At the Parliament of World Religions in Melbourne there were some fascinating inputs. None were more intriguing than those from indigenous communities including Aboriginal people from Australia, Inuit, and North American Indians.
The civilisations of these communities are complex but their complexity veils a great deal of common sense that usually serves to protect and sustain them. They are remarkably good at this despite all the obstacles that the western and colonial world has thrown at them. The ability to protect and sustain a community into the future is a great challenge to many governments today. In fact one definition of social cohesion is the ability of a society to sustain and regenerate itself.
These indigenous communities are facing ever greater challenges to their way of life. Despite the belief by some that Global Warming and Climate Change are an exaggeration, one Inuit Eskimo related an interesting story. Every year they move their Caribou Deer to new feeding grounds. This tradition and path has been in place for thousands of years and is necessary for the survival of the deer and the people. For the first time ever in the memories and the stories of the people a tragedy befell them. While herding the Caribou across a frozen lake the ice cracked and most of the deer ended up in a watery grave. For the people, this was tragedy of immense proportion and remains a deep challenge to their way of life making sustainability near impossible.
Ulrich Beck has a term for the world we live in today. He created the term ‘World Risk Society’ underlining that never before in the history of the world have people the ability to destroy the earth. The ‘risk’ that the world can be destroyed by the actions of even one human being runs very high in today’s world. The story from the Inuit man highlights this.
On the one hand, scriptures cannot address this problem that confronts the world today. When they were written ‘risk’ did not run at the same levels. However, scripture has some important principles to guide us. Many of these are captured in Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment entitled Laudato Si.
These ancient stories (Old Testament), full of symbolism, bear witness to a conviction which we today share, that everything is interconnected, and that genuine care for our own lives and our relationships with nature is inseparable from fraternity, justice and faithfulness to others. – Pope Francis, Laudato Si, par. 7