Windy's post about anthropocentrism got me to thinking more on this . . . and I just found this interesting essay from a Mennonite cookbook (not only great recipes, but lots of stories and essays from around the world). This suggests that culture, land, and people are inextricably tied together, rather than one holding dominion over another.
I find the quote on Christian views of anthropocentric nature to be very thought-provoking!
Caring for the Earth . . . Caring for One Another
An essay from Extending the Table (by Joetta Handrich Schalbach, Mennonite Central Committee , 1991)
"I was brought up to respect everything that was on the earth, "to the smallest grain of sand," my mom used to say, to those trees there, to the smallest insect, to the big bears that we have here.
My first lesson in life was respect for those things; to be thankful when I got any food from the sea, to thank the sea and the fish for giving me life, to never take for granted anything that I received.
But when logging companies look at trees, they see only dollar signs. Many of them do clear-cut logging-not one tree left on top of the mountain. So with the rain we get here, there is flood after flood, taking all the soil. So what's left is going to be bare rock.
We were put here as caretakers of this land. Our forefathers took good care of this land for thousands of years, without harming it. Now in less than 150 years, there's been so much irreparable damage that Telanzuin Island will never be revived. And if there is nothing left on this island, there's going to be nothing left of us. If you don't have a land, you don't have a culture and you don't have a people."
- Diane Brown, Haida Indian
Land, culture, and people -- they are intimately connected. If you respect one, you will nurture all three. But remove, change, or destroy any one, and the others will change in like manner.
Grave social problems facing many North American native communities today stem directly from nation-building activities that forced native peoples onto reserves, stripped away their traditional occupations, and restricted their hunting activities and access to sacred lands.
Current consequences of actions a century earlier provide strong evidence of the ecological, or interrelated, nature of life.
Despite enormous cultural loss, voices from within the native communities continue to express the deep philosophical understanding of their ancestors: The earth is sacred. All living things are interrelated.
In recent years interest in environmental issues has mushroomed on every continent. Members of quiet farm communities in Canada and the United States work to solve the problem of groundwater contamination while urban counterparts seek alternatives to overflowing landfills. Citizens in newly autonomous countries in Central Europe want to clean the air and rivers of their industrial cities. Brazilian rubber-tappers are organizing themselves against encroaching development schemes that threaten the life of the rainforests. In Africa, many people are working to slow the growth of the deserts.
To heal the scars of a raped earth, and to permanently restore and protect it, requires that we stop and examine the values and lifestyles that led to the environmental crisis. Why did we abuse creation in the first place?
Wesley Granberg-Michaelson attempts to answer this question in his book, A Worldly Spirituality. 2 He quotes from the letter of a friend living on the Lakota Indian reservation in South Dakota:
When most Christians talk about being good stewards of the earth, what they have in mind is something like this: We conserve resources so we can use them in the future, and we conserve some wildlife areas so we can admire and enjoy their beauty. I don't think this is biblically sound because both of these ideas are still caught up in human idolatry.
. . . The creation exists for the welfare of the human race is this thinking. I don't believe that. I think we all are part of the entire creation, with our own unique roles, and we exist for God.
. . . We are all in relationship with one another because we are all in relationship with God . . . The Lakota people have an elaborate kinship system (including) the earth, who is your grandmother, the sky and eagle, who are your brothers. When you think circular like this, you place prime importance on right and proper relationships. You don't abuse or use your relatives, human or otherwise."
Despite expanded systems of knowledge, communication, and transportation, many individuals and communities run the risk of losing their personal connections to the earth and to their global neighbors. Too busy to garden and too transient to tend an orchard, most of us buy fruits and vegetables from the supermarket. The colorful displays of produce represent various countries and geographical regions, but we have little way of knowing who cultivated and harvested the produce, or what their working and living conditions ate.
The stories in this section highlight our important relationships with the earth and with neighbors. We will meet people who suffer because of destructive forces in those relationships. We will find others working to develop more constructive partnerships with the earth, and to reinforce community relationships. They encourage us to redouble our efforts at caring for the earth and caring for one another.
Notes:
1 - From a discussion with Leona Dueck Penner during the Jan-Feb 1986 blockade against logging companies on Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, from Mennonite Reporter (Jan 1990), p. 12.
2 - Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, A Worldly Spirituality: The Call to Take Care of the Earth (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), p. 28.
