Earth Day

Happy Earth Day. Today is a day when many people celebrate the planet on which we live while also focusing on environmental issues that affect us all. Some plant a tree, others reduce their hydro consumption while others sign petitions and participate in rallies that highlight the very serious issues civilization has caused that hurts the earth. Some people do nothing at all and do not recognize its significance.

I ascribe to the Indigenous worldview that the planet is a sentient being that has a spirit. It's important to note that Indigenous worldviews are not homogenous and can vary from nation to nation; however, one commonality within Indigenous ways of knowing, doing, and being is the relationality between humans and more-than-humans. Their lives are in relationship with all that is including animals, plants, rocks, rivers, forests, and specific places that are all part of Mother Earth. Can you imagine how different our world would be if we all held this perspective?

Dennis Martinez (2008) refers to it as "kincentricity" whereby we have a relationship not only with our immediate biological family, our extended family, and community, but also with the plants and animals of Mother Earth. Kincentricity means being kin with the more-than-human world.

Rachel Carson, an extraordinary environmental activist published a book in the 1962 entitled, "Silent Spring," where she called out the big chemical companies for poisoning the environment. They did all they could to attack her credibility, but she stood her ground and would not back down. President Kennedy was so taken with her book that he prompted an investigation into the chemicals in question. Eventually, the "dirty dozen" chemicals were banned, including DDT. It was Carson's love of the planet that led her on this life mission to save it. Similar to the Indigenous perspective, she wrote, "The earth's vegetation is part of a web of life in which there are intimate and essential relations between plants and the earth, between plants and other plants, between plants and animals.” She recognized the sensitivity of our ecosystem and the inter-relationships between all.

Aileen Moreton-Robinson, (2020) a Goenpul academic and activist of the Minjerrbah people in Queensland, Australia also recognizes the sacredness of the Mother Earth. She contends that “everything returns to the earth: our mother, who is alive, a living being who sustains us, who is our sustenance and without whom we are extinct."

Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut in Apollo 14 founded an Institute of Noetic Sciences to look into the suffering that mankind has caused on earth. He held the belief that if Indigenous worldviews could be adopted by all, we could help our planet. He asserts, "Only a handful of visionaries have recognized that Indigenous wisdom can aid the transition to a sustainable world.”

We can go back decades for a poignant perspective offered by the Hopi on what we have done to our planet. In protest to over 65,000 acres of Hopi and Navajo land being stripped for coal mining, the Hopi wrote to President Nixon and said the following: "The white man, through his insensitivity to the way of Nature, has desecrated the face of Mother Earth. The white man’s advanced technological capacity has occurred as a result of his lack of regard for the spiritual path and for the way of all living things. The white man’s desire for material possessions and power has blinded him to the pain he has caused Mother Earth by his quest for what he calls natural resources (Banyacya et al, n.d., p. 170). No truer words have been spoken.

Sometimes it seems overwhelming when we try to conceive of what we can do to help Mother Earth especially in light of so many bad actors on social media claiming that climate change does not exist. For many, admitting to such a phenomena means changing their way of life, and people don't want to be inconvenienced or make sacrifices for the better of the planet. For others, denying climate change and the detrimental impact to Mother Earth allows them to continue to make grotesque profits and retain industry control. Either way, there are tangible benefits for them to deny climate change in spite of both quantitative and qualitative evidence to the contrary. One just has to use powers of observation to note the significant changes that are occurring.

That brings us back to what we can do individually to help Mother Earth. I fully support the activists who are tirelessly championing for the environment and the ones writing to politicians to pressure them to act in the best interests of the planet. I support fundraisers who seek money to back up their initiatives to fight big industry intent on carrying on with their destructive practices. I believe in planting trees and reducing our consumption, but I still go back to Indigenous wisdom about relationality with all that is. If we take the time to recognize and be in relationship with nature, we will be far less likely to harm her. Take 15 minutes out of your day and spend it in stillness with nature. Sit with her; listen to her; watch her. You will forge a bond and be forever transformed as I was. It is through your relationship with Mother Earth that you will save her and save yourself. You might even find her speaking with you on a level you had never conceived. More on that to come.

Happy Earth Day!