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Four life-giving elements 鈥� water, earth, fire and air 鈥� define Maceo Carrillo Martinet鈥檚 informative, persuasive book 鈥淗ealing the Land Teaches Us Who We Are: How Indigenous Cultural Resistance Can Restore the Earth, Recover Community, and Create Sustainable Futures.鈥�

Each element is presented in separate sections that explore humanity鈥檚 renewed relationship to the practices of Indigenous communities, though information about them overlap.

Water

An example in the Water section is the Pueblo peoples鈥� ancient practices of using rock dams, berm and terraces, and garden and rock mulch structures.

They were 鈥� and still are today 鈥� used to capture rainwater for gardens in its arid climate.

In those ancient gardens, Martinet writes, the Pueblo people had grown plants that provided food as well as grains, medicines, dyes for fabric, chew for teeth, materials for crafts, body soap and hair conditioner, and flowers to attract pollinating insects.

The same section describes the 21st century renewal of the ancient Quechuan practice of cosecha el agua (harvesting the water) that is again being applied in mountainous regions of Peru.

Another water-related example is in San Salvador, the capital of the Central American country of El Salvador.

CityAdapt, a UN Environment Programme鈥檚 flagship initiative, helps cities reconnect with nature.

San Salvador, a pilot city in the program, is reducing catastrophic flooding by employing a process borrowed from ancient Mayan structures that dealt with flooding and drought.

That process involved systems of canals and underwater tanks, dams across arroyos and forest gardening, Martinet states.

All of those systems depended on 鈥渁 knowledge of hydrology, rainwater harvesting and people power,鈥� he adds.

Earth

Rather than being a depressing story, Martinet writes, humanity鈥檚 relationship to land 鈥渉eld in common鈥� provides some hope and insights into reversing the climate crisis and increasing the spread of democracy.

For Indigenous cultures around the world, communal work has been a main strategic tool that they use to establish a sense of community identity and turn the task of caring for the land into a celebration.

Highly organized collective managing land in common has existed among Indigenous people in the Americas long before the arrival of conquering colonists.

Martinet finds noteworthy parallels between Mexico鈥檚 ejidos, the village-based decision- making in the Maghreb region of North Africa, and the rotational farming among the Karen people in Myanmar and Thailand.

Fire

This section shines a light on the worsening global crisis of wildfires.

Martinet writes that today the earth is in 鈥淭he Age of the Megafire.鈥�

How to deal with the fire menace?

He suggests learning from the fire-adapted practices of Indigenous people of Australia, Africa, Southeast Asia, California and the American Southwest. Those practices include frequent low-intensity burns to help restore forest health, which also sustains cultural and environmental resiliency, Martinet argues.

鈥淭oday鈥檚 megafires, unquestionably a direct result of racism and cultural exclusion, are the explosive expressions of suppressed land trying to wake us up,鈥� he writes.

The previously mentioned Karen people lightly burn the forest floor, and cut and prune trees to prepare the soil for planting. It鈥檚 a community-based element in crop rotation, according to Martinet.

Air

This section is initially about breathing. It opens with a reference to George Floyd and his death, coughing up the words 鈥淚 can鈥檛 breathe.鈥�

The author finds a parallel between Floyd鈥檚 plea and planet Earth pleading the same phrase to humanity.

Whereas Floyd was asphyxiated by racism and the dehumanization of Black people and culture, Martinet writes, the planet is being choked 鈥渂y a greed-centric economic system that treats the earth and its inhabitants as expendable.鈥�

From breathing, the section shifts to a discussion about language, spotlighting such issues as the loss of spoken languages (which means a parallel loss in cultural biodiversity) and how language 鈥� Spanish 鈥� was weaponized by a colonial power 鈥� Spain 鈥� against the Indigenous people of Peru and its Andean region.

The latter point is extensively discussed in the context of the first grammar book in Castilian Spanish, published two weeks after Columbus鈥� first voyage across the Atlantic, Martinet writes.

The grammar book鈥檚 author, a Friar Nebrija, convinced Queen Isabella I to haves the Indigenous peoples鈥� language, Quechua, barred from use in worshipping anything in nature, he writes.

Martinet quotes from a 16th century sermon delivered in the Quechua language as supporting evidence.

Though they were poor and mistreated, the sermon is quoted as stating these Quechan people have a soul, have intelligence and can speak.  The sun, the moon, the stars, anything in nature, lack those abilities.

Martinet concludes that the sermon has 鈥渁 bag full of stones designed to bludgeon the human imagination of the world鈥� and 鈥渋t reveals key components of a racist, imperialist worldview.鈥�

Martinet believes in the need for humanity to return to Indigenous ways because they are vital for the planet to have a sustainable future.

Martinet is an sa国际传媒官网网页入口-based restoration ecologist and planner who has worked statewide since 2009.