What Everyone is Missing".Again (Going "viral" is not sufficient)

Michael Moore tells Steven Colbert that his new documentary, "Planet of the Humans," is about the need to take "a different road," but he missed the most important clip in the film that says what that road is- as has everyone else!

On May 20, 2019, The Nation published my article entitled "The Media Have Missed a Crucial Message of the UN's Biodiversity Report." It pointed out that buried within the United Nation's 1,700 page "Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services" is a solution. However, hardly anyone in the media referred to it. Instead, the message that went viral was only that one million more species are on the verge of extinction owing to human development and habitat destruction. Very few learned that the 5 percent of the global population who control around 20 percent of the Earth's land mass and 80 percent of its remaining biodiversity operate under the umbrella of an Indigenous worldview. Nor did the news cite that "destructive extinction trends have been less severe or avoided entirely in areas managed by Indigenous Peoples," and that the reason had to do with a different view of human relationships with nature" and with a "the material versus the spiritual" perspective. In other words, we did not learn its message that it is not technology but worldview that can save us.

As did the UN report on extinction rates, reviews of Michael Moore-produced and Jeff Gibbs-directed film have also quickly gone viral with 600,000 online reviews from newspapers and magazines like Forbes, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Variety, Newsweek, and Esquire. However, whether they dismiss it as being a rant on capitalism, a rehash about overpopulation and overconsumption, an indictment of environmental groups and super stars of the green movement being in bed with corporations (intentionally or otherwise), or a significant expose' about humans as "dead species walking" (a phrase referring to the half a million species about to go extinct coined by the UN report), none interpret what Gibbs says in one small clip about loss of our original "Indigenous" worldview. Before you read his few lines, you might quickly scan the worldview comparison chart adapted from my book, The Red Road: Linking Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives to Indigenous Worldview. Note especially the precepts that relate to fearlessness and spiritual, mystical perspectives. With such precepts in mind, consider what Gibbs says around around 40 minutes into the film, while he is talking with a friend:

Gibbs: As soon as I heard you talking about our denial of death I thought, could that be it? Could it be that we can't face our own mortality? We don't like that we are animals. What human beings did back in yesteryear is to envelop ourselves in culturally constructive belief systems. Call them cultures, call them worldviews, schemes of things. His friend: If I haven't come to grips with my own anxiety about life and death I'm highly likely to make some tragic decisions for the community.

Gibbs: The only solution in principle is, as Albert Camus put it, "there's only one liberty, to come to terms with death, thereafter anything is possible." I find that downright inspiring.

The Indigenous acceptance of death comes from understanding we are spirits inhabiting a body on this wonderful planet. We see death as a natural, spiritual transition from the visible to the invisible world. We also see the animals as our teachers and are intricately interconnected with all of Nature in its visible and invisible, eternal forms. I think Gibbs knew this but like too many others is still unable to characterize it specifically as Indigenous wisdom. Until we can let go of five hundred years of anti-Indian hegemony, false histories about Indigenous ways of being in the world and continuing oppression of Indigenous Peoples throughout the world who are still against all odds holding on to not only the original worldview wisdom, but on to local, place-based knowledge via their languages, we will continue to dismiss the Indigenous worldview. Without it, our disrespect for diversity in all of its forms and our materialistic solution to our fear of ego and physical death will continue. We will continue to disrespect the female principle and its manifestation as well. It is not a coincidence that only one of the famous environmental leaders who did not wiggle a little when accused of buying into corporatism was a woman.

In the same way that news coverage of the UN Biodiversity Report and Planet of the Humans went viral quickly, Covid-19 has is a literal virus that has quickly taken over our world. Let us not allow what is buried within the news about it go unnoticed as well. As we all begin to realize different priorities, begin to realize the worldview changes that are possible now. As I have written in another paper, deforestation based is the source of this and previous pandemics and it is a phenomenon that does not occur when we use our original worldview to guide us. Please take some time to look at the contrasting lists below. If ones on the left define how you think and act in the world, start moving to the alternative on the right that kept our world in balance for 99% of human history, and can do it again if we choose.