Our Whale Relations: Ancient Kin, Evolutionary Vanguards & Radical Bridgers of Future Possibility

A Whale Council Gathering with Pat McCabe (Woman Stands Shining) and Mihirangi Wātihi
Across cultures and across time, whales have occupied an extraordinary place in human consciousness.
For many Indigenous peoples, they have never simply been animals to observe. They are ancestors, kin, teachers, navigators, singers, and beings woven into stories of origin, relationship, and the cosmos.
And science continues to reveal dimensions of whale life that invite us to reconsider what we think we know about intelligence, communication, culture, and consciousness.
Whales communicate across vast distances. They compose and transmit songs. They live within complex cultures and family structures. Knowledge and behaviors are passed between generations. Mothers tend their young. Elders carry memory.

What might these ancient beings have to teach us about relationship—and about the future?
On October 24, The Whale Council welcomes two extraordinary women whose lives have brought them into relationship with whales through very different waters. We invite you into council, a time of listening, learning, and sharing. These gatherings create time for small group interaction as well as being in a larger group.

Pat McCabe (Woman Stands Shining) brings a lifetime of inquiry into Indigenous knowledge, relationship, and what she calls a life-centered way of being human. Her recent journey into the waters of Tonga with The Whale Council offered an opportunity to enter the whales’ home not simply to observe, but to listen, encounter, and ask what right relationship might require of us.

Mihirangi Wātihi, Māori artist, musician, activist, and former Sea Shepherd crew member and board director, went to sea in defense of whales. Serving as quartermaster aboard the Steve Irwin, she navigated the Southern Ocean and Antarctic ice during campaigns confronting industrial whaling. As a musician and Indigenous woman, her relationship with whales also opens questions about song, communication, ancestry, and our responsibility to other-than-human kin.
Together, Pat and Mihirangi invite us into a deeper inquiry:

What happens when we encounter whales not simply as wildlife to study or species to save, but as relations?
What changes when we listen?
What can beings who have inhabited Earth’s oceans for millions of years reveal about communication, culture, family, memory, and belonging?
And might our whale relations—ancient as they are—also be evolutionary vanguards

, carrying ways of being that point toward possibilities humanity is only beginning to remember?
Join us for two hours of story, conversation, reflection, and inquiry as we explore whales as ancient kin, extraordinary intelligences, and radical bridgers between ancestral knowing and future possibility.
Perhaps the question is not only what we can do for whales.

Perhaps it is also what becomes possible when we allow ourselves to be changed by them.

Your ticket fee goes toward honoring our speakers and supporting current projects such as honoring the bones, ocean stewardship education.