Soil Talks: In conversation with huu nguyen
Orrin Williams and Dr. Akilah Martin talk with huu nguyen, culture worker and educator, in this 45-minute conversation that explores the spiritual side of soil.
Soil Loss Is Soul Loss
By huu nguyen
The question that keeps surfacing in response to the question “What can we learn from the soil about our fundamental interconnectedness?” is “What can’t we learn from soil about our fundamental interconnectedness?” Before I share a couple of takeaways we can learn from soil, I would like to establish a few concepts that hold the container for the lessons and takeaways I receive from soil in relation to our fundamental interconnectedness. Also, by our, I mean both our human-to-human interconnectedness and our human-to-more-than-human interconnectedness (LaDuke, 1999). Additionally, I am using interconnectedness synonymously with interaction and relation. Ultimately, exploring soil’s composition—and especially soil’s process of becoming—humbles me. My hope in my remembrance of soil’s connection to the divine is that it helps others to remember our fundamental interconnectedness, and interdependence, to one another, as well as to other species beyond the human realm.
Soil Is the Substance of the “Life and Death” Cycle
Soil has only existed for only 10 percent of Earth’s history. Around five hundred million years ago, the formation of soil was the result of the interaction between the barren rocky landscapes and early land plants’ root-like rhizoids, or hair-like filaments connecting their thin stems to and below the ground (Hetherington 2023). These rhizoids helped anchor the plants to the planet’s rocky surface and absorb water and minerals. Older stems entwined and decayed, gradually building up a thin, peaty soil, just a few centimeters thick. It is these early soil horizons, or layers, that launched support for myriad fungi. And “after every major extinction on Earth,” as Paul Stamets points out, it is mushrooms “who inherited the Earth and helped life to reboot.” So if not for soil, mushrooms could not have become the major force they are in closing this loop, this cycle, of decay and generation. And Stamets’s reference to Matthew 5:5, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” is so fitting when we think about fungi’s quiet humility in providing their massive labor in the soil to provide substances of life from death.[1]
Soil is a through line between cosmology and religion, ethereal and material, existentialism and science. Nearly all creation stories and sacred texts of the major world religions connect the creation of humans to soil. In Genesis 2:7: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” The Quran reads, “From the earth We created you, and into it We will return you, and from it We will bring you back again” (sura Ta-Ha 20:55).
Our dependence on plants and animals, who also depend on soil, is quite literally about survival, our life and death. And when we die, we will be either buried or cremated.
Soil Loss Is Soul Loss. Soil Contains the Substances of (In)justice and (In)equity
Soil is a fundamental need of all humans on this planet. Just like oxygen. And water. Both of which are also components of soil. And all three substances are paramount requisites for our ability to live. All of these essential building blocks on our planet are viewed as sacred within Indigenous worldviews. So revered are these gifts of Nature that the Haudenosaunee, for example, acknowledge them, along with all the nonhuman relatives, each time community members gather (Kimmerer, 2013). It is known as the “Thanksgiving Address,” not to be confused with the manufactured holiday of “Thanksgiving,” when folks are off on the third Thursday of November, a distortion of colonial manipulation and co-optation. The “Thanksgiving Address” is known in the Onondaga language as “the words that get spoken before all else.” This concept exists in Asian Indigenous cultures as well. The Hmong have a phrase hais cuaj txub kaum txub, which means “to speak of all kind of things.” The phrase is often used at the beginning of an oral narrative as a way of reminding the listeners that the world is full of things that may not seem connected but are (Fadiman, 1997).
Soil, like other parts of nature, including certain human beings, became objectified and commodified as part of the settler-colonial worldview and project. Settler colonialists built and maintained a global economic system that genocided Natives and enslaved Africans throughout Turtle Island. Through this twin process of separating human and nonhuman into a false hierarchy and reducing the gifts of nature to “resources” to be extracted and exploited, controlled and capitalized (Kimmerer, 2013), the primary way to access and relate to these gifts—land, water, and air—has become embroiled in the currency of dollars, pounds, and yen.
Commodification has disastrous effects, including manufactured scarcity and actual depletion of resources. Twenty-five million acres of arable land are lost annually to soil erosion (Penningham, 2019). Since the Industrial Revolution, an estimated 135 billion tons of soil have been lost through a combination of processes, including industrial farming, deforestation, monocropping (growing a single crop year after year), overgrazing, use of heavy machinery, and misuse and abuse of fertilizers and pesticides (Carrington, 2021).
The rate of soil loss is ten to forty times faster than the rate of soil formation. This soil loss is directly correlated to our sociopolitical and economic system, which bell hooks called an “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” to which I would add ableist and transphobic and homophobic. This hegemonic and oppressive system has led to soul loss, an Indigenous concept expressed across shamanic traditions that explains the wounding or separation or fragmentation of a person’s soul, as a result of traumatic experience (or disassociation in the terminology of Western psychology). Earth—as in soil, as in the land that provides plants that provide food, shelter, clothing, adornment, instruments, and culture—is itself fragmented and separated from humans, which are part of Earth. These centuries of separation have led to the intersectional and multitudinous crises and injustices of our times: food and housing apartheid, global climate catastrophes, disparities in health and life expectancy, to name a few.
So, What Can We Learn from Soil?
Given soil’s history and its relation to the humans and the more-than-humans who rely on soil to survive, what if our lesson in this moment is to remember our reverent and mystical interconnectedness to soil? What if we interpreted the language of modernity or science as miraculous interactions of soil? What if scientific language was just another holy text, expressed in another form? That language is quite literally already expressed in other forms: formulas.
From the language of osteology and soil science, we learn that eleven elements make up 99.9 percent of the human body (as atoms), and nearly all eleven are found in soil (El Ramady 2019). What if I relate to soil with awe and reverence, knowing that our bones are made of the same substances that compose rock structures and layers of soil? Basically, we humans are soil. How deep is that? We’re so deeply connected to Earth and to one another.
From the biochemical and neuroscientific research into Mycobacterium vaccae, a bacterium found in soil, we learn that this microorganism triggers the release of serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in regulating mood, in humans. How supernatural—magical, really—is that?
How can I not decipher the language of astrophysics as anything short of miraculous when this science demonstrates that our bodies are made up of the same elements as the stars? Basically, we humans are also stardust. It reminds me of one of the ancient Hermetic principles, “As above, so below” (Chandler, 1999).
There are the major keywords that highlight the insights soil provides and guide me in remembering, revering, and ritualizing my and our interconnectedness to ourselves and to all living and nonliving entities and energies on this planet:
Reconnection, Regenerativity, Reciprocity, and Rest
As Wendell Berry wrote in The Hidden Wound in 1970:
The white man, preoccupied with the abstractions of the economic exploitation and ownership of the land, necessarily has lived on the country as a destructive force, an ecological catastrophe, because he assigned the hand labor, and in that the possibility of intimate knowledge of the land, to a people he considered racially inferior; in thus debasing labor, he destroyed the possibility of meaningful contact with the earth. He was literally blinded by his presuppositions and prejudices. Because he did not know the land, it was inevitable that he would squander its natural bounty, deplete its richness, corrupt and pollute it, or destroy it altogether. The history of the white man’s use of the earth in America is a scandal.
So if this scandalous way of living is a part of the separation that has led to dehumanization and current global crises, then what if the antidote involves being in connection? I learn from soil its profound quality of reconnection. Quite literally, soil is the connection between Earth’s rock core and the living things on its surface. How much of a deeper connection to Earth can we get than through our relation to soil?
Human agriculture has existed for about twelve thousand years, and industrial farming is less than a century old. Regenerative agriculture, permaculture, and organic farming have been branded as “alternative” or “sustainable” practices to move us away from the detrimental practices of industrial farming. But all of these “modern” or Western concepts are ancient practices and relations that Indigenous people, all over this planet, have had (and continue to have) with food plants and agriculture.
These Indigenous practices are what I would call “generous agriculture.” By having a more generous relationship with Earth and its soil and all its relations, the generosity generates more abundance for the generations ahead. How can understanding “regenerative soil practices” and getting back to the ancient Indigenous practices of being in a loving and generous relationship to soil, to the land, to Earth, to Mother Earth, help us within and through the perils of climate crises? How can this generous and generative practice with soil and Earth help us to truly live out reciprocity, by which I mean the practice of exchanging and being in relation with others for mutual benefit and (inter)dependence?
Over the past two years, perhaps one of the biggest lessons I have learned from soil is to rest. The way that overtilling and monocropping have led to unhealthy and depleted soil, so too were grinding and not grieving leading to my unhealthy and depleted soul. Soil teaches us through the Indigenous practice of fallow (or swidden) farming, a technique that shifts the cultivation cycles so that land that has been used for a year or two to grow crops is rested instead.
Biodiversity, Dignity, Solidarity, and “Thrival”
Through exploring soil composition, what emergent lessons can be learned about how to be in community? Emergence, for adrienne maree brown in her Emergent Strategies, means the relatively simple interactions between organisms that create complex structures.
The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 30 percent of the world’s soils are degraded (Arsenault, 2014). At the same time, a recent report by the European Commission (2020) estimates that between 60 percent and 70 percent of its soils are unhealthy. If monocropping and industrial farming have led to the destruction of healthy soil, then what is soil asking us to learn through the Indigenous teachings and principles of polyculture (also called intercropping or mixed cropping)? These agricultural practices have been used for millennia, and they create biodiversity and ecosystems of reciprocity. Polyculture is a system of planting in which farmers sow more than two crops at the same time. Planting multiple crops allows farmers to maximize land use while reducing the risks associated with the failure of a single crop (Peronni, 2017), and monocropping results in plants that are much more prone to viral diseases. Additionally, polyculture systems attract biodiversity in the form of a variety of beneficial insects and soil organisms that minimize pests and can also increase soil organic matter, “fumigate” the soil, and suppress weed growth, all of which decreases reliance on fertilizers and pesticides. These practices provide pathways toward addressing the global issues of food insecurity while also building and preparing climate-resilient communities. Soil biodiversity is also essential in medicine and new drug discovery: soil bacteria have produced most of our antibiotics (Clardy et al, 2009), including streptomycin, chloramphenicol, and tetracycline (Quinton, 2023).
What if we extended this idea of the benefits of soil biodiversity to prioritize true biodiversity in our communities and our government agencies? Not a corporate version or the Office of DEI, but an embodied practice of biodiversity, in which people of all ages, all economic statuses, all skill, ability, and cognitive levels, live and interact with one another through the lens of plurality, particularly intellectual and social pluralism. This practice would look like public universities being free and open-access resources for all. What if we valued neurodivergence as a form of biodiversity, of plurality, capable of providing us with new pathways for finding modern solutions to ancient problems or medicines to cure maladies?
Many of the areas where fallow agriculture is practiced are unsuitable for permanent cultivation because the soils are too poor. With crop rotation, different crops are grown on the same plot in order to build better soil structure and increase the ability to store carbon in the soil (Peronni, 2017). What if we expanded this lesson to strengthening our social infrastructure? In moving their plots from year to year, tribal communities have developed ways to ensure a diverse and sustainable food supply rather than high yields in the short term. If we really want to glean lessons from this soil practice, should we shift our societal values away from instant gratification and toward delayed gratification and sustainability? From quantity to quality? From an individualistic to a collectivistic culture? Can we envision that, with such a shift away from the hegemonic cultural values rooted in degradation and scarcity to those of dignity and abundance, we could also experience a cultural paradigm shift back to an “ancient future” (Chandler, 1999)?
Shifting the dominant culture requires deep introspection and action, specifically interactions with others who are also working toward an ecosystem of care that is rooted in abolition principles. These interactions will inevitably involve the use of language, which itself reveals much about dominant culture. Take, for example, the word soil. Beginning in the thirteenth century, soil became associated with stain and corruption, something to be refused, rejected, or at least purified. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the verb soil this way:
1: to stain or defile morally : CORRUPT
2: to make unclean especially superficially : DIRTY
3: to blacken or taint (something, such as a person’s reputation) by word or deed.
The irreverence of soil, as defined in the dominant language and culture of modernity, shapes our relationship to it. We have advanced technology and the capacity to ensure that every human lives with dignity, with stable shelter and access to food and health care. But we don’t have the mystic technology of being in a more critical connection with one another. We need, instead, to remember our interdependent and reverent relationships with one another. We need critical connections that will lead to a critical mass, then to a paradigmatic shift away from our dominant system of extraction, exploitation, and oppression. The critical steps to take toward critical connections are literally our steps. Each time we take a step forward, we remember that we are stepping on soil, a life-giving substance. We shift the indignity we project onto soil to dignity.
What can be learned from observing the soil horizon, which is a layer of soil parallel to Earth’s surface? Each layer of soil has a unique set of physical, chemical, and biological properties. The properties of soil horizons, such as texture, color, and structure, result from soil formation processes, and they distinguish and inform each horizon from others above and below it (Huddleston, 1984). Can we extend this idea of the soil horizon to learn that each person has unique properties that contribute to a society beyond the realm of capitalism and extraction? Can we learn that each person is inherently valuable because each one of us is a source of creation? Soil horizons express a horizontal relationship between the layers and narrate stories from the ancient cultural past, elucidating the process of time. What if we looked to soil formation to teach us how to build and rebuild relationships with one another in which our intergenerational relations build on and honor the contributions of each generation, each layer, if you will? Could we then see our responsibility to lay down layers for the generations ahead? Is this not an ancient concept we’ve heard from the Indigenous of Turtle Island about our future being “seven generations past and present” (LaDuke, 1999)? These relationships require that we see our life not as the be-all and end-all but as a continuum and contribution to creation.
The soil in these different layers has distinct shapes and characteristics that inform a layer’s ecosystem and its primary roles in it. Rather than seeing our relationships as hierarchical and competitive, can soil horizons inform us about how to build relationships horizontally and cooperatively? About how to see each layer as a generation contributing to the next? How to see the injustices that built particular layers, and then committing to and working toward transforming the processes that caused the harm or toxins from previous layers?
As all the trillions of organisms do the work of metabolizing and decomposing, I like to imagine them exchanging energy—solids, gases, and liquids—in each soil horizon, like a troupe of beautiful dancers in a salsa rueda, reveling in their synchronized movements and exchanges. What if we replicated the way fungi in the soil decompose toxins to make soil healthier and then worked to decompose toxic residues of our own traumas, our own lived experiences in relation to racial capitalism, into rich soil for our growth?
In writing this piece, there were times when I was swipe-typing the word soil and soul would come up. I wondered if it was a divine message from soil, from Earth herself, telling me that if you replace the letter i (representing the individual and the ego) in the word soil with a u (representing the universal—not in the spiritual bypassing “universal” but universal as in the Universe itself), then soil becomes soul. And if ever there is a soul horizon, then my hope is that within these soul layers, artifacts, and fossilized deposits are joy and resilience, resistance and sustenance, human thrival! Remembering the divine connection, our fundamental interconnectedness with soil, in and within it, and therefore to one another, is a lesson. And ultimately, like building healthy soil, learning to be in thrival relationships to one another takes time and work; it requires conditions that are conducive to allowing us to know our true selves and our innate skills, and it insists on a commitment to and conviction in repairing harm and restoring our soul.
References
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Berry, W. (1970). The hidden wounded. Counterpoint.
Carrington, D. (2021, June 4). World’s soils “under great pressure,” says UN pollution report. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/04/soils-great-pressure-un-pollution-reportfood-farming-mining
Chandler, W. (1999). Ancient future: The teachings and prophetic wisdom of the seven Hermetic laws of ancient Egypt. Black Classic Press.
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El-Ramady, H., Alshaal, T., Omara, A. E.-D., Elsakhawy, T. A., & Abdalla, Z. F. (2019). Soils and human creation in the Holy Quran from the point of view of soil science. Environment, Biodiversity, and Soil Security, 3, 1–9.
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Notes
[1] These quotes are from a lecture by Paul Stamets that I attended on May 9, 2015. Video recordings of portions of his presentation, “Ancient Allies for Modern Maladies,” are available at the website of the Chicago Botanic Garden (https://www.chicagobotanic.org/stamets).
