nomads and lead heart

mom was telling me about a david suzuki documentary she recently watched. ?ian davidson? is an anthropologist who has been following the few remaining nomadic families in, presumably, the amazon. evidently, only several of these families remain; logging has drastically changed their cultures, their lives, their souls even. without the tree species they had come to count on (trees that are part of their family in my opinion) they were unable to build shelter.

the reason i find this fascinating is not because of the fact that these people are no longer going to exist. i cannot come to terms with the idea of nomadism fading away. this is going to reek of naive green enthusiasm, but that lifestyle seems to contain many important environmental and mental components. it is in the loss of those components that i am truly sad.

the habit of calling the entire natural environment your home no longer exists. one of the mothers in these families was shown breastfeeding a baby monkey whose mother had been killed. my mental reaction to the appropriateness of that act is culturally embedded and ultimately irrelevant, however i think it's a powerful example of how tightly that culture is tied to the environment. i'm certain that there are countless examples of this mentality.

environ-mental. the conscious relationship between the environment and our minds is fittingly encompassed within the word itself. even more fittingly, without the environ.. only mental is left. mental as in crazy. what does it do to a person to have their entire attitude of livelihood destroyed? these people must be accustomed to constant change; reacting to their surroundings, moving on when the dynamics in the area they are settled shift or when food is scarce. now, they are forced to stagnate. the documentary showed -- or so i am told, the fact that i haven't actually seen this may make all these thoughts pointless -- a stirring scene that spoke volumes about the effects of this stagnation on the mind. the anthropologist described the people as very peaceful, and yet, facing the erosion of their lifestyle, they had set a curse upon the loggers. placing two logs of wood from the trees they use for their homes into the ground, they erected a spear between them. this was supposedly to indicate that death would befall anyone who passed through the gate. when faced with death, the family constructed a warning of death. curses aside, the act holds an interesting larger significance in my mind. it seems some sort of karmic warning; you have caused our death, and we wish the same upon you, or we hope the same fate shall befall you.

the full effects of these changes also manifested themselves physically. the families that had settled into permanent shelter were becoming ill. perhaps the lack of a constantly changing environment, food, and all the physical interactions between those elements and the body, led to a similar bodily stagnation. our immune systems are supposedly strengthened through repeated exposure to small doses of substances. what if this same sort of effect was now missing in their lives?

in a global sense, this discussion triggered a familiar worry. i struggle with my own relationship with the environment, and am certain that there are people who currently cannot even claim to have such a relationship. if we feel no connection to the earth, how can we live without destroying it. or, if we can live without destroying it, i don't think we can live to improve it. when i see pictures of the far reaching effects of Deepwater Horizon i get the same leaden weight in my chest. every time some act brings me hope, it seems to be dashed shortly after. we are constantly throwing more rocks in the well than we are taking out. sooner or later we simply won't be able to draw water anymore.

be the change. be it, sterling.