All My Relations Podcast Getting Dirty: An Eco-Erotic Worldview
14 snips
Nov 6, 2025 
Melissa K. Nelson is an Anishinaabe, Cree, Métis, and Norwegian ecologist and professor focused on Indigenous sustainability. In this engaging discussion, she unpacks the concept of eco-eroticism, asserting our connection with the more-than-human world. Melissa shares stories that celebrate intimacy with nature, highlighting how plants and animals hold critical knowledge. She critiques colonial tourism, championing Indigenous stewardship and ancestral intelligence as pathways to healing. With humor and insight, she encourages a playful re-engagement with the land.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Eroticism As Kinship With Place
- Ecoerotics expands eroticism beyond humans into belonging with non-human kin and place.
- Melissa Nelson frames ecoerotics as a doorway to decolonize space and reenter kinship with all relations.
Learning By Walking With Mother
- Melissa recalls quiet walks with her mother where smelling plants and touching water taught embodied ecological knowledge.
- These nonverbal practices instilled ancestral intelligence and survival lessons, not abstract theory.
Ancestral Intelligence Equals Survival Knowledge
- Nelson coins 'ancestral intelligence' as the living knowledge in plants, animals, and cycles that sustained ancestors.
- She contrasts this with modern AI and stresses listening and practice as survival skills.
