An Open Access Environmental Humanities Project

The “social relation to nature” refers to an Amazonian way of engaging the nonhuman world as though it had the full range of human emotions.  Plants, animals, or even earth are believed to feel lonely and to desire company across species lines; but also to be shy, desire privacy, to sometimes be resentful or to withdraw from human company.   Empathy for human needs sometimes causes them to be generous, offering themselves for food or medicine.  On the other hand, they can be ambivalent, resentful,  take revenge for the death of their relatives.  The presernt project links short videos of testimonies, stories, and songs that engage various the forest world to the kichwa and scientific species names of the  various plants and animals present in the narratives.   It also links species and nature to the stages of the human life cycle through which nature is experienced socially..    Kichwa traditions on particular plants or animals can be searched by species.

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