the bird path

when birds awaken — hungry, owning nothing —
they sing

their feet grasp without effort
holding them to their perches by mechanics, not by muscle

and so, like us, they must use their strength
to let go

the road to our salvation is a path we've walked before

The concept of reindiginization keeps coming up for me. In this case I’m not using the word in the sense of returning lands to native peoples, but rather of how Western peoples in particular made a devil’s bargain: relinquishing our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the natural world for one of extraction and domination.

Like all devil’s bargains, this initially looked like it worked out for us. We benefit disproportionately from extractive industry and have a disproportionately large political and cultural influence over other peoples on this planet. 

The sting is in the tail. Extraction and exploitation, unchecked, will literally destroy the ability of our species to exist on this planet. Even if some proportion of us survive, they will be living in a world stripped of beauty and natural richness.

So how do we undo the devil’s bargain? Robin Wall Kimmerer, indigenous educator and scientist, speaks about how Westerners tell her that they want to partake of indigenous practices because they don’t have any of their own. 

True. We traded those away. 

But, Kimmerer says, appropriation is taking things that have not been given to you willingly. Cultivating a sense of gratitude and love and relationship with the world, with all of our fellow animals and with plants and even with the cycles of water and storms of dust upon which those more familiar lives depend — that gratitude belongs to no culture.

I grew up thinking of animism as a more “primitive” way of seeing the world, but now I see it as a pathway. We don’t need to adopt the words or thoughts of any particular culture; we need to learn to see the intrinsic value, the “personhood,” of everything with whom we share this planet, living and nonliving alike.

That shift in thinking is, I think, the only thing that can save us. “Managing natural resources” and “sustainable development” maintain the extractionist mindset. 

There are no natural resources. There are only gifts, and the world continues to be open-handed. Humanity must relearn how to reciprocate that generosity.