October 23rd 2022: Is The Land Alive
This week's theme questioned, Is the land alive? The Gaia Hypothesis says maybe. The Gaia Hypothesis was proposed by Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock in the 1970s. It says that the temperature of the earth and the acidity of our lakes and oceans are kept constant by feedback processes operated by all the living things on the planet. Of course, we know that human activity is causing the temperature to rise and is, in effect, breaking that feedback loop that regulates Mother Earth. Our Indigenous neighbours tell us a similar story. While there are many Indigenous cultures one of the common threads is their deep connection to the land. It goes much deeper than that. For example, Yellowknives Dené thought holds that the land is more than the earth. It is also people and animals, rocks and tees, lakes and oceans. Western thought is something quite different but at West Hill United, we value wisdom from other cultures. We will contrast Western thought with indigenous thought systems looking for ways in which we can respond to the impending climate crisis.