Seeds of Reciprocity

Emergence Magazine

January 31

Emergence Magazine is an online publication with annual print edition exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality. As we experience the desecration of our lands and waters, the extinguishing of species, and a loss of sacred connection to the Earth, we look to emerging stories. Our podcast features exclusive interviews, narrated essays, stories and more.

Held at Emergence's Shifting Landscapes exhibition in December last year, this panel discussion brought together environmental justice activist and Climate in Colour founder Joycelyn Longdon, award-winning Cambodian-American filmmaker Kalyanee Mam, and folk singer, song collector, and author Sam Lee to consider how we might rekindle awe and reciprocity by remembering ourselves as extensions of the changing Earth. Centering narratives of kinship amid the uncertainty of our time—and inviting the surprise of spontaneous song—each share ways in which their work opens spaces of connection with the living world.

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Sam Lee is an award-winning folk singer, writer, conservationist, song collector, and activist. He has released three critically acclaimed albums: Ground of Its Own, nominated for the Mercury Prize Album of the Year in 2012; The Fade In Time, which earned a Songlines Award for Artist of the Year in 2015; and most recently, Old Wow. He is the author of The Nightingale: Notes on a Songbird; creator of "Singing with Nightingales," an annual springtime concert series; and a founding member of both Music Declares Emergency and The Nest Collective, which brings people together to rekindle connections with nature, tradition, and community.

Joycelyn Longdon is an environmental justice advocate and academic whose PhD research centers on the design of justice-led conservation technologies for monitoring biodiversity with local forest communities in Ghana. Her work takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining machine learning, bioacoustics, forest ecology, and local ecological knowledge. She is also the founder of ClimateInColour, an online education platform and community for the climate curious, making climate conversations more accessible, diverse, and hopeful. She is currently working on a book entitled Rerooting: How We Overcome Monoculture Environmentalism.

Kalyanee Mam is a Cambodian-American filmmaker whose award-winning work is focused on art and advocacy. Her debut documentary feature, A River Changes Course, won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and the Golden Gate Award for Best Feature Documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Her other works include the documentary shorts Lost World, Fight for Areng Valley, Between Earth & Sky, and Cries of Our Ancestors. She has also worked as a cinematographer and associate producer on the 2011 Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job. She is currently working on a new feature documentary, The Fire and the Bird's Nest.

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee is an Emmy- and Peabody Award–nominated filmmaker and a Sufi teacher. His films include: Earthrise, Sanctuaries of Silence, The Atomic Tree, Counter Mapping, Marie's Dictionary, and Elemental. His films have been screened at New York Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, and Hot Docs, exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum, and featured on PBS POV, National Geographic, and New York Times Op-Docs. He is the founder and executive editor of Emergence Magazine.