Land as our First Teacher
Confronting Eco-grief with Critical Hope
Two weeks ago, my car was totaled. On an otherwise uneventful Sunday evening, a black cloud swept in suddenly and brought with it a storm of baseball-sized hail. My children, husband, and I were tucking into migas at a local diner at the time. Together, we—customers, waitstaff, and cooks—looked out at the darkened sky and listened to the unrelenting pummeling of solid ice, repeated shatterings of glass, and a chorus of car alarms for almost an hour. I feel so incredibly grateful for the safety found in that restaurant. After it was all over, we went out to assess the damage. Our car looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it (and there were dozens of cars that looked just like ours all around us). The asphalt was strewn with shards of glass, remnants of plastic casings, and large chunks of thawing ice. There were people rushing about, taking pictures and reaching for belongings through busted windows, pulling out cut-up arms. Rushing rivulets of murky water entered our shoes, and we just stood there. Wondering what to do next.
It’s the beginning of October and the fall is slowly approaching in central Texas after the Northern Hemisphere’s hottest summer in recorded history. Hail is relatively common here but I’d never experienced anything quite like what I saw two weeks ago. Throughout the world, “climate weirdness” has taken hold, causing discomfort, bewilderment, and—in the worst cases—complete devastation and unprecedented death tolls. All my life I’ve heard warnings that this would happen muffled somewhere under the euphemistic softness of the phrase “climate change.” In just the past several months, there have been record-breaking wildfires, floods, droughts, and ocean-warming in too many places to name.
In my own tiny corner of the world, the past several years have been punctuated by weather events that have proven, time and again, that the way we live is simply unsustainable. And I know how fortunate I am that I can emerge from these events relatively unscathed due to the privilege, convenience, and institutions of middle-class life in the United States. But I ask myself daily, how long will I continue to cling to delusion and desired ignorance? How long until it is actually impossible to live this life as it is? Bill McKibben outlined this reality nearly 15 years ago in his book, Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet. The extra “a” denotes that the planet we once knew is no more (he dates this from the 1970s when economic models forced hyper-carbonization upon the world). This connects to the idea that we live on an “uncanny” earth; a place that looks very much like what we know but is also unfamiliar, unsettling in some way. As he says, “We need now to understand the world we’ve created, and consider—urgently—how to live in it.”
And our students feel this urgency, too. A study from 2021 across 10 countries found that 75% of 16-25-year-olds agree with the statement, “the future is frightening” and 83% with the statement, “people have failed to take care of the planet.” The term “eco-grief” has been used to describe this feeling by Joanne Macy who cautions against the “deadening” of ourselves to this phenomenon: “...pain is the price of consciousness in a threatened and suffering world….As in all organisms, pain has a purpose: it is a warning signal designed to trigger remedial action.” But what should that action be, individually and collectively? And how do we grapple with these questions in the classroom, on campus, and in our communities?
These are questions without simple answers. There are so many approaches, so many ways of responding. Whatever those answers may be, looking away is not one of them. We cannot deaden ourselves. In work for an upcoming anthology I’m co-editing and co-authoring, Indigenizing Education for Climate Action, I have been quite moved by the works of Indigenous scholars, professors, teachers, and activists who center Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and land-based education. The concept of “land as our first teacher” has profound implications for pedagogy—reshaping not only content but also how we interact with, respect, and understand the world around us. What would it mean to let the land teach us — its histories, its desires, its systems, and its capacity for renewal?
I imagine it might lead us to a more interdisciplinary academic approach, to more holistic treatment of our students’ minds, bodies, and emotions, toward greater understanding of the laws, policies, and systems that endanger the land, that endanger us. We might come to finally commit to journeying—visualizing, imagining, studying—the histories of the land we live on, in full acknowledgment of the ways “ownership” was taken, and the devastating effects this has had and continues to have on Indigenous communities. We might also recognize the true interconnectedness of all living things—how our food and water are sourced, the particulars of the plants, animals, and insects that inhabit our most immediate surroundings, and how our specific ecological and cultural environments shape us as much as we shape them. Perhaps, most profoundly, we can come to see Mother Nature not as an antagonist, nor as indifferent to our existence, but, as Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, a “partner in renewal,” for we possess gifts that the Earth urgently needs. It is, she argues, the time for true reciprocity.
Young people are often derided for any number of presumed failings—lack of ambition, intelligence, initiative. But any sense of hope I have has always come from them. They are a kind generation. They care about each other, and are accepting of difference, in ways I don’t remember when I was young. And this kindness extends out—they care for the planet as well and are eager to embrace climate action. I believe we owe it to ourselves, and to them, the gift of “critical hope”—a hope that balances understanding with action, past with present, and heart with mind.
Centering Indigenous voices** and Traditional Ecological Knowledge can guide us toward more interdisciplinary, land-based, and holistic approaches. This allows nature herself to teach us the lessons we need to learn about reciprocity, resilience, and care.
**I did not want to end this discussion without amplifying additional works by Indigenous authors who have written in-depth about these concepts. Please refer to this not-exhaustive annotated bibliography for further reading if you are interested; you can also peruse selections for purchase here.
3 Things Newly Noted
Late to the game, but my kids and I really loved playing around with Google’s Arts and Culture app this week; in particular, the “art palette” feature where like-colors can be found as drawn from thousands of artworks across millennia. It paired nicely with a book I’m currently reading and loving: The Secret Lives of Color.
The difference between “Burnout” and “Boreout” as defined and discussed in Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s recent post.
Lang Lang Plays Disney. I’m not really a “Disney person,” per se (though my kids decidedly are) but this was a pleasant surprise that we stumbled upon looking for something suitable for family movie night. The whole concert is streaming on Disney+ but here is an equivalent of the final piece, a rousing rendition of “Let it Go” that my younger son thoroughly loved.
See you next Friday!
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