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It is easy to forget [that] we live in a remarkable period of human history, when the most predictable characteristic of our lives is change. Homo sapiens [for the last] 600,000 to 800,000 years [lived] as small family groups of hunter-gatherers living lightly on the land. Nature was vast and endlessly self-renewing.
Around the world, land was sacred. Land meant much more than just a place, an area - it represented the spiritual and physical source of life itself. The land included the air, water, animals, rocks, plants, one's ancestors and the generations yet to come. The very definition of one's identity and purpose came from the land. Aboriginal people around the world maintain a radically different relationship with the land around them than do members of western technological societies.
Native people speak of their kinship with all creatures. We tend to think of this as quaint metaphorical speech, but molecular biologists have begun to show that these relationships are grounded in physical reality. There is a unity of all life forms that goes to the evolutionary origin of life. So all living organisms are made up of the same seven major atoms, the same macromolecules, the same basic cellular structure. And all life is formed in accordance with a universal genetic code residing in DNA, the blueprint of life. Over 70 percent of the DNA in a wolf or seal, for example, is identical to that in our cells.
These remarkable scientific insights come at a time when the planet's biosphere is changing cataclysmically under the impact of the deadliest predator ever known - modern technological man.
Next to the threat of nuclear war, biologists agree that the most dire crisis facing the planet today is the loss of biodiversity. Species extinction is occurring at an alarming rate, primarily through habitat destruction in the great forests of the world. An attitude that sees all of nature as a potential resource has been given great muscle-power by science and technology and the delusion that we have sufficient knowledge to manage and sustain the likes of what we are "harvesting."
The brute force of technology enables us to satisfy our immediate demands for profit and material wealth by extracting "resources" from the land. Where it once took the Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands over a year to cut down a single large tree, contact with the Europeans brought steel saws which enabled two men to accomplish the same task in ten days. Today, one man and a chainsaw can do the same job in minutes.
We are the last generation to have any say about the future of wilderness because it will be gone within our lifetime. In the same way, it appears that in 150 years, 50 percent of all animal and plant species will be extinct while 200 years from now, only 20 percent will remain. Of the estimated 30 million species of organisms on the planet, biologists have only identified 1.7 million, barely over 5 percent. Our ignorance of the complexity of their life cycles and basic biology, to say nothing about their interdependence and interactions, is vast. We know next to nothing about the impact of massive removal of large pieces of the biosphere such as tropical rainforests or entire watersheds.
We - one species out of 30 million - now corral some 40 percent of the net primary productivity of the planet for our use. We have lost all sense of biological place. We are out of balance with the rest of nature, and like a malignancy in the biosphere, we consume far too much of the planet's resources. We seem driven by a need to sustain growth in profit and material consumption, and appear blinded by and illusion that we lie outside of the ecosystem and have become empowered to dominate and manage it. Most people in the world live in urban settings, or the human-created landscape of farms. It is easy to forget that the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink all carry the debris of our activity.
If we listened to the elder citizens of society, we would hear of the vast changes that have taken place within the span of a single human life. The fish, the trees, the water, the air, the soil have been changed beyond recognition, but these changes are written off as "the price of progress."
We have to change the destructive path we are on. We have to see
with sharp clarity the consequences of what we are doing now.
And we need a radically different perspective on our place in
the natural world. In spite of the depradations on their land
and people, pockets of Native culture survive, a priceless potential
for all of us. (1)
• • • • •
Logging
The ancient trees of the Queen Charlottes had long been the battleground
between the Haida seeking to protect their heritage and a logging
industry licensed to clear cut much of the island's rain forests.
Thirty Haida men and women blockaded the road to the logging camp
on Lyell Island in 1985. Blockading for several weeks, many Haida
joined by conservationists were arrested and the ensuing court
case gained worldwide attention. One year later the B.C. government
imposed a moratorium on logging in South Moresby and in 1987,
the Canadian government agreed to preserve the entire area, joining
forces with the Haida to run the new park reserve. Today the Gwaii
Haanas / South Moresby National Park protects a large area of
the rainforest, mountain and marine areas on the 138 islands of
the Queen Charlottes. (2)
• • • • •
When You Put Aside Values
We won in South Moresby. That's such a tiny little piece of this Earth and you see how they act like they lost a big piece of it. I don't know where they think they lost it - it's still up there.
Ten years it took so many people to make that happen - really it's kinda sad - but it shows that it could be done, anyway. I rode down from the Charlottes yesterday with a guy from Western Forest Products - he's still a little bit mad at me. We've known each other for a longtime. I think he put it best when he said: "You put aside the cultural values and the recreational values and the fish and wildlife values and the spiritual values, and it just makes no sense to leave those lands the way they are."
Guujaaw, of the Haida Nation, at the Stein Voices for the Wilderness
festival, August 1987. (3)
• • • • •
And, to again point out that all peoples in all places share
in a rich pre-historic international lore - no group is "culturally
deprived" until oppressed by an invader or exploiter. The indigenas
are bearers of the deepest insights into human nature, and have
the best actual way to live, as well, May this be realized before
they are destroyed. (4)
• • • • •
A curse on monocultural industrial civilization and its almost
deified economic and political systems that compete, exploit,
and then give vast wealth and power to a tiny few while draining
and scattering the cultural and natural wealth of our planet,
I say. (5)
• • • • •
The Force That Brought Life
Belatedly we may be moving to rejoin the community of living beings from which we have so long alienated ourselves and of which we have so long been a mortal enemy. Some of us at least are beginning to revolt against the killer beast that modern man has become. Those of you who are here today belong to the new awakening. You are not here simply to save the Stein wilderness, but because you know in your hearts and in your guts and, yes, perhaps finally with the mind as well, that to save the Stein is a step toward saving the living world itself. You have the power now, the real power that derives not from money and the machine, but from the force that brought life into being on this planet. Bless you all.
Farley Mowat, a message delivered at the Stein Voices for the
Wilderness festival, August 1987. (6)
• • • • •
Earth Love Fund
ELF is committed to raising funds and awareness for environmental
issues, in particular the world's disappearing rainforests. Its
aims are to create global awareness for these vital issues through
music-related projects, educational documentaries, videos and
special events. The charity also helps preserve the rainforest
and its indigenous inhabitants by funding development projects
which are directly involved in protecting and regenerating the
forests. (7)
• • • • •
Footnotes
1. David Suzuki "Forward" [edited] in Stein: The Way of the River(Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1988 Michael M'Gonigle + Wendy Wickwire), pp. 11-12.
2. uncredited, Nan Sdins: Spirits Of Haida Gwaii (http://www.HistoryLands.com/sites/12-nan-sdins, © 1999 Digital Wizards Inc.)
3. Michael M'Gonigle + Wendy Wickwire, Stein: The Way of the River (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1988), p. 144.
4. Gary Snyder, "Forward" in He Who Hunted Birds In His Father's Village: The Dimensions Of A Haida Myth (San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1979), p. xi.
5. Gary Snyder, "Forward" in He Who Hunted Birds In His Father's Village: The Dimensions Of A Haida Myth (San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1979), p. xi.
6. Michael M'Gonigle + Wendy Wickwire, Stein: The Way of the River (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1988), p. 145.
7. From "Earthrise: The Rainforest Album" 1992 Polygram (Earth Love Fund, 18 Well Walk, London NW3 1LD)
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