2025 Seminars

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Presentation Type

Presentation

Start Date

15-10-2025 12:30 PM

Keywords:

pareidolia, trees, snow, ice, forests, mountains, stones, sacred landscapes, senses, Sámi soundscapes, more-than-human kinship, temporal politics, productive forestry, Pinus contorta, Indigenous epistemology, old-growth forests; decolonial ecology, skull trees, spiritual landscapes, reciprocity, early epistemology of sustainability, sacred groves, relational ontology, Arctic environmental change

Description

Can forests sense, communicate and remember? How can we engage with trees as sentient subjects with wisdom to share with humankind in ecologically troubled times? Our collaborative presentation will bring together the expertise of four speakers on the subject of forest sentience. John Ryan (Turtle Island), Francis Joy (Rovaniemi, northern Finland), Åsa Andersson Martti (Swedish Sápmi) and Janne Sirniö (Swedish Sápmi) will share their perspectives on—and experiences of—the sentience of trees, forests and ecological communities with a focus on Sápmi, the homeland of the Sámi people of Northern Europe. After short presentations on forest sentience from scientific, artistic, and Indigenous points of view, the panel will open up dialogue with the Nulungu audience on the implications of sentience for forest appreciation and conservation in Australia. Forests face myriad pressures globally including in Northern Finland and Sweden, relatively remote regions celebrated as Europe’s last wilderness. For instance, throughout Northern Finland, which comprises sparsely populated Finnish Lapland as well as the urban area of Rovaniemi, the widespread clearing of mature trees has degraded boreal habitats. Rupturing longstanding relationships between people and trees, climate change will continue to alter the country’s northernmost forests. Parallel to these escalating threats to forests in Finland and elsewhere, however, lies a burgeoning area of research signifying the diverse ways in which trees respond intelligently to environmental perturbations and bolster their resilience. In this dynamic and rapidly shifting context, the collaborative project Gifts from the Sentient Forest (GSF) (2024–25) develops new modes of interacting with Northern Finland’s trees and valuing their biocultural heritage. At the centre of the project is arboreal sentience, a generative concept that sheds light on the capacities of trees to sense, communicate, behave, learn, and remember. In the project, more-than-human sentience serves as a foundation for cultivating tree-human collaborations. At the same time, the work expands the public’s awareness of the forest communities of Northern Europe through painting, photography, film, music, poetry, performance, and other creative interventions. After discussing the project’s key methods, John Ryan and Francis Joy will provide examples from a major exhibition of creative work in Rovaniemi, Finland in mid-2025. Åsa Andersson Martti and Janne Sirniö will then elaborate the significance of more-than-human sentience for Sámi people. We conclude with the proposition that arboreal sentience offers a promising basis for transforming environmental values, reframing forests as biocultural systems, and perpetuating knowledge of the region’s endangered seasons.

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Oct 15th, 12:30 PM

From the Arctic to Australia: Four Perspectives on Forest Sentience

Can forests sense, communicate and remember? How can we engage with trees as sentient subjects with wisdom to share with humankind in ecologically troubled times? Our collaborative presentation will bring together the expertise of four speakers on the subject of forest sentience. John Ryan (Turtle Island), Francis Joy (Rovaniemi, northern Finland), Åsa Andersson Martti (Swedish Sápmi) and Janne Sirniö (Swedish Sápmi) will share their perspectives on—and experiences of—the sentience of trees, forests and ecological communities with a focus on Sápmi, the homeland of the Sámi people of Northern Europe. After short presentations on forest sentience from scientific, artistic, and Indigenous points of view, the panel will open up dialogue with the Nulungu audience on the implications of sentience for forest appreciation and conservation in Australia. Forests face myriad pressures globally including in Northern Finland and Sweden, relatively remote regions celebrated as Europe’s last wilderness. For instance, throughout Northern Finland, which comprises sparsely populated Finnish Lapland as well as the urban area of Rovaniemi, the widespread clearing of mature trees has degraded boreal habitats. Rupturing longstanding relationships between people and trees, climate change will continue to alter the country’s northernmost forests. Parallel to these escalating threats to forests in Finland and elsewhere, however, lies a burgeoning area of research signifying the diverse ways in which trees respond intelligently to environmental perturbations and bolster their resilience. In this dynamic and rapidly shifting context, the collaborative project Gifts from the Sentient Forest (GSF) (2024–25) develops new modes of interacting with Northern Finland’s trees and valuing their biocultural heritage. At the centre of the project is arboreal sentience, a generative concept that sheds light on the capacities of trees to sense, communicate, behave, learn, and remember. In the project, more-than-human sentience serves as a foundation for cultivating tree-human collaborations. At the same time, the work expands the public’s awareness of the forest communities of Northern Europe through painting, photography, film, music, poetry, performance, and other creative interventions. After discussing the project’s key methods, John Ryan and Francis Joy will provide examples from a major exhibition of creative work in Rovaniemi, Finland in mid-2025. Åsa Andersson Martti and Janne Sirniö will then elaborate the significance of more-than-human sentience for Sámi people. We conclude with the proposition that arboreal sentience offers a promising basis for transforming environmental values, reframing forests as biocultural systems, and perpetuating knowledge of the region’s endangered seasons.