Canada Reads 2014 finished yesterday. This year's theme was "changing Canada"; and the winner was The Orenda - a historical fiction about the colonization of Canada and the clash between indigenous and european civilizations. A clash expressed by its eloquent defender, Wab Kinew, as:
"Do we own the land or does the land own us?"
European culture and Christianity profess a view that the world was created for humans to use as they like. Thus we can fish as much as we want, farm as we like, and treat animals as if they were no different than a shovel. While we have since realized each of these examples was foolish and reckless, the underlying culture has not changed as evidenced by politicians building walls to hold back the rising seas and passing resolutions barring the atmosphere from warming by 2 degrees - as if climate change can be prevented by divine right. King Canute has never been so proud.
Indigenous cultures are fundamentally different. Humans come from the land and must respect and care for it. Glory is not found in triumph but in struggle. Nature causes suffering through which meaning can be found (eg. rites of passage). Whereas honourable suffering for europeans comes from the hands of people (eg. self-flagellation, crucifixion, poverty).
My reconciliation these divergent views is would be summarized as:
"We are the land and the land is us"
We evolved on this planet with every other living thing. From our very origin we have changed the land around us just as it changes us. We spread the seeds of plants we need and we moved where the plants we need grow. We ate other animals, other animals ate us. Humans set fires turning eucalyptus forest into grassland and exterminated mega-fauna turning grassland into boreal forest. Animals evolved to be our friends and were domesticated. Others evolved
to be our foes and were dreaded. Parasites evolved to exploit the new habitats
we created. Meanwhile we evolved survive in the new habitats we discovered.
Now we have created a new frontier - cities, in which pigeons, rats and raccoons thrive as much as we do. Our growing population appropriates 20-40% of everything that grows through forestry, fishing, and agriculture. You'd be hard pressed to find a single square foot of land which has not been changed by our presence. Yet ants and termites - the city builders of the insect world - still dominate us in terms of both numbers and mass.
For better or for worse we cannot undo the past 200,000 (or so) years of human existence anymore than we can undo industrialization or undo colonization. We and the land will return to a stable state of affairs the only questions are when and how, the only certainly is that it will not as we are now.
