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CORVALLIS - Noted author and environmental activist John Nichols will give a free public lecture at Oregon State University on Thursday, Nov. 20, in which he will propose his ideas on "Liberation Ecology."

The lecture, which begins at 7 p.m. in Milam Auditorium, is sponsored by the OSU Department of Philosophy and the Spring Creek Project for Nature, Ideas and the Written Word.

Nichols was raised by an extended family of scientists and naturalists, and following his private school education he wrote "The Sterile Cuckoo" at the age of 23 - later turned into a film starring Liza Minnelli. Shortly after that success, he went to Guatamela and his encounter with indigenous people there turned him toward a life of political and environmental activism.

Since 1969, he has lived in Taos, N.M., where he is active in local land and water rights struggles, as well as in wider political and environmental issues of the West. He chronicled many of these issues in three books known as the New Mexico Trilogy, which includes one of his best-known works, "the Milagro Beanfield War," made into a film by Robert Redford.

In his OSU presentation, Nichols will delve into the minds of John Muir, Malcolm X, Rachel Carson and Karl Marx, and explore how their ideas may be critical to a hopeful future.

Nichols, whose activism often centers on issues of power in land and water rights, says such issues are not unique to the American Southwest.

"It's not just New Mexico," he pointed out. "The same thing that goes on down here finds echoes in Oregon, and suburban England, and upstate Vermont, and southern India."

For more information on the lecture, contact the Spring Creek Project at 541-737-6198.