People Who Have Survived Collapse

Today is Native American Heritage Day, at (almost) the end of Native American Heritage Month.

We do not (yet) do it well enough, but we want to “honor the history, rich cultures and contributions of Native Peoples” (White House Proclamation). Progress has been made, but there is a long way to go.

To my shame, I am learning that there is much we can learn from Native Peoples. An aspect that is quite new to me is that Native Peoples have suffered - and survived to some degree – the collapse (destruction) of their civilization. This is particularly relevant because we likely stand on the brink of the collapse of our civilization and environment.

To quote Brian MacLaren in Life After Doom, “Our global civilization as currently structured is unstable and unsustainable.” (p 23). “We dreamed that we would be like gods, exceptions to the adaptive pattern, but our bubble of exceptionalism has burst for many of us, and it will eventually burst for everyone else.” (p 169)

In the coming months/years I will have more to say about “eco-realism”, the idea that “it is, in fact, too late to avoid crushing losses to humanity and the biosphere on a global scale; and that human social systems— economic, political and religious—are largely unsuited to lead us through them.”

But on Native American Heritage Day it is helpful to note that other civilizations have collapsed, some people have survived collapse, and thus have experience from which we might learn.

Choctaw elder Steven Charleston writes:

I was asked to write a brief commentary about the Christian theology of apocalypse: the final, terrible vision of the end of the world. I said my Native American culture was in a unique position to speak of this kind of vision, because we were among the few cultures that have already experienced it. In historic memory, we have seen our reality come crashing down as invaders destroyed our homeland. We have lived through genocide, concentration camps, religious persecution, and every human rights abuse imaginable.* Yet we are still here. No darkness – not even the end of the world as we knew it – had the power to overcome us. So our message is powerful not only because it is only for us, but because it speaks to and for every human heart that longs for light over darkness.” (Life After Doom p 170).

(Our Black brothers and sisters have, also, survived the end of their world.)

I am under no illusion that our current (American) society is willing to consider the fact that we have already ruined our environment beyond repair and in so doing have ushered in inevitable and crushing loss.

On this Black Friday I am under no illusion that our current (American) society is willing to do what it might take to turn the tide. (See Drill, Baby, Drill!)

I am under no illusion that our current (American) society is willing to learn from Peoples who have survived catastrophe. Our position of privilege does not allow us to learn from others.

*”In 1800, about sixty million bison roamed North America, from Florida to Alaska. By 1900, they were on the verge of extinction, with only three hundred remaining. General Sherman had advocated their total annihilation, and the US Secretary of the Interior explained why in the early 1870s: ‘Kill every buffalo you can! Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.’”  (Life After Doom p 171)