Wild Developments
Wild Developments
Earth Archetypes
Amber's work with Earth Archetypes is a beautiful blend of creativity, environmentalism, and personal growth. Whether through the docu-series, podcast, or interactive elements, she's inviting people to reflect on their relationship with the earth in a new, meaningful way. If you're curious about your archetype or want to take the quiz, visit eartharchetypes.com and begin your journey toward a deeper connection.
Earth Archetypes
Wild Wisdom Highlights:
- Empowerment Through Reflection: By giving participants in her docu-series handheld cameras to document their personal reflections, Amber encourages an authentic, self-driven storytelling experience. This approach allows for raw, unscripted moments that deepen the connection between participants and the audience.
- Reframing Climate Action: Instead of asking, "What can I do to save the planet?" Amber encourages us to ask, Who are we in nature? By identifying with an earth archetype, we can better understand our role and begin working in harmony with the earth rather than feeling burdened by the climate crisis.
- Deep Connections to Land and Ancestry: Amber's pivotal moment in Scotland, where she felt a deep, physical connection to the land of her ancestors, underscores the importance of place and ancestry in shaping our relationship with the earth. Her journey shows that reconnecting with nature often begins by understanding our roots and origins.
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Earth is our home.
It's where we come from.
It's where our bodies will return to.
And once we have that memory that Earth is our home, it is not the outdoors.
It is not something that's out to get us.
Welcome to Wild Development Studio.
Join us as we venture into the breathtaking realm of wildlife arts and untamed adventures.
Adventures with captivating stories from the field and ideas to dive into the visual arts will ignite your passion for conservation.
Get ready to develop something wild.
Welcome to Wild Developments.
I'm your guide, Lauren, and today we're talking to Amber Peoples.
She is a filmmaker, podcaster, marketer, coach, and creator of the five earth archetypes.
All wrapped up into one, her official title is Chief Relationship Officer.
Her ancestors come come from all over in Scotland and Ireland, plus a little bit from Norway,
Germany, and the.
Netherlands. Plus, she is a third generation born on Turtle Island.
She says on her website, eartharchetypes .com, all of us have ancestors that have or had an intimate relationship with Earth.
Many cultures also included ways to welcome each other with belonging and connection.
Rituals and and traditions help us to blossom into the gifts that we each have to give to the world.
Modern industrialized countries have, for the most part, lost this climate of community.
Her quest is to explore how to rebuild such connections and community as we face the planet's climate crisis.
The time is now.
Amber, thank you so much for being here today.
So nice to be here.
Thank you so much, Lauren.
And you've got a company, it's called Earth Archetypes.
Can you tell us all about it?
Because I'm so fascinated by you're a filmmaker and a podcaster and marketer and coach and creator.
Tell us all the things.
Ah, wonderful. Well, thank you so much, everyone for listening today.
I'm so excited to be here and share these airwaves with you wherever you are on the planet right now.
And that's a big core of what earth archetypes is is um understanding that wherever we are in regards to our journey around how we can support and work with and be in relationship with the climate that ultimately it comes back to well who are you because just like any relationship like right now you me you and me lauren we're we're building this relationship as we have this conversation right now and what's kind of amazing about climate is that we've been in relationships since the day we were born and we've just kind of had different ways of kind of breaking up with the climate like over and over and over again and so with earth archetypes it is a tool that is rooted in both physics as well as folklore.
I have a wide background in theater and big events and storytelling and all kinds of things in regards to how to talk about characters and stories and things like that and so when you mix that with things like systems view of life which is in the more physics realm um that's where the earth archetypes actually came from it came from this way of looking at how can we actually break apart different ways that people have a sense of belonging with the climate so you know.
Back when many of our cultures were more closely connected to the land,
we were given names specifically to help us see how do we belong,
how do we have a relationship both with the place that we were born and the community that we lived in.
There may even have been big ceremonies to give us names, perhaps at specific stages in our lives.
And you know my last name actually comes from the town in Scotland where my ancestors came from and so these elements of belonging to the land and to the climate in industrial nations for the most part we've lost that and earth archetypes is a tool to help us bring us back to that by looking at okay with a modern lens with the reality that we're in in the world that we live in how can we find our way back to that how can we have a story that will help us both find our own place and our own way of being able to be in relationship with the climate and support it and create healthy choices and also how do we then work with other archetypes how do we have this kind of friend group of people that are you know it's it's relatively easy to do it with people people that are similar to you.
But then how do we stretch ourselves to actually become friends as well with the people that have different archetypes as us?
So it serves as that tool of both identifying as well as connecting.
I love that.
And I totally agree with you.
We are connected to the earth and everything that society is teaching us,
at least where I'm at in in America, we are getting so far removed from nature and climate.
And there are different ways that people can connect.
Like a fisherman connects to nature differently than a photographer would.
How can your company help someone to see where they fit in, in the world?
Well, where I often start with people is that I have a quiz.
It is, and what I love about the quiz is that it doesn't just boil you down to one archetype.
It actually shows you across the spectrum.
Like maybe you get 10points in one of them and 20points in another.
And you look at kind of that spectrum, but we will hone in on what is your primary one.
Just like, you know, no matter what language I learn in my lifetime,
I'll always come back to English as my primary language.
It's the way that I'll probably always do math problems for the rest of my life.
No matter what country I'm in or what language I'm speaking.
And so what is that, that primary thing?
Uh, and so by taking that quiz and it is, it's, it's a decent sized quiz.
It takes a little bit of time.
I would say, give yourself about five minutes.
There are 28questions.
Uh, but I really, um, made them as, uh, I, I phrased them all as I statements to really help you go,
okay, how would, how would I respond to this in my way of doing things in my natural way of doing things?
And then once you go through that, you get this great results page that shows you a bunch of things,
including, as I said, where you fall on the spectrum of all the different types.
And then after that, you also get some really great stuff in a report that I'll send you afterwards,
where it talks more in depth about what all the different aspects, personality traits,
skill sets, things like that, that go into that type.
And I even have a page in the report that's like I call my compatibility section.
Interaction uh so it specifically says okay for me example i'm the metaphor type well how do i work with how do i get along with how do i communicate with somebody who is a molecule type which is pretty different on the spectrum um and so that's that's the kind of the compatibility section very neat it almost reminds me of are you familiar with enneagrams ah yes i love it.
It's almost like an earth version of Enneagrams.
100%.
So, and that's coming out tomorrow.
The quiz.
Yes.
Well, by the time this actually comes released in September, it'll hopefully have been all over the place and many people have taken it.
Yes.
Well, I'm going to, for sure, going to take my test tomorrow to see where I fall on the spectrum.
And then you also have a podcast coming out next week which I want to hear all about that what's that going to be like what is that called is it the same thing as earth archetypes or you have something else in mind it's a little bit different I actually went back and forth on the title for a long time you know I I recorded a total of 17episodes before launching so I'd have some in the can but it was also a way to be like okay what what exactly are we telling what are the stories we're telling?
What are the aha moments that are happening as I'm interviewing people and even the guests,
they're having these aha moments as we walk through what their different archetypes are.
And for example, one of them, I love her.
Her name is Bernadette and we classified her as a molecule and she didn't particularly like it all that much.
And I was like, cool, you don't have to agree with me in the slightest,
no obligation, but let's just have the conversation.
And by the time we were done, and we'd stopped recording, she was like,
Oh, my goodness, I wish I would have talked to you before I had that interview with the New York Times,
because I would have had so much better things to say.
And so it's this way of really seeing who we are.
And so I actually, in that whole process went back and forth a lot with the name and where I landed that feels really fun is that it's called the Earth Mates podcast.
Podcast. So just like you have a roommate or a housemate or a landmate,
the, the idea is that we're all earthmates.
I love that.
So you already have 17ready to go.
Are you releasing them all at the same time or you have a schedule?
Yeah. Uh, so for, with the launch, I'm doing, uh, three different episodes because there's three different styles that I did.
Uh, one is where there's just solo episodes.
It's me kind of doing a mix between a storytelling thing and a TED Talk kind of a mix.
And so I'm launching one of those.
I'm launching one where it is an interview where I'm interviewing somebody about their type.
And then I have a couple special guests that for whatever reason, I want to focus on something outside of the archetypes.
And the one that I'm going to launch first is Lawrence Cole, who is a dear friend and elder.
He's 80years old.
And I really wanted to talk to him about something he often mentions,
which is called technologies of belonging and connection.
So we really focused on that during his interview.
So those are the first three episodes to launch, and then one a week after that.
And then meanwhile, as I continue to work on these film projects that I have,
I'm looking at how can we do podcast versions of them to start getting the story out there,
start experimenting with different things.
So by the the time that the show is ready to go um we we have all this amazing um uh exploration that we've gotten to do ahead of time that is fantastic so tell me about the films that you're participating in yeah so they're actually more like tv series um uh in the in the realm of um classifying things they're referred to as unscripted shows um one one word that might be more something people are more used to is reality shows.
Though one of the things that I find really important is I don't want to figure out how do we bring,
admitting that, you know, we're going to have to edit and make choices around the story we're telling,
how do we do it in a dignified way?
Because my background before the pandemic was actually in live events.
I did theater, I did big festivals, I did conferences.
Basically, my tagline was that I organized creative energy.
And so I was the the person with the clipboard and the resources and the timelines and the things like that as we were putting on these big live experiences.
And so for example, one of the shows is called Climate of Awe,
A -W -E.
And with that, we're going to be bringing eight people on as the main participants and they're going to be in partners.
It's going to be four artists and four ecologists.
And those happen to align with two of the earth archetypes uh the artist is in within the metaphor realm and the ecologist is within the network realm and we're going to have them actually partner together on really interesting projects um like we're not just going to bring a soil scientist to work with a ceramicist because that's too obvious but could we have a soil scientist work with a textile style artist.
Somebody who works in fabrics and go, when we look at the architecture of soil,
could we use that to create a new type of textile that will be in more alignment with nature?
So basically, that's a bunch of stories around what biomimicry is.
How do we use nature to help us create and design the things that we need to live every day,
like clothing?
And so Climate of is about bringing together these, these four partnerships, and we will be on one amazing location in Northern California for 30days.
And so for me, that aspect of in grand total, we'll need 35people on site with all the different crews and,
and assistants and things like that, that we'll need.
But that part about bringing 35people to one location for 30days,
I'm like, no problem.
I can do that in my sleep.
But the piece that really is exciting to capture is what is that story arc?
You know, what's considered a win?
What's considered a loss?
What's considered, you know, Nelson Mandela actually makes a really has a really great quote,
which is there is no such thing as loss.
You either win or you learn.
And so what can we learn by bringing these amazing, intelligent people together that are also human at the end of the day?
Where can people check this out?
So if you go to the website, eartharchetypes .com, you'll see that there's actually kind of four categories to the website.
One of them is called Screen, and that's where you'll actually find both the podcast and all of the shows that are in development.
Very good. And I love how a lot of entrepreneurs that started their,
their thing after the pandemic, they've used the tools that they learned in their previous jobs.
Like I was a dive safety officer before and very familiar with OSHA regulations.
And now I'm a drone pilot and that same thing applies.
And I'm like, I love how that all kind of works together.
And that's.
It's really neat that you're using scientists and artists together and seeing what they create.
So are there any spoilers you can tell us about that?
Or is that happened yet?
It is. We are, we are still in development.
We're having amazing conversations with potential cast and potential partners.
In fact, I've, I've purposefully looked at different ways as to how can we have we're going going to have special dinner guests that will have dropped by.
That will be kind of surprise moments.
There'll be different elements that we'll add.
One of the things that I'm super excited about is that I'm actually going to give every major participant,
so those main eight folks, a handheld camera.
So you know how in reality shows they have that interview where the production team is asking really probing questions and probably questions phrased in a way to get the participants to say a certain thing.
Well, I don't want to do that.
But I know that those moments of reflection are still really important.
And so I'm going to actually literally hand that power over to the participants and give them this opportunity to have a video diary.
And what's great about that is maybe they're going to capture a moment that happens in like two in the morning and they have this eureka moment and they can capture it because they have that camera.
Or.
Maybe something that their work on, like, exploded in whatever way, you know,
their project would metaphorically explode.
And they just need to, like, talk it out.
And I'll have that there.
There will be a couple sneaky things that I'll do with it.
Like, there's this amazing amount of study that's now happening around the emotion of awe.
It's about 15years old at this point.
So it's still pretty recent in regards to all the emotions we've studied.
Um there's some really fascinating research coming out about it and so we're probably going to try a couple of the simple experiments uh that we'll be able to capture with those handhelds uh so there's lots of little elements that will will weave throughout it but of course once again the major arc is what happens in this in these relationships between these people and and an.
And extension, what happens with their relationship with this land that they're on.
So between the podcast and filming, what is the end?
Earth archetypes, everything that you're doing, what at the end of the day do you hope your impact is on this planet?
Yeah.
So Yale says that 70of Americans are concerned about the climate.
It.
Vast majority of us go like this.
What can I do?
And there's two sides to that.
It is both a cop -out and it's also a trauma response.
And both sides, I totally understand.
Especially in regards to when it comes to the trauma element, the systems that are in play that even if we want to do something different,
we don't have the option, except for continuing to use fossil fuels for whatever resources we need.
Or, you know, systems within the government that have biases between different people that are all citizens.
And so my response then is let's not ask that question.
Let's not ask what can I do for the climate?
Because first of all, that puts you in in the savior position.
And yeah, we've screwed some things up, so we should fix some things.
There's no doubt we should be some help.
We should, we should put forth some effort and help.
But once again, I want to bring it back to nature.
In nature, there is no such thing as something that is individual.
You know, we've, we've learned a big lesson around that when it comes to like mushrooms and treats and how those micro,
uh, microwisal connections are so critical, um, for the nourishment and the health of the forest and that that system looking at that so rather than saying okay i need to come in and save the day and realize that how do i do that and still get my kid to soccer practice the soccer practice soccer practice is going to win every day because it's something that's concrete it's doable you can make it happen but how do i how do i save the the planet?
Or what can I do for the climate?
How do you even start with that?
So the way that I look at it is answering the question instead of who are you?
Are you a mushroom?
Are you a tree?
Are you a tiger?
Are you, you know, and in the realm of what I'm doing, are you an embodiment archetype?
Are you a metaphor archetype?
Are you a weaver or a network or a molecule?
Because once we understand who we are, then we can go, oh, that's right.
I can be in relationship with what I have, with who I am,
and that's where I can start.
And so it's really this idea of how do we how do we start so many people may have been shocked by hearing that 70of americans are concerned because we think we're the only ones because we're not talking about it it's not on tv we don't have characters responding to it or messaging to it in fact this year the 2024oscar nominees were all analyzed for is there a character that mentioned something about the climate and do they know what they're saying when they say it?
Of all the shows nominated, only three had even one sentence.
Well, considering we're in a climate crisis, those other shows are all basically science fiction.
And so because we don't hear it, we don't know, A, we feel more alone,
and B, we don't know how to talk about it.
And so the earth archetypes are a way to have have that conversation and begin to go in this cycle,
just like the seasons have a cycle, just like the weather has a cycle.
There's this cycle of a framework I've actually developed called the three -step reciprocity style,
or I'm sorry, let me say that again.
It's called the three -step reciprocity cycle.
And when you're in that, it's these three steps that help you know how to get deeper and deeper into your archetype and connect more with earth and with other people yeah when you look at the state of the environment it seems very overwhelming but it just takes everybody doing a little bit and working together and having those conversations like you said it will make a huge impact for sure yeah and what inspired you to start this journey me?
Yeah, that's a good question.
And it's hard to pinpoint.
And one of the reasons I say that is that I actually grew up on a farm in northern Minnesota.
So I'm a farm kid, though I'm old enough that I was in fourth grade when Reagan was president.
And unfortunately, during that time, many, many small farmers were going bankrupt and my family was one of them.
But there were a lot of gifts that were given to me growing up in that kind of environment and one of the big ones that is hard to say but unfortunately true is that as a kid i always knew that strawberries came from um you know a plant and not from a box and so i always had that as a core i always was you know and i was the girl who would climb the trees in a skirt and hold it in a reggae dance doll.
You know, I was the one that had my red rubber boots on as I was feeding cows and in my twirly skirt as I was doing it at the same time.
I was always been kind of this interesting mix in that regard.
And so as I continued to become an adult, there were different things that came across my path.
Like I actually learned a lot about how, even though I honor how I grew up,
the way my parents were farming was actually, you know, this form of farming that we now know is really not beneficial for any of us.
Um, it was the monoculture, it was the plowing, it was all these different things.
And so as an adult, I've really leaned a lot more into regenerative food systems.
Um, and, and I was always somebody who viewed the outdoors is the place that I wanted to be.
Um, but, uh, a big thing happened to me in 2016,where I realized,
oh, by making it the the outdoors, I'm actually still retaining this distance from it.
I'm still making it this other thing.
And so in 2016,I had the amazing opportunity to go to Scotland for what is at this point the one and only time.
But I was there for quite a while.
I actually worked a big festival there called the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
And then I have three weeks to go explore the land of my ancestors.
And I know that I actually have many different, um, names, uh, within Scotland where I come from.
There's the town of Peebles, there's the town of Dundee, uh, there's the.
McEwen family line, which we actually don't quite know where they're from, but they're in the.
Highlands. Um, and so I actually just walked these lands and, and listened,
uh, and wanted to see what would what would the feeling be like in my body and in my bones and would I hear anything would I feel anything um and each one revealed something new I think the one that I physically felt the most was I did a big train ride across the highlands and the moment that I stepped foot in Inverness my body just like rooted like I wanted to nest I wanted to do laundry I wanted to.
Like, I just wanted to root.
It was such a fascinating physical sensation, um, of, of some kind of recognition,
um, that is, that is really hard to put into words.
Uh, and then I came back, uh, and this was the fall of 2016.
And, um, I had a lot of big questions around what was next for me.
Uh, and I'm someone who's, uh, not unfamiliar with existential crises.
Um, I, you know, I talked talked about my family, but I also had to leave my family as a teenager because it was quite dysfunctional and unsafe for me to be there.
And so I've had to work through a lot of things in my lifetime.
And so as I was kind of going through one of those moments in that fall of 2016,
I've developed resources I have to either kind of notice synchronicities in my path that are helping me answer these questions.
And even sometimes I'll hear words.
And in this particular moment I heard two phrases very loud and very clear and they were simply earth is your home arts are your skill set and for about five minutes I was like awesome and then immediately after it like what am I doing that more words give me more words I'm like you know concise is good but like like a little how -to would be awesome.
Right, and so I've honestly, I've been figuring it out ever since, when I was a live event producer,
I moved into more things, like I ran something called.
Science on Tap for a year, I worked in farmer's markets, I did this amazing project on the south coast of Oregon,
where we blended food, art, and outdoor rec with this idea, this metaphor of of fermentation and culture.
And then when the pandemic hit, I had this idea for a docu -series that had been planted in my head back in 2018,
and in a particular way of distributing it through something called direct response marketing.
And so when the pandemic hit, I was like, okay, okay, maybe it's the time to see if this docuseries thing can fly.
And the first place I realized I had to start was the marketing because most of my career had been in operations and education up until that point.
And so I was like, okay, I need to understand this world.
And so I dove really deep into that while I kept my pulse on the things that I really cared about.
Like I was part of the inaugural design science studio through the Buckminster Fuller Institute.
I took the online course with physicist Fritjof Capra about the systems view of life there were things that I continued to do to really enrich my understanding of what it is that I the stories I wanted to tell and then back in September 2022I had launched my original website and immediately one of my friends from marketing was like you have to talk to my friend Tim I'm like cool who's Tim and we a week later we were down on Tim's land in northern California and all of a sudden I now had the location for Climate of Off and that's when I was like okay this could become real and so since then I've really devoted to developing the concept that is now Earth Archetypes bringing it out into all these different areas that I have skill sets in from the stage to the screen to marketing to to membership.
And really kind of building this whole ecosystem around earth archetypes.
But it all started, you know, with, you know, these grains of sand along the way.
And of course, there's these major milestones.
And so, you know, I would say that if we had to pick a milestone to answer that question,
I would, I would probably pick that moment in 2016,when I heard those two two phrases.
That's really awesome that this is kind of like the beginning of this chapter for you.
And I'm hoping in September that it you're, you know, making such a positive impact and people are just,
you know, checking you out and knowing what their earth archetypes are and helping to make changes for the earth.
So that is really, really a privilege and a pleasure to be here at beginning of this story,
this part of your life is really cool.
Do you have a favorite moment in nature?
Oh, goodness. A favorite, like in my entire life?
Yeah. Whoa.
Dang.
Well, you know, we just here in the United States had a major eclipse.
I was not in the path of totality this this time around, but in 2017,
I was, I actually was part of a group of people that lived and worked on a site for,
I was there for a month, um, for a huge, like 50,000person event,
uh, surrounding it.
And, um, I, I, one of my spiritual practices that I work with what's called.
Kundalini energy. And it is an energy that can often cause your body to,
to have shakes, a shaking sensation.
And, you know, I was watching, I was watching it, I was watching it,
I had my little glasses on.
But those few minutes of totality, it's kind of like when I talked about how when I was standing in Inverness,
like there's, there's really no language for that physical sensation I had.
Well, that moment of totality is very similar, though the closest closest connection i can make to it is the work that i do with kundalini energy because my body did have similar shakes uh in that tradition they call them kriyas uh that my body was experiencing but it was it was truly this moment of of beyond awe like awe has so many different gradations it could be a flower it could be seeing another human do something kind it can be seeing the grand canyon but this moment of awe of physically experiencing totality is beyond anything i have words for yeah i just i got to see the recent one and i've seen solar eclipses before lunar eclipses and right up until totality i'm like you know why did i drive all this way you know this is just like every other one i've seen and in the moment of totality when you can see the corona it's just like i took pictures of it but nothing compares to actually being there and seeing it it is just it was like something from another planet there's no you're right there's no way to explain it and you just have to to be there to know what it is like because it was just amazing yeah truly truly an incredible like physical experience which you know we talk about that we saw the eclipse but really we experienced the eclipse yeah absolutely well before we go was you just have a couple minutes left i'm gonna be tagging links to everything in the show description but do you want to tell people where they can find you and where they can take the quiz yeah definitely so the best place to find the quiz is on the website it's right there at the top a big button that i encourage you to do so and that website is eartharchetypes .com.
And then since we've talked quite a bit about the podcast, it'll be on all the different audio channels,
whatever one's your favorite.
And then also there will be video versions on YouTube.
Once again, just search for Earth Archetypes and you'll land on the site.
Perfect. And what is one tip you have for someone that would like to reconnect with nature?
Well i'm going to bring it back to what happened to me in 2016and now and what is now step number one in my three -step reciprocity cycle which is earth is our home plain and simple there is no planet b no matter how many rockets we try to shoot up into into other locations earth is our our home.
It's where we come from.
It's where our bodies will return to.
And once we have that memory, that earth is our home, it is not the outdoors.
It is not something that's out to get us.
It's something that we are so much a part of that without it,
we can't even be who we are.
It is it is where we are from and we are intimately connected to it and so that's that's the tip that i would start with always it's it's always step one on that cycle is earth is our home and how do we understand that at deeper and deeper levels every time we say it beautiful great advice thank you so much for being on the show today ember thank you lauren it was an absolute delight life and until next time get outside and see what develops thanks for joining wild development studio we hope this exploration into the world of wildlife arts and adventure has sparked a desire to get outside and connect with something wild if you have an adventure that's awe -inspiring don't hesitate to share click the link in the description to submit your story to have it featured on our show or be a guest until next time keep connecting to the wild and see what develops the views opinions and statements expressed by individuals during wild development studio productions do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of wild development studio or its affiliates participation in any activities expeditions or adventures discussed or promoted during our content may involve inherent risks it is strongly advised that individuals conduct conduct thorough research.
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