The veil between us and our ancestors is thin the next few days, according to many cultures and traditions. From the Celtic Samhain to Día de los Muertos and All Hallow’s Eve and Halloween, people around the world are taking time to celebrate and commune with ancestors.
Our ancestors lived closer to the land, attentive to the seasons and cycles that governed their lives in ways those of us who live with heat, electricity and other luxuries of the modern world will never know.
This weekend also begins The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as #COP26 in Glasgow, UK. It seems like a good time to ask our ancestors for guidance on navigating our modern world.
It’s not just our ancestors that we can look to for wisdom. There are many cultures around that still practice ancient traditions. Among them are the Achuar people of Ecuador who have lived in and with the Amazon rainforest for thousands of years.
Once semi-nomadic, most Achuar now live in small villages. In the 1960s, the Ecuadorian government granted concessions to oil companies on their ancestral lands, which resulted in the poisoning of water and high levels of cancer in the area. The Achuar realized that the threat to their existence extends well beyond the extractive industries. Drawing on an ancient ritual of using dreams to guide them, Achuar elders spoke of a dream of “waking the modern world from a trance.” In that spirit, they reached out to some emissaries of the “Northern world” and created The Pachamama Alliance.
Three years ago, I was invited to a fundraising luncheon for Pachamama. We gathered at a swanky restaurant on the Hudson River with a view of the Jersey skyline. People in business suits mingled with Indigenous Achuar leaders wearing painted geometric designs on their faces and beaded and feather headbands. Achuar leaders took the stage and explained the devastation to their communities. They spoke about a tenant in their culture that one must “touch the jaguar”, a reminder to transform fears into positive action.
It was at that Pachamama luncheon in 2018 that I reconnected with my friend, human rights lawyer Steven Donziger. I wrote about Steven a few newsletters back. He is someone who is not afraid to touch the jaguar. 30 years ago, after visiting the Amazonian region in Ecuador and witnessing the contaminated water and land left behind by Texaco (later acquired by Chevron), he lead a legal battle to hold Chevron accountable. After winning a historic $9.5 billion settlement, Steven has faced legal retaliation that resulted in him spending 813 days in home detention. Despite a UN body declaring his detention a violation of international laws, and support from 55 Nobel Laureates, he was sentenced to six months in jail for contempt of court. This past Wednesday he reported to federal prison in Danbury, CT.
Steven sent a message from jail this week saying, “I will get through this better and stronger.” His incarceration has contributed to a global awakening and the development of new models for the legal system.
For millennia, laws and contracts have been written to protect the property rights of individuals, corporations and other legal entities and nature has been viewed as a “resource” to be owned, used, and degraded. The Rights of Nature demands that humans act in a way consistent with modern, system-based science, and demonstrates that humans and the natural world are fundamentally interconnected. In 2008, the people of Ecuador amended their Constitution to include The Rights of Nature, which means that the ecosystem itself can be named as the injured party, with its own legal standing rights, in cases alleging rights violations.
Waking up is hard. Disconnecting and slipping into a half-conscious state is not a surprising response to the stressors of our world, but we have done it countless times from the abolition movement to #MeToo, LGBTQ rights, and apartheid. The pandemic continues to reveal ways in which we have been asleep. This is where pleasure comes in. Pleasure reminds us of who we are and why we are here on this planet. When we generate pleasure we are creating a state change. It is after filling up on pleasure— gathering with loved ones, traveling, making music, even a short dance break—that our imaginations are freed from the constraints of the familiar and able to access radically different ideas. Buckminster Fuller said it so well: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
The Law of Nature evolved from a collaboration between keepers of ancient wisdom and activists from the modern world. This is a time of imagining alternate realities that draw from our past and present to create a new future. Go touch your jaguar.
FROM THE INSTITUTE OF PLEASURE STUDIES
Join Me: November 4th at 3 PM EST. Pachamama is hosting Global Community Gathering with reports from indigenous leaders and activists who are on the front lines. Join me for a watch party. Sign up here.
Pachamama Alliance has excellent online and virtual live workshops to orient people to the issues around protecting the rainforest and collaborating with indigenous leaders around the world.
Democracy Now! Interviewed Steven Donziger hours before he left for jail. You can find out more, including actions you can take at FreeDonziger.com. And read his full update from prison
Finally, a treat for getting to the bottom of this email. Check out this stunning video that made my spirits soar.
As always, thank you for reading.