An interview at the US Social Forum with Faith Gemmill, member of REDOIL (Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands) Network, about the environment, climate change, and a warning to all about failing to take care of the earth.
Voice from the North: "Humankind is in the Brink of Destruction"
Q: We are here today at the US Social Forum with Faith Gemmill from REDOIL network. Thank you for talking to me today. Faith, can you tell me in general what REDOIL is?
FAITH: REDOIL stands for Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands and we are a network of native Alaskan people... Standing up to confront fossil fuel development in Alaska. We are standing on the foundation of upholding the human and ecological health of our peoples and our homeland, as well as adressing catastrophic climate change as well as standing up for the inherent self-determination rights of tribes in Alaska.
Q: I want to go deeper into what you were saying during the panel about your relationship to the land, both historically and spiritually...
FAITH: In Alaska we still have a substicence to the land. Our communities still have a close relationship to the land. Our land provides for everything we need. Our physical, social, cultural, spiritual and economic needs are provided from the land. We don't have big groceries stores. We hunt for our survival. We still fish, we still gather. Is how we live. And for us subsistence also means our spiritual connection to these lands, these lands that have been handed down generation by generation. These lands are ancestral territories and for us, that connection is so profound and so deep that we are a part of it. We are part of our natural environment. Everything in our environment is a part of us. Whatever happens to the environment happens to our people.
Q: So when you are here in Atlanta it must be very different for you about how people relate to the land. What would you be able to tell people who live in big cities about their disconnection with nature?
FAITH: I would tell people that is time to reconnect with the land... All of us. Because what we are doing to the environment now, by all this massive use of energy, the way we live. We are consuming too much of the earth's resources and the earth does not have time to heal or replenish itself, and we need to give mother earth a rest. We need to change the way we live. We need to change how we use our energy. We need to stop depending on destructive uses of energy, destructive forms of energy. The fossil fuel industry is an example of that. And we have the capacity and technology now to move towards sustainable and renewable energy, and we need to do that. Because what's happening to us in the north is that we're being affected by climate change. We see our land being destroyed by the fossil, mining, military industry... We are actually literally dying and everyone is responsible for that. Because the energy that is being taken from our homelands, feeds the need here and so we are calling on all people, all human beings of conscience... Change how you live. Let's move together towards a renewable way of life because all future generations are dependent on what we do today.
