New Hope in Old Ways
As a youth I was taught that the land is governed by a set of principles, laws and values and natural order. Change is the result of natural order. Change must be guided by Elders and Cultural traditions from the existing people of the place we wish to manage, heal and grow. Each individual, family and community has the innate knowledge of the natural order for well being and change. Every community has its own knowledge and solution for well being.
Healing will take place through cultural and spiritual guidance. We must look at the land, air and ocean as our mother, brother, sister and father. Unfortunately we often have healing to do within our families and thus we have healing to do with the place that feeds us. If we can look at place as that which feeds us, heals us and nourishes our well being then we can beign healing and appreciating and maybe loving the place we are.
When we hunt, harvest, fish, and plant we must be of right mind and thought. Why am I taking this, why am I planting this, why and how am I treading on this place, what am I leaving for my grandchildren and their grandchildren?
My grandfather used to say, “Our very existence is the cause for death and destruction but also the opportunity for rebirth. Our survival depends on taking from our mother, so we must think about how we take from what she gives us, how we react to her teachings and how we view our relationship to her. All life is sacred so when we return to her, will we come back as the toxic, spoiled, self indulgent child or the appreciative spiritual being to give new life in the soil.”
Our existence should be one of leadership. If we are leaders then we must do the most good for the most of amount of people and place while doing the least damage to place, flora, fauna and people. If we take from the land, what are we putting back and who are feeding with what we have taken.
I was brought up with a general rule of thumb when hunting or harvesting. Half goes to the elders where we harvested. When delivering the harvest, we spend time with the elders and learn the old stories, ways, recipes, and share in learning about place, their well being and how we can improve the place.
My grandfather used to say, “true knowledge of place has existed for generations but ego and greed make people think that knowldege is found in a lab or university, where the system has for centuries stolen knowledge from places and dressed it up with numbers and fancy words for their own benefit. This has caused trauma and displacement to people and the land whilst under the pretense of knowing what is better for the place and people.”
He used to tell me in a low voice with a sad look and lowered look, “Now you can go to once healthy ecosystems and places and see fallow unhealthy and abandoned fields and thousands of acres of mismanaged places that once fed thousands of healthy thriving communities. There you will also see communities in chaos (acoholism, drug abuse and domestic violence) without relationship with their place, land, and food. These things disconnect people from the spirit of our ancestral knowledge and what is the natural order of our planet and innate knowldege of what it means to treat our mother, family and community. How can we know ourselves and heal if we do not know our mother?” he would ask.