Guest Post: "A Short Rant about LOVE, and the CLIMATE"

When I read Antonia Paquin's "short rant" this morning, I asked her right away if I could post it here for you. Antonia is a young friend nearby who gives her life's energy to ensuring a future for us all. Much love to you, Antonia, with thanks for sharing this with my readers!

Antonia Paquin, in Victoria (with thanks to Creatively United)

A Short Rant about LOVE, and the CLIMATE

Sometimes I find myself disconnecting from the word "climate," because it seems obscure and somewhat nebulous unless you're a scientist who studies this stuff.

I've found the following to be helpful in bringing "climate" into my immediate experience:

• Notice the breath you just took ... now the one you are about to take. You are taking climate into your body.
• Look outside, look around you, really LOOK, noticing the trees, the sky, the soil. You are looking at the climate.
• Feel your heartbeat ... touch your fingers to your wrist, or neck to feel your pulse, or just feel your body moving ever-so-slightly by your heart beating. You are a living creature, interacting with your surroundings. We are also climate.

Remember the Earth is extremely resilient. She knows how to heal herself. Humans are also resilient. We can adapt to change. Though the world feels grim right now, especially with this messy [Canadian federal] election, we are inevitably forced to call into question the major systemic failings that have led us to where we are, which is a good thing!

We are being collectively called to question the ideologies, and the political and economic systems that led us into this mess, the colonial way: "Dominate people, dominate land, YOU SHALL HAVE NO HEART."

This is the movement to end all movements.

We are now being called to decolonize the crap out of ourselves and remember who the hell we are as humans.

Could it be that humans aren't somehow above the natural world?

Could it be that we don't have the right to pillage and rape the Earth?

Could it be that humans are actually inextricably ~connected~ to the Earth?? WOW! You don't say?

David Suzuki, our beloved national man of science, is preaching this message loud and clear. Time to wake up and smell the soil, friends!

Here's how we "fix the climate":

• Tune into what Indigenous land defenders and water protectors have been saying for hundreds of years. Support these movements with your money, time, energy. Uplift voices of black and indigenous folks, people of colour.
• Breathe deep, ground yourself in gentleness and self-compassion so that you feel safe. Then take time to call into question your own belief systems, assumptions, attitudes. We can all do this together.
• Have "adventure conversations" with others. Bring up things like climate, the human condition, hope, guilt, fear, grief, love.
• Vulnerability is powerful. Connect deeply with your fellow humans, know that they probably have similar fears and doubts that you have, and when we share ... it can be so healing.
• Cry and cry and cry, then laugh. It's okay to feel like a mess. [This is my favourite line! JJ]
• Spend time in nature, FOREST BATHING, to remember that Earth is magical and resilient. Every single cell in your body is made of the Earth. The trees and rocks and rivers are your kin. 
• In so many ways you are also magical and resilient. Often our minds forget this, but somehow our hearts can never fully forget this. 

Okay, my rant is over. 

Thank you. I love you. 

*****

And our thanks and love to YOU, Antonia, for these wonderful calls to reconnect ourselves with our first mother.

Permaculture to the Rescue!

I'm already into the fourth week and the fourth lesson of the online permaculture design certificate course I'm taking with Geoff Lawton and his team in Australia (see this intro to Geoff). I've gotta tell you, it sure is exciting learning!

Given that I'm as far away as you can get from having a three-dimensional-seeing brain, I'm already on my way from being a person who only saw flat land versus hills to someone who can detect contour and see the nuances in a flattish landscape. I'm starting to be able to see possibilities and opportunities whenever I look at someone's land. (Now my own chunk of rock in the shade, it still stumps me.)

But more important than the landscaping "eye" I'm developing is the ecological learning I'm doing. For example, there's a whole section just on patterns in the natural world. It's the patterns that capture energy for living systems, and it's vital that we harmonize with patterns rather than working against them. 

Things got really out of whack in this culture when we started working against the rest of Nature: growing monocrops in straight lines with no diversity, with no features for trapping and recycling nutrients, with no water features. Topsoil was either lost or depleted of nutrients. So farmers had to start using chemical inputs, which has led to even less diversity of life in soils and on farms generally. This course teaches that soil degradation is at the core of the environmental problems we're facing. Permaculture is about partnering with ecosystems and designing for ecosystem interactions that will build soil. 

Looking at what's happening in California right now is chilling, knowing how much of western Canada's food comes from there. One hundred percent of the state is in drought of some kind (and it's only April, close to two months away from summer), with nearly 25% of California in exceptional drought. The most important element in permaculture is water, and permacultured landscapes are focused first and foremost on water retention. 

Imagine the resilience in the face of climate disruption that would come from food growing that is based in and on natural systems (which we help along) that have many connections, that are rich in diversity, and that waste nothing because everything is cycled through the system. Imagine!

If you are ever feeling totally blue about the state of this planet, I won't blame you for going the way of Paul Kingsnorth and Will Falk (I often go there myself). But if you want to try out something different, look up permaculture. Watch Geoff Lawton's videos on it or check out the old videos by permaculture founder Bill Mollison. Read a book on it (try Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway, or a book by co-originator of the movement, David Holmgren). Take a course in it. It will definitely cheer you up for a while, by the sheer sense of possibility and opportunity it will give you.

p.s. I am grateful to permacultureprinciples.com for the wonderful image above.

Learning from – and Standing Beside – Our First Nations Sisters and Brothers

Thanks to Nina for writing last week with the title of a book to check out. Reading about it reminded me of something I was told long ago.

Indigenous (Native or aboriginal) North Americans (First Nations and Inuit peoples in Canada) have withstood assault after assault after assault by the marauding European explorers, settlers and resource exploiters. Assaults on their territories, their livelihoods, their health, their sovereignty, their pride and their identities. 

And yet, they're still here. Try as my European ancestors might, they could not eradicate, annihilate, obliterate or even assimilate the people who were here first. The First Nations "won" (if we ignore the attempted genocide, disintegration of families and communities, continued discrimination, rampant poverty and associated widespread health problems) because of their resilience.

Aboriginal peoples around the world showed themselves to be resilient. And now, climate change is testing that resilience once again. Many Native communities are among the most vulnerable to the ravages of climate disruption.

*****

I'd never considered resilience as something that could be asserted. Yet, there it is, in a title: Asserting Native Resilience: Pacific Rim Indigenous Nations Face the Climate Crisis. This 2012 book edited by Zoltán Grossman and Alan Parker is a collection of Native and non-Native voices and perspectives on the climate change crisis. From the description:

"Indigenous nations are on the frontline of the current climate crisis. With cultures and economies among the most vulnerable to climate-related catastrophes, Native peoples are developing responses to climate change that serve as a model for Native and non-Native communities alike. 

"Native American nations in the Pacific Northwest, First Nations in Canada, and Indigenous peoples around the Pacific Rim have already been deeply affected by droughts, flooding, reduced glaciers and snowmelts, seasonal shifts in winds and storms, and changes in species on the land and in the ocean. 

"Having survived the historical and ecological wounds inflicted by colonization, industrialization, and urbanization, Indigenous peoples are using tools of resilience that have enabled them to respond to sudden environmental changes and protect the habitat of salmon and other culturally vital species. They are creating defenses to strengthen their communities, mitigate losses, and adapt where possible."

Winona La Duke, executive director of Honor the Earth and White Earth Land Recovery Project, said:

"In the times of the unraveling of our world, it is essential to stand against the combustion, mining and disregard for life. Life is in water, air, and relatives who have wings, fins, roots, and paws, and all of them are threatened by climate change — as are people themselves. 

"Grossman and Parker have done an excellent job in telling the stories of climate change, and the people who are standing to make a difference for all of us. Change is indeed made by people, and climate change must be addressed by a movement, strong, strident, and courageous."

Reviewer Chris Arnett suggests that "in promoting an indigenous worldview, there is a slight tendency throughout the text to essentialize Indigenous people for their unique resilience or capacity to weather change, when resilience is a characteristic of all people." He then admits, "All contributors acknowledge that Indigenous people, or any people in a close relationship with place over time, have unique firsthand knowledge of place and, as this book shows, science supports such a view."

*****

That reminds me of a suggestion that came up at the Council of Canadians AGM a year or two ago. Well, it came up in conversation out in the hallway, with someone who could maybe be considered a little "fringe." He thought that all Canadians should ask to be adopted by a First Nations band (tribe) and then renounce their Canadian citizenship. That way, he said, we could really join together to fight the federal government and their "Tar sands and pipelines of the people, for the people, by the people" philosophy. 

*****

You know how much I like synchronicity. At dinner with a friend last night, she mentioned a 2011 documentary called People of a Feather (see the trailer here), which tells the story of the Sanikiluaq Inuit community in Hudson Bay, whose traditional dependence on the eider duck has been threatened by giant hydro-electric projects. "Inspired by Inuit ingenuity and the technology of a simple feather, the film is a call to action to implement energy solutions that work with nature."

*****

Our friend at dinner also mentioned a segment of CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks science show called The Mental Health Toll of Climate Change. It seems the resilience we spoke of earlier is starting to meet its match among Labrado Inuit as the changing climate impacts their traditional lifestyle so negatively. That's got to feel like a real kick in the teeth, after surviving so much.