Deep ecology of Native Americans and permaculture to overcome the global social and environmental crisis
The strong anthropocentric culture of biblical origin that characterises Western and so-called “developed” man is slowly leading us to extinction. Environmental, economic, social, political and cultural crises are increasingly evident, yet we find ourselves unprepared to find real and effective solutions. The truth, unfortunately, is that solutions don’t exist if we remain prisoners of our culture. The solutions proposed to us by the media and governments have the same thought matrix that brought us to today’s situation: they consider human beings as separate from Nature, to which they only attribute an instrumental or exploitative value.
Albert Einstein said that “we cannot solve problems with the same type of thinking we used when we created them”. I add this emblematic phrase by Hippocrates: “Before seeking healing for someone, ask them if they are willing to give up the things that made them ill”. Surface ecology, the mainstream one with which they are bombarding us, is based on the same paradigm that brought us to where we are today and will hardly be able to solve anything. By this I obviously don’t mean to say that surface ecological practices should be discarded, but they should only be a passage towards something deeper that brings us back to being an integral part of a larger organism, rather than cancer cells as we are today.
The natives and Permaculture
We are accustomed to considering problems in the light of the very brief experience of industrial civilisation, a minimal fraction of human experience. Everything that comes from other cultures, even if millennia-old and therefore much more resilient than us, is considered wrong or outdated a priori. The solutions to third millennium problems instead could come precisely from those peoples we have always considered “underdeveloped” and who instead are proving to be much more far-sighted than us. Permaculture, for example, suggests conceiving human settlements as ecosystems, drawing inspiration from the observation of nature and the way indigenous populations inhabit the Earth. In this perspective the natives, instead of being primitive, can be seen as a beacon for our future. They see the earth as a sacred living being.
They don’t separate men, nor any other thing, from the natural environment, so much so that for the natives it was completely illogical to give a monetary value to the land in which they lived. In this regard, the words of Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé tribe addressed to the American governor who proposed a treaty to negotiate ownership of their land are emblematic: “The earth and I are of the same mind. The measure of the earth and the measure of our bodies are the same. Tell us, if you can tell it, that you are sent by a Creative Power to talk to us. Perhaps you think the Creator sent you here to dispose of us as you see fit. If I thought you were sent by the Creator, I might be induced to think you have the right to dispose of me. Do not misunderstand me, but understand me fully taking into account my affection for the land. I never said the land was mine to do with as I please. The only one who has the right to dispose of it is the one who created it. I claim the right to live on my land and to accord to you the privilege to live on yours“.
“I am a stone; I have witnessed life and death, I have known happiness, suffering, and hardship: I live the life of rock. I am part of Mother Earth; I feel her heart beating against mine, I feel her pain, her joy: I live the life of rock. I am a fragment of the Great Mystery; I have heard her mourning, I have heard her wisdom, I have seen her creatures that are my sisters: the animals, the birds, the whispering waters and winds, the trees, and everything that is on the earth and every thing in the universe.” – Hopi Prayer
The natives’ worldview
The natives celebrate the earth as the origin of their own life, a mother who gives her body for the nourishment of her children. When one of them dies they return to the womb of the earth, the same womb from which they were born. The conservation of natural resources and ecological balance are the guarantee of their own existence. Plants, animals, rocks participate with men in life on earth. The natives address them as their brothers as they are born from the same mother and conceived by the Great Spirit. Only in relationship with nature does man find himself again and the meaning of life.
For this reason the natives didn’t abuse the resources made available by the earth and consumed only what was necessary for survival. The scenes from the film Dances with Wolves are famous in which they try to represent this concept in buffalo hunting. The Native Americans who inhabited the great plains killed only the number sufficient to feed themselves and used every part of the animal: the meat for food, the skin to keep warm, the horns and bones to build tools. Hunting was always followed by rituals animated by feelings of regret for the animal’s death and gratitude for the sustenance it offered. From a biological point of view this way of hunting fitted perfectly into the ecosystem. Preservation was also applied to men themselves: conflicts between different tribes occurred often, but were almost never fatal. During the fight, to avoid causing unnecessary deaths, they used “counting coups”, namely getting as close as possible and striking rather than killing the opponent.
“The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth.” - Limping Deer, chief of the Dwamish tribe
The community was founded on mutual support and cooperation: simple technologies, spiritual customs and sustainable, healthy and wholesome political organisations. Amongst the native tribes women enjoyed a status of equal dignity compared to the male component of the tribe, although there was no lack of a clear division of tasks in daily work. Before the arrival of the white man they didn’t know the concept of “welfare state”, the idea of a rigid hierarchy of power was lacking. No member of the tribe was obliged to work or pay tributes for others: each worked according to their own needs, and those of the family. No tribe possessed a police force, prisons or a judiciary that exercised repression on the basis of an authority superior to and binding on individual members. Choices for the community were made by the Grand Tribal Council which was usually presided over by the elders, holders of wisdom. In some tribes, there existed an institution, called the Council of Mothers, which the representatives of the Grand Tribal Council were obliged to consult before making decisions and in any case the most important choices were made on the basis of general consensus.
Rebuilding native culture: ecovillages and transition towns
Today ecovillages, movements for deep ecology, happy degrowth, transition towns, projects inspired by permaculture are trying with no little difficulty to rediscover this ancient way of living and return to exalting the virtues of simplicity, sobriety, honesty and farsightedness that characterised Native American communities. Erasing the conditioning of 2,000 years of anthropocentric history is an extremely arduous mission, but it is probably the only way to understand who we are and where we are. I conclude with a quotation from the great Tiziano Terzani: “Only if we manage to see the universe as a whole in which each part reflects the totality in which the great beauty lies in its diversity, will we begin to understand who we are and where we are. Otherwise we will only be like the frog in the Chinese proverb that, from the bottom of the well, looks up and believes that what it sees is the whole sky”.
Written by Francesco Rosso. This article was featured in the magazine Vivi Consapevole 60, March/May 2020.
