Presidential Plenary Address: Imagining Freedom & Dignity with Rescued Elephants

What might freedom mean for elephants who have been denied it for decades? This question guides a filmed conversation between Leela Prasad, president of AAR, and the founders of Wildlife SOS - Kartick Satyanarayan and Geeta Seshamani, whose decades-long work in rescuing and rehabilitating abused & distressed elephants invites us to think beyond the human. The filmed conversation features the elephants who live on the elephant hospital campus of Wildlife SOS, and will include a live Q & A at the session. Through the experiences of these formerly begging elephants—who were once paraded through cities, used in processions, forced into labor, and subjected to unspeakable violence—we ask how ‘dignity’ pairs with ‘freedom’ in elephant experience. What does it mean to be free in a society that once profited from your captivity, bondage, abuse and complete lack of freedom? How do elephants remember, resist, and recover? And how might attending to their journeys help us imagine liberation in broader, more entangled terms? How even to ask questions and seek answers without privileging human categories and experiences? Anchored in field-based storytelling, this session considers how ecological care, co-species kinship, co existence, and embodied healing enrich and complicate our understandings of freedom.