Learning from the Other: Our indigenous brothers and sisters

This morning, on my early morning drive to the airport, I heard several news stories about a couple ballot initiatives that will be decided on November 8; both had to do with environmental concerns. One was a carbon tax on the ballot in Washington and the other was a ban on the sale of animal byproducts of endangered species in Oregon. One quote caught my attention. In the conversation on the Oregon initiative it was said, “We need to protect these animals so that they are around for generations to come.”

Now I know that I am parsing words and that what I heard was not what this gentleman actually said. Given that he was from the Humane Society, I would bet that what I heard was NOT what he intended me to hear. Even so, what I heard is a common refrain when it comes to talk about preserving creation and protecting the environment and wildlife. What I heard was:

“We need to make sure these animals are around so that we can enjoy them for generations to come.”

To some, that phrase may not strike you as troublesome. Of course we need to protect the environment so that our children and our children’s children have a beautiful world. We’ve enjoyed the beauty of the bison, tigers, and whales; we want our ancestors to enjoy such beauty and majesty in the future as well.

I agree.

But something I’ve learned from my Lakota brothers and sisters, and by extension many native peoples, is that the creation doesn’t have value simply in what I can take from it. Even if I am simply taking pleasure at its existence.

The cosmos and all that is within it have value for the same reason that you and I have value. It is a good creation of a loving God.

In the creation narrative in Genesis, after God had created everything, God looks out at all that is and says that it is all “very good”. Not because it gave pleasure to humans, but because God made it.

In our hyper-individualistic and materialistic culture, we often ascribe value only to those things that give me pleasure or that are useful to me. Dangerously this even extends to humans as well. Children, the elderly, the impoverished, and the immigrant often get unfair and unjust treatment because we think that they provide nothing for us, and so their value is diminished. More seemingly benign, however, is the way in which we treat the world, animals, and plants in this same way.

They don’t have value only because they provide me sustenance, beauty, and relaxation. They are valuable because they are the beautiful creation of God.

In Romans, Paul says that creation itself is groaning as if in childbirth, waiting for its redemption, waiting for the children of God to be revealed.

My indigenous brothers and sisters have taught me what that means. The more we abuse the earth and its inhabitants, the more we sin by desecrating the good creation of God. That’s why a pipeline in North Dakota matters. That’s why protecting animals matters. That’s why reducing carbon and methane emissions matters. Not only because we want our children to enjoy this beautiful earth, but because the earth is a sacred sanctuary of the Divine, singing the praises to God and groaning in lament to God, longing for the children of God to be revealed.

That’s why with every bite of a burger, whether beef or veggie, we should pray a prayer of thanksgiving at the God who made the sustenance and the sacrifice it took to bring it to us. With every compression of the gas pedal in our cars we should pray thanking God for the resources and technological advances, and pray that we enthusiastically pursue alternative, clean energy. With every majestic waterfall, untamable animal, or beautiful sunset we see, we should be renewed in our commitment to protect and defend creation. Not so I can keep burgers on my plate, gas in my car, and beauty in my eyes, but because God made it, called it good, and in so doing bestowed upon it a worth and a value that must be honored.