Why A “Re-Indigenization” Of Society Makes Sense

Why A “Re-Indigenization” Of Society Makes Sense

This article by J.P. Linstroth contains some helpful wisdom regarding respectful ways of relating to each other and Earth. We do not agree with the author that so-called ‘green’ energy technologies are solutions to the climate crisis. However, the article raises important points regarding human separation from the natural world, soil degradation, indigenous rights, continued destruction, and the need to find a new way.


by J.P. Linstroth / Counterpunch

It may sound patently absurd to discuss a “re-Indigenization” of society.

Yet, I argue not only is it practical but necessary if humanity is to survive into this century and beyond. Humans, for most of their history, lived as hunter-gatherers, for about the first 290,000 years or so. It is only in the last ten to fifteen thousand years from the “Agricultural Revolution or Neolithic Revolution”, did we begin domesticating animals and plants, and thus began so-called “civilization” with writing, hierarchies, state systems, endemic warfare, and worst of all, slavery. In fact, most of us do not even think about this pre-history. We simply “are” in the world today—a globe we inherited from our collective human shift of moving away from hunting and gathering to a world of domesticating the natural environment.

If we are to legitimately address a history of these inequalities and their historical consequences, “environmental destruction”, “genocide”, “racism”, “systemic warfare”, “human exploitation”, and “state system oppression”, we must begin by examining if progress means a continuation on our present path toward self-destruction. In part, I address some of the effects of these colossal man-made calamities in my new book, Epochal Reckonings (2020, Co-Winner of the Proverse Prize)—a poetic guide to some of our 21st century crises.

What I wish to examine here is a re-thinking of ourselves on our planet earth, in relation to an indigenous understanding of “Mother Earth”.

Moreover, I will argue while we have moved well beyond the likes of French philosopher René Descartes, for many reasons his intellectual legacy still remains as we struggle to come to terms with our environment and our heritage from the Agricultural Revolution.

Descartes is well-known for his “Cogito, ergo sum”, “I think, therefore I am”, which in many ways, makes Descartes the father of “philosophy of mind” and “consciousness” from a Western perspective. He thinks and therefore he knows he exists. But what does existence mean though in terms of our own present day understanding in relation to the world and the environment? In biology, cognition, and neurology alone, our knowledge of brain, mind, and body are indeed profound. With basic evolutionary knowledge, we know biologically we are animals, although perhaps a special kind, and why it is a false narrative to separate humankind from nature. When René Descartes wrote, for example: “…For as to reason or sense, inasmuch as it alone makes us men and distinguishes us from the beasts, I prefer to believe it exists whole and entire in each of us…” (Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, 1637 & 1641, 1998, trans. Donald Cress, p. 2), Descartes had no way of knowing the future of human epistemology. Perhaps he might even have been amused by the contemporary subdiscipline of primatology as aiding our comprehension of human behavior. Who is to know?

What is extremely dangerous, however, is holding on to a kind of Medieval thinking that somehow our world is centered around us, humans and humans alone, and God made man (humans) for the world and for him (them) alone. In the Old Testament, Isaias (45: 18) in the Bible (1899 edn.) it states: “For thus sayith the Lord that created the heavens, God himself that formed the earth, and made it, the very maker thereof: he did not create it in vain: he formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord, and there is no other”. Yet, it is in Descartes’ Meditation 6 where he explicitly outlines why he separates “Mind from Body” as if the mind itself in all its abstractive capabilities can somehow be divorced from our corporeal selves.

And thus, if men’s (human’s) minds may be divided from our bodies then humans may be divided from nature.

Here is what he asserts: “Thus it seems to follow that the power of imagining depends upon something distinct from me. And I readily understand that, were a body to exist to which a mind is so joined that it may apply itself in order, as it were, to look at it any time it wishes, it could happen that it is by means of this very body that I imagine corporeal things…” (p. 93) Of course, and to be fair, René Descartes was well ahead of his time on his discourse about the mind, human perception, and the brain. Even so, there are remnants from what he contended which have remained with us, namely, “Cartesian Dualism”, or our complete divorce from nature.

In Maurice Bloch’s (2013) seminal work, In and Out of Each Other’s Bodies: Theory of Mind, Evolution, Truth, and the Nature of the Social, he explains rather than thinking of the separation of mind and body, or culture and nature, “…The social is understood as the flow of interaction between people: I call this the transactional. On the other hand, the transactional social is contrasted with conscious, explicit representation of the social: these I call the transcendental social. I argue that the transcendental social consists of second-order phenomena created and maintained by rituals. The transactional social is governed by norms and ways of doing things that are largely subconscious. It involves the continual mutual monitoring of each other by the members of a social group” (p. vii). In other words, there is no separation between mind and body, nor nature and humankind, nor between culture and nature the biological is intertwined with the social and vice versa.

In addressing the human issue of our separation from nature may have its Western roots in the so-called “Scientific Revolution” of the 1500s-1600s and the “Age of Enlightenment” of the 1700s, but today, we may re-examine some of the erroneous philosophical carryovers and create a future of cohabitation and interbeing akin to an indigenous understanding of our world. A skeptic may declare, “Well that’s all fine and good but what about poverty, starvation, over-population, and the like?” A re-indigenization of society means a re-orientation of human thought. It does not mean becoming Native or indigenous. It means re-imagining our humanity.

As a society we need to think beyond technological progress and using the planet as an unending natural resource. Here is how in my humble opinion.

1) Accept human beings as part of Earth, and not apart from it, and by this acceptance, accept our dependence upon it;

2) Accept Earth as a living being, the Gaia theory. And if we are to take care of ourselves, we need to take care of the Earth too and become its guardians. We need to love the Earth and respect it as much as indigenous peoples everywhere do;

3) Being grateful for our being on this planet and not endlessly destroying it and polluting it is a good beginning which has been around for a while in ecological consciousness circles;

4) Instead of putting resources into warfare, put resources into renewable energies and into solving malnutrition and poverty in sustainable ways. Make farming more sustainable too instead of a form of factory production and endless soil depletion;

5) Allow indigenous peoples to have “more voice” with first-world nations (Europe, United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other powerful states as China and Russia) in United Nations forums and such environmental decision-making as the Paris Agreement of 2015;

6) Protect indigenous peoples and their rights and allow for indigenous parks and reserves to remain and to be expanded upon by protecting larger tracts of land, instead of developing and exploiting natural resources on indigenous lands for industrial farming, mining interests, oil extraction, electric dams, lumbering, and ranching;

7) Make the “re-indigenization” project official in international law and international treaties, and along with other international laws concerning indigenous peoples (e.g. ILO Convention Number 169 of 1989 and the 2007 UNDRIP, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples). Make all nation-states adhere to such a project if possible;

8) Create more public awareness through more education programs through universities, and above all, create an ecological consciousness understood from indigenous perspectives and in their own voices;

9) Remember scientists believe we are entering the sixth extinction phase on the planet and we must prevent this by all productive means necessary;

10) And finally, allow more indigenous peoples to be spokespeople and to become planetary ambassadors for realizing such a re-indigenization project before it is too late.

One indigenous leader in Ecuador, Nemonte Nenquimo, First Female President of the Waoroni Organization of the Pastaza Province and Co-Founder of the Ceibo Alliance, declared in an open letter to world leaders:

My name is Nemonte Nenquimo. I am a Waorani woman, a mother, and a leader of my people. The Amazon rainforest is my home. I am writing you this letter because the fires are raging still. Because the corporations are spilling oil in our rivers. Because the miners are stealing gold (as they have been for 500 years), and leaving behind open pits and toxins. Because the land grabbers are cutting down primary forest so that the cattle can graze, plantations can be grown and the white man can eat. Because our elders are dying from Coronavirus, while you are planning your next moves to cut up our lands to stimulate an economy that has never benefited us. Because, as Indigenous peoples, we are fighting to protect what we love—our way of life, our rivers, the animals, our forests, life on Earth—and it’s time that you listened to us. In each of our many hundreds of different languages across the Amazon, we have a word for you—the outsider, the stranger. In my language, WaoTededo, that word is “cowori”. And it doesn’t need to be a bad word. But you have made it so. For us, the word has come to mean (and in a terrible way, your society has come to represent): the white man that knows too little for the power that he wields, and the damage that he causes. You are probably not used to an Indigenous woman calling you ignorant and, less so, on a platform such as this. But for Indigenous peoples it is clear: the less you know about something, the less value it has to you, and the easier it is to destroy. And by easy, I mean: guiltlessly, remorselessly, foolishly, even righteously. And this is exactly what you are doing to us as Indigenous peoples, to our rainforest territories, and ultimately to our planet’s climate.” (The Guardian, October 12th, 2020).


J. P. Linstroth is a former Fulbright Scholar to Brazil. His recent book, Epochal Reckonings (2020), is the 2019 Co-Winner of the Proverse Prize. His article was published in Counter punch on DECEMBER 11, 2020. You can access the original article here: https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/11/why-a-re-indigenization-of-society-makes-sense/

Featured image by Max Wilbert: fish-trap basket and weaver in a rural part of the Philippine archipelago.

A Malagasy Community Wins Global Recognition For Saving Its Lake

A Malagasy Community Wins Global Recognition For Saving Its Lake

This article was written by Malavika Vyawahare and published on the 18 November 2020 in Mongabay. Malavika describes the work undertaken by a community association to improve the health of the ecosystem of a wetland.  The organization won the Equator Prize in the category “Nature for Water.”


[The Ohio River Speaks] The Veil Of Unreality

[The Ohio River Speaks] The Veil Of Unreality

The Ohio River is the most polluted river in the United States. In this series of essays entitled ‘The Ohio River Speaks,‘ Will Falk travels the length of the river and tells her story. Find the rest of Will’s journey with the Ohio River here.


By Will Falk / The Ohio River Speaks

One of the defining questions of my life has been: How have humans been capable of pushing the planet to the brink of total ecological collapse? The answer is undoubtedly complex and one that I will likely pursue for the rest of my life. But, I’ve long thought that a major part of that answer can be found in the spiritual failings of those most responsible for the destruction.

I found support for this idea in the writings of the great Lakota scholar, lawyer, and author Vine Deloria, Jr. In his book God is Red: A Native View of Religion, Deloria argued:

“Ecologists project a world crisis of severe intensity within our lifetime, whereas religious mythologies project the end of our present existence and the eventual salvation of the chosen people and the creation of another world. It is becoming increasingly apparent that we shall not have the benefits of this world for much longer. The imminent and expected destruction of the life cycle of world ecology can be prevented by a radical shift in outlook from our present naïve conception of this world as a testing ground of abstract morality to a more mature view of this universe as a comprehensive matrix of life forms. Making this shift in viewpoint is essentially religious, not economic or political.”

As I read this quote on the banks of the Wabash (a major tributary of the Ohio River) in southern Indiana’s Harmonie State Park, I wanted my journey with the Ohio River, and the writing that comes from it, to contribute to this radical shift in outlook, this spiritual change that Deloria described. Not long after I came to this realization, however, I read a warning Deloria gave about how difficult achieving this radical shift truly will be. He wrote:

“The problem of contemporary people, whatever their ethnic or cultural background, lies in finding the means by which they can once again pierce the veil of unreality to grasp the essential meaning of their existence. For people from a Western European background or deeply imbued with Christian beliefs, the task is virtually impossible. The interpretation of religion has always been regarded as the exclusive property of Westerners, and the explanatory categories used in studying religious phenomena have been derived from the doctrines of the Christian religion. The minds and eyes of Western people have thus been permanently closed to understanding or observing religious experiences.”

As a person from a Western European background who had previously been deeply imbued with Christian beliefs, my heart sank when I read Deloria’s words that the task of piercing “the veil of unreality to grasp the essential meaning” of my existence is “virtually impossible.” However, and with a hope that this would make the late Deloria smile in whatever world he presently occupies, I used my lawyerly pedanticism to conclude that “virtually impossible” is not equivalent to “completely impossible.” Additionally, I thought I could call on the Ohio River as an ally in this endeavor.

I did not know where to start the task until I came to Deloria’s discussion of the different views of death held by Christians and what Deloria calls “American Indian tribal religions.” During this discussion, Deloria described the importance of ancestors to tribal religions:

“Most tribes were very reluctant to surrender their homelands to the whites because they knew that their ancestors were still spiritually alive on the land, and they were fearful that the whites would not honor the ancestors and the lands in the proper manner. If life was to mean anything at all, it had to demonstrate a certain continuity over the generations and this unity transcended death.”

Reading Deloria’s words reminded me of a now-famous speech made by Chief Seattle upon signing the Treaty of Medicine Creek in Washington state in 1854 (and in fact several paragraphs later Deloria quotes the speech himself.) Two of Chief Seattle’s lines echoed in my head: “To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and seemingly without regret…”

Chief Seattle prophesied my existence. Throughout my life, I had wandered very far from the graves of my immediate ancestors in Kentucky and Indiana. After moving away from southern Indiana when I was eleven, over the next 23 years, I had lived in Utah, Ohio, Wisconsin, California, Hawaii, British Columbia, Utah (again), and Colorado. Non-coincidentally, perhaps, I had struggled so much to pierce the veil of unreality Deloria said was necessary in order to find the essential meaning of my existence that I had previously tried to kill myself. Twice.

I sat with that idea for awhile until the sound of the Wabash River bubbling over some downed trees reminded me where I was. Southern Indiana. Not far from my ancestors’ graves. A quick look at Google Maps on my phone clarified that I was only 54.4 miles from my father’s maternal grandparents’ graves in Log Creek cemetery near Stendal, Indiana.

I had never visited any grave of any of my ancestors. It was time to go.

Log Creek Chapel, near Stendal, IN

Log Creek Chapel, near Stendal, IN

***

The Log Creek cemetery was only accessible by a series of graveled and pot-holed county roads. These roads navigated the sharp, geometric lines of Hoosier cornfields and the groves of hardwood trees that farmers had mercifully left standing as testaments to the former glory of the forests that once stretched across the region. The driver of a diesel truck carrying some sort of agricultural equipment noticed my Colorado license plate, decided I must have been lost, and sped around me, tossing gravel at the flanks of my jeep. Maples, sycamores, and oaks did their best to shower dun cornstalks in reds and golds, but in early November, the trees had already given up most of their colors.

I squeezed through a gate in the wire fence built to keep the deer out and surrounding the cemetery, and set out to find my great-grandparents’ graves. Taking photos to show my father, I took my time searching amongst the hundred or so gravestones arranged in parallel lines marching up the side of a tall hill. A few lone sycamores, a birch, and a row of red cedars stood watch over the cemetery. I found them, sat down in front of the gravestone they shared, and tried to recall everything I knew about them.

Curtis Bone and Leah Bone née Renner – buried side-by-side, and next to my grandmother’s two sisters who had died as infants – were members of the sizable German Lutheran community that settled in southern Indiana (my grandmother converted to Catholicism when she married my grandfather). Both Curtis and Leah died long before I was born. Curtis died of a stroke in 1957 before my father was one year old, even.

I wondered if they understood why I believe the Ohio River speaks, why I love the beings we share our homes with so much, why I forsook the Christianity they, and the rest of my family, had embraced.

I imagined the notion that a river can speak is something that would have sounded ridiculous, at best, and downright sacrilegious, at worst, to these plain, stolid Lutheran farmers. I guessed that – for people who were forced to rip up forests, to dam and divert creeks and streams, to combat the natural succession of plant life to grow their grains and corn ¬– my love for the Ohio River would have seemed sentimental. I feared that my rejection of Christianity would have been something they simply could not accept.

I don’t know where the notion came from, but I left an acorn on each of my little great-aunts graves. I ran back to my car and grabbed a copy of the book I wrote,How Dams Fall. On the way back, I grabbed a curled oak leaf and a big, broad sycamore leaf. Then, I picked a dandelion that managed to get a bloom in before winter. I arranged the leaves, the dandelion, and my book on the foot of their gravestone.

As I sat there, a desire to connect with my great-grandparents in the only way I still could grew within me. I wanted to touch the leaves falling from the same ancient trees who once dropped their leaves on them. I wanted to smell the same fragrances of soil and old, wet wood the earth created for them. I wanted to feel the same chill on the air the winds once brought to them.

The old Log Creek church – a simple, white box of a building that alternated between Lutheran and Baptist uses over the decades – stood at the top of another hill just to the west of the graveyard hill. In between the hills was a shallow ravine where a grove of mature oaks showered the ground with their tawny leaves. I sat at the base of the roundest oak and knew the tree must have towered over my great-grandparents as they walked by on Sundays. The oak also must have witnessed first my two little great-aunts’ burials, then Curtis’, and finally Leah’s.

I took my hat and jacket off and let the wind play with my hair. I walked up to the church. And, in the shade it created, I let the chill bite into my bones until I was too cold to stand it. I moved out under the open sky and let the sun warm me back up.

As I lingered in that autumn sunlight, it shined in an amber slant that I could almost hear ripping open the veil of unreality. I felt a continuity with previous generations of my relatives. And, in this continuity, despite my Western European background, I got a glimpse of the essential meaning of my existence.

Citizen Of The Soul

Citizen Of The Soul

This piece, by Paul Feather, explores what it means to be a citizen of system ruled by the machine, placing it in context of the recent elections that offers no real choice to the voters.


By Paul Feather / November 3, 2020

I voted today, even though I think it’s a crock of shit.

It’s easy enough and doesn’t hurt anything. At least not as far as I can tell. I took the sticker that proclaims, “I secured my vote,” from the smiling lady by the exit, but I didn’t post a selfie with the sticker to let everyone else know how easy that was, or how civic minded I am, or to remind them of their duty to democracy. Don’t get me wrong. I hope all y’all vote. Go team.

I won’t say that voting doesn’t matter. I’m sure it does. If nothing else, votes are expensive. In the 2016 presidential election, Trump and Clinton spent a combined 1.8 billion dollars on their campaigns with Clinton outspending Trump by nearly two to one. Since there were about 129 million votes cast for these two candidates, this comes to about $14/vote, (with Clinton paying $19/vote and Trump paying a little less than $10). Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, got about 4.5 million votes and only paid about $2.60/apiece for them, but he didn’t scrape up too many at that price, and his campaign spending was literally pennies to Trump and Clinton’s dollars. I’m sure there’s more to it than money, but not terribly much more. Votes are expensive, and the more of them you need the more they cost. Roughly speaking, I figure my vote for president’s worth about 15 bucks.

So by all means, go spend your vote, but can we stop pretending that it’s worth much more than dinner for two at a cheap Mexican joint? (Throw in the value of the down-ticket votes and you’ve earned a Miller Lite with your chile relleno.) Can we stop pretending that this is the most important election of our lifetimes? Can we stop pretending that we’ve got to “vote like our democracy and freedom are on the line?” I hear people saying things like this, and I don’t even know what it means. How do you vote like your freedom’s on the line? You vote or you don’t. You can’t do it extra hard so it counts double. Damn straight our democracy’s on the line, but it ain’t the line outside the precinct. Vote, but can we stop pretending?

I feel like this election is something out of the Salem witch trials…

when Puritan settlers would throw a woman in the lake to see if she sank or swam; if she didn’t drown, they burned her. Poor Lady Liberty’s on trial for devil worship. The blue team will drown her, the red team will burn her, and there’s no way out of this one. Go team.

It’s not really a fair metaphor, I know. I’m comparing Lady Liberty to some poor woman that the Puritans probably killed for a heinous crime like midwifery, herbalism, or refusing to suck the parson’s cock. Lady Liberty is not that blameless lass, and if we’re equally lost when we sink or swim, maybe we should admit to some dealings with the devil. Not you, of course. Nor me either, but the whole body politic of the USA—who will ostensibly choose a president next week—has sold its soul for sure.

That’s why we can’t tell what’s true anymore.

Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to be a citizen of the USA, and maybe I’m glad for that because I’m not sure how I’d choose. There are some obvious benefits. It’s possible to live off reasonably well in this country of what other people throw away. That—or rather the general opulence it implies—is a very big deal. But there are costs as well. Perhaps I lean too heavily on metaphor when I say we have sold our collective soul, but the food we eat is grown on land that was stolen from people who now go hungry. I don’t drink the water that was poisoned in the manufacture of the computer I use to write these words, but other people do. To be a citizen of the USA means that other people in other places will bear the material cost of our consumption, our decisions, and our lives.

We can imagine that the food we eat, our energy, our clothing, every need or whim that we fulfill finds provenance in a sort of materialist soul.

Without that food, we die. Without that warmth or clothing, we can’t survive. But we don’t fulfill these needs alone. The days of rugged self-sufficiency are over. We fulfill these needs as participants in the body politic. We will not eat without the functioning of a whole production and distribution system involving untold numbers of people—and very often sitting at the bottom on stolen land. What is the word for the totality of these systems that keep us alive both individually and collectively? This is literally the source of our being; it existed before we were born; and so I will call it our soul.

This soul of ours is not nice to look at, so mostly we don’t. We’d rather pretend we don’t have a soul, or that the source of our existence is abstract and ethereal. Fast for a week and get back to me on that one. I think when our soul is ugly—when the material systems that form the source of our existence are exploitative, unjust, and criminal—then we tend to turn away from that. We cover our soul up with distractions and stories we’d rather hear, but in doing this we deny the source of our existence. In the end—and this is starting to look like an ending—we lose our bearings. We can’t tell what’s true anymore.

When this happens, I suspect there is no way out. We will sink, or we will burn.

If, by chance, an individual attempts to come to terms with her soul, she may find the drama of presidential elections to be less exciting. Not because their outcomes don’t directly affect quality of life for a great many people. I’m sure they do, so go vote. But if one places her full attention upon our soul—again speaking of the whole and material systems that are the source of our lives—she will be disappointed to find that no one else is talking about this. She will not be able to play with either team.

The other thing this individual will notice (if she hadn’t already) is that neither side is willing to look at the truth about who we are and how we got here, and so both sides are locked inside of a strange simulacrum of the world that has no soul. In that world, the only thing that matters is power, and the only way to get votes is to buy them.

The soul functions as a bedrock of reality…

for without it we are dead—and in its absence nothing is real, nothing is sacred; we find ourselves in a post-truth world where the only thing that matters is power.

A soulful vision perceives our electoral process to be a sham, not only because that vision is entirely unrepresented, but because the process itself isn’t sacred. There is no integrity, no trust; it’s not even possible to cheat, because the only real rule—the only sacred thing—is power. It’s not cheating as long as you win, and deep down everyone knows this. We may be close to the breaking point—where the absence of any inviolable law forces one or both contenders to claim the presidency on terms of power alone. We won’t be able to pretend anymore, and I don’t expect that’ll be pretty.

I suspect the only way out is this: to turn the consciousness of the body politic to the real and material systems that support our lives. To illuminate the soul. We can fight about two healthcare systems that are equally devoid of connection to the source of our medicine, or we can bring people to that source. We can vote for one or another plan to keep anonymously packaged food on indistinguishable grocery shelves, or we can anchor our souls in the black dirt of home. This collective shift may not be wholly possible until our souls become so hollow that they collapse and people die—it may be that this is already happening—but incremental shifts toward soulful connection are possible and even inevitable.

You may (and certainly should) attempt to recover your soul on your own, but I’ll warn you that this attempt will be only partially successful. There may once have been a time when there were enough commons left that one could escape into them and live on chestnuts and game, but the commons are now fenced, and the chestnuts are gone. You will continue to live alongside and even inside the soulless simulacrum that we have co-created.

If this election has stirred up a brief moment of civic-mindedness, I hope to leverage that moment not to remind you to #vote, but to question our concept of citizenship. Materially, what are we citizens of except of this massive machine that keeps us alive—that moves bananas and timber and textiles from wherever they’re produced to wherever someone needs them to live? And although most of our consumption goes far beyond mere survival, the conditions of our survival must be met. It is the machine that meets them. You and I are citizens of the machine. Look at it. Look at it squarely. Do not flinch. That machine is your soul. That machine is your center.

Let us stop pretending.


Note: Editor’s introduction to the piece has been edited.

The Ohio River Speaks: White Jesus and the Gray Seagull

The Ohio River Speaks: White Jesus and the Gray Seagull

The Ohio River is the most polluted river in the United States. In this series of essays entitled ‘The Ohio River Speaks,‘ Will Falk travels the length of the river and tells her story. Find the rest of Will’s journey with the Ohio River here. Featured image: White Jesus photographed in the home of the author’s grandparents.


by Will Falk

In my grandparents’ house in Owensboro, KY, the Ohio River spoke to me through Jesus.

After the incident with my grandfather in the hospital parking lot, I returned to my grandparents’ home with my mother and grandmother. One step through the front door and I counted no less than six Jesuses staring at me from the wall. Three different crucifixes hung over three different doorways. Dozens of prayer cards and placards my grandmother couldn’t bring herself to get rid of littered table tops and shelves. And, a statue of a blonde, blue-eyed infant Jesus, dressed as a Renaissance princeling, stood guard over the centerpiece of my grandmother’s cluttered little living room: a massive Bible.

These images of Catholic Christianity filled me with a mixture of painful emotions. The depictions of Jesus as white annoyed me with their historical inaccuracy. The prayer cards invoked my wish that more people would spend more time acting to change the real world than praying. The crucifixes, with their classically Catholic goriness, displayed the broken and bloodied body of a man I had been taught was tortured and killed for my personal sins. Shame rushed in until I remembered that the Roman soldiers who murdered Jesus of Nazareth 2000 years ago could not have cared less if I missed Sunday Mass, cussed, or even used a condom while having premarital sex. But, by then, an old, but familiar anger burned within me.

I was angry about how, as a child, adults sought to control my behavior by threatening me with the eternal suffering of hell. I was angry about the guilt Catholic teachings encouraged me to feel when my behavior conflicted with arbitrary Church doctrine. I was angry about the long history of atrocities Christians have inflicted. I was angry about the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Doctrine of Discovery, and the witch hunts. I was angry about the sexual abuse so many priests have perpetrated on so many children.

I felt sorrow, too. I felt sorrow for my great uncle, a priest in his 80s, who told my mother and me about some resentment he felt over the way that his parents took him to the seminary at 13. In other words, my great-grandparents determined their son would take the vow of celibacy required of Catholic priests before their son had even finished puberty.

I felt sorrow for both of my grandmothers who, encouraged by the Catholic Church, stayed nearly permanently pregnant during the prime of their lives. My paternal grandmother gave birth to eight children. And, my maternal grandmother – the one whose house I was currently in – gave birth to seven children. To illustrate this more vividly, my maternal grandmother (93 years old and with slight dementia) recently asked me: “You know how women get periods, Will?” I, wondering where this was going, cautiously answered, “Yes, Granny, I do.” My grandmother then said, “Well, can you believe it? From the time I was pregnant with Clare until after Cecilia was born, I only had one period!” My grandmother burst out laughing, but I almost started crying.

It is funny, of course, but the more I thought about it, the sadder I got. My aunt Clare is my mom’s oldest sibling and my aunt Cecilia is her youngest, so my grandmother became pregnant and gave birth to 7 children – and only experienced one period during that entire time. As a man, I can only imagine what being pregnant and nursing for that long must have felt like. To make matters worse, each time either one of my grandmothers became pregnant, she had one more child to take care of than the time before.

Just a few hours after I had committed to learning how to treat my grandparents more compassionately, confronting the icons and imagery of Catholicism in my grandparents’ home already caused me to question this commitment. I wanted to blame my grandparents for forcing Catholicism on their children. I wanted to blame my parents for attempting to do the same to my sister and me. I wanted to direct my anger for the pain Catholicism has caused me at my grandparents and parents – people within reach. In order to honor my commitment, however, I knew I had to move past blaming my family and had learn to understand. The question was: How?

A prayer card from my grandmother’s collection.

***

Before I could begin to answer this question, I had to justify spending precious time and invaluable energy trying to understand my family’s spirituality while I was supposed to be writing about the needs of the Ohio River. Achieving this understanding would primarily be an internal process, a journey through my memories and emotions, through history books and conversations with my relatives. At a time when more industrial poisons and more agricultural pollution were pumped into the Ohio River with every passing day, could the Ohio River forgive me for taking this personal journey?

Intellectually, the answer seemed obviously no. Instinctually, however, I felt something urging me to begin this journey. I did not yet understand why, but my intuition insisted that this journey would yield answers to this project’s two central questions: Who is the Ohio River? And, what does she need?

There was something deeper contributing to my hesitation: I was afraid of my family’s reaction if I criticized the Catholic Church and their participation in it. If I was not careful, my criticisms might come off as nothing more than immature contrarianism. I could not sugar coat the pain the Catholic Church has caused me or gloss over the history of Church-sponsored genocides, but it would be disingenuous to lay most of that pain at the feet of my family. Their Catholic beliefs were rooted in generations of indoctrination, passed down by well-meaning mothers and fathers. My family’s participation in Catholicism followed a long history involving the destruction, erasure, and cooptation of the traditional cultures of Europe. A true understanding of why my family has practiced, and still practices, Catholicism would have to attend to 2000 years of history.

I faltered under the weight of it all – the battle between my intellect and my instinct, the fear of my family’s reaction, and the enormity of the history of the Catholic Church. For days, I flip-flopped between ignoring my family’s Catholic beliefs and embracing my intuition that there were useful lessons for both the Ohio River and me if I was just brave enough to delve into that history.

***

I retreated to the little cabin the Troutmans had been letting me use in Potter County, PA. With very little writing to show for my confrontation with my Catholic upbringing, I had just about convinced myself to ignore my family history and head down to Pittsburgh to write about how that city has affected the Ohio River when Melissa Troutman invited me to come with her to run a few errands in Olean, NY. (She probably noticed the squirrelly look that had grown over me while I debated my family’s spirituality during my self-imposed isolation and figured I could use some time outside of my own head.)

Olean sits on the river the indigenous Seneca call Ohi:yo’. To the Seneca, the Allegheny and the Ohio Rivers are one and the same. And, as I’ve explained in earlier installments of this project, I follow the Seneca’s lead. Melissa needed to get her oil changed. So, we dropped her car off and took her terrier Runo for a walk in Olean’s Franchot Park, on the banks of Ohi:yo’.

The river is not visible from most of the park because of a massive earthen flood control mound. Runo, proving the wisdom of his species, took off over the mound, forcing Melissa and I to follow. I crested the mound to find the Ohio River flowing from east to west below me, curling through the curves formed by the hills’ shoulders. Despite knowing I would find the Ohio River, I was stunned once again by the realization that no matter how much time I spend thinking about her, there is no substitute for being in her presence. And, I found the clarity that had eluded me while I had contained my search to the round confines of my own skull miles from the main stem of the Ohio River.

The Ohio River turned the gray, October sky into silver. She glittered under the russet leaves of autumnal oaks, the golden bursts of aspens, and the brash crimsons of changing maples. Emerald feathers flashed where mallards, reminded by the chill breeze of the need for winter fat, tipped their tail feathers up and fed on underwater plants and insects. Honking Canada geese carried, once again, the voices of my ancestors.

Ask the river what to do.

So, I did. Out loud. A few moments later a single seagull caught my attention, descending from the clouds. She took her time, making slow, wide circles above the water. On that overcast day, all the colors of the sky –  the spectrum of whites and grays – settled in her feathers. When she reached my eye-level, she made three or four circles without making progress towards the river’s surface. I got the impression she wanted me to notice her. The gentle repetitions in her circular flight-paths hypnotized me. Memories flooded through me. This was not the first time a seagull had carried me a message.

***

It’s the fourth day after I tried to kill myself the first time. The St. Francis psyche ward is on the seventh floor of an eight-floor building. For exercise and because there’s nothing else to do, I brave the fluorescent lights outside my room and pace the long hallway that connects most of the seventh floor.

At each end of the hallway are wide windows. One looks west into the rows of old company housing for the Milwaukee Iron Company. The other looks east over the waters of Lake Michigan.  Patients are not allowed off the seventh floor and there are rusty bars outside the glass in case we were tempted to take that route to fresh air. I try to open a window facing Lake Michigan anyway. It will not open. A heavy snow begins to fall surrounding the hospital in more white. I press my forehead against the cold glass pane. The cold feels good.

It is not long before I see an old spotted seagull awkwardly wheeling and diving through the falling snow. I am mesmerized by the odd gracefulness in his seemingly drunken turns through the snow. His circles bring him closer and closer to my window. I wonder why he is flying through such treacherous conditions. He is the only bird in the sky. As he flies closer, I am stricken with the beauty of his grayness against the white.

I begin to believe the drunk old gull is braving the snowstorm to speak to me. When he lands on the sill of the window I’m watching from, I know he is. He pauses on the window sill, makes eye contact with me, dips a wing, leaps, and wobbles back toward Lake Michigan. The waves on the lake ripple gray, too. The wet snow falls slowly, gingerly over the waters. They hesitate, hanging a moment in the air, before they are swallowed by the lake. White becomes gray. I drink up the colors following one gray wave after another from their birthplace on the horizon until they wash not far below me onto the shore.

While still in the hospital, I begin trying to write about how the seagull showed me color again. I do not know why. I just feel I should. It is instinctual. There is no articulable rationality that I can come up with. Writing about the seagull is like choosing a path when you are utterly lost. I see a path and go.

While trying to dress the memory in words, the experience cements in my mind. A place – neither completely concrete nor completely abstract, neither completely within me nor completely without me – begins to form. My heart and my memory meet my paper and my pen and the gull’s spotted gray wings flap on. He navigates spiritual planes, physical spaces, the long distances of memory, and fat snowflakes to lead me out over Lake Michigan.

My contemplation intensifies.

While I seek the right words, find them inadequate, scratch them out, and write new ones, the meaning of the gull’s visit grows. Color bleeds from the tip of my pen and begins to trickle to the edges of my memory. Though I cannot make out their tunes, faint songs reach my ears from far away. Voices in strange languages enchant me. I feel hair stir on my head, a twitch in my leg, water collecting on my tongue. I feel small sensations after a long numbness. My memory begins to stretch. The blood returns. It feels good.

The beginnings of a new understanding are planted within me.  I sense mystery. I sense possibility. My world was pain, anguish, and the certainty of more pain and anguish. Now, whispers kiss my brow speaking rumors of something new.

***

Runo dropped a stick, his favorite kind of toy, on my feet. The seagull splashed down next to the mallards and geese. And, I came back to the present.

Seven years after the old grey gull led me to writing in the mental hospital, I knew the Ohio River seagull was urging me to write, too. But, was I supposed to write about my family history and Catholicism? I stood watching the river for a few more minutes and no answer seemed apparent. I turned to catch up with Melissa and Runo. And the first thing I saw was two towering church steeples: The Roman Catholic Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels.

Socio-Ecological vs. Socio-Economic

Socio-Ecological vs. Socio-Economic

This piece comes from the Karuk Tribe, a nation located in what is today northern California and Southern Oregon, along the Klamath River. This piece shares Karuk cultural teachings around socio-ecology. We publish this with gratitide to the Karuk Tribal Department of Natural Resources Pikyav Field Institute, which is currently raising funds to support their land restoration and cultural revitalization initiatives.


Socio-Ecological first vs. Socio-Economic first

by Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources / Pikyav Field Institute

What are these perspectives and how are they different? Both approaches intend to enhance the health and well-being of ourselves, our communities, our ecosystems, and our economies, but they go about it in different ways – based on different priorities.

Socio-Ecological First

The core belief with socio-ecology is that we (humans) are intimately connected to and a part of our ecosystem (i.e. socio-ecosystem).

There is an emphasis on balancing and enhancing human-ecosystems, interactions and ecosystem dynamics and an understanding that resilient abundant economies rest on a
resilient socio-ecological foundation.

Resilient Abundance here means having healthy human communities, diverse and abundant economic opportunities, diverse and frequent ways people interact with the ecosystem.

In addition, we should have diverse and plentiful reproducing animal and plant populations; plentiful high quality air and water and thriving mycorrhizal networks; etc.

Socio-Ecological Management

What does it look like when priority is given to socio-ecology? There is Socio-ecological-economic integration. Many people work in natural resource-related fields because of the complexity of ecosystem management. This includes, for example ecosystem stewardship such as thinning, burning and herd management. There is frequent, regular monitoring of and interaction with the ecosystem and species. There is alignment of ecological and economic benefits.

The indigenous stewardship ethic is that resources (e.g. fruits, nuts, meat, fish, fuel, fibers) are not harvested for trade unless

1) Their habitat has been managed such that they are thriving & reproducing.

2) The local animal and human populations have had their share

What Does This Lead To?

With Socio-Ecological First this leads to interconnection between social, ecological, and economic factors. This results in strong feedback loops between humans and the ecosystems upon which they depend and are part of.

This can result in quicker identification of ecological problems including species in decline, pest/disease outbreaks and negative
impacts of management actions. Prioritising this interconnection can result in more complete ecosystem understanding and thus, more appropriate systemic solutions. There is an increased and increasing interconnection.


Socio-Economy First

The core belief with socio-ecomony is that humans are separate
from the natural world. That natural resources are here for us to use.

There is a strong emphasis on  economic and financial Growth as the root of prosperity, happiness, & health.

Resilient Abundance in this context means healthy human communities, diverse and abundant economic opportunities with higher (and higher) profit margins.

The priority is focused on increased (and increasing) gross domestic product (GDP), and an increase in jobs.

Socio-Economic Management

What does it look like when priority is given to socio-economy?

Many people work in entirely socioeconomic fields such as finance, business, accounting, law, policy and/or IT and they live with minimal interaction with the outdoors. There is disconnection between economic and ecological benefits which sets up perverse incentives. This lead to using natural resources in an exploitative manner (e.g. overharvesting).

What Does This Lead To?

With socio-economic first this lead to separation between socio-economic gain and ecological impacts which in turn leads to negative externalities such as pollution, erosion, species extinctions, and an increased risk of pest/disease/high severity fires.

There are more likely to be boom and bust cycles due to the disconnection between ecosystem and human system of supply & demand. These are often addressed with technological fixes rather than systemic solutions, and thus, do not result in long-lasting resilience (the ‘whack-a-mole effect’).


This piece was first published in June 2019 at https://www.karuk.us/images/docs/dnr/Socio%20Economic%20vs%20Socio%20Ecologic_Rossier_Tripp_2019.pdf