- Sustainability & Colonialism
- Posts
- The original big lie (Issue #7)
The original big lie (Issue #7)
Don't stories shape our reality?
Chris Musei-Sequeira
December 18, 2024
Add [email protected] to your address book so you don’t miss newsletter issues from us!
So I’ve finally begun reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, who is of the Potawatomi people of North America. Early in the book, Kimmerer shares her people’s creation story: of Skywoman, who falls from the heavens until she is caught by a goose. Slowly and gently, the goose brings her down to the waters and introduces her to the animals of the seas. Skywoman climbs upon a turtle’s back, and a creature dives to the depths of the ocean… giving its own life to bring her a tiny paw-full of mud. From this mud, Skywoman builds the land of Turtle Island: filled with abundance, with Skywoman just one among all. Not a master, not a manager; instead, a caretaker.
Kimmerer contrasts that story with the Judeo-Christian creation story in the Book of Genesis: Adam and Eve, blissful and ignorant in the Garden of Eden until the day they touch the Tree of Life against the Word of God. For this Original Sin, they are cast out of the Garden to scrape and grapple with a wild, vicious, and merciless Nature — a Nature they must dominate or surely they will perish.
Man and Nature: an ontology at least as old as the Judeo-Christian creation story. Two categories, mutually exclusive—all of Creation is either one or the other.
I believe that is the original big lie. The lie of separation.
What to do with these two categories? Well, fight them against each other of course. Man vs. Nature. “Us” vs. “Them.” Locked in mortal combat, only one shall survive. The lie of separation leads to the act of domination.
Oh but those are just stories, right? Fairy tales. Meaningless.
Well… what if I told you that stories shape our reality?
How many times have you seen a sustainability professional write about how “we” need to “work with Nature?” Or of Indigenous peoples: “we” need to learn “their” ways?
Did you hear about that Prime Minister who said that his “war” is about “civilization vs. barbarism?”
The lie of separation is a lie whether used to discuss working together, or used to discuss working against. I wrote at length about “us” vs. “them” in my post “We” do NOT all have the same sustainability goals.
“But Chris,” you say. “Humans categorize. We need categories to help us understand the world.”
I agree with you, completely.
I also believe that categorization is an inherently political act. There is no law of physics dictating the “right” and “appropriate” categories that “we” are supposed to use. This is easy enough to play around with in our daily lives. For example: I live in Queens, New York… not in Brooklyn. But I also live in New York City, which includes Queens and Brooklyn but excludes Hoboken. I live in the East Coast, which includes New York City and Hoboken but excludes Dallas, Texas. So which is the “right” categorization? Well… none of them… and all of them. Or some of them. Categorization is context-dependent. Categorization also shapes thought; shapes conversation; shapes analysis. Shapes outcomes.
When “we” see the world as humans separate from nature, what thoughts come to our mind? What conversations are opened, and what conversations are shut down?
Braiding Sweetgrass has a beautiful chapter, “Learning the Grammar of Animacy.” In it, Kimmerer describes paging through a dictionary of words in the Ojibwe language.
. . . my eyes settled on a word—a verb, of course: “to be a Saturday.” Pfft! I threw down the book. Since when is Saturday a verb?
She picked up the dictionary again and flipped through it, finally resting on wiikwegamaa: “to be a bay.” “I was ready to give up,” she said, at the ridiculous concept of so many persons, places, and things being verbs in this mysterious language.
And then I swear I heard the zap of synapses firing. An electric current sizzled down my arm and through my finger, and practically scorched the page where that one word lay. In that moment I could smell the water of the bay, watch it rock against the shore and hear it sift onto the sand. A bay is a noun only if water is dead.
. . . But the verb wiikwegamaa—to be a bay—releases the water from bondage and lets it live. “To be a bay” holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and a flock of baby mergansers. Because it could do otherwise—become a stream or an ocean or a waterfall, and there are verbs for that too.
“Silly,” perhaps you say. “Water being alive is just a metaphor.” Okay fine then: don’t metaphors have power? Don’t metaphors shape perspectives?
Don’t stories shape our reality?
“Man and Nature” is not a fact. It’s a perspective. What other perspectives can we try on?
What other realities can we try on?
Here are my questions for you
How do you decide who counts as “us” and who counts as “them” across the many domains of your life? What causes these categories to morph and change?
Where do you see the lie of separation playing out in your mind and in your life? If you were to release yourself from the lie, what conversations would open up?
Press the “reply” button in your email app and share with me your answers if you like. I’d love to talk to you.
Where to find the sustainability perspectives you’ve been missing
FIRST: Subscribe to the “We Are LaCH” podcast, where friends Heather Luna and Lavinia Muth and I host discussions on power and oppression — particularly in the context of the sustainability industry.
SECOND: Follow on LinkedIn:
Heather Luna of keduzi: workshopping pro-connectedness and anti-oppression as a way of life
Lavinia Muth: deconstructing the (un)sustainable fashion industry
Dr. Vidhya Shankar, Ph.D: decentering whiteness in evaluation of non-governmental organization projects
THIRD: Forward this issue to people you know in the sustainability industry — they’ll probably say a thing or two in response!
Got something to say to me?
I’m Chris, the Principal of CJSC, LLC, and I’m (un)learning along with all of you — so hit the “reply” button and give me a piece of your mind!
Know someone who needs to see this issue? Hit the “Forward” button in your email app and send this to them.
My position
My name is Chris Musei-Sequeira, and I use he/him pronouns. My mother was born in Trinidad and Tobago as a descendant of African slaves brought to the islands during the time of European colonization. She came to the United States of America (USA) at the age of 10. My father is Goan and was born in India, in Mumbai, and raised Catholic and English-speaking. He came to the USA for his graduate studies, where he met my mother.
My sister and I were born in the USA and lived a middle-class life in the suburbs of multiple American cities. I studied aeronautical engineering and technology policy in university, then worked at the Federal Aviation Administration and as an aviation consultant. I've lived in cities up and down the USA East Coast since the age of 18; I now reside in Queens, New York with my wife.
I thank Heather Luna and Lavinia Muth for showing me the importance of publicly expressing our positions. Because of our positions, all of us are very familiar with some aspects of the world while having no idea of other aspects. Positionality expresses how our individual positions affect our relationships with other people and with the world as a whole.
Introductory image: History of the United States of America. Native American council and conquistadors meeting around a fire. Engraving by Vernier. Panorama Universal. History of the United States of America, from 1st edition of Jean B.G. Roux de Rochelle's Etats-Unis d'Amerique in 1837. Spanish edition, printed in Barcelona, 1850. Later colouration. Source: Mary Evans Picture Library. Last accessed December 18, 2024.