- In 1988 while filming a two-hour documentary on the Amazon
rainforest, I encountered a remarkable Kaiapo Indian named Paiakan. Growing
up as his ancestors had done for thousands of years, he had realized as
a teenager that Brazilians were invading his forests for gold, farmland,
and mahogany, and he decided to fight to protect his peoples' land. When
I met him, he appealed to me for help and I got involved raising support
to oppose a dam on the Xingu River that would have flooded Kaiapo territory.
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- He succeeded in stopping it in 1989 with a massive protest
that brought together thousands of Indians from different tribes with hundreds
of environmentalists and media. But as a result, Paiakan received a number
of death threats and in Brazil at the time, Indians were still murdered
with impunity. In order to let things cool down, Paiakan asked if he could
bring his family to stay with me in Vancouver. I didn't have much choice
but to agree.
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- When they arrived, I settled the family into our home
and then proudly took them for a drive to show off our city of gleaming
buildings, stores filled with consumer goods, and clean streets jammed
with vehicles. His response surprised me. After a long silence as he gazed
at the sights, he remarked in Portuguese, "Isn't it amazing - all
of this comes from Mother Earth!" He lapsed into another long silence
and finally commented, "How long can she continue to give all of this?"
I was completely taken aback by the profundity of his observation.
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- Of course, he was dead on. Even in the most sophisticated
urbanized area of a megacity, every human being is utterly dependent on
the generosity of nature. We are reminded of it daily from the weather
reports - heat waves, droughts, floods, forest fires, and hurricanes -
to the quality of our water, air, and food and the spread of diseases like
the West Nile virus. In Canada, 80 percent of our citizens live in communities
of more than 10,000 and more than half occupy the five largest cities.
In a big urban setting like Toronto, one can live totally in air-conditioned
comfort, from the apartment building to the car stored in its garage to
the garage of a downtown business building and the office itself. Often
the buildings are directly connected to theatres and shopping malls, so
one can live for days and nights without ever actually going outside. Who
has to worry about the seasons, time of day or weather conditions?
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- So we lapse into forgetting our biological nature and
it becomes easy to think we are a different kind of species because of
our intelligence. After all, what other species has ever created cell phones,
computers, jet planes, or television? Nor are we restricted to a specific
habitat as are most other creatures because we learn to exploit the "resources"
of our surroundings in ecosystems as varied as desert, arctic tundra, tropical
rainforests, coral islands, and prairie grasslands. Having created machines
that confer enormous muscle power, we erect structures that reach to the
skies, route subway trains far underground, explore the deepest ocean trenches
and search for life in other parts of the cosmos.
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- In forgetting our biological roots, we have lost that
sense of connectedness with everything else in our surroundings. We no
longer sense that everything we do has repercussions. Driving an SUV in
the city, driving five blocks instead of walking, or buying fresh strawberries
or tomatoes in winter, all have repercussions for weather and climate around
the world, but we aren't aware of them. Indeed, every item we purchase
that comes from distant parts of the planet, every economic transaction,
has consequences for the planet and all life on it. But few think about
it. We forget a simple truth that an Indian from the heart of the Amazon
understands: the earth is the source of everything and it is finite.
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- Copyright 2002, David Suzuki Foundation
- All Rights Reserved
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- ENN is a registered trademark of the Environmental News
Network Inc. Copyright © 2001 Environmental News Network Inc.
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- http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2002/09/09042002/s_48202.asp
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