The truth is that I am just coming to realize the depth of what “all living things” and “all my relations” as the Anishinaabe say actually means. I have appreciated the efforts of animal rights activists but at some level I have not really understood the level of our interconnectedness with all animal and plant species and the environments (woodlands, wetlands etc.) that host them.

 This is a growing edge for me. I have it as head knowledge and it is more and more creeping into my full body awareness and knowing in a new and deeper way.

 

This is the kind of knowing that Indigenous people have with the world. We need this now.

Why?

Because as the article in the link points out we have been plundering the gifts of Mother Earth and the effects are reverberating to so that those of us like me who were blind before can now see.

 

The article in Forbes about the UN Report: 1 Million Animal And Plant Species At Risk Of Extinction:

It’s been no secret that people are destroying the natural world all around the planet at a rapidly accelerating pace, but a landmark UN intergovernmental analysis released on Monday assessed the state of global biodiversity and finds that the devastation is proceeding at a rate that is tens to hundreds of times faster than during the past ten million years… and could plunge the planet into a sixth mass extinction event.