HOW WATER AND FORESTS CAN SAVE OUR FUTURE
- A modern Indigenous perspective
All life is created with water since the beginning of time. Through evolution, we are connected to the whole journey of life through water that holds the memory of this epic journey. We humans, like all living creatures, are water’s children and can call upon water to refresh ourselves, bodies, spirit, our fields and our forests as well as our knowledge and cultures. Water brings joy. The rain dances of old reconnected to water in all its playfulness, whirling around the world, in the skies and raindrops and puddles and in the bodies of plants and humans alike. If we want to preserve the future and the beauty of our planet, we need to dance with water again, the lifeblood of our Mother Earth and call upon its wisdom and memory to help shape a thriving future on our planet.
Humans are a very young species, evolved over the last few hundred thousand years as part of our living planet. The last ten thousand years our ancestors have started to impact the living body of the planet through large scale destruction of the tissue of the biosphere, breaking up the interaction between biomes and the water cycle. We are disrupting this metabolism everywhere with our destructive behaviour and cancerous growth. Life has begun to die back and we are near the tipping point of irreversible freefall.
Many indigenous cultures have known all along that all life is interconnected as part of this living planet. She has many names like Gaia, Pachamama, Mother Nature or Earth. While the indigenous cultures have changed the regions where they live, they have always restrained their use of the natural environment in a way that it could regenerate and stay abundant. They saw themselves as stewards of their region, harvesting food and nourishing themselves to the extent that it did not destroy the habitat. They were and are the grateful recipients of life’s abundant gifts.
The Amazon Rainforest is the largest and most biodiverse tropical forest on Earth and also the place with most diverse tribal cultures. Here the great forest has been central to the cosmology and wisdom traditions of the Huni Kuin, the Kayapo, the Yanomami, Guajajara and many other Indigenous tribes. The forest is their food garden, their pharmacy and protective home, but their relationship with the living forest is much deeper than that: when in resonance, the Indigenous feel part of and communicate with the living field of consciousness of the forests and forest beings. They learn from the plants and the animals. Everything in the forest has deep meaning, every being tells stories. Within all of this water plays a central role as the source of all life. Water carries wisdom and memory and is therefore honoured and prayed to in ceremonies. Rivers are life-giving spirits, family members really. So are clouds. They know that the trees call the rains to keep nature wet and refreshed. The rivers in the sky and the clouds that fly above the canopy and sometimes through it, are lifegiving breaths.
Modern science is slowly catching up with this story of the interconnectedness of all life and the rivers and the clouds. It discovers the microbial life in the soils, the evapotranspiration through leaves that cool us from the sun’s rays. The modern discovery of the biotic pump shows how forests keep the lands humid and alive. The Amazon Rainforest is the pumping heart of the living planet. The Indigenous people know that and are defending that planetary organ with all their might against the onslaught of destruction. They are keeping the sky from falling for all of us.
Modern humans have forgotten their relation to the past, to water, to its fellow species and to the living planet. We need to reconnect and learn from and work with nature to understand how to enjoy and restore the abundance that is freely given to us, in stead of destroying her health. Water and forests are the two gateways to restore that connection. Embrace water and help to keep the sky from falling.
