Art and Science of Relationship and Meaning

A vessel for water, tobacco, gratitude, and commitment

I am so inspired by the symposium I'm attending this week called,
The Once and Future River: Imagining the Mississippi in an Era of Climate Change put on by the University of Minnesota, Institute for Advanced Study. It will take months to reflect on all the perspectives offered. You'll see why if you look at the speaker and topics list - from artists to water scientists to historians, with speakers from around the country and strong representation by Native American artists, advocates, and scientists.

On Wednesday night, the keynote speakers were Jim Rock, incoming Program Director, Marshall W. Alworth Planetarium, University of Minnesota-Duluth and Sharon Day, Executive Director, Indigenous People’s Task Force. Jim said something that struck me as extraordinarily useful for the interdisciplinary gathering focused on the river, and as an understanding to bring to other complex conversations. I may have jotted this inaccurately, but the gist was this: that Dakota science is first about relationship and meaning, and second about measurement and prediction, though all four can work together. I find it interesting that he included relationship and meaning as part of his idea of science, not just a precursor. This might bend up some people's ideas of what the word "science" means, but I found it very helpful to integrate the idea of meaning and relationship into science to begin the symposium's big questions to establish the idea that value, relationship and meaning is foundational to any conversation, even about scientific topics or about the academic study of perspectives on the river. The idea of relationship is not just another topic alongside others, but can be a permeating paradigm, and an experiential reality.

Embodying this, after their talks, Jim and Sharon, and others conducted a ceremony to initiate the symposium that included songs of water gratitude in several languages, a pouring together of waters from near and distant water bodies, and an offering of tobacco. So often in problem-solving discussions, what is sacred, or deeply valued is left at home, so as not to cloud the 'objective' discussion or perhaps to guard against the vulnerable open-heartedness that deep connection can produce. This entirely different approach of beginning with a shared experience of relationship and meaning, does not cloud, but instead guides the intellectual discussion. It is as if the ceremony invites our hearts, as well as our heads into the room, to give the conversation ethical and value-based grounding and to draw us personally inside the circle of our shared concern. We can no longer stand at the edge of the river, it has now washed over us and we are immersed. The ceremony is a sacred, functional, and participatory artwork, doing an essential job in the ecosystem of constructive conversation.

Update: The video of the symposium keynote is now available here.