Back to the Future with Keith Williams with Moderator Laura Pustarfi

This conversation with Keith Williams, hosted by The Plant Initiative, was recorded on April 9, 2024.

Have you ever wondered about the connection between humans and plants and what it means to live in good relationship with our vegetal kin?

Join scholar and professor Keith Williams in a conversation about plants as relatives, partners, and co-creators with moderator Laura Pustarfi, board member of The Plant Initiative.

Our relationships with the vegetal world are typically informed by human exceptionalism and colonial extractivism animated by the flows of global capital. This conversation explores an alternative perspective that figures plants, fungi, and other relatives as partners and co-creators rather than resources to be exploited.

As part of the discussion, Keith will draw on Indigenous philosophy and post-humanism to offer a different way of being with our planty kin featuring examples from his personal experiences with gardening, wild food gathering, and with sacred plant medicines.

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About Keith Williams:

Keith Williams is an assistant professor (educational studies) at Athabasca University. His work focuses on better understanding how to be good relations with our more-than-human kin. Keith draws heavily on Haudenosaunee teachings (part of his paternal lineage is from a Mohawk community on the shores of Lake Ontario), posthuman philosophy, and his lived experience with family members—human and otherwise. Keith has an undergraduate degree in plant science, a master’s in mycology, and a Ph.D. in educational studies with a focus on Indigenous ways of knowing and being.

Learn more about Keith from his Athabasca University web site. Some of his many publications are listed on his ResearchGate site here.