Earth is everything to us but we treat her like dirt

Last night was a rather political evening in my home with a double feature of documentaries. Trudell is a film about the life of John Trudell, the Native American activist and poet. He’s a man who grew up on the Res, poor as poor can be and has had a life full of pain (his entire family was killed, rent the movie to hear his story).

The second movie was another viewing of An Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore, a very familiar figure, is a Washington insider and power broker, wealthy and privileged. Gore is almost the complete opposite of Trudell, or so it would seem. But what struck me at the end of the evening is that they were both talking about the same thing – our relationship to the Earth.

Al Gore presents a very convincing (and terrifying) scientific case for global warming. He uses high tech animation, computer projections and video to support his case. Trudell discusses the spiritual realm, the invisible, the improvable. His philosophy about the poisoning of our lands (the uranium mining on his reservation has given many Natives cancer) is that our society is spiritually lost, we have no connection to the land or to each other. Our spirits don’t love the generations to come. He criticizes the American culture for needing to be hit over the head with facts formulated by scientists (or politicians presenting the science) before believing what is in plain site – we are poisoning the Earth.

While Al Gore argues that we can use our democracy to clean up our environment, reduce global warming and prepare for the changes to come, Trudell argues that the fight is inside of each of us. I argue that both are true.

The fight is not to save the Earth… she’s been around for a long time and has survived worse than us… the fight is to save life as we know it. We must use science to buy us more time and figure out how we can still have our toys while being in balance with the earth. However, in the end, true sustainability requires a change in our spirits.

A start may be to ask questions of ourselves. Where is the love for our children and for our home? Are we really such slaves to our jobs that we have no time or energy to dedicate to bettering our civilization? Do we care more about what people think about us than who we actually are? Why are we afraid of the bacteria and not the antibacterial chemical that kills them? Why is packaging less real than the object inside? Why are we constantly searching for what is new?

Change is what life is about.