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November
1996
In
the Lap of Our Mother
Book Review by Martin Rowe |
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"We sit in the lap of our Mother...
We shall soon pass, but the place where we now rest will last
forever." - Lakota saying, quoted in This Sacred Earth
Defending Mother Earth: Native
American Perspectives on Environmental Justice
Edited by Jace Weaver. Orbis Books:
Maryknoll (1996) $18.00 pbk. 192 pages
This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature,
Environment
Edited by Roger Gottlieb. Routledge: New
York (1996) $24.95 pbk. 690 pages
Wolf Wars: The Remarkable Inside Story of the Restoration
of Wolves to Yellowstone Park
by Hank Fischer. Falcon: Billings, MT
(1995) $12.95 pbk. 208 pages
"This savage people ruleth over many lands
without title or property," wrote John Winthrop, the recently
arrived governor of Massachusetts, of Native Americans in 1631. "For
they inclose no ground," he continued, "neither have they cattel
to maintayne it, but remove their dwellings as they have occasion,
or as they can prevail against their neighbors." For Winthrop,
this was literally incomprehensible. His own world view held
property to be the central principle of government. Land's
only purpose was for farming, and to leave it fallow - as "waste
lands" to use his words - was a sign that it was his Christian
duty to occupy this promised land and work it. Winthrop's bafflement
and disgust have characterized the history of European conquerors'
relations with Native Americans and the land. And as the challenging
essays in Defending Mother Earth reveal, Winthrop's
words are still very much the lingua franca.
The book seeks to dispel misconceptions. For one, it reports, Native
Americans are not one "people." In Winthrop's day there were two thousand
different tribes inhabiting the North American continent. Now there
are 600, with 400 different ethnicities, eight major language groups,
and three distinct racial strains. Secondly, Winthrop's thinking that
the "savage people" were not doing anything with the land is equally
wrong. Like all peoples, the native inhabitants worked the land, but
they did so in a way that enabled the land to recover. Defending Mother
Earth comes down hard on such groups as Earth First!, who, according
to the writers, consider native peoples in their own way to be as environmentally
destructive as the white people who followed them.
Thirdly, native peoples do not all think the same, and do not always
agree. Take, for instance, the meaning of sovereignty. While most writers
in Defending Mother Earth hold that sovereignty goes hand in hand with
environmental responsibility, others - such as Wendell Chino of the
Mescalero Apache, profiled here - actively campaign for storing nuclear
waste on tribal lands because of the substantial monies that would
accrue to his tribe. Grace Thorpe (from the Sac and Fox peoples) comments
drily: "The real irony is that after years of trying to destroy it,
the United States is promoting Indian national sovereignty - just so
it can dump its waste on Native land." Schisms within native cultures
are aired: Margaret Sam-Cromarty (Cree) left her reservation because
of what she perceived as her people's infighting, alcoholism, and corruption
by money; Duane Good Striker (Blood) complains about "rocking chair" farmers
on the reservations leasing out native lands to outside developers
who do not practice sustainable agriculture.
One of the strengths of Defending Mother Earth is that writers
place the struggle of native peoples on the North American continent
in the context of the worldwide struggle of indigenous peoples. Multinational
corporations are exploiting indigenous communities for their resources
around the world. And it is not just multinationals. Andrea Smith (Cherokee)
sees the deliberate attempt of the North to place the burden of population
control on Southern women of color as part of the age old racist dynamic
of the industrialized world refusing to stop its over-consumption and
accept the need for economic justice for indigenous peoples. Indeed,
according to George Tinker (Osage/Cherokee), the Euro-American tendency
to identify itself as a moral conqueror (whether as the neo-colonial
World Bank or well-meaning Western non-governmental organizations)
will not solve the root causes of environmental destruction or global
population. His answer, and the answer of many, is the restitution
of lands to native peoples and a granting of real sovereignty to the
First Nations.
With sovereignty, however, come the threats to the small amount of
land Native Americans own. According to the writers in Defending
Mother Earth, although Native Americans own only 2.3 percent of
the United States, their lands contain 35 percent of the commercially
valuable minerals, timber, and metals in the United States. These are
resources which mining and other industrial interests have sought to
exploit. The result has been, say the writers, disproportionate amounts
of mining and pollution on native lands. In Canada, cancer and birth
defects among natives caused by pollution have risen by as much as
600 percent in some areas, while Iron Mountain in California is so
polluted from mining that rivers running through the area will never
support life again. Sometimes these sites are on the tribe's most sacred
ground, destroying the cultural as well as natural fabric of native
communities. When native peoples have tried to organize resistance
to the exploitation of their habitat, mining interests have stirred
up anti-native sentiment. In northern Wisconsin, for instance, groups
were organized to counteract the fishing and hunting rights granted
to the Chippewa by Wisconsin courts. These groups' message was clear: "Spear
an Indian; save a walleye [a fish]," or "Spear a pregnant squaw, save
two walleye." When a colonel in the Army Corps of Engineers was asked
recently why he had broken promises to the Sioux, he responded: " 'Well,
it was those people from Standing Rock Reservation that killed Custer,
and I'm not going to forget it.' "
Native Americans, as all native peoples, perhaps feel the impact of
environmental and cultural degradation more acutely than other groups
precisely because of their dependency on the natural world. Disease,
a non-native meat-based diet, and environmental degradation have meant
that current life expectancy for many Native Americans and Canadians
is only about 47 years. Norma Kassi of the Yukon Gwich'in writes that
all her 11 aunts and uncles died of the non-indigenous diseases of
smallpox, tuberculosis, and measles.
Defending Mother Earth is not a comforting book. Those
of us who believe in animal rights need to take seriously
these writers' call for the fish they catch and the animals
they hunt to be free from toxins and pollutants. We also
need to respect the fear and anger of someone like Norma
Kassi when she blames in part the animal rights movement
for destroying her nation's livelihood from the fur trade.
Nevertheless, all writers are clear that the kind of sustainable practices
which evolved with their different peoples - of respecting the lives
of animals rather than hunting them to extinction, of recognizing the
intrinsic value of all life and not just its instrumental value to
human beings, and of letting nature alone rather than seeking to control
it - is not just necessary for their own survival as peoples or for
the sons and daughters of John Winthrop, but for the survival of the
planet.
The writers in Defending Mother Earth each acknowledge that
an enormous spiritual change will be required to save the planet. If
the world was just, This Sacred Earth would be able to accomplish
the spiritual change singlehandedly. The book is a massive, extraordinary
collection of essays, poems, and articles encompassing the response
of the world's religions to the environmental crisis. Like Defending
Mother Earth, it acknowledges the problem inherent in centuries of "Winthropian" thinking
about the planet, much of it based on traditional Christian theology.
Nevertheless, This Sacred Earth also argues that the world's
religious traditions offer important resources for reclaiming a biocentric
spirituality [see sidebar]. As such it presents not only a history
of the emergence of religious ecological consciousness, but powerful
ritual and theological expressions of a respect for nature and non-human
animals. The book does not shy away, however, from the concern of liberation
theologies that environmental concerns cannot be divorced from genuine
concern for the culture of indigenous or disadvantaged peoples. Writing
as an African American liberation theologian, Theodore Walker, Jr.
says that concerns about the environment and animals run the risk of
being the preserve of the privileged white middle-class who have given
up - or, worse, do not consider necessary - the fight for racial justice.
No review could possibly do justice to the richness, variety, and thoroughness
of this anthology. Compiled as a textbook for courses in religion, This
Sacred Earth nevertheless has a readability and organic wholeness
that makes it a good narrative read for non-scholars. Unlike other
environmental texts it includes the perspectives of women, people of
color, non-Western religions, religious practitioners as well as scholars,
and creative writers as well as scholars. It also acknowledges that
the exploitation of "food animals" remains as much a concern of the
Creator as the protection of endangered species.
Wolf Wars is a breezy and readable account of the 30-year effort of
biologists to return one of those endangered species (the gray wolf)
to Yellowstone Park. The political ins and outs of the story - the
compromises, the stand-offs, and the changes in consciousness - make
salutory reading for anyone seeking to bring about even so seemingly
moderate a goal as returning an indigenous predator to a park where
the threat to livestock is minimal. Two important lessons emerge from
the book. The first is that changing public opinion through on-site
education and public lobbying was a core reason why politicians finally
felt empowered to allow this scheme to go forward, even when the ranchers
were aligned against it. The second is that the forces arranged against
change are formidable. If it took 30 years to get wolves back into
Yellowstone, we perhaps should take the long view in campaigns to end
factory farming and environmental destruction.
The story, of course, is far from over. Some wolves have been shot
when they strayed out of the park, and across the West Animal Damage
Control continues its unrestricted war on any wildlife that poses a "threat" to
livestock. Clearly here, John Winthrop's "cattel to maintayne" the
ground remain firmly in place
The Religious Response to Nature
From This Sacred Earth
Buddhism
"The Buddhist tradition counsels us to treasure and conserve nature, of which
human beings are an active part. Each of us must choose the extent to which we
will bring to life the teachings of the Buddha." - Chatsumarn Kabilsingh
Christianity
"Creation is not one thing and salvation something else; rather, they are related
as scope and shape, as space and form, as place and pattern. Salvation is for
all of creation. The liberating, healing, inclusive ministry of Christ takes
place in and for creation." - Sallie McFague
Hinduism
"The sacredness of God's creation means no damage may be inflicted on other species
without adequate justification. Therefore, all lives, human and nonhuman, are
of equal value and all have the same right to existence. According to the Atharvaveda,
the Earth is not for human beings alone, but for other creatures as well." - O.
P. Dwivedi
Islam
"Our universe, with all its diverse component elements, was created by God and
the human being is an essential part of His Measured and Balanced Creation. The
role of humans, however, is not only to enjoy, use and benefit from their surroundings.
They are expected to preserve, protect and promote their fellow creatures." - Mawil
Y Izzi Deen (Sammarrai)
Judaism
"Life has become too precious in this era for us to be involved in the shedding
of blood, even that of animals, when we can survive without it. This is not an
ascetic choice, we should note, but rather a life-affirming one. A vegetarian
Judaism would be more whole in its ability to embrace the presence of God in
all of creation." - Arthur Green
Taoism
"The gentle Way of the universe appears to be empty,/yet its usefulness is inexhaustible./Fathomless,
it could be the origin of all things./It has no sharpness,/yet it rounds off
all sharp edges./It has no form,/yet it unties all tangles." - Tao Te Ching
Thoreau in November
We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in
a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before
setting, after a cold, gray day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon,
and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and
on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon and on the leaves
of the shrub oaks on the hillside, while our shadows stretched long
over the meadow east ward, as if we were the only motes in its beams.
It was such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before,
and the air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to
make a paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that this was not
a solitary phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it would happen
forever and ever, an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure
the latest child that walked there, it was more glorious still. [From "Walking," quoted
in This Sacred Earth]
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