“How do cultures change? This text, written for the Zivilisationsfrage conference at HKW in 2022, is about indigenous peoples, environmental movements and totemic animals in the present-day Americas. Jumping off from a detail in David Graeber and David Wengrow’s Dawn of Everything, I explore two cases where modern societies begin to be transformed by indigenous cosmovisions. And these are not isolated cases. Under the shadow of ecological collapse, don’t be surprised if you, too, suddenly start perceiving an entire world of non-human others.”

— Brian Holmes