Aquarius 50 Forest Activism

Great to share the stage with 3 of my heroes at the Aquarius 50 Forest Activism panel - Nan Nicholson, Dailan Pugh & Susie Russell

 

Click Link to Full Photo: 

Experiential Deep Ecology with John Seed & Skye Mandozay
Work That Reconnects Podcast

"I just did a zoom webinar on Experiential Deep Ecology with my Melbourne colleague Skye Mandozay for the Work That Reconnects Network -100 people showed up, exciting event."

 

Click Link to View: 

Yasuhiro Hamano interview with John Seed

"A Japanese TV program interviewed me on rainforests and deep ecology in 1992."

 

Click Link to View: 

"The Elder Tree Podcast", Sacred Herbalism segment.

Stephanie Hazel interviews John Seed April 5 2023: Episode 27, Apr. 5, 2023
"Being Small Enough to Hear the Plants, Wise Enough to Act our Age".
John Seed on Deep Ecology & Sacred herbalism.

 

Click Link to listen on Spotify: 

Our Little House

Our little house, owner-built by my wife Megan, is taking shape. First photo shows a team from our community having hoisted 160kg lintel on top of the thermal mass wall running down the centre of the house made from locally made compressed mud bricks it takes a village! I’m the bald head foreground. Second photo a couple of weeks later..

Click Photo for Full Size 

WTR Conversation Cafe

I'm excited to be joining my friend Skye Mandozay in this WTR Conversation Cafe, May 6 and 7, 2023 exploring the EXPERIENCE of Deep Ecology and how these processes, synchronous with ceremonies and rituals practiced by all indigenous peoples, end the illusion of separation between humans and the rest of the natural world.

Online: https://www.facebook.com/events/238762278534514

Bob Brown and John Seed in conversation

John Seed’s poetry, music and philosophy reconnects us with the garden of nature.

We met at Salamanca Place’s Wild Gallery to ponder the nature of being. Here is that conversation – please feel free to share it. Bob Brown.

Online: Listen to Full Video

Great couple of weekends on Bruny Island Tasmania
both full with 35 participants and a waiting list. Has deep ecology’s time come at last?

Deep Ecology Bruny Island Feb. 2023  

Yorta Yorta elder Kris Schaffer welcomes us to country, Bruny Island Feb 2023

"DEEP ECOLOGY AND MENTAL HEALTH"
hosted by Jacki Short from the Sydney Centre for Creative Change.

Deep Ecology and Mental Health
Special Guest Presenter: John Seed

Holding Space for Self and Others Webinar Ep 42. Deep Ecology is a philosophy of nature which explores the psychological disease that allows humans to attack the biological fabric out of which our own lives too are woven. This stems from “anthropocentrism”, human-centeredness, and the ensuing illusion of separation from nature. The term was coined by philosophy professor Arne Naess who claimed that “ecological ideas are not enough – we need ecological identity, ecological self”. This webinar explores the relationship of deep ecology to mental wellbeing and includes some experiential processes that help us break through this illusion of separation and allow us to deepen our felt sense of connection with the living Earth and nourish our ecological identity.

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the webinar, you will have the opportunity to:

1. Understand the cause of our illusion of separation from the rest of the natural world,

2. Know the kind of therapies that treat this illusion,

3. Experience a deeper sense of personal connectedness

Online: Watch the Video

A Conversation between John Seed and Julien Tempone-Wiltshire Feb 2023

AJulien is national co-ordinator for the study of Grief and Trauma at the biggest private Counselling and Psychotherapy Institute in Australia (ACAP) and is interested in deep ecological and ecological-grief perspectives and their contribution to Mental Health in Australia.

Of this conversation Julien wrote for his students:
Grief Ritual and Deep Ecology
with John Seed

"To hear within ourselves the sound of the earth crying"

In this episode I meet with Deep Ecologist John Seed. Together we explore the relationship between collective sorrows, trauma and ecological anxiety; and the need to generate new and innovative community therapies, yet therapies that call back to our ancestral roots. We look at the Deep Ecological response, developed by John Seed and Joanna Macey, that weds together Group Work, Ecological Connection and Grief Ritual.

We discuss what occurs for participants who collectively make contact with grief, rage and terror the culturally repressed, forbidden feelings that we are not invited to share in polite company today. These workshops demonstrate the therapeutic potency of engaging in group processes that combine both gratitude for inhabiting, and honouring our pain for, the world, and in this process seeing with new eyes.

In this yarn we discuss the evolutionary pressures that operate not just on individuals but upon groups, for millions of years, in generating a ‘socially-extended and ecologically embedded’ sense of self. What does it mean, then, that our cultural approach to mental health, to grief, is so atomised? There is an evident call, John Seed suggests, to both honour our relations in the more-than-human world and recognise our greater ecological identity. A question for you to take forward is: what role can psychotherapy, group-therapy, eco-therapy, play in producing this shift?.

Online: Link to PodCast

Deep Ecology workshops in Melbourne in November 2022

Amazing how there’s an unprecedent surge of interest in experiential deep ecology workshops. 35 participants in Melbourne in November so I scheduled one for Feb. Filled in a week so now scheduled May and September. Same for Sydney, same for N Coast. Last weekend on the Central Coast I dared to expand to 40 in the circle for the first time in decades. Utterly gorgeous. What a blessing.

Online: See Large Photo

The Cicadas interrupt the Dharma Talk

Reflections on Forest Meditation Centre, near Lismore, NSW, Australia
CHRISTOPHER TITMUSS JAN 7, 2023

Published in November 2022, Living and Working Together tracks the 50-year-old history of the Dharmananda Community in The Channon, near Lismore, NSW Australia.
Around 40 people, including present and past community members, contributed to the book (A4 format), which also includes around 100 photographs, colour and black and white, spread over the 50 years.
Jen Ireland of the Community, who compiled and edited the publication, invited me to write a reflection of teaching in the forest centre.

Online: Listen to Full Talk

PDF: Transcript & Links

Great day in Melbourne yesterday. I emailed one of my heroes, Tyson Yunkaporta, author of the brilliant "Sand Talk" and asked him if we might have a yarn on his podcast "The Other Others". https://anchor.fm/tyson-yunkaporta Lo and behold he replied at once, "how about between 1 and 2 to-day?" So ... we had a great rave together and at 5.30 he emailed me "Yau, here's the link bruz"
https://anchor.fm/tyson-yunkaporta/episodes/Eco-Warrior-e1rj0rs
Cool!Then a Deep Ecology talk at the wonderful Black Spark Cultural Centre https://www.facebook.com/black.spark.cultural/  and to-day begins the Entheogenesis Australis conference. https://gardenstates.org

Interesting to look back at the podcast I did for Derrick Jensen’s “Resistance Radio” in 2018.

"In the light of our huge success in stopping mining in Los Cedros and other important areas in Ecuador this year, I find the description of our campaign as I saw it back in 2018; pretty illuminating.

But the best bit, for me, was the more philosophical, deep time tangent that the conversation took at one point, musing on the implications of extinction.

PDF:  Transcript of  Derrick Jensen’s “Resistance Radio”

Actual Podcast:
https://derrickjensen.org/2018/01/john-seed-resistance-radio/

Some great music fell into my life this week.

"The Great Turning" from my friends Kelly and Donna, Still on the Hill: https://youtu.be/Ybeaf6_ETTc . Sweet! They organised deep ecology workshops for me in Fayetteville Arkansas long ago and then we reconnected recently..

A gorgeous new song from Howard Eynon. The land on Bruny Island that he is stewarding will host my February Tasmania Deep Ecology Workshop . -

And to top it off my friend Subhira wants me to help organise some gigs so he can bring his quintet out from Chile next month when he’s been invited to the Port Fairy Festival https://youtu.be/sCur0la2_CE

I feel the presence of the Angel of Music.

This was the verse we added we added to "Angel of Sunshine" . It came through Doug Ferguson and me and someone else I’ve forgotten, on the banks of the Evans River during a deep ecology workshop in the 1980’s.

Angel of Music, I hear you calling
Pour your vibrations down over me
Into my spirit your sweet song is falling
In your embrace, may we live in harmony.

HOW I CAUGHT DEEP ECOLOGY - REFLECTIONS ON THE 4Oth ANNIVERSARY by John Seed

Back in 1982, somewhere between the Nightcap and Franklin actions I was searching to understand the ubiquitous psychological or spiritual sickness that allows modern humans to imagine that we can somehow profit from the destruction of our own life support systems. Paul Ehrlich: “We are sawing off the branch that we’re sitting on”.  James Lovelock: “Its as if the brain had decided it was the most important organ in the body and started mining the liver.”...Read more

Click >> To Read John's Full Story

"Deep Ecology" by Daniel Mirante

Art by: Daniel Mirante >> See Full Size Photo and Link to Daniel's Website

Memoirs of the Rainforest Information Centre

“I’m so grateful to Divish Petrof for the 2^nd of the “memoirs” of the Rainforest Information Centre”  which I asked him to write (see July 9 this year for the first instalment). Brings so much flooding back from the heydays of activism. In particular, his mention of the 1989 rainforest benefit in Brisbane with music by The Wallies (my son Bodhi, then aged 12 and his friend the late and sorely missed Emu) caused me to find this classic video by Andy Caffrey of the North American rainforest roadshow of the same year https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asr6pd1Ltas .
Some great clips including the Wallies singing Steve Tripp’s legendary “Once Upon a Planet” (starting at 4m25s) which led me to Steve’s own recent version of this great and uplifting  song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9pyXyefYvI .

Andy Caffrey’s video also has a short but sweet deep ecology rave (7m40s) as  introduction to “Expanding Universe”   and The Wallies singing “Lay Down Your Whopper Baby” inside a Vancouver Burger King to protest BK destroying rainforests in Costa Rica for cattle pasture (30m15s).

Workshop in the forests of the Arcoora Arts and Ecology Training Ground

Such a beautiful workshop in the forests of the Arcoora Arts and Ecology Training Ground in the foothills of the Border Ranges, one of the national parks we helped bring into being with our direct actions. I look forward to singing this song again and telling a few stories from long ago at the Nimbin Town Hall on Saturday night Oct 22 as part of the 40^th anniversary celebration of those actions and the declaration of the Nightcap National Park.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1018409028786726

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch7G_fzJ4j6/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

Skye Cielita Flor shared a post:

Check out this new podcast conversation between Leilani Navar of Turning Season Podcast and John Seed

Some of the topics explored are:

• how John found his calling in rainforest protection (part psychedelics, part being willing to help a neighbor, and part lucky accident)
• why he likes to attend a group Experiential Deep Ecology workshop about 10 times a year (like all of us, he still needs to remember to remember)
• one practice that you can easily do on your own
• the recent Rights of Nature win in Ecuador
• how he’s able to relate to this ecologically “on the brink” time with passion, but without hysteria
•and a glimpse through his words of what it’s like to expand your identity through time, through the cosmos, and through different life forms on Earth
It’s such a special opportunity to hear from John Seed, especially after his 6-year struggle with cancer, when he couldn’t engage in leading workshops or activism like he had been.
 
"John Seed is founder and director of the Rainforest Information Centre in Australia. He’s been involved in direct actions to protect Australian rainforests since 1979. He’s a well-loved leader and teacher of Deep Ecology, and collaborator with Joanna Macy in the early development of the Work that Reconnects. In 1988, Joanna Macy and John Seed co-authored the book Thinking Like a Mountain: Toward a Council of All Beings with Pat Fleming and Arne Naess."

https://turningseason.com/episode17

DEEP ECOLOGY AND THE CONSERVATION OF ECUADOR RAINFORESTS:  

John Seed is offering 2 deep ecology workshops on the N Coast this year near Kyogle (August 26-28) and near  Nimbin (October 21-23). 25% of proceeds support the  protection of Ecuadorean rainforests.

See John's 2022 Schedule here:>>

   Click to View Full PDF

Deep Ecology Online: Practices for Awakening & Resilience in a Changing World
One of the facilitators was my old friend and colleague Dr Eshana Bragg. To-day she wrote on her Facebook page:

   Click to View Letter

John Seed recites Poem by Drew Dellinger "Word to the Mother"

   Click to View Video

John Seed Sings "Born To Be Wild" Music by John Seed

   Click to View Video | Click for Audio Only on SoundCloud

John Seed Excerpts from Redwood Summer 1990
with The Wallies (musical group of Emu and Bodhi Seed)
News Clips from the Redwood Summer and Music by John Seed

   Click to View Video

A letter from Divish Petrof (1st installment)

I had a visit a couple of weeks ago from Divish Petrof, an activist who worked with us at the Rainforest Information Centre but we hadn’t been in touch since the ‘90’s. We sat around the fire and I was amazed how well he remembered stuff that I had long forgotten. He agreed to write some of his memories down for our archives and today I received the first instalment.
Remembering the Rainforest Information Centre - Pt.1
   Click to View Letter

River and John
   Click to View Full Size Photo

Los Cedros Biological Reserve Dec. 2, 2021

In December 2021, Ecuador's Constitutional Court decided in favour of protection for Los Cedros Reserve from mining.

Seven of nine judges voted to revoke the environmental license of mining companies Cornerstone Capital Resources and ENAMI, forcing them to cease operations within the reserve.

The exciting thing about this 117-page ruling is its declaration that Cornerstone and ENAMI have violated three sets of constitutional rights:

- the rights of nature;

- the rights of nearby communities to safe water and a clean environment;

- the rights of communities to consultation regarding environmental impact.

The court also ruled that companies failed to follow due process with environmental and water permits for the Rio Magdalena mining concessions which cover Los Cedros.
This ruling creates a precedent in Ecuador as more than 2 million Ha of similarly threatened “Bosques Protectores” and a worldwide precedent for the Rights of Nature

 Click to View Story in THE GUARDIAN:

    
      Los Cedros Reserve. Photo: Roo Vandegrift

Los Cedros Biological Reserve Dec. 1, 2021
Monumental victory in Ecuador as the Constitutional Court ejects mining companies from our Los Cedros Biological Reserve. Click to View Story:

“Interview by Steven Wyatt, ex Financial Review journalist and ex China correspondent for that paper, for his alternative history of Byron Bay" Click Here to View:

Photos of John and his Son River. Click Here to View:

Some photos from the last couple of years  Click Here to view:

Deep Ecology and Psychedelics

Presentation to "Rebel Herbal"

Click for Podcast: <<

Update: "Actually, I have to credit Acacia courtii and some sweet friends for assisting the immunotherapy" Click Here for: link from "Acacia courtii and some sweet friends"

“We’re doing well, River just turned 5 and is a delight.

A biopsy late 2017 found that the tumour had returned. The scans had been indicating this for 6 months but prof Miyazaki (cyberknife surgeon) categorically stated it was only scar tissue and advised against the biopsy. By the time I had the biopsy and scan December 2017 it was tracking towards the brain stem and last January I was booked in for surgery with Ben Panizza in Brisbane to remove eye, exenterate the orbit followed by a hole in the back of my skull for further surgery followed by radiation.

However, the final MRI before the op showed that the cancer was too far advanced and he called it off and this was precisely what made me eligible to participate in the trial of a new immune-therapy. This stopped the tumour advancing and then, after 8 months of fortnightly treatments at RNSH, my October MRI showed the volume of the tumour had precipitously dropped to 30% and last month it was down to 15% of its former glory.

So … Dr. Miyazaki saved my eye twice - 4 years ago with his cyberknife and again in 2017 with his mistaken diagnosis! “ 

Johns Son River and Grand daughter Jala

Update:

Click Photo for Full Size

John Seed on Deep Ecological Identity

FOR THE WILD, Podcast (audio)

Click for Podcast: <<

This could be the game-changer we’ve been waiting for. A court in the Azuay Province of Ecuador has rejected the Government’s appeal and the Chinese-owned Rio Blanco gold mine has been stopped! See the excellent article about this issue  written last week before this historic decision.

Megan  left for  a workshop yesterday leaving River (RIVER GALAXY) for a week for the first time. Next Wednesday  he and I will fly to Cairns. Friday we’ll  pick Megan  up at Cairns airport and drive to my first gig with the families at Kowrowa, a small indigenous -community out of Kuranda, (out of Monamona Mission in the 60's). Next morning we head to the Coalessence  Festival,  Mission Beach for a deep ecology workshop and to meet Bodhi and family (IMAGES 6008, 6012, 6014, 6016) there for the weekend before we repair to a week together at Cape Trib then deep ecology gigs in Kuranda and Cairns and home again jiggety jig.

Melbourne RAG's superb research into the Aussie miners who hold the lions share of the contested concessions threatening to lay Ecuador's rainforest biodiversity to waste

Important article on the economic damage caused by the mining industry, written by Alberto Acosta Ecuadorian economist  former Minister of Energy and Mines. Former president of the Constituent Assembly. Former candidate for the Presidency of the Republic of Ecuador. ENGLISH.....  ESPAÑOL.

Thanks to Davide Nicastro, the Hope St Warehouse residents and all the musicians for last night’s  rave party which raised $11,000 for Los Cedros legal defense

About 40 activists from Students of Sustainability, Friends of the Earth  and the Melbourne Rainforest Action Group   descended up BHP's headquarters in downtown Melbourne  today, locking down the lifts and blockading the main entrance for an hour until police intervened. We held  Ecuador-related campaign signs and handed  out leaflets.  Several TV news networks came to cover the action, with the ABC  (the national broadcaster) covering all the various student actions targeting various government agencies

Great deep ecology workshop, 40 participants, first time I’ve had to turn people away from a full workshop in 20 years, booking 2 more in Nov-Dec, $1900 raised for Los Cedros. Thanks so much Mycelium Studios for donating this incredible space. Melbourne rocks! Afterwards, one of the Mycelium gang, Ivanna,  took some great portraits of me

Brendan Condon from The Cape Ecovillage near Melbourne recently gave a talk at our Narara Ecovillage where he described the totally passive (open source) designs that they have created and started building down there which now achieve  over 9  NatHERs stars and require minimal  cooling OR heating. Today Brendan showed a couple of us around his project and we went to visit some of the houses they have built . We were stunned  by the comfort on a wild weather day in July and particularly by the economics – they can now build one of these houses with zero energy bills at a tiny 3% premium over the cost of a well-build conventional house costing $3000 to $3,500/year in energy bills (ie  3 year pay-back period and then no energy bills for the life of the building). This is the future.

Students of Sustainability are a totally kick-ass group of  uni students from around the country that get together at a different campus each winter, this year in Melbourne. They organise direct actions following each of their conferences and I was able to negotiate for this years actions to include one at BHP’s HQ in Collins St – they want to attack BHP around Aussie uranium mines among other things and happy to include Ecuador in the mix. I’ve gone to 6 or 8 of their gatherings during the last 20 years and will once again give a deep ecology workshop at this one next week.

John Plays Guitar for the Kids

 Click to view Full Size Photo Here  or (See the FB link) >> Click Here

Los Cedros Summary Update Click Here

A weekend  of  deep ecology events in Bathurst NSW to  benefit Los Cedros. Friday night  a talk on deep ecology for “Green Drinks” organised by the Sisters of Mercy “Rahamim Ecology Centre”. They posted a video of my talk onto youtube as well as a 5-minute clip and the two Drew Dellinger raps I opened and closed with: The Universe Jam and Word to the Mother. Then a gorgeous weekend of experiential deep ecology. The best part is that, in spite of being the facilitator,  I’m able to fully  participate as well and, just as for the other participants, I get to soak in the healing and empowerment returning so refreshed to my family and work.

My old friend, the permaculture legend Jeff Lawton, posted my Los Cedros rave to his news site  and also filmed a passionate 7-minute video which went out to some 60,000 subscribers to his “Friday Five”

Los Cedros, the  Biological Reserve in NW Ecuador which we launched back in the late ‘80’s with the help of a grant from the Australian Government’s development assistance bureau is facing its most serious threat – The Ecuadorean government has secretly signed a mining agreement covering Los Cedros and other “protected” areas with the Canadian company “Cornerstone Capital Resources inc”. Many of the international scientists who have worked at Los Cedros have signed a letter attesting to the irreplaceable scientific value of this, the best -forested watershed in Western Ecuador. You can support this fight by signing the petitition here: http://rainforestinfo.nationbuilder.com/save_los_cedros

John Seed Rad Activist

8 minute clip by Emma Carrol

1. Honouring our Pain for the World
2 Deep Ecology & The Conservation of Nature
3 The Religion of Economics

Click for Video: <<

Great news: following the 3000 emails which you sent to environment minister Jairam Ramesh, news is in to-day that Vedanta’s controversial bauxite mine on Dongria Kondh tribal land at Niyamgiri in India has been stopped. You can see the story in The Guardian or theMinistry of Environment and Forests decision  itself on the ministry website. Furthermore, Ramesh has been quoted as saying that  Vedanta had committed ” very serious violations of environment act and forest right act,” and that his department was looking at taking punitive action against the company. The news sent Vedanta shares down 6%.

For more on this issue, see  the amazing 10-minute film: “Mine: Story of a Sacred Mountain“ or this  great 5 minute clip and a couple of recent articles one by Arundhati Roy

A great new painting for Arunachala (the  sacred mountain we’ve been reforesting for 20 years) .

First music gig in 20 years with my son Bodhi.

Draft  chapter  ”The Religion of Economics” for”Handbook of Social Ecology”.

Indian Journal of Ecocriticism interview with Swarna

3rd exhibition of “The Two of Us” – my sculptures along with paintings by my mother Judy Cassab,  Canberra July 31

Recent interview on ABC Radio National “The Spirit of Things” – transcript

Have you been wondering what the “Maoist insurgency” in India is about. Great article by Arundhati Roy and interview by Tehelka.

John Seed's Rainforest Road Show, Takilma, OR

A Video by Andy Caffrey

1. Extinction; 2. The Burning Times; 3. Expanding Universe

Click for Video: <<