Would We Listen to Nature if Our Lives Depended on It?

People who read my work often say, "Okay, so it's clear you don't
like this culture, but what do you want to replace it?" The answer is
that I don't want any one culture to replace this culture. I want ten
thousand cultures to replace this culture, each one arising organically
from its own place. That's how humans inhabited the planet (or, more
precisely, their landbases, since each group inhabited a place, and not the whole world, which is precisely the point), before this culture set about reducing all cultures to one.

I live on Tolowa (Indian) land. Prior to the arrival of the dominant
culture, the Tolowa lived here for 12,500 years, if you believe the
myths of science. If you believe the myths of the Tolowa, they lived
here since the beginning of time. This story may sound familiar, but
its significance has, thus far, been lost on the dominant culture, so
it bears repeating: when the first settlers arrived here maybe 180
years ago, the place was a paradise. Salmon ran in runs so thick you
couldn't see the bottoms of rivers, so thick people were afraid to put
their boats in for fear they would capsize, so thick they would keep
people awake at night with the slapping of their tails against the
water, so thick you could hear the runs for miles before you could see
them. Whales were commonplace in the nearby ocean. Forests were thick
with frogs, newts, salamanders, birds, elk, bears. And of course huge
ancient redwood trees.

Now I count myself blessed when I see two salmon in what we today
call Mill Creek. Another Tolowa staple, Pacific lampreys, are in bad
shape. Just three years ago you could not hold a human conversation
outside at night in the spring, and now I hear maybe five or six frogs
at night. Salamanders, newts, songbirds, all are equivalently gone. The
rivers are poisoned with pesticides and herbicides. All in less than
two centuries.

Why? Or, perhaps more important, how?

Only the most arrogant and ignorant among us would say something
that implies that all humans are destructive, and that the dominant
(white) culture is the most destructive simply because somehow
indigenous peoples around the world were too stupid to invent backhoes
and chainsaws, too backward to dominate their human and nonhuman
neighbors with the efficiency and viciousness of the dominant culture.
They might even try to argue that the Tolowa weren't actually living
sustainably, even though they lived here for at least 12,500 years. But
when 12,500 years of living in place won't convince them, it becomes
pretty clear that evidence is secondary, and that there are, rather,
ideological reasons the person cannot accept that humans have ever
lived sustainably. One of these ideological reasons is very clear: if
you can convince yourself that humans are inherently destructive, then
you allow yourself the most convenient of all excuses not to work to
stop this culture from destroying the planet: it's simply in our nature
to destroy, and you can't fight biology, so let's not fuss about all
these little extinctions, and could someone please pass the TV remote?
It's an odious position, but a lot of people take it.

If we want to stop this culture from killing the planet, we might
instead try asking how so many indigenous cultures lived in place for
so long without destroying their landbases.

There are many differences between indigenous and nonindigenous ways
of being in the world, but I want to mention two here. The first is
that the indigenous had and have serious long-term relationships with
the plants and animals with whom they share their landscape. Ray
Rafael, who has written extensively on the concept of wilderness, has
said that Native Americans hunted, gathered, and fished "using methods
that would be sustainable over centuries and even millennia. They did
not alter their environment beyond what could sustain them
indefinitely. They did not farm, but they managed the environment. But
it was different from the way that people try to manage it now, because
they stayed in relationship with it."

That last phrase is key. What would a society look like that was
planning on being in that particular place five hundred years from now?
What would an economics look like? If you knew for a fact that your
descendants five hundred years from now would live on the same landbase
you inhabit now, how would that affect your relationship to sources of
water? How would that affect your relationship with topsoil? With
forests? Would you produce waste products that are detrimental to the
soil? Would you poison your water sources (or allow them to be
poisoned)? Would you allow global warming to continue? If the very
lives of your children and their children depended on your current
actions--and of course they do--how would you act differently than you do?

The other difference I want to mention--and essentially every
traditional indigenous person with whom I have ever spoken has said
that it is the fundamental difference between western and
indigenous peoples--is that even the most open Westerners view listening
to the natural world as a metaphor, as opposed to something real. I
asked American Indian writer Vine Deloria about this, and he said, "I
think the primary thing is that Indians experience and relate to a
living universe, whereas Western people, especially science, reduce
things to objects, whether they're living or not. The implications of
this are immense. If you see the world around you as made up of objects
for you to manipulate and exploit, not only is it inevitable that you
will destroy the world by attempting to control it, but perceiving the
world as lifeless robs you of the richness, beauty, and wisdom of
participating in the larger pattern of life." That brings to mind a
great line by a Canadian lumberman: "When I look at trees I see dollar
bills." If when you look at trees, you see dollar bills, you'll treat
them one way. If when you look at trees, you see trees, you'll treat
them differently. If when you look at this particular tree you see this
particular tree, you'll treat it differently still. The same is true
for salmon, and, of course, for women: if when I look at women I see
objects, I'm going to treat them one way. If when I look at women I see
women, I'll treat them differently. And if when I look at this
particular woman I see this particular woman, I'll treat her
differently still.

Here's where people usually ask, "Okay, so how do I listen to the
natural world?" When people ask me this, I always begin by asking them
if they have ever made love. If so, I ask whether the other person
always had to say, "put this here," or "do that now," or did they
sometimes read their lover's body, listen to the unspoken language of
the flesh? Having established that one can communicate without words, I
then ask if they have ever had any nonhuman friends (a.k.a. pets). If
so, how did the dog or cat let you know that her food dish was empty? I
used to have a dog friend who would look at me, look at the food dish,
look at me, look at the food dish, until finally the message would get
across to me.

How do we hear the rest of the natural world? Unsurprisingly enough,
the answer is: by listening. That's not easy, given that we have been
told for several thousand years that these others are silent. But the
fact that we cannot easily hear them doesn't mean they aren't speaking,
and does not mean they have nothing to say. I've had people respond to
my suggestion that they listen to the natural world by going outside
for five minutes and then returning to say they didn't hear anything.
But how can you expect to learn any new language (remember, most
nonhumans don't speak English) in such a short time? Learning to listen
to our nonhuman neighbors takes effort, humility, and patience.

The Tolowa believed the nonhuman world had something to say, and
that what the nonhuman world had to say was vital to their own
survival. Given that they were living here sustainably for 12,500
years, and given that we manifestly are not, perhaps the least we could
do is acknowledge that they were on to something, and maybe even
explore just what that kind of relationship might look and feel like.