EARTH & US: Healing the Wounds
A Nation Divided
Following the bitterly contested presidential election, many people are wondering how we can heal our divided society. Valarie Kaur, author of See No Stranger, suggests that we need first to tend our own wounds, and then also to tend to the wounds of our opponent. “Hurt people hurt people.” Those who are actively racist, misogynist, and anti-immigrant are wounded themselves, but have been taught to project their anger and hurt onto marginalized groups. How to tend to their wounds? We must listen deeply, with curiosity and empathy instead of judgment; consider that this person is “a part of myself that I do not know yet;” and lift up the vision of the better world we know is possible. These are skills we all need to develop, to be part of the Revolutionary Love Project.
Healing Ancestral Wounds (from the Sixth Sun series)
All over the world, conquering nations have wrought genocidal devastation on indigenous peoples. Whether in Canada, the U.S., Central and South America, Africa, or Australia, the colonizers have considered native peoples as “not fully human.” With this rationalization for their greed, they have stolen land, raped women, separated families, desecrated sacred places, destroyed cultures. Missionaries were determined that everyone had to be converted to Christianity and forced this religion on native peoples. Children as young as 5 years old were placed in “boarding schools” in order to separate them from their language and traditions. People were imprisoned for speaking their own language or practicing their religion. Although things are slightly better now, there are generational wounds and ongoing low self-esteem. Too often, children of color are taught that they are inferior not only in schools but by their own relatives.
This wounding is global in scope, yet very little has been done to right the wrongs committed.
How can healing occur?
Stuart Jemesen of Australia, an Aboriginal who facilitates healing with his didgeridoo music, believes that prayer and ceremony are important means for healing loss. He spoke of global “wiping of the tears” ceremonies to help heal the trauma, the anger and victimization. He believes that pain exists in our bodies in areas where we are not in communication, areas we’re ignoring or medicating. If we listen to the subtler messages from our bodies (before the pain occurs) and follow our inner truth, we can heal much better than by going to a doctor, he believes. “Pain is a communicator; don’t hand over responsibility for healing to a doctor,” he advises.
A member of the Lakota Sioux tribe, Godfrey Chips, told how people pray to the ancestors for help whenever in pain or trouble. Before a ceremony such as for healing a disease, people must create 405 prayer ties. That means making 405 prayers, not just one! And the sick person also has others praying for him with pure heart intention. Dancing, singing, and art help to free and release emotions, to express what could not be expressed. When we learn about and know ourselves, that’s the key to healing.
“We must love and forgive ourselves first,” said Jemesen. “The wound in us is the wound in the world.”
Truth and Reconciliation, Restorative Justice
The first Truth and Reconciliation Commission was held in South Africa under Nelson Mandela, after the apartheid regime fell. Many, many South Africans who had suffered gross human rights abuses told their stories, sometimes to the perpetrators of the abuse themselves. The compassionate witnessing of this suffering contributed to healing. Amnesty was offered to the abusers, though, and there is still bitterness about that. Inequities persist, and true reconciliation clearly depends upon dismantling of oppressive systems. Restorative justice requires accountability by perpetrators to repair the harm that was done. This is different from retributive justice, which only punishes the offender but does not contribute to making whole the injury or rebuilding of relationships.
Healing Earth’s Wounds
Much of the Amazon basin is on the verge of collapse due to deforestation. The “hydrological pump” of the Amazon is in danger, with potentially dire consequences for the whole globe.
Joe Brewer lives in Barichara, Colombia with his wife and daughter, where they are working on ecosystem restoration through the Center for Applied Cultural Evolution; he is author of The Design Pathway for Regenerating the Earth.
Due to colonial practices, 98% of the area had been deforested. Through planting of tobacco and corn, and overgrazing by cows and goats, much of this plateau had become desertified into hard, dry clay. The hot air over it actually evaporated fog and clouds, preventing rainfall.
The most urgent challenge for this region is water scarcity and poor water quality. A local group has begun organizing for landscape-scale regeneration.
Their goals:
1. Reforesting the plateau with native plants to protect and restore the tropical dry forest.
2. Bringing the primary river, Rio Barichara, back to life along with its estimated fifteen tributaries by restoring aquifers and building landscape-scale water management systems.
3. Building a regenerative economy of solidarity and cooperation among the local campesinos, families in the town, and businesses in the region. This is probably the most important part.
Inspired by other projects around the world where rivers have been brought back to life, this local effort is devoted to restoring health and vitality to Rio Barichara by creating keyline structures, contour swales and sloped terraces, water retention systems, and riparian restoration for waterways.
The community has come together and planted a 6.5 hectare community food forest, with the aim of food and water security and ecological restoration. Reforestation helps rain to return, and tree roots can refill underground aquifers. Water used to run off cobblestone streets and roofs, causing erosion of topsoil, but rainwater now is being redirected into cisterns and reservoirs. A “Water Brigade” uses pick-axes to dig small diversion channels to help slow and sink the water and redirect it. Ten farms now exist, with cooperative coffee production and a “forest school” of regenerative education: permaculture, crafts and skills for kids and adults. Solidarity Food Networks sells weekly food boxes.
According to Brewer, within 3–5 years water can be restored to land and desert reversed. In 5–10 years, trees can be planted, which will form a true forest in about 30 years. Demonstration sites where this work has been done can serve as inspiration and training for others. https://www.crowdcast.io/e/regenerating-an-entire-landscape
In the Loess plateau of China, it took only 15 years (and a massive amount of work by hundreds of people) to regenerate 100,000 hectares of land. This transformation was documented by John Liu, who went on to found “Ecosystem Restoration Camps” in degraded areas around the world. See www.ecosystemrestorationcamps.org. In these 37 camps, volunteers learn and install restorative design measures, such as tree plantings and water management.
Says Brewer: “We degenerated the land, and we must regenerate it…We can become wise managers of our own evolutionary process.”
Healing land, healing ourselves
Colonial practices subjugated both the land and its indigenous inhabitants to the will of the invaders. The colonial extractivist mentality, which defines our capitalist system, values people only for their labor, and land only for what it can produce for short-term profit. The result is wounded people and wounded land. Healing comes from valuing relationships more than profit, seeing how interconnected ecosystems are with one another, and respecting the wisdom and spirituality of indigenous land keepers.