This is beautiful, sad, moving and hopeful.

http://www.ted.com/talks/brian_skerry_reveals_ocean_s_glory_and_horror.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2010-06-02&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

A visually stunning documentary about our planet and the relationship we all have to each other. A message we have all heard, but need to hear until we start making changes for the better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU

http://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_the_worldwide_web_of_belief_and_ritual.html

Anthropologist Wade Davis muses on the worldwide web of belief and ritual that makes us human. He shares breathtaking photos and stories of the Elder Brothers, a group of Sierra Nevada indians whose spiritual practice holds the world in balance.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures.html

Wade Davis: Anthropologist, ethnobotanist

A National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, Wade Davis travels the globe to live alongside indigenous people, and document their cultural practices in books, photographs, and film. He’s a passionate advocate for preserving what he’s dubbed the “ethnosphere.”

Anthropologist Wade Davis is perhaps the most articulate and influential western advocate for the world’s indigenous cultures. His stunning photographs and evocative stories capture the viewer’s imagination. As a speaker, he parlays that sense of wonder into passionate concern over the rate at which cultures and languages are disappearing — 50 percent of the world’s 6,000 languages, he says, are no longer taught to children. He argues, in the most beautiful terms, that language isn’t just a collection of vocabulary and grammatical rules. In fact, “Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind.”

Davis, a Harvard-educated ethnobotanist, believes humanity’s greatest legacy is the “ethnosphere,” the cultural counterpart to the biosphere, and “the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imaginationsince the dawn of consciousness.” He beautifully articulates the intellectual, emotional and moral reasons why it’s in everyone’s best interest to preserve the world’s cultures.

To this end, Davis serves on the councils of Ecotrust and other NGOs working to protect diversity. He also co-founded Cultures on the Edge, a quarterly online magazine designed to raise awareness of threatened communities. Perhaps his best-known work is The Serpent and the Rainbow, an international bestseller about zombification practices in Haiti. Wes Craven adapted the book into a 1988 film, which Davis denounced as a betrayal of the book’s spirit. His latest book is The Clouded Leopard: A Book of Travels.

“His work with indigenous cultures has given him a truly unique view of the world. He is able to slip off the map for awhile, to live with the voodoo priests in Haiti, the Penan in Borneo, or the Quechuen of Chinchero.”

CBC-TV

http://www.naturalnews.com/028358_deforestation_human_civilization.html