Wealth

...continuing to quote from Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams,

In the following narratives [of Arctic exploration], it is not solely the desire of some men for difrerent sorts of wealth that becomes clear, but the suspicion that North America offered more than material wealth. It offered wealth that could not be owned, like the clarity of the air and the sight of 300,000 snow geese feeding undisturbed on the Great Plain of the Koukdjuak...We seem vaguely uneasy with the notion that a flock of snow geese rising like a snowstorm over Baffin Island is as valuable or more to mankind than the silver, tin, and copper being dug out of the Bolivian Andes at Potosí. These are not modern misgivings;  they daye in North America from the time of Columbus and Cabot...
(pp.312-313)

Apologies for the long passage today. I like the idea of wealth that cannot be possessed, because it makes it a communal asset. If I don't possess A, it means that my friends can also enjoy it. But it does make me wonder about responsibility with relation to possession. If I own, say, a tree in my back garden, I have a responsibility to make sure it is safe and well looked after otherwise it will be my fault if it dies. If there's a tree on the patch of communal land outside my house, whose responsibility is it to protect that tree, to make sure it thrives and grows beautifully old?

Wealth that cannot be owned by any individual cannot be traded. It cannot be bargained for, charged interest on, entered into ledger books or spreadsheets. It makes me think of Oliver's song: "Who will buy this wonderful morning?" The rising sun is one of our most valuable assets and yet completely and utterly un-possessible. Just a thought.

Two types of fear

Thanks to Barry Lopez' Arctic Dreams  for these...

The Tununirmiut Eskimo on Bylot Island have at least two words for fear (maybe more?):

ilira - fear that accompanies awe (like watching a polar bear)
kappia - fear in the face of unpredictable violence (having to cross thin sea ice)

Do either of these apply in the face of our changing climate? Are we sitting back and experiencing ilira, watching the changes take place from a point of relative safety, or have we got collective kappia yet? Are we as afraid as we should be?

Barry Lopez published his Arctic Dreams in 1986.

The key to survival

"...a place where knowing your environment is the key to survival." *

We rarely think about how our knowledge of our surroundings is a matter of life or death. We reserve that for people living in the more out-of-the-way places, where the weather is more severe, and the natural landscape hazardous.

But it's not quite true.

I know that if I walk across a certain road at the wrong time, my life is in danger. I know that this particular alleyway is narrow and dark and should be avoided at night. I know to be wary of certain wild animals. I know that these berries are tasty and these berries are deadly poisonous. I know how to keep food so that it won't go off. I know, more or less, the things which will help me preserve my life and those which will bring it to a more rapid end than I'd wish.

This is true for me, someone who lives on the edge of a medium town in a pleasant county.

Knowing our environment is always a key to survival, wherever it is. We need to understand that our environment isn't somewhere 'out there' where the wild things are, and see that it's here, right where we are.


* I took this from the concluding statement of BBC's Human Planet episode, Arctic life: in the deep freeze. It's currently available to watch on iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rrd7r/human-planet-3-arctic-life-in-the-deep-freeze

In a land of ice

In the fantastic After the Ice: Life, Death and Politics in the New Arctic, author Alun Anderson talks about the extreme northerly communities of Inuit peoples in Canada. Living on the edge of the ice, their language points to a people who have a profound understanding of their relationship with their natural surroundings. Perhaps 'understanding' is too trifling a word: the connection runs deeper than consciousness. The communities here in places like Grise Fiord depend almost entirely on their surroundings for their survival in a way that is hard to understand for a soft, suburban dweller like myself.

And so in Inuit you find the following words:

qanuqtuurniq- resourcefulness
piliriqatigiiniq - capacity to work together for a common cause
tuunganarniq - fostering good spirit by being open, welcoming and inclusive
avatittinnik / kamatsiarniq - respect for the land, animals and environment

When we speak about 'sustainability' in English, I think we mean all of these things and more. Maybe it's time to expand our vocabulary a little bit.