11 Comments

Excellent! Was discussing this very entanglement with my sister an hour ago. Bendell's "Breaking Together" of HUGE benefit in sorting thru such muck. It hurts when the Void stares back, but we must face that fact. Solutions emerge.

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Dudley Lynch, author of the way back there years ago book, Strategy of The Dolphin, would be a good mind to pick on all of this if you can locate him. Go find him! Talk story.

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If solutions don’t include Indigenous people stewarding the land then we are fucked. The data shows they know what’s best. Government needs to nationalize “resources” and then hand over stewardship to Indigenous. We can’t use the same hegemonic, imperialist cis het thinking that got us here (to rephrase Einstein).

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not sure cis-het has anything to do with this particular bit? And there's always a question as to whether pastoral/agrarian/hunter societies possessed truly different deeper wisdom, or if they simply lacked the numbers and the technology to make bigger impacts (mass game drives where Lakota only cut out the tongues of buffalo, or ubiquitous "midden mounds" aka trash dumps, that archaeologists are always poring through both come to mind. I'm 100% open to the Wetiko/Hungry Ghost critique of Western civ, 'and' I'm also sympathetic to "sapiens gonna sapiens" argument about our shared human foibles

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I’m referring modern day Indigenous populations (the global majority) doing a heckuva job keeping lands from modern western capitalists destructive tendencies. Movements in Cheran, Chiapas, the Dakotas are northern examples of guardianship that’s also happening in the Amazon, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Africa, etc.

Maybe check out the UN report on how much better today’s Indigenous peoples steward than the Nation State. https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/updates/10177/un-report-indigenous-people-are-the-best-forest-guardians

The hegemonic, imperialist, cis het paraphrasing comes from bell hooks and Laverne Cox as it relates to thinking that got us here.

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nice. yes, water keepers, forest keepers, anyone who's standing up to further depletion/extraction, is doing a service to all beings.

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Please check out a very lucid writer on Substack https://blorrainesmith.substack.com/

Her aim is to promote an economy 'in service of life'. Yes!!!

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Very much in alignment with my current read “Breaking Together “ by Jem Bendel. Would highly recommend to all those resonating with critical doubting.

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Wonder if there any WACKY solutions some folks are just too embarrassed to bring up?

Or is that not precisely the reason...

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Most relevant for me has been the insightful, and courageously real and grounded wisdom and approach outlined by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira in her book Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism. Just finished the related course, which is itself is a true 'unlearning' experience to provide perspectives and tools for "cultivating a compass of sobriety, maturity, discernment, and responsibility": https://continuingstudies.uvic.ca/teaching-learning-and-development/courses/facing-human-wrongs-2-0-climate-complexity-and-relational-accountability/

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Thank you Jaime! These are the most lucid and helpful words I've ever read on this topic.

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