That question comes from Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass. She asked it to a group of graduate environmental students who were in the program because they felt profound love and devotion to the natural world. But when she asked, "Do you think the earth loves you back?" they got twitchy, unwilling to feel their love for the earth was returned.
Kimmerer is a biologist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and her book has been one of my companions on this journey we are taking. She writes about many different aspects of her experience, tied together with a worldview founded on graditude and relationship, rather than profit, selfishness and isolation.
In a previous blog, Paul told about the stories and lessons Don Fish, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, told us at the Two Medicine Campground. Fish, like Kimmerer, grounds his experience of the world in gratitude and relationship. Starting from this viewpoint changes everything.
Kimmerer writes about the Honorable Harvest, which is similar to the idea of sustainability but arises from an ethic of honoring the gifts given by the earth, rather than the strictly practical consideration of eking out maximum returns indefinitely. She tells a story to illustrate: Tribes in the Great Lakes have always harvested wild rice. Early European settlers saw their harvesting methods as wasteful, evidence of laziness. But that wasn't it. The tribe follows a principle of never taking more than half of any gift the earth offers, in order to leave some to feed other beings and to seed next year's crop. One recent visitor wanted to learn more about Native ways of being and accompanied a family out on the lake to harvest rice. He saw that about half the rice spilled into the lake, and -- being a good young engineer -- sketched out a device that could capture 85% of the rice instead. The family thanked him for the idea, but wasn't interested. "Do you think we're the only ones who like rice?" they asked.
On our trip, we've been spending more of our hours touching earth than usual, but we're still driving a gasoline-fueled, air-conditioned van and eating packaged food. Paul and I may have a lower overall environmental impact than some, but we are far from being harmless. What would it take for us, and for the U.S. as a whole, to pivot to a life built on gratitude, respect and relationship? And what would it change?
The U.S. has a lot of challenges to overcome in the next seven generations, climate change being potentially the most devastating. If we don't implement solutions now, widespread destruction will force painful solutions upon us. Dabbling around the edges won't do it. Easy technological fixes won't do it. What the earth needs is for us to treat all forms of life, all the different ecological niches, our plant brothers as well as our animal sisters, as our relations -- to respect, to listen to, to learn from, and to meet every morning with not just gratitude, but love.
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| Red-tailed hawk in Fairview |
--Elena
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