To Know the World by Mitchell Thomashow

Author:Mitchell Thomashow [Thomashow, Mitchell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Environmental Studies; Global Environmental Change; Anthropocene; Environmental Awareness; Environmental Education; Ecological Imagination; Ecological Networks, Environmental Justice; Environmental Studies Curriculum; Improvisation; Migration; Sense of Place; Bioregionalism; Biosphere;
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2020-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

The Original Bioregionalists

According to the UN, there are 370 million self-described “indigenous peoples” alive today. Generally defined as people whose community preexisted a larger nation-state that enveloped them, indigenous people comprise about 4,500 distinct cultures and speak as many different languages and dialects.

—Mark Dowie, The Haida Gwaii Lesson

To gain a deeper appreciation of the extraordinary diversity of peoples and cultures, scroll through the outstanding Wikipedia list of indigenous peoples.5 Indigenous peoples represent approximately 5 percent of the world’s total population and occupy about 20 percent of the planet’s land surface. Please keep in mind that these distinct cultures (4,500) “exist within and straddle the borders of 75 of the United Nations 193 recognized countries.”6 As Dowie reminds us, these cultures live in equally distinct habits and ecosystems.

Indigenous peoples live in tropical forests, boreal forests, deserts, and snow as well as on tundra, savannas, prairies, islands, and mountains, and occupy every remaining complex biotic community (or “biome”) on the planet. They are stewards of about 80 percent of the world’s remaining biological diversity and account for 90 percent of its cultural diversity.7

There’s a significant research literature that indicates cultural diversity and biological diversity are mutually reinforcing, and the languages of indigenous cultures represent veritable encyclopedias of natural history, ecology, and environmental change knowledge.8 Dowie suggests that most indigenous peoples regard these ancestral habitats as nations, First Nations, and “would draw a very different map of the world than that found in modern atlases.”9 You can get a glimpse of what such a world map might look like by viewing the interactive map of the world’s indigenous peoples on the LandMark website, subtitled the Global Platform of Indigenous and Community Lands.10

Notice how these habitats (or territories) are juxtaposed within country boundaries. It’s worthwhile to spend some time reconceptualizing borders and boundaries in this way as it helps you visualize the dramatic impacts of European colonization along with the stretch and reach of historic empires—the obsessive compulsion to satisfy the egotistical gratifications of territorial aggrandizement. There are many comprehensive histories of this process, and I need not reiterate the exploitation contained in those histories here. One of the best is by Charles S. Maier, Once within Borders, which magnificently traces global enclosures since 1500, and in the process reveals the complex relationship between power, wealth, territory, and belonging, informing any good conversation about the political dynamics of nationalism, and offering a sobering challenge to utopian notions of cosmopolitanism and/or bioregionalism. I’ll look at some of those issues shortly. For now, let us remember the consequences of squeezing 4,500 distinct cultures into 193 countries, recognize the processes that led to such a powerful centralization, and at the very least raise consciousness about the dislocations, deracinations, and delegitimations that are still very much with us.11

There’s another angle here. I am in awe at the wondrous diversity of people and cultures that once roamed the planet, and still reside here, and how many are revitalizing their cultural practices and ecological knowledge. Dowie further reminds us that

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