Publisher's Letter: Indigenous Cultures Lead the Way

Indigenous Cultures Lead the Way

By Lisa Bland

Dear Readers, As the daylight grows with each passing day, it’s time to emerge from winter dreams into the promise of spring.

We made it to 2020, and in this dawning of a new decade, it’s ever more apparent that we live in a global community. What befalls other people and places befalls us, too. We are in this together.

I remember thinking about 2020 as a far off, futuristic era with many possibilities, strange and wondrous, yet wrapped in a sense of foreboding for the future. I loved to read as a child and teen, and travelled in my imagination to distant lands and realms. I gained insight into people’s thoughts and worlds and became intrigued by cultural and ecological diversity.

At no other time in history have so many gained access to raw materials with which to build or create the reality they choose. Through social media and the internet we can also connect with every corner of the globe and gain insights into the impacts the global economy has on the planet. In many direct and indirect ways, the Western world view impacts not only biological but cultural diversity. Indigenous cultures are often the strongest voices to rise up against the destruction of the natural world and to address the climate emergency. In the past year alone, the impacts of burning and land-clearing in the Amazon rainforest, the wildfires in Australia, the Canada-wide uprising regarding Indigenous rights and title in Wet’suwet’en territory, the vast reduction in wild salmon returning to spawn in the Fraser River, and the loss of Arctic ice are heartbreaking and conflict-laden issues. Yet, regardless of our cultural roots, we are bound together on a common Earth with the same genetic inheritance and raw capacity to respond to challenges.

The diversity of world cultures arose out of the ways the human imagination relates to the environment, and the cultural lens people developed brought their lives meaning, value, and a moral compass for navigating the world.

Canadian anthropologist and UBC professor Wade Davis coined the term “ethnosphere,” which refers to the sum of all thoughts and intuitions, myths and beliefs, ideas and inspirations brought into being by the human imagination. He suggests that the ethnosphere is humanity’s greatest legacy and that even though half of the 7,000 cultural languages spoken on earth are at risk of disappearing, this and any path to the future has not yet been written.

Davis suggests that cultures are not destined to fade away nor are they suspended in historical versions of a pre-industrial past without progression. Instead, they are dynamic and continuously evolving with complexity and uniqueness in the face of modern-day challenges. He believes that every culture has a model of reality and a unique answer to the question of what it means to be human and alive.

“The real central lesson of anthropology is that every culture has something to say,” Davis says. “We in the West, with our way of thinking of the natural world, we are not the norm—we’re the anomaly.” On a recent CBC Radio Ideas program called Into the Wild, Davis reflected on the 10 years that have passed since his 2009 CBC Massey Lectures, “The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World.” His answer to the question about why ancient wisdom still matters is two words: climate change.

Davis believes that the diversity of the cultural imagination is what holds the seeds of resiliency for the future of humanity—and its present. It depends on understanding and listening to Indigenous peoples, he adds, in what they know of the world, what they have to teach us, and how they can help us find a way to survive and thrive.

Davis suggests that the greatest threat to culture is power, which in its most obvious form is in industrial developments and forces that want access to the land. This power also manifests in the colonial system that has persuaded people and perpetuated the educational story that other cultures are inferior to the dominant culture of the West.

To the ancient Inuit, the Earth was the centre of their universe. The Moon (Taqqiq) was a flat disk of ice, and the Sun (Siqniq) a ball of fire. This painting represents how light finds its way through the darkness, the inevitable cycles of environmental change, and the steady presence of wisdom our ancestors fostered. It is in their ancient wisdom that the balance between humans and proper Earth stewardship resides.

Taqqiq - Acrylic Gouache by Al-Lisa McKay / Miss White Spider Arts

But he is hopeful and believes that if humans are the agents of cultural destruction, they can also be facilitators of cultural survival.

In places such as Columbia, a cultural revival has occurred for Indigenous people through securing the legal land tenure to an area of land for 57 ethnicities. Out of this, a new cultural dream has been born. Davis believes that reconciliation, restitution, and the act of returning land title to Indigenous people allows a place for cultures to move forward in strength and diversity to face the challenges of the future.

The voices calling for action to address climate impacts are getting louder. Perhaps we are at a time where the collective human imagination, in all its technological savvy, along with the wisdom of Indigenous Peoples in their interconnectedness with the natural world, can ignite the fire of change that pushes for alternatives to our carbon and fossil fuel based reality quickly enough to take a great leap forward. With the climate emergency urging us to re-structure our material world and value systems, the time for action is here. The wisdom of our collective ancestors and genetic inheritance is urging us to evolve.

Four Books to Inspire & Ignite Change Written by Canadian Authors

David & Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and The Art of Battling Giants By Malcolm Gladwell Little, Brown and Company (2013) From the Publisher:

“Three thousand years ago on a battlefield in ancient Palestine, a shepherd boy felled a mighty warrior with nothing more than a stone and a sling, and ever since then the names of David and Goliath have stood for battles between underdogs and giants. David’s victory was improbable and miraculous. He shouldn’t have won. Or should he have? In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell challenges how we think about obstacles and disadvantages, offering a new interpretation of what it means to be discriminated against, or cope with a disability […] or suffer from any number of other apparent setbacks.

Gladwell begins with the real story of what happened between the giant and the shepherd boy those many years ago. From there, David and Goliath [shares additional stories] to demonstrate how much of what is beautiful and important in the world arises from what looks like suffering and adversity.”

Clean Money Revolution: Reinventing Power, Purpose, and Capitalism By Joel Solomon with Tyee Bridge New Society Publishers (2017) From the Publisher:

By 2050, $50 trillion will change hands in North America in the largest generational wealth transfer ever. It will remake the world and be the biggest money-making opportunity in history.

“Business as usual,” founded on exploitation and environmental ruin, is over. Climate catastrophe, reactionary politics, and widening inequity have put the world on edge. Meanwhile innovations are shifting the economic ground, and an entire generation is pounding the table for real change. Capitalism is evolving into a force that can restore the planet, transform the global economy, and bring justice to people. The Clean Money Revolution is part memoir of an inspiring thought leader’s journey from presidential campaigner to pioneering investor, part insider’s guide to the businesses remaking the world, and part manifesto for a new vision of profit, power, and purpose. Grocery Story: The Promise of Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants By Jon Steinman New Society Publishers (2019) From the Publisher:

Food has become ground zero in our efforts to increase awareness of how our choices impact the world. Yet while we have begun to transform our communities and dinner plates, the most authoritative strand of the food web has received surprisingly little attention: the grocery store— the epicenter of our food-gathering ritual.

Through penetrating analysis and inspiring stories and examples of American and Canadian food co-ops, Grocery Story makes a compelling case for the transformation of the grocery store aisles as the emerging frontier in the local and good food movements. Author Jon Steinman: • deconstructs the food retail sector and the shadows cast by corporate giants • makes the case for food co-ops as an alternative • shows how co-ops spur the creation of local food-based economies and enhance low-income food access. Grocery Story is for everyone who eats. Whether you strive to eat more local and sustainable food, or are in support of community economic development, Grocery Story will leave you hungry to join the food co-op movement in your own community.

If you enjoyed the above synopses, consider joining our virtual Greeny Green Book Club to chat about themes, ask questions, and share stories. Visit greenygreenbookclub.com to sign up! -GG This Crazy Time: Living Our Environmental Challenge By Tzeporah Berman with Mark Leiren-Young Alfred A. Knopf Canada (2011) From the Publisher:

“This unique book—part manifesto from a leader, part humorous activist memoir from a soccer mom—offers a wryly honest, behind-thescenes, ultimately uplifting look at the state of the planet. For almost 20 years, Tzeporah Berman has been one of our most influential environmentalists. A founder of Forest Ethics and Power Up Canada, she was instrumental in shaping the tactics and concerns of the modern environmental movement.

In her early 20s she faced nearly one thousand criminal charges and six years in prison for her role organizing blockades in Canada’s rainforest. She later transformed her tactics and sat down with CEOs and political leaders to reshape their policies and practices. In her new role at Greenpeace International she is fighting the problem of our time: climate change. This Crazy Time is an impassioned plea for a better world.” By Ryan Elizabeth Cope W hat makes for a great non-fiction read? Is it the way in which authors weave together story with fact, painting a picture that is equal parts thought-provoking and eyeopening? Or is it that the content so often strikes close to home, is so familiar?

The below titles share these kinds of commonalities. Each is heaped full of information and is relevant in these changing times. From these titles, we are invited to imagine different ways of living, eating, and doing business. We’re given an opportunity to reconsider how battles are won and what the term “underdog” really means. Ultimately, throughout each of these books we’re given a hefty dose of hope and encouraged to get up and take action.

Ryan Elizabeth Cope is a Kelowna, BC-based advocate for plastic-less, healthful living. She blogs at Seven in the Ocean (www.sevenintheocean. com/) where she marries her love of food with her disdain for plasticwrapped garbage.