As humans grapple with how to protect the environment and sustain life amid intensifying climate issues, St. Louis-area universities and other local institutions are looking to time-tested approaches for ideas as they kick off a free virtual conference later this week.
One of those ideas has to do with kinship, an ancient concept that Kyle Whyte, the George Willis Pack Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, has embedded into his contemporary research.
“A lot of times when people think about kinship they think about their relationships with immediate family members. But for a lot of Indigenous people, we use the concept of kinship both to include that, but in ways that are pretty different,” Whyte, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, explained Monday on St. Louis on the Air.