“…so we can thrive with a planet in transition.”

My feelings are that I want to ground our lives in consideration of not just surviving but thriving. When Google invented gmail I made my email thrivalist because so many people I knew were survivalists, permies, etc. It came out of discussion with Elizabeth Sahtouris’s class back in the day at CIIS. Surviving isn’t the goal, thriving is the goal. Thriving requires relationship with Earth.

I come at climate chaos a bit different than many because of an innate trust that despite the human destruction, the planet, Gaia, Mama-pacha, Earth will prevail and adapt — even without us or this current iteration of “us” humans. I’ve resolved my fear of death, my lack of future blood lines after my children because I’m not alone in that. Earth will thrive and so many of us are the last of our future ancestors as the population will decrease from the chaos.

And so I want to reflect that in relationship building with the planet in my work. And also I’m always seeking to de-center the human and re-center the basins of relation as Brock Dolman so eloquently describes the ecosystems contained by watersheds. Humans caused this, but the extinction of life right now is 6th greatest in Earth’s 4.5 Billion years.

It’s also why I call it a land lineage rather than an acknowledgement. The places I’ve lived are a part of me, they wired my neural networks. They literally made up my cells and ability to transfer (copy) my DNA into the future in the foods that were grown there, the air I breathed, the water I drank, and the energy that was consumed to keep me warm.

My Land Lineage is a both/and reflection of the people that lived on the land for millennia before me, now and after me in the future and the lands. It’s an affirmation that both the land and the Indigenous will remain despite the colonization.

So my thoughts are that a climate statement must include the land where you are and vice versa. It’s intertwined.