Healing The Land, Healing Ourselves- Dr. Maceo Carrillo Martinet

The fastest way to lose the future is to forget the past, what the land already taught our ancestors. Granddaughter Crow sits down with Dr. Maceo Carrillo Martinet, ecologist, educator, and community restoration practitioner, to explore why climate change adaptation is as much about relationship as it is about data. His book Healing the Land Teaches Us Who We Are brings “hard science” into conversation with Indigenous knowledge, history, and cultural resistance, insisting that restoration work has to heal people and place at the same time.

We dig into how cycles and interdependence show up in both ecology and traditional teachings, and why linear “progress” can blind us to solutions that have worked for thousands of years. Dr. Martinet shares a powerful watershed restoration story from a legal water meeting where the default answer is bigger dams and bigger budgets, but the evidence points back to small rock dams placed high in the mountains. Those humble structures can slow runoff, increase infiltration, and bring back grasses, wildlife, and resilience, turning wounded land into a sponge again.

From there, we widen the lens to common lands, biodiversity, and the overlooked history of communal stewardship across the world, including Europe. We also challenge the words we use, unpacking how language can be a companion of empire and how even the word “nature” can carry separation. Along the way, we talk about listening to the land’s soundscape and why the “languages of life” matter if we want real ecological restoration, sustainable futures, and community healing.

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Bio: 

For over 24 years, Dr. Maceo Carrillo Martinet has been co-creating and implementing community-based ecological restoration and education projects across New Mexico and beyond. Helping communities restore land and water has been both his professional and personal passions and obligations since he can remember. His book: “Healing the Land Teaches Us Who We Are”, published by North Atlantic Books, is a culmination of his experiences working in community on projects to restore the land, but also attempts to situate ecological restoration into historical and cultural context in these tumultuous times. He received his doctorate in biology from the University of New Mexico where he focused on ecology, freshwater sciences and environmental education. Presently, he teaches a hands-on course at UNM on watershed and community restoration, and is planning to take students to do this work internationally.

https://maceocm.com/

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

GDC 0:01

Welcome to Belief Being and Beyond with your host, Granddaughter Crow. Hi everybody, Granddaughter Crow here with yet another episode of Belief Being and Beyond. And sometimes in order to go beyond, you gotta step back to the earth. You gotta know what your belief is and where it is coming from and what informs that belief and how you believe constitutes how you are being in this life, how you function day to day. And then there's always something more. There's always something beyond. I am so excited. Today we get to talk with Dr. Maceo Carrillo Martinet. Woo whoop! That's a mouthful.

Dr. Maceo 0:55

Let me it is a mouthful.

GDC 0:58

I love it. Dr. Maceo. So for over 24 years, Dr. Maceo Martinet has been co-creating and implementing community-based ecological restoration and education projects across New Mexico and beyond. Helping communities restore land and water. Yes, land water has been both his professional and personal passion and obligation since he can remember. And this is what we love on the show people who live what they are talking about. And you can tell that he lives what he's talking about. His book, oh my goodness, you guys, Healing the Land teaches us who we are. I'm gonna go ahead and take a second and read how indigenous cultural resistance can restore the earth, recover communities, and create sustainable futures. Woo! Yes, we're going there, people. We are going there. And I love it as Granddaughter Crow. You know, I'm all about the wisdom of the natural world and how to learn from the earth. This book is published by North Atlantic Books. It is a culmillation of his experiences working in community on projects to restore the land, but also attempts to situate ecological restoration into historical and cultural context in these tumultuous times, right? Got that right. He received his doctorate in biology from the University of New Mexico, where he focused on ecology, fresh water sciences, and environmental education. Presently he teaches a hands-on course. You will find that Dr. Maseo is very hands-on, very grounded, very amazing. Um, at and he teaches that hands-on course at UNM on watershed and community restoration, and is planning to take students to do this work internationally. Oh my goodness. Without further ado, Dr. Maceo, welcome to the show.

Dr. Maceo 3:38

Thank you, Granddaughter Crow. Thank you for that beautiful introduction. And hello to the viewers and listeners. Out there and beyond.

GDC 3:45

Out there and beyond. I love this. You know what I find so beautiful is that not only the dedication and this beautiful book, you guys, you can pick it up. It just released here in the month of June. You can get it anywhere you get your favorite books. Um, you can always just walk in there and say, Hey, do you have Healing? The Land Teaches Us Who We Are, you know, by Dr. Maceo, and they'll be like, Yes, or they'll be like, We will order it for you. So we got you covered there. It is so amazing because what I love is the intersection between ecology, the natural world, science, biology, grounded, hard science, right? Fact-based, you know, quantifiable science meets cultural awareness, historical restoration, and drawing the lines by saying, wait, when you do this hard science, it is more than just science left hemisphere. You are actually, let's set the record straight, historically, culturally, with indigenous bodies, indigenous stories around how to take care of the land because there was a connection back then.

How Science Met Culture For Him

GDC 5:14

So of course, my first question is how did you connect these two models? Where did that come from? Because I think we need more of hard science, cultural awareness, setting the record straight with history and indigenous people.

Dr. Maceo 5:36

Yeah, thank you for that question. Um I think it it's from just how I grew up and the people I was around. Um so I grew up in San Francisco, very urbanized, urban area. But I had a lot of uh people that were very connected to their culture, their history. I grew up also in a lot of political um 1960s folks that were into the AIM and Brown and the Brown Berets and the Black Panther Party. And so I kind of grew in in an environment that was very self-aware and struggling to become more self-aware. Um and so, in that kind of mix, for some reason, I was an urban kid, but I just was drawn to the nature. So all the parks I visited in San Francisco, uh, me and my friends, I remember the day I left um the city to come to New Mexico, there was a red-tailed hawk circling us the whole time we were having our final session. And I figured, so it I there's a lot of examples like that where Mother Earth always spoke to me, even in a very urban environment. In fact, one of the connections that I always made was this kind of city where we kind of slept and ate and everything on top of each other, it felt like, and going to the edge of the ocean where the where the ocean meets the land and they these coral reefs and these uh low where you could see them in low tide, and how life itself right there was also living on top of each other, but needed to live on top of each other, or else they'd be washed away. So I kept seeing those two worlds um kind of connected. Um and I think one of the sayings that I kind of grew up with was how you know we treat, if we don't know our history, we don't know how to move forward in a future. That's one. And then the other one that was very common was which I didn't really understand, was what we do to the land, we do to ourselves, and what we do to ourselves, we do to the land. Those were kind of common themes that carried through the circles that I I grew up in. And so, you know, as a as a as a young man, I got hired to do ecological restoration. That's, you know, planting trees where there are no trees, uh hilling the land so a denuded landscape becomes, you know, can it can can be able to grow grass again and and its flowers again. Um when I started to do this work, I started to reflect on those earlier experiences, those early early sayings. And that's kind of how I became, you know, at that intersection. I kind of the the the work and the intersection found me. And uh and I didn't go out looking for it. It just became, you know, I became um in a position that I can see, you know, both from my own personal point of view, my own experience, but also connected to what's going around the planet right now and and you know the state of crisis that takes on many different forms, whether it's fire, whether it's you know erosion off of you know the desert desertification. Um and I started seeing a theme where a lot of communities that were healing this land, whether it was it typically from you know, um industrialization or uh all kinds of things, you know, with that. The hotel industry, the tourism industry, um, but mainly the industrialization, uh urbanization, and and um agriculture production. So all these communities around the world were trying to restore their land. Well, it turned out the pattern that I saw was these are communities that are basically returning to their indigenous practices, relationships, understandings. It became a portal, it became an opening to uh to really reflect on the intersection between, you know, the hardcore science, how we live, you know, the material world, but also the cultural and spiritual connection. And uh and I and that to me was an it's an important story, and that's why I decided to write it. I actually didn't try to write a book, I was writing curriculum for students, a curriculum that didn't exist anywhere, as far as I could find. And writing those stories up, I just it became like a flood, and I kept writing and writing and writing, and next thing I know, I had a book.

GDC 10:26

Yes, you know, I think it's so beautiful because it's it sounds very organic that you were right there at that um intersection that between understanding uh person of color, indigenous people, people with culture, people with stories that have been passed down. And then also, you know, you've got the the science, which allows that voice to go even further. It allows the voice of the ancestors, the cultural expression to go even further because it now explains that these stories of cultural awareness in indigenous communities and how they worked with the land, worked with the land, right? Um, actually now can go into more of the Western civilization of it's our resource, blah blah blah, you know? And so I think it's I think that it's a very beautiful beacon that you are that you are helping us carry and to see. It's got legs because of your doctorate, you know?

Dr. Maceo 11:43

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think sometimes that's why I did the doctorate. It wasn't because I I wanted to, you know, be on some higher hierarchy, hierarchy of knowledge. But it I you know, I was the way I was taught was I have a responsibility to uplift people, younger folks, uh, my community and my family. And the an avenue that was open to me at the time was to do this doctorate. And so I decided to do it in in water, specifically on a on a desert where at that time I was living in New Mexico, and and water, as you know, can imagine, and any desert in the world, it's precious. So I figured, okay,

Cycles, Relationship, And Native Science

Dr. Maceo 12:26

what would be the best to be prepared and to help my community is to know a little something about water. Right. Yeah. But in it, you bring up another thing in me, and that's um, you know, when I was doing my doctorate, I continuously would think about, I would read, you know, for example, there's a there's a story that was taught to me as a as a young graduate student that was like the avant-garde Western science research, and it basically looked at how the sun's energy gets recycled from the trees down to the roots, into the leaves, into the insects, into the soil, back into the trees, and it goes back into the sky. Then it comes. So that it kind of captured a cycle looking at the sun's energy from the sun's. And of course, in the science world, it was more kilojoules of this and and carbon atoms of this. It was more quantitative. But what I realized really quickly is that this is just what Native people around the world typically, it's j it's a j it's a general statement, but but typically indigenous lands of the world always saw things in cycles. Yes. Always saw things in in energy cycles and real and relationships. That cycle involves relationships of everything that were around us and within us. And so to me, the Western science was catching up to native science, you know. And I and I think, you know, I think we're in an age where we're realizing that there's other ways, there's other sciences out there, not just Western science, that that we all need to be uh aware of and and reconcile with, because that's really what climate change is about, is reconciling what has what has driven us to this point, what what has kind of defined our path. But more importantly, what how can we change that path? And you know, how how do we change what we're doing so that we can you know live on this planet a little bit longer and not destroy it? The only way to do that is to is to start listening to all of humanity, not just one part of it.

GDC 14:41

Oh, the full circle, not a line. It's not linear. Yeah, it's it's a circle. I talk, I talk like that too. You know, and so this book is absolutely brilliant because one of the beautiful things, I mean, you bring the scholarly knowledge, but you also bring this humanity to it. You bring this cultural awareness as though you're like, hey guys, remember what was handed down culturally by the ancestors who actually did work with the land, not lord over, and that type of thing. You have the book, and it is broken into four beautiful parts: water, earth, fire, and air, all of the beautiful elements, which although you know it's science, and and you're Dr. Maceo, and and you have a degree in ecology and biology, and oh, well, we understand, you know, the gigabytes or whatever those terms were, the quantifiable terms, but you break it down in a way that speaks to the human race, it speaks to the people. It doesn't just speak to the science of it, but you bring bring that in. And in each one of these parts, you bring up cultural stories. You remind us of cultural stories. And I think that that reminds me of the bigger circle, not just with the sun and the earth and the and all of that, but the circle of humanity and how we sit in circle with our culture, with our ancestors, with where we have come from, our our belief system, and and remembering those those ways of relationship. I think that's the best way to say it. The relationship. You show us relationship beyond science. So could you kind of maybe without giving too much away about your the inner workings of your book, would you kind of give us maybe a little teaser of one of the elements and one of the stories that we might find in your book?

The Elements As Teachers

Dr. Maceo 17:02

Okay. Yeah, so so to talk about that that the division or uh the kind of organization of the book, um, earth, fire, water, and air, um, that that kind of seemed like a good way to organize it because it was a lot of lot of stuff. It was a lot of material, and I was trying to figure out how to best organize. Yeah, it's kind of weighty. Yeah, it's it's um and and I thought it was really useful as well because what what winded up happening to me while I was writing this, I was writing it during the pandemic, and which in and of itself became almost like my own therapy uh to get through the kind of doomsday scenario of that period of time, which is you know um continued. But I started realizing that each of these elements needed their own space, their own space to be recognized, their own space to be honored. And the way I related to each of the elements in the stories, um, so each section has of various stories, um, is where fire and water and earth air are be are our teachers. That's how we learned how to be human beings. And if they've taught us how to be human beings, you know, at some point in our history, they can they're always teaching us how to do it again. And it's just a matter of us kind of reconnecting and relearning and and and maybe even uh digesting and metabolizing and and recycling some of the things that were, you know, that that we've been thinking for a long time. Uh recycling in the sense of like a compost pile, you know, you put all the things that you, the scraps of things that you don't want in your life, or you don't want in society, or you don't want anymore. And that can be a point of making really nutritious soil, you know. Um so the the one of the stories, I guess, is um, you know, so a lot of uh in each of these sections I talk a little of stories about me, stories about um other people. Um and one of the stories in the water, so I

Rock Dams And Saving Mountain Water

Dr. Maceo 19:20

this is uh one um incident, but it happened several times where I was in a pretty high high uh level meeting around water, and it was actually a legal out-of-court settlement. So it's you know, lawyers representing tribes, the state, the city, uh the irrigation community, which out here they're called uh asequeros or asequia communities, um, they were all in this meeting talking about how best to save water because the issue is that because of climate change and the way we've been man, you know, um man uh managing land, the water is coming off the mountains much sooner, even way before farmers can even start planting. And so the issue at that we were talking about is um how do we save more water in the mountains so that we can have it more for cities downstream, so that we can have it for our farmers downstream. And this is a this is a quandary that a lot of people around the world are facing. And one of the the it was very clear that the so the the federal people, the people that were federal agencies, they said, well, we have these big dams. We could just increase the height of the dam, which which actually would take millions and millions of dollars. The the tribes and the Sekiv folks were were saying, Well, isn't there a way that we can do work high up in the mountains? Maybe do these little rock dams, they were saying. And to which, you know, some of the scientists kind of sh chuckled, you know, like, oh, what are little rock dams gonna do? Well, it turns it turns out that there's been serious USGS, which is one of the top science organizations in the country, has actually studied the impacts of these little rock dams. And there's a there's a there's a famous case, there's many cases, but in this case, they they looked at one family that did thousands of these rock dams throughout the watershed.

GDC 21:29

Yeah.

Dr. Maceo 21:29

And the scientists came and looked at that watershed that was had a lot of rock dams and compared it to a watershed that doesn't have any. And what they found was the area that had tons of rock dams had more water, had more wildlife, had more colors, had more sounds, had more life. And so what that story kind of represented, and what I kind of do for a living in a lot of places were if I go to a And it's denuded, the first thing I do is I work with rocks, I work with uh pieces of wood to help conserve water, basically these rock dam structures in various different configurations, right?

GDC 22:13

Yeah.

Dr. Maceo 22:14

That practice, that practice is as old as the hills themselves. It's an old indigenous practice throughout this this area is Pueblo and Dine and Apache, this area. And the Pueblos are known for their gardens that they they they have these rock gardens almost throughout the whole area here, at a scale that we can't even comprehend today. You just see vestiges of it. And very few people that are from New Mexico know that some of these messes were completely covered in rock gardens. What they essentially did is through community work, through tons of community work, they created these rock dam structures that, in effect, created sponge. The land became a sponge because anytime the water would fall, it would collect and dam behind these little rock dams and seep into the ground. And it essentially created, you know, a lot of healthy grassland, a lot of healthy vegetation, which led to healthy everything. And so I I you know that's kind of the first one of the examples of, you know, here we are talking about what to do to confront less water or water that's coming off the mountains, and we're going right back to these old school methods. And so, you know, one of my mentors loves to say, and this is I it became a mantra in the book, is all the old is new again.

GDC 23:45

Yes.

Dr. Maceo 23:46

You know, all the oldest. Yeah, and so that's that that to me is just one example. And then the stories for for fire and for earth and for air are very similar in that sense, where you know, there's an issue that we need to address, you know, whether it's megaphire, uh, whether it's yeah uh losing languages and how we how we're seeing things with language. Um and and with the earth, you know, how we're essentially losing uh our connection to the earth. You know, we're we a lot of what we need to do is to go back to, for lack of better words, earlier relationships, which are which are actually not anything of history. That's not many times it's known as prehistory or what the ancestors did, but actually it's it's that is a cutting edge. That's a cutting edge of science, it's a cutting edge of community work, that's a cutting edge of of uh adapting to climate change. So, you know, the whole linear thinking of the past is just the past, it's that's upside down. And and the earth herself is pushing us that direction, whether we realize it or not.

GDC 24:59

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Indigeneity, Commons, And Biodiversity

GDC 25:32

I love it. So for all of you who are studying, you know, climate change, um, environmental science, you're working with all of this stuff in in your job or whatever, this is a good resource. I'm just saying. So beyond that, then in the book, you talk about how they all combined. And in that, I love that you kind of broke it out with these four basic elements, and then you come back and go, but it's about the combination. And I'm looking at that, and it's like the combination between the elements, the combination between humanity and ecology and those systems, the system of being a human and the system of being Mother Earth. There are interconnections, there are direct correlations, and I absolutely love that. You know, one of my things, and I'm just side noting, one of my things is that yeah, what is old is now new because it's a circle.

Dr. Maceo 26:46

Yeah, it's a circle. Exactly, exactly.

GDC 26:49

But anyway, I wanted to go back into the concept of the combination, human and ecology systems, the interconnectivity, the cultural awareness, the diversity, the restoration, the relationship, all of those huge concepts that we talk about in so many different circles. If we slow down and get our little rock formations and slow our little right, slow ourselves down a little bit, we can actually absorb that this is a beautiful correlation between humanity and the natural world. And in fact, I would think that if somebody were listening to this a hundred years ago, they'd be like, why would she even say that? Of course it is. You know? So talk to us a little bit about that correlation between humanity and teaching us who we are. Healing the land teaches us who we are as people. Um, we're sitting down tonight with Dr. Masseyo. So what do you think about that?

Dr. Maceo 28:00

Well, yeah, and that's that's the the pattern I was alluding to earlier. Is um, you know, I guess the book is also a shout-out or a dedication or a gift to, I think, um human humanity's indigeneity for for lack of better word. I mean, I think where, you know, um Robin Kimmer would say, and and she's a author of Braiding Sweetgrass, that a lot of people know, that I that was very inspirational to my work. And I've met her before, and she's a very powerful woman. She she once um and she said this um once, that we're all indigenous to some place. Yeah. And so in in these stories of restoration, you know, I I didn't just want to focus on the Americas. I I because I'm from the you know North America, I tended to look at Americas first, but I extended my my vision beyond that, uh, partly because I wanted this to relate to our global community. I wanted anybody in the world to be able to pick this up and maybe see themselves in this book, but also because this is a pattern that the cool thing about the pattern is that it's everywhere, everywhere you look. And, you know, for for somebody in in the continent of Africa or Europe or Southeast Asia or Australia or um, you know, South America, Central America, or the or the Caribbean Islands, those are all kind of places where these stories are from. But what they show is that the the indigenous folks of those particular area areas, including Europe, which was an what which I think is in a very important uh part of the story, um that that experience hasn't really been understood. Those stories haven't been um really comprehended in in kind of you know in us figuring out our sustainable, you know, living, how are we going to become adapted to climate change, how are we going to change, you know, our curriculum. You know, we just have I think we really have to look at our whole humanity, human experience. You know, we're 300,000 years old, or at least that's the but we only really know the last 2,000 years, if that, if that if that I mean we only you know, industrialization is a blip on our radar, and so there's a a longer story, a longer uh something to say, a longer experience that we really haven't, we've only scratched the surface. And to me, that's an opportunity, it's a it's a it's a necessity for us to figure out if how we're gonna move forward to really understand our past. Going back to you know how I grew up, that's the saying that I grew up with. But it's it but to me, I think, you know, like for example, you know, in in Europe, one of the places that in in England um that has the most species of butterfly, um, that has the most endemic species of plants, that has, I think, 50 different kinds of dragonflies, that has a plethora of life. One of the most biodiverse areas in in England is their old commonlands. They're old indigenous commonlands that were that were it's called a floodplain meadow. And it's still, it's only like 300 acres. Wow. Within, you know, the whole island, right? But it's been practiced as a common land for thousands of years. It just so happens that that's also the place that has the most biodiversity. So it's within all of our cultures, if we were to go back to those areas that have the most biodiversity, that have, you know, a plethora of different things, they tend to be those areas that were communal lands, that were lands that we, you know, had positive that we we experienced how to collectively manage land, became those same areas that are today the sought-after examples of how to move forward.

GDC 32:24

Yeah.

Dr. Maceo 32:24

And so that's kind of, you know, um, Eleanor Ostrom, who won, she was a scientist that 2009 won the global um, oh gosh, what it the the one of the the prize, I can't remember which prize it is, uh, Nobel Peace Prize. Wow in economics. Wow. She won, and all she did, but this, and I don't mean to reduce what she did, but all she did was to show that common lands actually produce very sustainable outcomes. And she looked at she looked at communities in Africa, the continent of Africa and Southeast Asia and Latin America. She looked at indigenous communities.

GDC 33:04

Wow.

Dr. Maceo 33:05

And and she showed that, you know, the tragedy of the commons wasn't really a common thing. In fact, the tragedy of the commons, the only tragedy is that we don't know the commons. We don't know about a history of the commons. We don't know that that that common history is within all of us. That's the tragic part of it.

GDC 33:25

Yeah.

Dr. Maceo 33:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've had, we've had, there's been, of course, tragedies. Um it's not to say we've been perfect, but but in our trajectory, there's more examples of us commonly working the land in partnership with different people, with communities in a healthy way than there is otherwise. And that's really important for us right now.

GDC 33:50

I love that. I agree. If you go back far enough in anybody's lineage, DNA, we all were indigenous, we all sat in circle, we all communed with the land, we all understood it beyond English, not to this English, but we understood it in our body, we understood what it felt like when the air was dry, we understood what it felt like, we sensed these things, and sometimes now we get so far removed, you know, not just because of the screens and the phones and all of this, but we get so far removed because we my father used to say, we talk so intelligently about our confusion. But if you right, but if you know, you know in here, and this is exactly what he's talking about. We're having these big, you know, UN meetings or these big meetings, and we're talking so intelligently about our confusion. But if you take a minute, if you take a minute and relax and reconnect with yourself and the land, it speaks so much and it doesn't always speak in human language, it speaks in sensation, it speaks in patterns. What do you what do you think about that?

Language, Power, And Listening To Land

Dr. Maceo 35:20

Well, yeah. Um yeah, I I I'm language is so air is one of the elements, is where I talk about language because I make the connection, you know, um air is the the birth of breathing, and breathing is the birth of language. In fact, some I there's a great quote that breathing is the is older than language. Um I love that. You know, the the thing that's crazy is the word nature in English, yeah, doesn't that concept of nature doesn't exist in most of humanity. So the the one word that in English and in Spanish and in other kind of dominant quote unquote dominant languages, the word nature doesn't exist. And the reason why is because there's no disconnection, there's no separation between what is outside and what and your s and your body. There's no word for that in most of most, I think of, and I would venture to say a lot of indigenous cultures throughout the world. Uh, and maybe that's something you just see when you become very localized, you live in a place for a very long time, and you see how everything is connected. There is no distinction between how you feel and how the land feels. There's there's a there's a deep relationship there. Um so I kind of I I kind of got into the weeds with the uh English and Spanish. And you know, the other thing that we I you know that's important for us to realize is when uh Columbus set sail about two weeks later, a friar uh uh went to the Spanish Queen and said, you know, we really need to uh set up shop around language. And the way he put it was that the the written language is a companion of empire. And just the idea that language is a companion of empire, and that's that that that is it signifies to me how language can be a weapon and has been weaponized. Yes, and like and and language is, as uh Bell Hooks and Audrey Lorde would say, it language, how we define ourselves, how we define everything around us, is a place of struggle, is a place for us to discuss, to debate, for us to self-question, for us to ponder and to think about. Yet we use nature all the time without really thinking of how that might be shaping our way of thinking. We say natural resources. When we when we talk about everything in nature, we call it natural resources, which which fundamentally means it's a very mechanical, materialistic way of seeing things. It's only important a mountain's only important if I can extract that bedonite out of it, or if I can extract that thing out of it and make it's a resource to be used.

GDC 38:25

Wow.

Dr. Maceo 38:26

It's not, it's not, it's not, it's not recognized by its name, or it recognized by its its God or earth name. That is typically how it was recognized for maybe a longer part of humanity, right? So it's both a window, language is both an air, is both a window into you know how we have to self-criticize everything that comes out of our mouth and be accountable to those words. But also it's an uh uh opening the door to unlimited imagination. We are I mean, language, if you look, if you're a linguist and you study how different cultures talk about plants and animals and mountains, you're you are literally uh uh uh learning a lot about the human poetry, the human experience on this land. And that to me is super important. I'm not a linguist. I'm just uh I scratched enough to know that it's it's it's important that we go beyond English and go beyond and you you mentioned it right on, you know, that the original we learned all of our languages, they came from some place, some experience that humans were having with their environment. And and you know, there's you know, one of the help one of the ways to monitor a health of a land and to see if it's you know, if you're helping to restore land, to a wounded land.

GDC 39:56

Yeah.

Dr. Maceo 39:56

Or a met a measure to see how wounded an ocean is, is literally to learn the sounds of that place. Bioacoustics, that word, you know, or echo acoustics, though that's those are technical terms. That basically just means you can tell a lot by a by uh the land, by the the symphony of voices, you know. So you're absolutely right. It's not just the human language here that we're talking about, it's the languages of of life. That's that's I think the the the languages that we need to learn and listen to beyond our own, do you know?

GDC 40:39

Wow. See, you guys.

Dr. Maceo 40:42

That's why it's belief and beyond.

GDC 40:45

It is beyond. It is beyond healing the land teaches us who we are. It is not just a really quick, oh, I got it. It is an embodiment, it is an embodiment, and I love that the language of the land, because I play with that. I I am not a linguist either. And if you guys watch this podcast, you know I even screw up English sometimes. So, but at the end of the day, it is that acoustic, that sound. And you know, I I listen sometimes to even people speaking a language that I don't understand, but yet you can kind of understand a little bit about are they excited? Are they angry? It's the sound. And every morning I wake up and I hear the birds. And if I don't hear the birds, I'm like, there must be a storm or a hawk out there, or there's something going on. So key into it because even beyond that, listeners, the language that you speak is the language that you think in. The language that you speak is the language that you think in. So if you are speaking a language like Granddaughter Crow in English, and it was a language that um shows hierarchy and division and separation and labeling, just know that that's what it is. But there is languages beyond to include the natural world.

Who The Book Is For

GDC 42:17

Exactly. I have a question for you. Who did you write this book for?

Dr. Maceo 42:27

I was hoping you'd ask that.

GDC 42:29

Yes.

Dr. Maceo 42:32

So I I wrote it for I wrote it for young students of color um like myself that are wandering the the planet wanting to do something good on its behalf, but not knowing quite how and where to start. I essentially wrote it to myself, uh a younger self that I wish I had. I wish I had this book growing up. I wish someone gave it to me. Um and that's who I I wrote, not not necessarily dwelling on me, but but just a younger person that's that's uh, you know, I worked with youth enough to to know that they are, and and most youth in every generation are like this. They they want something different than what they've been given. And they realize that what they've been given is not all that hot, and you know, it's there's a lot of we've they've inherited a mess from the previous generations, and so how do you change things?

GDC 43:31

Yeah.

Dr. Maceo 43:32

And where do you start? And you know, those that are interested in doing something on the environmental sciences and all that that wheat means. Um I think I wrote it for them.

GDC 43:46

Yeah, I absolutely love that because I mean it's it is funny, and I agree with generations. And when I was a younger version of myself, I too was like, You gave me a broken system. What do you talking about and yet and yet we you are now filling in that you know little tavern that little place with the thinking of the old ones once again what is old is now new and taking us back to what is important healing the land teaches us who we are on so many levels individuals people on so many levels beyond English we can't even I mean it's it's got to be embodied it's got to be experienced but in order to get the lenses to be able to see that listeners pick up your copy healing the land teaches us who we are and if you have the resources pick up a couple of them and donate them to your local library if you are in university ask your university library to get this book for your studies it is written by a doctor who understands all of this but it'll open your mind to something that your body already is paying attention to that's me Granddaughter Crow saying that I appreciate that yeah one 100% because that's I mean really that's why I have this show is because I want to take us all back to the heartbeat of the human race. I want to highlight the creators the authors the ones who live what they do and they think beyond and with that I am

What Lies Beyond And Closing

GDC 45:41

going to ask you a question that we ask all of our listeners Dr.

Dr. Maceo 45:46

Maceo what lies beyond I think endless possibility endless endless connection relationship it is endless sounds and smells and tastes and I think the beyond is also inside us and it's also all around us it's not necessarily beyond this planet.

GDC 46:19

Everything that we need to live is right here you know it's always been and will always be yay oh my goodness that's I love that I absolutely love that you guys thank you so much this evening we've sat down with Dr. Maceo and his book Healing the Land teaches us who we are get your copy you can also find him at www másseocm.com which is www m dot com and keep your eyes out because even after you read this book of course keep one for your library because this is going to do a lot of memory and you know what in a very interesting way what I'm thinking is that the more that an individual reads the the perspective the the worldview the viewpoint that you're talking about the more that they can probably investigate some of their own internal their inner world and the outer environment and find that we are connected with it there is no separation.

Dr. Maceo 47:35

Yeah I hope so I hop I hope that's the kind of I was hoping hoping that this is just a departure not necessarily an arrival you know um the and the other thing too is a part of it is to show that you know and and this is for various reasons uh things going going to the wound to figure out how to heal the wound and going to the wound actually is a place is a place of of healing is a is a place that that's a you know causes us to be creative and um and that's kind of what the land teaches us.

GDC 48:09

I absolutely love it and I'm just gonna throw in my two cents you know the land is my greatest teacher and my greatest mentor even in that sometimes when I listen to a human concept spoken in English or dominant language or whatever I take the concept and I try to find it in the natural world and if I cannot find that concept in the natural world I know that it was man-made and it doesn't really make that much sense for example something very very small would be the human concept of I don't belong there are so many people on the face of this earth that are sensing I don't belong the separation but I went outside and I asked the tree do you belong? You're so tall hey rosebush do you belong hey do you belong all of them didn't even understand of course they belong and so do we thank you so much for what you're bringing to this world it has been a pleasure a pleasure a pleasure thank you and listeners like subscribe share and we've got more coming up but for now healing the land teaches us who we are thank you so much and we will see you on the flippity flip. As always thank you for listening to another episode of Belief Being and Beyond please subscribe and please share with a loved one who might enjoy this podcast and please leave us a review we really really appreciate that. For more about Granddaughter Crow please visit GranddaughterCrow.com there you can learn about classes appearances and all her books. And if you're interested in learning more about Jenny C Bell please visit jennycebell.com where you can learn about her books, her classes and her art community. Thank you so much for listening. Let's see