Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
many changes will befall our people. It is said that the land will become fragmented,
plants and animals will be lost, that the people will be scattered and divided from their
homelands, and that the language spoken for millennia will nearly disappear. As we
know, these things have come to pass. Our peoples live on tiny remnants of their orig-
inal homelands, and our language and culture face many threats. The prophecy ex-
plains that the plants and animals will become diminished, the waters undrinkable,
and the air itself changed. This, too, we know has come to pass.
We are also taught that in the time of the seventh fire, there will be a fork in the
road. The people remaining on Earth must make a choice either to continue on the
path that leads to destruction of life as we know it or to choose a different future—one
of renewal. It is said that should the remaining people choose the path toward life,
they will turn back along the road from which they have come and begin to pick up
the pieces that have been scattered along the road—remnants of language, the old sto-
ries and songs, seeds and ragged patches of plants, wandering animals and birds, and
together they will begin to put the world back together again. The people will reclaim
their responsibilities for taking care of the land, and thus heal the land and the people.
The prophecy of the seventh fire speaks, I think, of reciprocal restoration (box 18.1).
In the dominant materialistic worldview, humans are understood as standing out-
side nature, as exogenous forces whose interactions with nature are generally consid-
ered negative. Jordan (2003) laments that humans can take from a bountiful land-
scape, “but we can never give anything back,” despite that “our conscience demands
BOX 18.1
Reciprocal Restoration
Reciprocal restoration is the mutually reinforcing restoration of land and culture
such that repair of ecosystem services contributes to cultural revitalization, and re-
newal of culture promotes restoration of ecological integrity. Based on the indige-
nous stewardship principle that “what we do to the land we do to ourselves,” restora-
tion of land and culture are inseparable. This approach arises from a creative
symbiosis between traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and restoration science,
which honors and uses the distinctive contributions of both intellectual traditions.
Reciprocal restoration recognizes that it is not just the land that is broken, but our re-
lationship to it. Reciprocal restoration encompasses repair of both ecosystem and
cultural services while fostering renewed relationships of respect, responsibility, and
reciprocity. All flourishing is mutual.
Reciprocal restoration is grounded in the positive feedback relationship between
cultural revitalization and land restoration. Revitalizing language and culture pro-
tects and disseminates TEK, and builds relationships of reciprocity and respect, all
of which are good for the land. What's good for the land is good for the people.
The fate of the land and the consequences for culture are much more strongly
linked for Native peoples than for those in the dominant culture. Thus, ecological
restoration in indigenous communities takes on a special depth and dimension.
