#relating forests - Myths, Humans and Nature II

Indigenous Wisdom and Ritual Practices: Reconnecting with the More-Than-Human World

The second part of our creative online event on April 8, 2025, shifted our focus to indigenous perspectives and traditional ritual practices. This session provided a profound counterpoint to Western approaches to nature, offering alternative frameworks for understanding our place within the natural world.

Harald Gaski, Professor of Sami Literature, introduced us to the Sami worldview where nature isn't merely an object to be used but a subject deserving respect and permission. His explanation of the Sami concept of "asking" before utilizing resources resonated deeply with many participants. In Sami tradition, even before cutting down a tree, one asks permission—acknowledging that each tree has its own soul.

Gaski shared the beautiful myth of a young reindeer's beating heart placed at the center of the earth to give comfort and hope to the Sami people. He explained how the Sami verb 'gullat' means both 'to hear' and 'to belong to'—suggesting an intrinsic connection between listening to the earth's heartbeat and belonging to it.

"Indigenous ways of knowing are not inferior to Western scientific knowledge," Gaski emphasized. "They are simply based on different cultural values and perspectives."

The second half of the event featured photographer Yannick Cormier's exploration of mask traditions in European paganism. Through his striking photographic work, Cormier demonstrated how mask rituals serve not to conceal identity but to reveal deeper connections with nature spirits. His presentation highlighted how these rituals, preserved in remote regions of Europe, enable participants to transcend social hierarchies and feel more connected to the natural world.

What fascinated me was Cormier's description of the transformative experience of wearing masks—how it allows people to temporarily shed their social personas and experience a more primal connection with nature, both external and within themselves.

Art as Mediation: Bridging Humans and Nature

A recurring theme across both events was the potential of art to serve as a mediator between humans and the natural world. Whether through storytelling, mask theater, photography, or traditional rituals, artistic practices offer pathways to reconnect with forests in ways that analytical thinking alone cannot achieve.

The project partners emphasized that the current environmental crisis is also a crisis of imagination. By exploring diverse cultural perspectives and creative practices, "relating forests" aims to stimulate new ways of thinking about and relating to nature.

Anne Bouchon of Cultures Eco Actives summarized this beautifully in the closing remarks: "We need mediators to create connection with nature. Artists can be mediators, as can masks, music, and songs. Our aim is for people to feel this connection to nature, which exists biologically anyway, and to become aware of it. This awareness should lead to living in such a way that nature is not destroyed."

Looking Forward

The "relating forests" project continues its exploration through upcoming workshops in France, Germany, and Norway, culminating in a final event in October 2025. These field experiments and research initiatives promise to further develop the insights gained from the online events, translating theoretical understanding into practical approaches for fostering sustainable relationships with forests.

As we face the growing challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss, initiatives like "relating forests" remind us that our response must be not only technological but cultural and spiritual. By reimagining our relationship with forests through diverse cultural lenses and artistic practices, we may discover new pathways toward environmental healing and reconciliation.

The recordings of both creative online events are available on the project's Vimeo channel, offering valuable resources for anyone interested in exploring the intersection of art, ecology, and cultural heritage. I highly recommend watching them as a starting point for your own journey toward a deeper connection with the forest.

What myths shape your perception of forests? How might traditional practices help you reconnect with nature? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

About the lecturer

Harald Gaski
Harald Gaski is from Tana in Finnmark and is a professor of Sami literature at Sami University College. He has been central to the development of Sami literature as an academic discipline since the mid-1980s. He is also a fiction writer and has translated Sami literature into Norwegian and English. In his research, Gaski has been interested in indigenous aesthetics, Sami myths and traditional values, as well as the multi-artist Nils-Aslak Valkeapää.

Yannick Cormier
After producing a photographic series on the ancestral traditions that are still celebrated to the rhythm of trances, ceremonies and sacrifices in Tamil Nadu, in southern India, which can be found in the collection Dravidian Catharsis, Yannick Cormier is continuing his research into contemporary rites in France and Europe. From 2017 to 2020, he will produce a new series in the Iberian Peninsula, Espiritus de Invierno, documenting the carnival rites practised in this region.
The photographer shows this form of resistance to the cultural identity of so-called traditional societies or smaller communities that have not yet been completely anaesthetised by the modern consumerist world. It is an attempt to reveal the mythological attitudes of these groups.
His photography brings together the spiritual and the material, fiction and reality, tradition and modernity. His photographs are living images that he draws from travel, social rites, religious ceremonies, cultural fantasies, dreams and, more generally, from all the games, sacred or mundane, that disguise identity and appearance.

www.yannickcormier.com

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