Newsletter Summer 2026 Deeper Dive

A Conversation with Inishmurray

Contribution by Imogen O’Connor

The Rights of Nature movement has gained momentum in recent decades with the growing acknowledgement of the devastating effects of human extractive activities on the natural environment. The natural environment includes the societies of animal, plant and fungi species that have developed complex interwoven reciprocal ecosystems, along with weather, water and earth systems that regulate our biosphere. There is an argument that these depleting human activities have led to the current increasingly irreversible environmental crisis.

The Rights of Nature movement recognises that the Western legal framework, which was founded on protecting the interests of human beings, needs its scope of moral consideration extended to include the interests of non-humans such as animals, plants and ecosystems. Recent legal actions have been successful in recognising indigenous people’s rights to protect mountains and rivers they hold as sacred beings by granting these ecosystems legal personhood as living indivisible entities, afforded the associated duties, rights and responsibilities of a legal person. Examples of successful cases include Uluru in Central Australia, the Whanganui River in New Zealand and the River Wye in the United Kingdom.

In Ireland, the Celtic indigenous spiritual tradition has persisted, overlaid by the newer spirituality of Christianity and currently it is undergoing a revival, encouraging deep connection and communion with nature and nature places. Celtic spirituality is founded on a monistic cosmology in which the sacred is indivisible from the environment and all is imbued with agency and thus worthy of respect and consideration.

Inishmurray, like any other ecosystem is vulnerable to climate change. Lying low on the skyline, a tawney brushstroke on the horizon, it stands as a symbol to humans of a treasured heritage, holding the memories of the islanders who inhabited this beautiful

but windswept island, home to what was a vibrant monastic complex founded in the 6th century.

What if were to ask: Is Inishmurray alive? What if Inishmurray possesses sentience in its animal and plant inhabitants and as a whole ecosystem? What if it has interests its of its own? What if it has rights to flourish? What if we humans who have our own connections with and love, desires, and even fears for the island, were to consider what might be the interests of the interconnected web of life that comprises Inishmurray? What might these interests be?

In May of this year, I joined a trip to Inishmurray organised by the Friends of Inishmurray and funded by Creative Ireland to bring three artists to engage with the landscape to create worded, painted and photographic artforms. I began my own collaboration with the island inside the beehive cell in the monastic enclosure. Inspired by the monastic tradition, I quietened my mind, slowing it to the mantra-hum of the bees and the thrum of silent stone. Outside once more, and enraptured in a mindful walk, I asked the non-human inhabitants of the island what they wanted to convey. I walked with my phone on video experiencing what I can only describe as a profound few minutes of connection where my sense of self merged with the wider intelligent presence of the island. In this expanded state of awareness, some poems emerged. The videos capture something of the rich multi-sensorial spontaneity of this poetic dialogue, which was co-created with gull, stone, grass, lichen, sky, earth and sea.

with gull, stone, grass, lichen, sky, earth and sea.

Transcript

Human Wonders:

What do you want to say?

Inishmurray replies:

We are thriving.

We are cormorant and thrift, bluebell and rock, sea, ground, water and bramble –

We are finding ways to live together –

We are changing.

We are finding ways to live together.

We are thriving.

We thrive on the silence.

 We thrive in the wind,

We thrive in the sun.

We thrive with a few humans – not none,

   but some.

We have our own ways of restoring balance.

Listen.

Learn from us.

It will take longer than your lifetimes,

But we are finding a way to thrive.

Human asks:

What did you just say?

What do you want me to convey – Soft earth, bracken, nettle, fern and grass, moss and lichen – So many voices, so many voices

Watching, thriving.

What do you want me to convey?

Inishmurray replies:

We are fine. If you have your own designs, let them defer to ours.

We are cladding the stones, upholstering them, binding them together. 

See how we do that. 

We are bringing the stone back into the ground piece by piece. 

The memory is always in the ground – every brick, every human hand that built it, every bone, every cry, all the love-making, all the hate-making. 

Here. 

Remembered, remembered in the ground, in the plants, in the animals who feed.

There is no forgetting. 

If you stand very still and just breathe, you will hear us all –

All the ancestors that ever lived and ever will be. 

If you just stand still….

Conclusion:

I have suggested engaging in a thought experiment which asks what might happen if we perceive Inishmurray as a sentient and intelligent ecosystem.  Might we recognise the island more as a subject with personhood and less as an object?  As’ them’ rather than an ‘it’?  And if we did, might this inform the way we interact with them?  Perhaps we might then engage as with a beloved relative, with a sense of respect and obligation, and perhaps an acknowledgement of its independent right to thrive. Perhaps we might be open to learn from an intelligence more complex and ancient than ours alone could imagine.