Rerooting Ourselves in Connection

 

I am currently reading ReRoot: the nature of change through the system of trees by Māori author Louise Marra.  In the introduction, Marra writes, “Disconnected people and systems will always create more disconnect… Often fueled by superiority, survival energy, fear, and trauma, we have found ourselves in a world that is orientated around humans being separate entities and not an intrinsic part of the natural systems we need to live in. (p xiv)

I was pondering this idea at a recent rally to protect green spaces in our province.  I am part of an Indigenous drum circle that includes non-Indigenous people like myself.  We were asked by the local Field Naturalist club to come to the rally to drum.  Members of our group already drum every Friday (April to October) at the end of a road to a gravel pit.  The gravel pit is using the purest water in the world to wash gravel for roads, draining this pristine aquifer at an alarming rate.  We drummers, drum for the water and to bring awareness of this to passing motorists.  So, we are used to being outside drumming to protect the water and land.

Louise Marra

Marra goes on to write, “Separation itself is one of the primary traumas we all face.  We cannot be well as individuals within an unwell world.  Trauma isolates, and when isolated as humanity from the web of life and from each other, it means trauma leads the way, leads the solutions, unconsciously.  We then stay on trauma highways and our solutions are from this unhealthy place.  We need our connected selves to lead the solutions, but many lack the confidence, skills, and even the belief that it is possible.” (p. xiv)

As we spent time at the rally, I thought about how the government’s idea to build lots of houses on protected green spaces was an idea that came from disconnection.  There are lots of spaces in the city for housing.  However, speculators have bought up some of the protected land and want to turn a quick profit and they seem to have the premier’s ear.  The trauma of seeing land as money is one that comes from disconnection from the land and from future generations.

We drummers stood in an arc facing the people with the megaphone and signs.  We drummed between speakers and when asked to lead the procession down the main road, we did so, singing and drumming all the way.  Once we returned to the square, one of the protesters took a long green ribbon and began to wrap it around us in a way that gently formed us into a circle.  She said that she wanted us to wrap ourselves around the Greenbelt the way she was wrapping us in ribbon.  I noticed that the energy in that space changed once we were in a circle in which everyone could see each other, in which there was no hierarchy.  Speakers spoke from within the circle as the ribbon connected us.  I could sense that solutions that came from within that connected space would be different than those that came from the premier’s hierarchical power structure.

People who were already connected to the land connected to each other, listened to each other and were uplifted by each other.  This felt very hopeful to me.  It was more than symbolic.  Our bodies are our first access point to nature.  We are nature, not in nature.  As we positioned our bodies in relation to each other, in a connected circle, we changed our embodied presence there.  It was like we got off the trauma highway for a moment as we connected to each other and to the web of life.  This gave me hope that we can gain the skills and the belief that this is possible.

I choose to see the disconnected solutions of the government as offering us the opportunity to connect with each other and with the land to co-create new solutions.  People are figuring out how to stand up for what they believe in.  They are figuring out how to connect with each other to protect what they love. These are skills we need to hone to deal with the challenges ahead of us.

There is so much more to reflect on in this fascinating book.  I will return with more stories of Rerooting.

Louise Marra (2022) Reroot: the nature of change through the system of trees. Empower Press: Colarado Springs, CO.