Jesse's Interview with Wade Davis

JB: You coined the word 'ethnosphere' when writing about the tragedy of vanishing cultures and languages. How did the idea of the ethnosphere come about?

WD: I was looking for an organizing principle to draw attention to the parallel process of loss happening to the cultural fabric, alongside the loss of biological diversity. The same forces affecting the biosphere were impacting culture.

I coined the term ethnosphere to get people thinking about this interconnected web of life. I defined the ethnosphere as the sum total of all thoughts, dreams, ideas, intuitions, myths, and memories brought into being by human imagination since the dawn of consciousness.

Biologists and anthropologists used to be at loggerheads. There was a famous moment in the late 1970s at Harvard when the Dalai Lama was giving a lecture and across the street, E. O. Wilson was introducing Norman Myers, who had written about the biodiversity crisis. Wilson, in apologizing for the sparse audience, said Harvard students couldn't get their priorities straight and were off listening to a "religious kook." It highlighted the divide between biologists, who saw people, especially indigenous people, as part of the problem, and anthropologists, who couldn't abide what we saw as the misanthropic elitism of the naturalists.

Now, of course, science in the guise of genetics has brought it all together. We know that race is a fiction, that we're all cut from the same genetic cloth, and that culture is a matter of choice, not a failed attempt at modernity.

The idea of the ethnosphere was to highlight this parallel process of loss, symbolized by the erosion of linguistic diversity. By academic consensus, half of the world's languages aren't being taught to schoolchildren.

JB: Did Professor Richard Evans Schultes, ethnobotanist and one of your mentors, help inspire this idea?

WD: It wasn't really Schultes. I was lucky to have two mentors at Harvard: Schultes, who indirectly turned me on to the realm of plants, and David Maybury-Lewis, a great social anthropologist who thought more profoundly about culture than anyone I've ever met.

Schultes gave me something concrete in the form of plants, which became a perfect conduit to culture. Plants grounded me as a young man, giving me a way to approach indigenous people as an apprentice rather than as someone coming to study them. It helped me understand indigenous dynamics better than if I'd shown up asking personal questions.

While Schultes introduced me to plants, intellectually I was more influenced by Maybury-Lewis, who was very much in the scholar-as-activist tradition. He created Cultural Survival and deeply influenced my thinking about culture.

JB: Regarding cultural relativism, does it mean different things in relation to multiculturalism and cultural diversity?

WD: Cultural diversity is just what the word says. Multiculturalism is a policy that formally acknowledges a nation is made up of different voices and cultures, as opposed to the melting pot metaphor where everyone merges into one set of ideas, language, and values. Canada embraces the metaphor of the mosaic, acknowledging and celebrating the differences within.

Cultural relativism is a specific anthropological concept. It posits that the world you were born into is just one model of reality, a consequence of adaptive choices made by your ancestors. Every culture, whether it's a yak herder in the Himalayas or a Voodoo acolyte in Haiti, teaches us that there are other ways of thinking, being, and orienting oneself in the world.

The fundamental idea of anthropology is that other peoples of the world aren't failed attempts at being you. They're unique answers to the question of what it means to be human and alive. Each culture has something to say, and none has a monopoly on the route to the divine. Cultural relativism, in that sense, is the antidote to nativism, to the idea that one way is the only way.

JB: Is that why your work highlights the vitality of story and myth?

WD: Yes, because you can't communicate the lessons of anthropology through polemics or politics. Storytelling is how you change the world. That's what I am — a storyteller. Whether it's through books, films, or lectures, the medium is storytelling.

JB: You tell an epic story in your book One River. How did you develop your ability to write so enchantingly?

WD: I taught myself to write because I had no choice. I always tell young people to be opportunists, not schemers, and put themselves in situations where they have no choice but success. That's how I learned to write.

I took an assignment in Haiti and went from having money to being broke after my main backers either died or had strokes. I had to write, and I taught myself because I had to. That's the only way you truly grow — by putting yourself in situations where you have to succeed.

JB: Speaking of language, you've said that at the time of the Neolithic Revolution, "the poetry of the shaman was displaced by the prose of the priesthood."

WD: There's a big difference between a shaman and a priest. A shaman's role is to release the individual's wild genius, which is why shamanic traditions often involve psychoactive substances. These substances are inherently subversive because they can't be controlled, which is why they've always been so transformative and threatening to the state.

A priest's job, by contrast, is to socialize people into a congregation that can be managed by the state. The shaman's role is to catalyze the individual's spirit and release it, which is the opposite of state-sponsored religious orthodoxy.

JB: Do you think there's a future for culturally sanctioned use of these plants in the West?

WD: I think it's already happening. There's a resurgence of interest in the clinical applications of psychedelics, which is long overdue. These substances have immense potential in therapy, which was why people like Leary and Alpert got so excited about LSD. They saw it as the missing key to unlocking the mind.

These substances are subversive because they change people's lives. I wouldn't write or think the way I do without my experiences with psychedelics. They deeply impacted my understanding of cultural relativism, nature, and life itself.

JB: One of your graduate students is researching San Pedro cactus. What do you think will come of this?

WD: San Pedro is fascinating because it has a deep history in Pre-Columbian Peru and was used by virtually every civilization there. My student, Laurel Sugden, is doing a comprehensive study of San Pedro's history and its potential therapeutic use today. It's a long-overdue project.

San Pedro shows up in the iconography of coastal civilizations like Paracas, Nazca, and Moche. Of all the entheogenic plants, San Pedro may have played a catalytic role in the spread of Chavín civilization, less an empire and more a religious idea. Despite this, no one has seriously studied it since the 1970s. Laurel's work is addressing that gap.

JB: Much of your work comes down to how humans relate to the land and to each other. You've worked to protect the Stikine Valley from industrial developments.

WD: I've tried, but I haven't been very successful. The Red Chris mine in Todagin Mountain is an egregious example of corruption. Despite my efforts, industrial interests won out.

However, I believe in fidelity to place. That's something we can learn from First Nations. I promised my daughters and friends that I wouldn't abandon the valley, even though it's being destroyed by industrial development. The fight continues.

JB: What advice do you have for young people today?

WD: My advice is to bear witness. Life isn't about winning or losing battles. It's about maintaining a state of mind, choosing to be on the side of light, compassion, and good.

You won't vanquish evil, but you can choose where you stand. This allows you to conserve your energy for the next fight, because there will always be a next fight. Life is an ongoing process, and we work all the time. I'm writing my twenty-third book now, and it's just as difficult as the first, but I'm here in the moment, working on it now.