Lyla June, John MacNeill Miller, Kate Marvel
As our planet undergoes profound transformation, this conversation with climate scientist Kate Marvel, Indigenous scholar Lyla June Johnston, and literary historian John MacNeill Miller explores how we might similarly transform our cultural narratives about Earth. Marvel's new book, Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet, demonstrates how climate science itself is evolving - from sterile data to emotionally resonant storytelling. Lyla June Johnston illuminates the ways in which Indigenous knowledge transforms our understanding of humanity's role, showing how Native Americans historically served as keystone species who nurtured ecosystems into abundance. Miller uncovers how 19th century literature first captured - then lost - nature's interconnectedness, a transformation in storytelling with lasting consequences.
Together, they'll examine how this moment demands more than policy changes - it requires a fundamental metamorphosis in how we see ourselves within nature's web. This dialogue offers a chrysalis for our collective imagination - where scientific truth, ancestral wisdom and narrative art might combine to birth new ways of being in a changing world.
Presented in association with Damascus Citizens for Sustainability.
Date
Jun 22, 12:30pm to 1:30pm
Featuring
Lyla June
Dr. Lyla June Johnston (aka Lyla June) is an Indigenous musician, author, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages. Her multi-genre presentation style has engaged audiences across the globe towards personal, collective, and ecological healing. She blends her study of Human Ecology at Stanford, graduate work in Indigenous Pedagogy, and the traditional worldview she grew up with to inform her music, perspectives and solutions. Her doctoral research focused on the ways in which pre-colonial Indigenous Nations shaped large regions of Turtle Island (aka the Americas) to produce abundant food systems for humans and non-humans.
John MacNeill Miller
John MacNeill Miller is Associate Professor of English at Allegheny College, where he writes and teaches at the intersections of literature, animal studies, and the environmental humanities. His recent book The Ecological Plot: How Stories Gave Rise to a Science (University of Virginia Press, 2024) shows how ecological science emerged in the 1800s from a particular form of narrative storytelling. His essays have appeared at Literary Hub, Electric Literature, and The Millions among other venues, and his research on the introduction of non-native birds to the United States has been covered in the Science section of the New York Times.
Kate Marvel
Kate Marvel is a senior climate scientist at Project Drawdown, the world’s leading resource for climate solutions. Dr. Marvel spent seven years as a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University; before that she held positions at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Stanford University. A former cosmologist, Dr. Marvel received a PhD in theoretical physics from Cambridge University where she was a Gates Scholar. She serves on the chapter leadership team of the US Fifth National Climate Assessment, has given a TED talk, appeared on Meet the Press and The Ezra Klein Show, and testified before the US Congress. She’s written for Scientific American, Nautilus Magazine, and the On Being Project.
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