Our Core Values

At the Roots

“…I have a desire:

I want to become one who reaches for the sun.

I want to become one who roots deeply in the earth.

Then, nothing.”

~ Plant Songs: New & Selected Poems

Reverence

Eastern spadefoot toad (Scaphiopus holbrookii) sitting in a hand with a Shibipo beaded bracelet

Reverence arises from perception of the sacred. To embody reverence is to deeply embody radical respect, wonderment, and awe for Nature, including the essence of the human animal. Reverence fosters relationality, reciprocity, and regeneration. It manifests as respect, gratitude, humility, and caretaking.

Relationality

We exist within a dynamic, intricately connected, interdependent web of life and life force. Relationality, in its original essence, is an act of returning with wisdom to share in service of community. Relationships are about connecting and sharing resources – life force - for the whole of the system. Generative relationships foster resilience, adaptive transformation, and thriving communities.

Q'ero child in the Peruvian Andes playing with a rock while a tourist watches

Reciprocity

Mutual flourishing arises from the generative cyclical exchange of resources – the act of reciprocity. The word ‘resources’ derives from the Latin resurgere, meaning "to rise again" or “spring anew.” In its original 17th-century use, the term referred to giving aid in difficult times. Resources are life force. Reciprocity is, thus, the pathway to generative resilience. 

Q'ero ceremonial despacho offering in the Peruvian Andes

Regeneration

In its original use, ‘regeneration’ referred to spiritual rebirth – to a reawakening of consciousness. Human cosmology is at the roots of ecological and socio-cultural regenerative capacity. A regenerative worldview – one that deeply values and fosters living systems – is needed to shift from an extraction- and accumulation-mindset to one of reverence and all that flows forth.

Achiote seed pod in hand in the Peruvian Amazon

To work with Terra Sapiens Remembering is to accept an invitation to embody these core values as an expression of Nature-integrated identity. To do so is to engage in the rootwork from which survival gains optimism. To do so is to make a vow to a co-creative future, to the path of generative resilience.