Catherine Murupaenga-Ikenn is a Māori human rights and environmental advocate from the Ngāti Kurī and Te Rarawa peoples of Aotearoa (New Zealand). A lawyer by training and longtime activist by calling, she has spent decades working on Indigenous rights, climate justice, Treaty negotiations, food sovereignty and more, and applied herself from local campaigns close to home to international advocacy at the United Nations.

In this episode, we go deep into metaphysics, ‘staying with the trouble’ of the current moment while also seeing the bigger picture. Catherine leads us in drawing lessons from Maori language and worldviews, and we think through the cycles of time to find life-sustaining hope for the future.

We were delighted to get to know Catherine at the Planet Local Summit, and I have no doubt that her vibrant energy will also come through in the airwaves!

Lars Veraart is a veterinarian and agroecological farmer. Together with his wife Robyn, Lars moved from the Netherlands to a small village in the mountains of Romania, where he co-founded ALPA – Land for Life — an initiative supporting small-scale ecological farming, young farmers and bioregional regeneration. He and Robyn also run Provision Transylvania, an example farm and centre for agroecology and non-violence.

In this episode of Planet Local Voices II, Lars offers a concise and lovely story of social, cultural, and ecological regeneration in action. He describes the process of 'becoming a peasant' in Romania and the surprise of the local villagers as he and his family began to emulate their ways. He speaks of change and ecocide, but also of hopeful signs, stressing the oft-overlooked relationship between small-scale farming and wild biodiversity conservation. He also shares about how non-violent communication and localisation have informed his work.

Mattias Desmet is a professor of clinical psychology in the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University (Belgium), a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and author of The Psychology of Totalitarianism.

In this episode of Planet Local Voices II, Mattias explains how the poly-crises roiling the world today ultimately stem from a metaphysical crisis, a "de-souling" of the world produced by a rationalism in Western science that lost sight of its own limitations. Excessive rationalism, he argues, is actually deeply irrational, and the socio-ecological breakdowns we are witnessing today, in many cases produced by the most advanced science applied to technology, are a clear illustration of this. Unless subordinated to deeper values and ethics, science and rationalism will continue to lead the world to ruin.

Mattias also argues that the fading of local exchange, craft and economy have contributed to the psychological crises of loneliness and meaninglessness. Accordingly, rebuilding local, grassroots economies are vital to repairing peoples' sense of meaning, purpose and mattering.