The Matriarchs of the Earth

Lessons from Elephants and Elders

Happy Mother’s Day to our Matriarch. Mama - we love you so much. You are our guide and our glue. Beep beep and boo.

In February, I spent a week filming a documentary, alongside the a dear friend who flew out to produce. This project was born from a deep curiosity about what elephants might teach us about becoming better humans. These animals are extraordinary creatures. Elephants have the largest brains of any land mammal, with a highly developed prefrontal cortex which allows for empathy, emotional intelligence, and complex social connection. They communicate through rumbling sounds that travel underground, felt through their feet, and express care through touch, scent, and vocal reassurance. They use baby language with children, soothing babble that differs from the way adults speak to one another. They mourn their dead, comfort the distressed, and move through life as deeply loyal, matriarchal families — protecting, waiting for, and loving one another fiercely. In a world obsessed with independence, elephants remind us that true survival depends on connection, unity, and belonging.

In the midst of this particular week, happened to find myself sitting under a Marula tree eating lunch with eight grandmothers — though in South Africa, they are called “Gogos”.

We were spending the day in Kruger National Park, bumping along dirt roads in a game viewer (open-air safari vehicle), as part of an initiative led by Elephants Alive — a conservation organization whose work stretches far beyond protecting elephants. Their work begins, as all good work does, with people.

In this case, with the Gogos.

Conservation is rarely just about animals. It is about people, and poverty, and survival. It is about the local who sets a snare not out of malice, but because their children are hungry. It is about the farmer whose crops — the only thing standing between his family and starvation — are trampled overnight by a wandering elephant.

It is easy to sit in distant corners of the world and romanticize conservation. As if it’s simply a question of sitting on safari vehicles observing these animals in their natural habitat. It is harder though, to understand that protecting wildlife begins with protecting human dignity. What I’ve learned in my past few months of conservation work is this: conservation is never just about animals. At its' core, conservation is a socioeconomic question. If you ask anyone doing this work, they’ll tell you — you can’t preserve a species without tending to the needs of the people who share their land. Hunger, poverty, and survival will always win in the eyes of poachers, over abstract ideals like “preservation”, if those ideals don’t feed families or secure livelihoods.

Elephants Alive knows this. And so they bring the Gogos — the elders of nearby communities — into the park once a month, to meet the elephants face-to-face. To laugh in awe at their size and power. To marvel at their gentleness. To feel, perhaps for the first time, that these creatures are not intruders or enemies — but kin.

Because what happens next is what matters most: the Gogos return home and they tell stories. Around cooking fires, over quiet walks to fetch water, at church gatherings and family meals — they tell their children and their grandchildren about the elephants. About their beauty, their intelligence, their tenderness. And they teach them the stories that their grandparents passed along to them.

This is how conservation takes root — in stories shared between generations, in respect earned not through lectures, but through the experience of wonder and awe; and being built through trust… both with other humans, as well as these creatures.

It struck me, sitting beside these women, how similar they were to the very animals we had come to see.

Elephants are matriarchal creatures. Their herds are led by the oldest, wisest female — a grandmother, a keeper of memory, a leader not because of dominance, but because of experience.

It is the matriarch who knows where the water holes hide in a drought year. Their memory extends for the duration of their lifetime, and the knowledge is passed from their mothers. It is she who remembers the safe paths through dangerous terrain. It is she who teaches the young how to be gentle, how to grieve, how to live.

Elephants honor age. They follow wisdom. They slow down for the youngest and wait for the oldest. They are fiercely loyal and endlessly communicative — rumbling low-frequency sounds beneath the earth, sending signals miles away (up to 15km), staying connected even when separated.

What a thing it is — to be a human, watching elephants, while sitting beside the human matriarchs of a community.

• • •

There is a line I once heard: When an old woman dies, a library of tales burns to the ground.

But perhaps the opposite is also true:
When we gather our elders, listen to their stories, and honor their place in the herd — a library is rebuilt.

The elephants know this. The Gogos know this.

Perhaps the real work of conservation — of both wild spaces and human hearts — is not only about saving what is disappearing, but about returning to what has always been true:

That we belong to one another.
That kindness is a form of remembering.
That wisdom lives in the bodies of those who have lived long and seen much.

And that maybe — just maybe — the greatest thing we can do for the future is to slow down, sit beside our elders, and listen. Really listen. Like the elephants do.

We came to film a documentary about elephants… But like all good stories, this one turned out to be about people too. About building a future where both humans and elephants can thrive — not because we built higher fences. But because we built deeper trust.

Thank you to the Elephants Alive team, and Celeste Tyrna for a beautiful week, and lifting the conversation around how we build a kinder world to a more public forum.