Boreas (The North Wind)
John William Waterhouse, 1903
The winds of change are upon us.
There was a time when spring was my least favorite season. Just when we are longing to be warm again, a chill lingers in the air, and the wind has a bitter edge to it. The woman in the painting is battling just such a wind.
The wildness of weather can be exhilarating, thrilling, its velocity reaching such ferocity that we're reminded how small we are.
In Chinese medicine, the aggressive character of spring is acknowledged as the force that plants must exert to burst upwards through the cold ground. Before winter has even officially ended, tiny green sprouts push aside dead leaves, twigs, and other debris, responding to the call of the increasing light after the winter solstice.
Life insists on living.
I no longer cut back my plants in fall, since learning that birds can still snack on them during winter -- so spring is a lot of work for me. Having cleared dead brush for the past several days (yes sir, yes sir, 12 bags full), I describe this as the relentlessness of growth. Spring asks us to clear away everything that obstructs the emergence of The New.
Where I live, in the Colorado Rockies, it's not uncommon for March to deliver enough snow to measure in feet, not inches. But this March, I am already spot-watering my yard, and we've had our first forest fire, in the "snowiest month of the year". There's a good chance for fires all summer, depending on which winds prevail. Our ski resorts are closing early - they've given up on this year, focusing on better for next. Forecasters bemoan the dire lack of moisture as the jet stream goes sideways, taking it elsewhere. The bumper sticker popular among skiers - Pray For Snow - has an actual urgency this year.
Despite a dramatic shortfall in the snowpack, Colorado will still fare better than those downstream from us, as within our borders are the headwaters of seven rivers. The Rocky Mountains are the 'spine' of the continent, and the slopes of their backbone determine the direction water takes. From the eastern slope of the Continental Divide, the Rio Grande, the Platte (North and South forks), the Arkansas, and the Republican River flow towards the Atlantic Ocean. The Colorado River flows westward towards the Pacific from Milner Pass, which is also the source of the Cache La Poudre - a river that flows both east and west. How many rivers can say that?!
There are rivers in the world that (or, I should say, who) have recently been granted the legal status that, before now, has been accorded only to humans: the Whanganui in New Zealand, and in India, the Ganges and its tributary, the Yamuna, as well as the Vilcabamba in Columbia, and the Atrato in Ecuador. These rights were not based exclusively on environmental concerns - in some cases historical spiritual traditions were also taken into account. Native Maori people in New Zealand have long contended that their connection with the river deserved legal recognition, an argument bolstered by the fact that the name of their tribe is derived from it.
The Whanganui-iwi (people) have a saying: “I am the river and the river is me” - relaying ancestral knowledge down the centuries from long before the proclamation of any 'court'. Nature herself is their court, issuing blessings and challenges as natural law dictates.
The rights of nature is an emerging legal paradigm and the cases involving rivers set important precedents. Rights awarded to rivers are given because of what rivers provide for human life. Part of this revolutionary legal idea is that rivers, as legal entities, have, themselves, rights TO something - for instance, to 'integral respect'. In 2008, the Constitutional Court of Colombia decided that the Atrato River is a living being, ruling that it had a right to be restored from damage caused by mercury contamination.
The Colombian state is required to ensure these rights, and the Court ruled that authority for the river's management be entrusted to the local Indigenous people - a major tipping point acknowledging exactly who has ALWAYS HAD the river's interests at heart (as opposed to letting the fox guard the hen house, as we so often see).
Another innovative aspect of current ecological law is that, in Ecuador, you do not have to own a property to speak up for its bio-cultural rights - removing a previously formidable obstruction, the burden of 'legal standing'. Enforcement was tested in court in 2011, when an American couple, with no ownership at all, sued the provincial government over a proposed road project that would have deposited large amounts of material into the Vilcabamba river, with deleterious results. The river won.
One river whose rights are currently being fought for is the Magdalena River (the Rio Magdalena), the last of 45 rivers that once existed in Mexico City. Where did all the rivers go? Paved over by concrete and asphalt. The mind boggles at our ignorance, and the heart mourns the rivers forced underground.
You may be surprised to learn that the early beginnings of the movement towards recognizing the rights of nature gained traction originally in the United States. In 2006, Tamaqua Borough in Pennsylvania became the first community in our country to respect nature's sovereignty within municipal boundaries - inspiring adoption of similar ordinances in other communities.
Bolivia passed two national laws, in 2010 and 2012, also recognizing rights for nature, or Pachamama, Mother Earth. From all appearances, you might think that we're getting somewhere.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rivers-get-human-rights-they-can-sue-to-protect-themselves/
https://upliftconnect.com
But, in July 2017, the status of the two rivers in India came under dispute; a high court overturned the previous legal decision, saying that "rivers cannot be considered living entities." Does this statement strike you as inaccurate? It certainly perpetuates our misguided idea of ourselves as superior to the river, rather than dependent on it. Ultimately, its health is our health.
Whatever "high court" issued such a decision, it was not high enough. Destruction of the natural environment is known as ecocide. We don't seem to grasp that for us, ecocide equals suicide, even if it happens slowly.
The world was jolted into awakeness by witnessing the paradigm shift that took place at Standing Rock, as people from all the Four Directions flowed in to prayerful resistance in support of the indigenous voice for water.
Thank you, Standing Rock, for giving us Mni Wiconi - water is life, the Mother for all that lives on this planet. We emerge into this world from the watery vessel of our mother, ourselves made mostly of water.
The exploitation and neglect of water betrays our future, and reflects the loss of the matri-centric view of the elements. Men and women who have somehow, in the Machine Age (the Kali Yuga), preserved that vantage point know instinctively that the voice of Nature is still speaking - but how many of us are listening?
.
"Among the present day Iroquois nation in eastern North America, the guardianship of resources has traditionally been, and is still, under the authority of women.
'Nature has given women the ability to create, therefore is it only natural to have women in positions of power to protect this function. To us it made sense to have the women control the land since they were far more sensitive to the rhythms of Mother Earth.' "
- Iroquois writer Doug George-Kanentiio, quoted in Messengers of the Wind: Native American Women Tell Their Life Stories
The female connection to nature is irrefutable. It's elemental, my dear Watson: an inherent part of the circuitry, if you have the double-X chromosome intact.
We see here that the Y chromosome is basically
a truncated X.
Clearly, one of these people has both feet on the ground,
while the other has only one leg to stand on.
Our sympathies to you.
"The Iroquois women's control of food distribution also meant political power: they were able to prevent war expeditions by denying supplies of dried corn and meat to the men."
Messengers of the Wind: Native American Women Tell Their Life Stories, edited by Jane Katz
Is that not a peace-keeping strategy par excellence? From the look of things, it was more effective than whatever we're doing now.
>>>>>>>>
It was the genius of our ancestral Grandmothers to align our cyclic fertility, here on Earth, to the rotational pathways of the sun and moon. This 'constellation', forever in flux, never static, is responsible for making the moon phases visible to us in a pattern of change that is constant (periodicity) - the menstrual period being the part of the pattern when we bleed. As this refrain repeats in the heavens, our own bodies are the earthly receivers for the signal of light transmitted by the sun, that ricochets off the moon, and is collected by the pineal glands of not just humans, but by birds and reptiles who use the luminous information for navigation and migration. In this cosmic equation, for all intents and purposes, WE ARE the Earth.
The immutability of the pattern made it sacred: taboo, from the Polynesian tapua. The British Dictionary defines tapua: "...in Polynesia and other islands of the South Pacific, marked off as simultaneously sacred and forbidden."
All taboos concern consequences, and articulate what we must do, and what we must not.
In other words, don't mess with what's sacred.
It's bad for your health.
This monthly culmination of our fertility cycle - the menstrual period - is a messy business, so our retreat to the Moon Lodge always ended with ritual bathing. This allowed it to be perceived, from the sacred perspective, as a purification; the shadow side of this is to label it 'dirty' and 'impure'. I suspect that this shadow emerges partly from jealousy. We bleed every month, but we do not die. Our blood is the only blood that is not the result of injury or wounding.
Due to the lunar/menstrual locking that the Grandmothers understood and employed, the regularity of our cycle allowed the men to develop their own purification rituals in response.
The predictability and constancy of our ritual provided structure to the life of the tribe, as a dependable clock for measuring the interval known as a month. The sun can serve to measure a year or a day, but only the moon measures a month.
........
The female connectedness to the Earth is acknowledged in this verse from the Dineh (Navajo), who sing songs of the iconic Changing Woman at the initiation of the maidens who are stepping into womanhood:
I am the spirit of the Earth herself;
the Earth's strength is my strength.
The Earth's thoughts are my thoughts.
All that the Earth is, all that is everywhere, I am.
I am beautiful. I am indeed beautiful.
........
Indeed, you are beautiful, Dear Earth. We depend upon your generosity for all that we need. When our bodies are finally surrendered to you, we fertilize the soil, becoming part of the plants that grow there, part of the animals and birds that are nourished there. We become part of your voice, dear Earth, heard in the blessed rain, the wind, the whispers of clouds that foretell the storm.
And we know that you will celebrate with us when the abuse of women and children becomes tapua -- and is no longer tolerated anywhere, by anyone.
My unmet great grandchildren and I
thank you in advance, our good guardians and allies, you who protect and support us, whoever you may be, wherever you are,
for whatever you may do
to accelerate this shift.
Our desire is only to receive such rights as accrue to integral respect. Like the river.
References:
The Earth Law Centre advances the rights of nature to exist, thrive and evolve. Directing Attorney, Grant Wilson, is working to create replicable models of laws that communities across the world could pass to establish legal rights for nature.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rivers-get-human-rights-they-can-sue-to-protect-themselves/
http://theconversation.com/when-a-river-is-a-person-from-ecuador-to-new-zealand-nature-gets-its-day-in-court-79278
