"There is only one Earth, not one planet for nature and another for humans. However, we are inclined to think of our planet simply as a scenery, which runs contrary to local and indigenous understanding. The values that enable us to live together in harmony with nature are expressed on several levels. Values that deal with knowledge: how do we create knowledge, and how do we use it? Values that deal with action: what is our responsibility in the face of the foreseeable or imaginable consequences of our collective actions? And finally, values that shape how we care, see and listen."
On the occasion of the International Day for Biological Diversity 2021, UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador Vik Muniz participated to the UNESCO Forum Living Together on Earth. During this forum, speakers were invited to share their relationships with the living world and express their views on ways to reconcile humans and the other living beings on Earth. This event is following the launch of the movement for living together on Earth by UNESCO on 24 March 2021 during its Biodiversity forum.
The indigenous people don't feel separated from nature, they feel they are part of it. They don't own the land, they are the land. For most of us, we lost the ability to think like this. We have lost this very basic ability to exist in our own environment. But we can reconnect to this feeling by being in touch with people with this kind of sensibility, and translate it into educational projects.
In the first phase of the forum, the poem "The Earth Keeper" by N. Scott Momaday, Native American writer and UNESCO Artist for Peace was read by actor David Coburn (USA).
We humans must revere the earth, for it is our well-being. Always the earth grants us what we need. If we treat the earth with kindness, it will treat us kindly. If we give our belief to the earth, it will believe in us. There is no better blessing than to be believed in. There are those who believe that the earth is dead. They are deceived. The earth is alive, and it is possessed of spirit. Consider the holy tree. It can be allowed to thirst. It can be cut down. Worst of all, it can be denied our faith in it, our belief. But if we speak to it, if we pray, it will thrive. When we dance the earth trembles. When our steps fall on the earth we feel the shudder of life beneath us, and the earth feels the beating of our hearts, and we become one with the earth. We shall not sever ourselves from the earth. We must chant our being, and we must dance in time with the rhythms of the earth. We must keep the earth.