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>Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 10:10:15 -0800
>From: Native Americas Journal <bfw2@cornell.edu>
>Subject: A Consciousness of Mother Earth
>
>The following article is provided as 'First Words' to Native
>Americas' special-issue on "Global Warming, Climate Change and Native
>Lands." Published by the Akwe:kon Press at Cornell University's
>American Indian Program, Native Americas keeps you informed of issues
>and events that impact indigenous communities throughout the
>hemisphere. You can find more information on this topic, as well as
>how to subscribe to Native Americas on our web site at
>http://nativeamericas.aip.cornell.edu.
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>A Consciousness of Mother Earth
>By José Barreiro/Native Americas Journal
>© Copyright 2000
>
>For years Native traditionalists have pointed to the growing
>convergence of scientific prediction and Native prophecy. The
>intuitive, observational acumen of Native cultural practitioners,
>particularly when informed by the values and stories that detail
>prophetic tradition, have upheld certain basic truths. One is that
>everything in the living world is related. Another is that everything
>must be in balance; harmony as a positive factor. It has not been
>lost on elders that new currents of thinking in the
>academy-ecological, multi-disciplinary, inter-relational-are
>increasingly working from these premises.
>
>At a conference held in Albuquerque on October 28 to November 1,
>1998, scientists from various institutions, including the National
>Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), met with dozens of
>Native elders. Signalling what might become a trend, these scientists
>from the hard branches were requesting to hear from Native people
>their opinions, stories and observations on the effects and possible
>causes of climate change, a problem that may very well become
>humanity's greatest challenge of the 21st Century.
>
>This volume represents a special double-issue of Native Americas. The
>theme is climate change and its resultant impact on weather and
>environment. A collaboration between Akwe:kon Press and Earth Science
>Enterprise, a division of NASA, the effort gathers the contributions
>of nearly 20 writers and the voices of dozens of elders, scientists
>and other concerned people. Native Americas enlisted these seasoned
>Native writers and scholars, as well as several frequent
>contributors, who have tracked this issue over the years and asked
>them to sort out for our audience the range of scientific, cultural
>and political arguments that dominate its discussion. The result is
>an opening broadcast of pertinent currents that we hope will help
>everyone to ponder and pursue this important issue. It reports in
>part on the process of 20 national and regional workshops assessing
>the current and potential impacts of climate change.
>
>Following the mandate of the 1990 Global Change Research Act, these
>workshops were conducted under the auspices of the White House Office
>of Science and Technology (OSTP) and the United States Global Change
>Research Program. We appreciate the funding assistance provided by
>(NASA's) Earth Science Enterprise as we are honored to collaborate in
>its mission to share scientific and cultural knowledge with our
>audience, which includes many educators, students and Native
>community educators and leadership. (It is intended that this special
>edition of Native Americas will be distributed to every Native
>American community school in the country).
>
>Climate change-its causes and implications-is a complex topic,
>calling for considerable attention to science as well as the serenity
>to ponder long-term effects. Yet, the notion is inescapable that
>something drastic is occurring with the weather. Certainly, there is
>widespread agreement about this among indigenous elders and many of
>the practitioners who still actually conduct nature-primary
>activities in their daily lives. Now at the end of 1999-in the final
>gasp of a century of unprecedented industrial growth-by far the vast
>majority of scientists are as close as can be expected to consensus,
>particularly in a case of such global magnitude. Everybody is talking
>about the weather, to paraphrase Mark Twain, except this time we
>might actually need to do something about it.
>
>As Mohawk author and Native Americas co-founder Tim Johnson writes in
>a comprehensive cover article, it is at the level of local weather
>that most people notice change. Floods, drought, increasingly
>powerful hurricanes-they affect specific localities and regions,
>although their inherent variability seemingly makes them unreliable
>evidence. Yet, the current, apparently progressive warming of the
>Earth is by implication a transcendent, global issue. We know that
>the Earth's mean temperature climbed around one full degree in the
>past century, and that this is linked to the fact that carbon dioxide
>concentrations have increased from 280 to 365 parts per million over
>the same period. We know that both carbon dioxide levels and the
>global mean temperature continue to rise and are doing so at a
>quickening pace. We know that the decade of the nineties was the
>warmest ever on record and that Arctic ice is melting at
>unprecedented rates. We know that the current impacts of severe
>weather are raising apprehensions of "super-disasters" among relief
>agencies. Johnson, (a senior executive at the Smithsonian
>Institution's National Museum of the American Indian), details the
>complex scientific and political questions of determining global
>warming. It is easy to see why the broadest consensus on the issue is
>the silence of politicians and major pundits.
>
>But it is easier still to agree with the many elders, leaders and the
>vast majority of scientists who are concerned with what the
>indicators are telling us on the issue of climate change and one of
>its symptoms, global warming, about the increasingly clear evidence
>of its causes, and, especially, on the need to prepare to mitigate
>its destructive impacts. If ever a grave issue called for the
>intellectual and political will to seek solutions, it is this one,
>but political will to action has proven fickle and easy to dissipate.
>
>As Alex Ewen writes in his troubling article, "Consensus Denied: Holy
>War over Global Warming," just enough doubt has been raised in the
>scientific community, by a small number of ideologically-driven
>scientists, to deviate the impetus for corrective action. This is a
>major story, virtually ignored by the international media, of how
>selected funding for research-by the industries most directly
>impacted through the emerging scientific consensus-has obfuscated and
>largely derailed U.S. leadership on the issue.
>
>For the Native peoples of the Arctic north, the consequences of
>global warming are already substantial. Alerted by the tragic
>testimony of elder Arctic fishermen and hunters at the Albuquerque
>conference, Yaqui producer Fidel Moreno turns in an interview with
>Caleb Pungowiyi, Yupik elder from Nome, Alaska. Pungowiyi's testimony
>on the drastic impact of disappearing ice on many species such as
>walrus, seal and polar bear has a strong focusing effect. It is
>echoed by many others, including Gwich'in leader, Sarah James, whose
>Yukon Valley people also are reporting serious environmental changes
>resulting from record levels of warm weather for their region. This
>is consistent with reports of Arctic Systems scientists from the
>National Science Foundation about "first time" rains and the high
>melt rate of the Arctic ice pack-which they anticipate at current
>trends would "disappear in 25 years."
>
>The range of impacts of warming patterns and climate change on Native
>fisheries, coastal wetlands and on the Northern Plains country are
>reported by long-time observers Robert Gough and Patrick Spears
>(Lower Brule Sioux). In a statement on the Albuquerque Conference,
>Gough and Spears point to the importance of Native Homelands as a
>"biological and social link to the climatic history of this
>hemisphere." Because of long-standing inhabitation, and "by virtue of
>geography, history, culture, political status and experience, Native
>peoples have important contributions to make to the National
>Assessment." Perhaps Native peoples share a perspective with NASA,
>they write, because of the view that NASA-among all other federal
>agencies-has developed of the Earth as a "unique, complex and unified
>living system ... dependent upon a fragile and finite life support
>system."
>
>Navajo journalist Valerie Taliman turns in a view of the Southwestern
>Native lands. Native elders interviewed for her article, some of
>which testified at the Climate Change workshops, speak of a "world
>out of balance," where summer is much hotter than it has been in
>living memory and where water, always scarce, becomes more and more
>precious. The ravages of uranium and coal mining in that arid zone
>have been felt most by the Native nations. Yet, in the context of
>intermittent drought, coal slurry pipelines continue to suck pristine
>non-replenishable aquifer water to water-feed crushed coal from the
>Four Corners area to Nevada and other points.
>
>From farther south, foreign correspondent Bill Weinberg, reviews the
>devastation caused by the recent seasons of severe weather in Mexico
>and Central America. Weinberg's article focuses the relationship of
>global warming, deforestation and worsening floods. The
>Honduran-Nicaraguan disaster would appear to qualify as a
>"super-disaster" for those increasingly deforestated (unprotected)
>Mesoamerican countries, washed over by Hurricane Mitch's monumental
>flooding. This region, buffeted in the geo-politics of the 1980s and
>now mostly ignored in U.S. foreign policy, nevertheless continues to
>endure the ravages of global currents, this time meteorological.
>Titanic hurricanes and mammoth fires ignited by drought have replaced
>machine guns and bombs.
>
>Reporting on impacts in South American Native environments, Melina
>Selverston as well as Craig Benjamin examine indigenous perspectives
>and responses to similar trends in their weather patterns. Indigenous
>lifeways come into play as Benjamin assesses the variability of
>Andean and other Native agricultural practices, a potential trench of
>preparedness against the impacts of climate change on agricultural
>production. Selverston takes us through the complications of action
>at the international level. The Kyoto conference, and the intricacies
>of its "Protocol to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change,"
>are worthy processes in the challenge to find solutions. Other
>contributors on specific effects include Stephan Schwartzman (on the
>impact of mega-forest fires), and; Paul Epstein and Bruce Johansen
>(on health consequences of global warming).
>
>Several Native writers round out the volume. Dean Suagee, Cherokee,
>writes on the movement to establish Sun-friendly building codes for a
>more effective use of solar power to conserve energy. Several Native
>nations, Hopi among them, are leading in the use of solar to meet
>energy needs. John Mohawk, Seneca, writes of an old alliance between
>Hopi and Haudenosaunee predicated on deep cultural mandates to warn
>of impending dangers of modern trends that disrupt nature. Simon
>Ortiz, Acoma, offers a heartfelt vignette on the river of his youth-a
>geography of spirit.
>
>For many years, the Haudenosaunee chiefs and clanmothers have carried
>to the world their tradition of the Seven Generations, which proposes
>the concept that the current generation always has a responsibility
>for the state of the world onto the "seventh generation yet to come."
>Many other Native nations have expressions and traditions that
>articulate long-term, multi-generational visions of human existence
>on the Earth. There appears to be very little thinking on this level
>by politicians and corporate leaders internationally. In the United
>States, which practically should lead on this pressing issue, even as
>we enter the Year 2000 presidential season, no candidate has yet come
>forward to raise it. As one Native elder put it, when it comes to a
>problem of this magnitude, corporate CEOs need to think more as
>grandparents and less as industrial leaders. And politicians who
>would be statesmen-elders must provide the leadership for bold
>solutions, even at the risk of discomforting some of America's
>central industries.
>
>The tradition of the Seventh Generation, we submit, offers an idea
>whose expression should become mantra, song and message to the
>politicians and magnates of industry who hold the fate of the world
>in their hands. It is possible that this will require a seminal shift
>in contemporary human thinking. But this is entirely in line with the
>wish and the responsibility to undertake actions that position our
>children, and our children's children, for a viable future on the
>Earth.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>-----------------------------
>José Barreiro, Taino, is Editor-in-chief of Akwe:kon Press and
>Associate Director of Outreach at Cornell University's American
>Indian Program.
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>-----------------------------
>
>
>"Nowhere else will you be able to find such powerful-knowledge filled
writing."
>-Wilma Mankiller, Editorial Board Member of Native Americas Journal
>
>Native Americas Journal
>Akwe:kon Press
>American Indian Program
>Cornell University
>450 Caldwell Hall
>Ithaca, NY 14853-2602
>
>Tel.   (607) 255-4308
>Subs.  (800) 9-NATIVE
>Fax.   (607) 255-0185
>Email. nativeamericas@cornell.edu
>
>Native Americas Journal
>       http://nativeamericas.aip.cornell.edu
>
>American Indian Program
>       http://www.aip.cornell.edu
>
>               **Help us put Native Americas in your library.**
>          Please request that your local libraries subscribe to
>Native Americas.
 

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