The sovereign child: Remembering how to parent in ancestral ways - Arthur Haines

This week’s show is with Arthur Haines. Arthur is a Maine hunting, fishing, and recreation guide, forager, ancestral skills mentor, author, public speaker, and botanical researcher.  He grew up in the western mountains of Maine, a rural area that was home to swift streams known for their trout fishing. He spent most of his childhood in the Sandy River Valley hiking, tracking, and foraging.

Arthur now runs the Delta Institute of Natural History in Canton, Maine, where he teaches human ecology, focusing on the values of foraging, wildcrafting medicine, and primitive living skills.  He continues to spend a great deal of his free time practicing his skills as a modern hunter-gatherer. 

In 2017, he authored “A New Path”, a comprehensive work on nature connection and rewilding, detailing how to incorporate ancestral practices into modern living. 

As a research botanist for the Native Plant Trust, he completed an inclusive flora of the New England region titled “Flora Novae Angliae” and has authored over twenty publications in peer-reviewed journals and books, including naming species of plants new to science.  His series of YouTube videos has inspired thousands of people interested in foraging wild edible and medicinal plants.

In this show, Lian and Arthur explore if our attempts to control and shape our children are not only unnecessary, but a wound to their sovereignty? In this evocative and deeply human conversation, Lian is joined once again by Arthur Haines to explore what it means to parent in a way that honours the innate wholeness of the child.

Together, they journey through the emotional and practical landscape of ancestral child rearing… touching on everything from physical punishment and coercive control, to co-sleeping, mixed age play, and the essential power of physical touch. Arthur offers stories from his own family alongside insights drawn from hunter gatherer societies, where sovereignty is not earned… it is assumed.

Throughout the conversation, they reflect on how so many of our cultural norms – even well intentioned ones – can fracture the nervous systems of both child and parent. This episode is a remembrance, an invitation, and a reclamation… calling us back to a more natural, compassionate, and connected way of raising the next generation.

We’d love to know what YOU think about this week’s show. Let’s carry on the conversation… please leave a comment wherever you are listening or in any of our other spaces to engage.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• The illusion of control in modern parenting can fracture trust and deplete both parent and child… offering sovereignty instead creates a foundation of mutual respect and deep connection.

• Physical punishment, even when socially normalised, models domination, damages cognitive development, and teaches children that love and harm can coexist.

• Returning to ancestral patterns, including co-sleeping, mixed age community, touch-based communication, and high indulgence of infants, supports emotional resilience and deepens parent child bonds.

Resources and stuff spoken about:

• Visit Arthur’s Website

• See Arthur’s books

• Find out more about Arthur’s Apprenticeship Program - for people excited to pursue a rewilding lifestyle

• Join Arthur on Facebook<