



by Ria Del Montana

I was born belonging to a field and a forest edge until civilization stole my being and ‘developed’ my home. Years later I was still a teenager when I stole back some summertime alone in noncivilization, a juniper knoll over a lake. Each dawn a mourning dove perched on the branch above greeted morning cooOO-woo-woo-woooo. For years after, work-consume city culture swallowed my life. One day I opened my city door shocked to find a lame mourning dove on the deck. My mind wondered on which human construct caused the collision. My inner self, original self, truest self, arose from artificial hibernation. My animal being compassionately watched over this other animal being through days and nights as her body healed. When she found strength to fly away, I mused mystical meaning of this visit from my past converting this deck artifice into wild refuge. Too quickly I distracted back into illusory life.

I moved to another urban area, this one with sloped landslide-prone ‘parks’ astonishingly let be as withered wildlife habitat. They were dumped, fragmented and encroached into by domesticated humans and their invading tag-along plants and animals. These wild lands civilization rejected for ‘development’, however degraded, became my authentic life. In forests dominated by conifers, much taller and widespread than junipers, in swaths along saline shores, my animal being reawakened. This time I heard nature’s cries and responded wholly, learning ways of tending the wild. Indigenous plants are the locus of thriving wild, so I observed their characters, their pleasures and aversions, movements and constraints, givings and takings, shape-shifting communities and ranges, and what assists them in their struggles with invading colonizers.

My assists aligned with the science of restoring ecology, but my emphasis on caring observations of everything wild awakened a connection deeper than anything science. I didn’t see my change coming, or plan it, though I was ready for it and accepted it fully. Despite reports as increasing in population, the only time I saw a mourning dove since moving to the land of towering conifers was on a walk through a human altered environment. Crows harangued with raptor-warning caws from electric lines above her lifeless body on roadside lawn. Blood dripped from her beak as a hawk held her still with a talon to rip open her breast. My mind wondered if humans’ ‘development’ vastness created space too open, stealing cover that serves hawk the advantage. After years of lying dormant inside me, mourning dove’s call intuitively sounded, not entering through my ears but emanating through my voice. cooOO-woo-woo-woooo

Mourning doves are so uncommon in the forests that I began using the call to communicate with habitat restoration friends working within sound range, drawing selective attention of others familiar with expected bird calls of the place. I varied the emotionality of the call to signal meaning, from “I’m here now” to “Come check this out!” Now that my project focuses on inviting return of extirpated indigenous plants, each time I cast seeds, bury rhizomes or stake stems into a habitat in which the species once thrived, I sound the mourning dove’s call selectively to all others who live in this home to announce the plant’s presence. Then I leave the wild alone to reacquaint.

During a recent training on how nonNatives can ally with Native Americans I learned a lesson not taught: restoring wild ecology is the deepest way colonized humans can decolonize. Returning a place toward its pre-colonized state is rewilding both the place and the rewilder’s self. This training however centered on identity politics, which I see as correlational to and part of the birth of human colonization: civilization. Humans’ domestication and domesticating is colonization’s core, which is wild life’s core problem. As this training revealed, civilized humans wage futile fights paradoxically against civilization’s hierarchies. Further, they see the heinous power they hold over nonhuman animals as worth the price of civilizations’ ‘progress’, from world takeovers much farther back than humans’ most recent post-stone age globalization.

Post-stone age colonization removes us from wild ways of knowing, for example, replacing childhoods in connection with nature to childhoods enclosed behind walls studying ways of controlling nature. Humans’ stone age colonization enculturated humans away from primal ways of living by unnaturally positioned themselves as Earth’s top predator as they expanded. This most noticeably manifests in the shifting human foodway from biological herbivores to advantageous omnivores. From foraging to dominating by organized hunting.

Past shifting human lifeways of a place creates a curious predicament in restoration ecology. The restoration reference point of a place resembles the most recent phase diversity of life was thriving there. In most cases that phase was a settled period after the habitat was markedly altered by human colonizing actions impacting the environment. If nature restorers’ reference point for a place was shaped by actions such as old growth forest burns set by some to open gaps for hunting opportunities, how do they account for these missing human interactions that shaped the ecology?

For thousands of years humans have decided how all life live, further which life and entire species live and which die. Imagine a pre-human colonization wildlife map. Imagine wildlife timelines fluctuating at points of first human contacts, how interconnections transitioned from wild dynamics to hierarchies under human control. Species deemed appealing to human usefulness or preference moved to the top, while any species unwanted was marginalized and risked extermination. Imagine nonhuman animals hosting a training for humans on the history of their oppression and exploitation, complete with stories of their slaughters and species extinctions, as well as their resistance stories and strategies, with an invitation for you to support them.

An invitation to ally with nature, to liberate Earth from human colonization, would center on rekindling primal relations with others we now oppress. A training to ally with wild life would confront humans’ colonizing propaganda, stereotypes and defenses with countering truths. Not all past humans hunted, many remained foragers, just as many humans today as young as toddlers instinctively choose to refrain from animal exploitation. Humans’ reign over others is not natural, nor is humans’ consuming animals part of the ‘circle of life’, no matter how much ‘thanks’ is expressed. The heart of wild interactions and relations is not using others as resources, but thriving community wild life. Other animals do not mystically ‘offer’ themselves for consumption, whether or not ‘every part’ of their body is used. They are not ‘food’ animals brought into existence for us to live, but wild animals often bred into unnatural form by imprisoning civilized hands.

Truth is, humans are an incredibly adaptive species with great abilities to change toward sustainable lifeways, if they would take steps in overcoming their speciesism. In a training to ally with nature, they would get a checklist to test their speciesism, akin to Dr. Raible’s checklist for antiracist white allies. *I demonstrate knowledge and awareness of the issues of speciesism. *I continually educate myself about speciesism. *I raise issues about speciesism over and over, both in public and in private. *I identify speciesism as it is happening. *I take risks in… Like civilization, speciesism is so rampant, so ingrained in all of everywhere, the chasm feels unbridgeable. But going hand in hand with civilization, not facing the daunting task of bringing down speciesism means humans’ own demise.

Like all oppressions, the dominant group benefits leave tracks of misery seeming so unnecessary in retrospect. Bringing down the old ways gives space for the new. Humans can identify and breach the cracks in the cycle of systematic oppression of nature at each step. The generated misinformation and propaganda. The justification for further mistreatment. The institutions perpetuating and enforcing speciesism birthed in civilization. The internalized dominance and feelings of superiority. The internalized oppression via subscribing to the narrative. The cultural acceptance, approval, legitimization, normalization. The systemic mistreatment of nature. Whether targets are specific or broad, planting seeds in the hearts and minds or immediately effective actions, opportunities abound.

While the path of the new way does not and cannot have an overarching plan, some potential actions of the new way can be envisioned. Collectively reduce human population. Give back land for indigenous rewilding. Restore habitat toward times of last thriving ecosystems, that is pre-European colonization. Invite the return of extirpated species. Where possible, reintroduce human-removed indigenous top predators. Sanctuaries for liberated animals bred into domesticated forms who cannot go feral or co-adapt into habitat community. Shrink animal agriculture first, plant agriculture second. If possible, skip over architecting food forests & permaculture with humans at the center and return straight to foraging. Draw from sciences without bias barriers to wildlife’s innate right to live on their own terms

Humans will either soon drive themselves to extinction with many others, or they will decolonize themselves by mutualizing their alliance with Earth’s living communities. Hope lies in releasing mass delusion, in bringing down speciesism and civilization that dragged it in, in assisting Earth’s transition into a rewilded state that includes the compassionate feral folio-frugivore human living in symbiosis with others. Not utopia, but liberating Earth from human domestication. The transition has already begun, and all humans are invited to join. cooOO-woo-woo-woooo