The thing about being on panels at speculative fiction conventions is that you are never quite sure what to expect. A panel on liminal spaces in stories leads to a deep conversation about the thresholds in our lives. An editing panel leads to the best discussion of pronouns and gender diversity. Twice, a thought from a panel has stuck with me and wormed its way into a novel.

There are, however, odd places we end up in. There is always a panel with not enough people signed up to lead it and make a good discussion. The organizers throw someone in. You get two weeks notice to get your head around the topic, but you never quite know what you are walking into.

For example, the question “Who should go to space?” I treat all panels about the stories, but this one was led by a scientist who was known to think a lot about who should be able to get on rockets to other planets. And the audience really wanted a discussion of which people should get to go. Many of them wanted to. I was rather lost.

Not long into the panel, the man I was with announced that no one should go to other planets until we have developed a much better understanding of sentience. That made sense to me.

I contributed a couple Ursula Le Guin stories that explore our limited ability to see sentience. In The Word for World is Forest, many of the humans refer to the local intelligent creatures as “it,” because they have tails, even though they are clearly advanced beings. She also wrote a haunting short story of livestock farmers colonizing a world inhabited by plants and trees. After a time, a tree births a two-legged person who learns how much of their family has been eaten and shipped off world. As I said, it is a haunting story, but it clearly illustrates the point that my co-panelist made that night – until we can look with open eyes at a different world, we should not go there.

That night came back to me as I listened to a radio discussion on the words we use when we talk about space. Colonial language creeps in – exploration, discovery, colonization. We are in danger of repeating the colonial mistakes.

In the radio interview, the person talked about extending the idea of “all my relations” to the stars. Around us are our plant relations, animal relations, rock relations, and in space are our planet relations and our star relations.

When I first heard the expression “all my relations” I could easily apply the idea to all people. Diverse shapes and colours, with diverse cultures and practices, we are all human. My relationship shifts if I think of a stranger as one of my relations.

It was not hard to extend the idea to animals around me. We clearly affect the fox and the chickadee by our actions. If they are our relations, we treat them with more respect.

I was taught to extend the idea to the plants I share the world with. They too have their life to live, and what I do affects them. I take apples from a tree, but also care for the tree. We have a reciprocal relationship. I promote the growth of wild flowers because I can see that the local insects love them, and I get to enjoy their colours.

We live because everything else does.

– Richard Wagamese, Ojibway teacher

More recently, I was challenged to see my rock relations, my mineral relations, my soil relations. If we think of extracting resources, mining goes whole hog. If we think of sharing gifts of the earth from our relations, we go about the process in a completely different way.

So, let me finish with words from an Ojibway teacher, Richard Wagamese (Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations): “I’ve been considering the phrase ‘all my relations’ for some time now…ALL my relations. That means every person, just as it means every rock, mineral, blade of grass, and creature. We live because everything else does. If we were to choose collectively to live by that teaching, the energy of our change of consciousness would heal each of us – and heal the planet.”

Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation.