
In her new book, Echo Loba, Loba Echo: Of Wisdom, Wolves, and Women, Sonja Swift delves into wolves and their intricate connections with human society, ecosystems, and cultural narratives.
Bridging the gap between ecological wisdom and a rich tapestry of cultural wisdom, Swift delves into the multifaceted dating between humans and wolves, a bond that has been loved and questioned throughout history. From memories of formative years to ecological roles, and from colonial affections to fashion. An in-depth exploration of how wolves reflect our own histories, fears, and hopes.
Swift recently spoke with Mongabay about how wolves reflect our lifestyles and the myriad tactics that are perceived across cultures. He explained how Echo Loba, Loba Echo reflects his private explorations and deep connections with those creatures, and shared his observations on the evolution of conservation. Popularity of the industry of indigenous interactions with the herbal world.
Mongabay: You talk about this in detail in your ebook, but for those who haven’t read it yet, what encouraged you to write an ebook that intertwines wolf stories with themes of femininity and ecological awareness?
Sonja Swift: In many ways, it’s the interrelationship between themes that prompted me to write this, or otherwise what encouraged me to keep writing it. There are many books about wolves, from a more biological point of view, but what is the case with the Wolves? What I was asked to do was to weave in combination stories that are also reflected in us as other people in relation to wolves, either through coexistence or the risk of their elimination. Along the way, several associations have sprung up, in addition to those between wolves and women. Having lived my own life defying censored patriarchal forces, those parallels were easy to notice. And when it comes to ecological awareness, wolves communicate about it in a profound way, as a “keystone species” in clinical parlance and as “the one who shows us the way,” which is the meaning rooted in the Anishinaabe word for wolf, Ma’. ingan.
Mongabay: You open the e-book with your grandmother’s story that gives you the opportunity to sponsor an animal at the Palm Springs Zoo. It turns out that your grandmother’s reaction to your selection includes many people’s opinions about wolves. How did their reaction influence your perceptions?
Sonja Swift: It comes from my memories as a kid, who was essentially asked to pick my favorite animal from a desert zoo. I chose the Mexican wolf and then found out that my selection made my grandmother angry. I don’t so obviously forget my response, how genuinely bewildered I was by his contempt for wolves and also how unwavering he was in my own conviction. Thinking about it all those years later, I see this little story serving as an illustrative and also typical representation of people’s innate love and/or puzzling hatred towards wolves. Here we were talking about wolves in the confinement of a zoo!And a well-intentioned Christmas gift that basically pays extra in the form of a donation for a card with an image of an animal on it. Still, a wolf. This same projection on wolves is at the heart of what I have tried to question in my book.
Mongabay: You note that only six other people have been killed by wolves in the U. S. A significant number of wolves have been killed each year in the U. S. over the past hundred years, while a significant number of wolves are killed each year as part of Wildlife Services’ “predator management” program. Do you think there is such a disconnect between the fear of wolves and the danger they pose to people and livestock?
Sonja Swift: Yes, the recorded deaths are very few and all depending on the circumstances. The fact is, wolves don’t seek out other people to kill or eat. Like killer whales, also known as “sea lions”, which until recently were projected in the same way, related to an alleged wolfish malevolence, considered to be the most likely to attack humans at all times. None of this is true, as other people now know about those whales, and it’s all a projection that the wolves have yet to shake off.
The roots of misperception in many ways go back to medieval Europe and then traveled to North America by way of colonization. Settlers brought wolf lore with them, and then used it as part of the economic project of colonization – slaughtering the bison herds alongside the wolves, which meant starving the Indigenous Nations and stealing their land.
There is a valid concern when it comes to rabies, a rabid wolf like a rabid dog is dangerous, but rabies alone does not produce the confusing projections that wolves have been accused of. So I guess I see old patterns of thinking, worrying, and distrust. they still provide under the guise of ranchers’ considerations and the Wildlife Service’s brutal agenda, which leads to another theme I explore in the book: how a mind can triumph over all evidence and revel in the opposite. especially when it comes to entrenched ideals and vested interests.
Mongabay: The scenario for wolves in Idaho looks terrible right now. Do you see any tactics in their luck? For example, would raising public awareness of the role wolves play in supporting the health of ecosystems expand public support for their protection?
Sonja Swift: If only the Nez Perce, Shoshone, and Kootenai, among other tribes, stayed even longer in the state of Idaho, that would help. And yes, I think there are a lot of opportunities to raise awareness, especially starting with children.
Oddly enough, the hatred of wolves strangely overlaps with political narratives, which can get downright bizarre, and which I didn’t even talk much about in the ebook because calling them terrorists and such is so absurd. A more typical narrative accuses the wolves of having dinner. “our elk,” without understanding their key role in managing herds and maintaining abundant land for those same herds to thrive. Unfortunately, there is also an unbridled thirst for killing and banal machismo. These varied mentalities close the door to the idea of contemplating another way of living alongside wolves, and yet I find it strange that other people who live in beautiful landscapes can be so eager to decimate the very animals that make those places be special.
Wolves and the stories we tell about wolves show us. Therefore, converting our beliefs begins with examining ourselves: where we come from, where we belong. Hatred of wolves is one thing, the challenge is romanticization, either of which are projections that end up centering people. Perhaps a deeper lesson from all of this is to move away from human exceptionalism.
Mongabay: The segment on the etymology of the word wolf in all languages illustrates the geographic extent of wolves and what they constitute in societies and culture. As a result, you refer to the wolf as a metaphor that embodies conflicting worldviews and wisdom. Explain what the wolf symbolizes in your eBook and why this metaphor is meaningful?
Sonja Swift: The metaphor of wolf, as I understand and present it, has far more to do with people than wolves, and the human propensities toward control, destruction, violence, and greed. For, in this case, I am not referring to wolves directly as the beings they are, but to the ways in which “wolf” has come to mean so many divergent things. And perhaps I am also dreaming about how – if only – people could more widely value a conceptual metaphor, a story, an understanding that honors wolves as harboring wisdom for how to live, which is knowledge that can’t be quantified, contained, bought or sold.
I couldn’t write about wolves without examining the spirits that try to eliminate them. This leads directly to the forces of colonialism, but is also similar to the origins of corporate conservation as an industry guided by dualistic colonial thinking that tended to view other people as separate from nature. Today, that falls to the world’s largest environmental NGOs, which have revolving doors with global finance and extractive industries and continue to be driven through top-down economic agendas such as castle conservation and carbon offset programs. There is a vital difference here. of “conservation” as a spiritual, localized, common sense practice.
I suppose, in general, this e-book is about colliding worldviews, because the enduring struggle between earthly ethos and evangelical industrialization is a struggle for cosmology and worldview, as the wolf metaphor shows us. And greenwashing has no standing here, as it only distorts and distorts true attention to the importance of survival.
Mongabay: Your e-book focuses a lot on the dates that indigenous people have with wolves. Could you give us an idea of these quotes?
Sonja Swift: The full and straightforward translation of the Anishinaabe word for wolf, Ma’iingan, means “the one who was sent here through this loving spirit to show us the way” and profoundly illustrates the relationship that indigenous peoples have with wolves. I learned this word and its translation while visiting Winona LaDuke, who wrote the beautiful foreword, and Robert Shimek, in the Ojibwe Nation of White Earth, Minnesota, years ago. It was here that I discovered an understanding of the wolf, as old as the indigenous country. whose local language expressed it, which nevertheless made sense to me.
Of course, wolves have a deep meaning in many cultures: as ancestors, guides, and protectors. For example, the Ainu of northern Japan have origin stories that tell of the union of a wolf-like dog and a pass, in the same way as Turkish legends about a she-wolf giving birth to half-wolf, half-human puppies, their ancestors. The story of the rise of the Lakota tells the story of Sungmanitu Tanka, the wolf, guiding other people to their homes. In Monpasslia, wolves are to be the protective spirits of the prairies, spiritually and literally, as it is now widely understood. As you can see, the overlaps of meanings and understandings are profound and can be traced back to intergenerational memory, at least for cultures that have never done so. Separated from the wolves.
Mongabay: In the same vein, it turns out that there is a shift taking place in the conservation sector to place more emphasis on the role that indigenous peoples and local communities play in maintaining healthy and productive ecosystems. Do you have any thoughts on this trend?
Sonja Swift: I think what is well understood is that indigenous peoples’ lands are home to most of the world’s remaining biocultural diversity, which in some people’s lexicon still means blank. Laugh at “resources”. While I recognize that there is a genuine general awareness and appreciate Mongabay’s policy about the myriad tactics that indigenous peoples and local communities are skillfully maintaining the suitability of their own lands and waters on their own terms, what matters to me are the timelines monetary of the companies. conservation sector. When big industries and global finance are guilty of devising conservation policies, they fail, and when we look at the forums of the world’s largest environmental NGOs, representation is correspondingly skewed. So while indigenous peoples are more identified by their indispensable role as protectors of land and surface water, corporate conservation systems remain focused on a superseded economic playbook that prioritizes self-interest. the so-called protected spaces and, specifically, to carbon offset markets, and not to artistic projects. concepts of local and indigenous communities. So, even when indigenous and/or local alliances are formed with those actors, when the master schedule remains controlled by the largest and best financed, a huge imbalance of forces persists that seriously restricts the imagination. The terms are fixed. Clearly, the goal is not creativity, but rather the maintenance of economic and political influence.
Protected spaces become especially ironic when the original custodians are marginalized and oil corporations are invited to drill. Carbon markets are illusory, oil is a reservoir of eons, there is no offsetting, anything that takes millions of years to achieve. Yet, despite mounting evidence of decades of failure to protect anything other than personal monetary interests (corruption, land grabbing, human rights abuses), we now have the International Monetary Fund and conservationist-affiliated corporations that are turning whales and elephants into commodities as the first living things. to be reduced to the prestige of things. Carbon credits are sold as offsets. I’ve heard other people propose that wolves have their own key role. It starts with a mindset that objectifies life and then seeks to market it. I don’t see any wisdom in the commodification of life.
Instead of focusing on Indigenous land rights, carbon offset systems have brought wave after wave of financially-minded marketers to Indigenous communities, providing jargon-rich contracts that infringe on standard Indigenous rights to protect their own lands. This is completely contrary to conservation as a skillful practice of taking control of one’s own home. In the rare cases where communities have some capacity to act, the big gain is that they get a safe amount of money. There are other tactics for local land protection and control efforts besides compensation systems. , the hegemonic forces remain very reluctant to replace and relinquish control.
A story I cite in my book is about Aldo Leopold, once a wolfer, who became the nature writer and environmental advocate he is known as the day he met the eyes of a mother wolf dying. I name how he arrived at this knowledge the destructive way, but began to embody a different metaphor than wolf as vermin, in need of subduing, controlling, eliminating. Unfortunately, I see the massive environmental NGO’s and affiliated philanthropies still often guided by metaphorical thinking that situates them as saviors of Nature/wild animals, rather than the other way around, as Indigenous people understand and instruct. Hence wolves as guides. These very shifts in perception change everything.
Mongabay: What do you hope readers will take away from your book?
Sonja Swift: Honoring and Protecting Wolves, which starts with honoring and protecting one’s knowledge about wolves.
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