The Sacred Balance: blending Western science with Indigenous knowledges, David Suzuki's influential book has been updated for this moment
Canadian scientist, author, and environmental activist David Suzuki knows firsthand the power of books.
- Canadian scientist, author, and environmental activist David Suzuki knows firsthand the power of books.
- Suzuki, now 87, may be one among millions active in today’s environmental movement, but he is one in a million.
- This is the sacred balance: that people might achieve “rich, rewarding lives without undermining the very elements that ensure them”.
- Read more:
David Suzuki: Australian scientists should be up on the ramparts
Soil and life
- Consider the opening few pages of the chapter on soil, or the element “earth”.
- the fundamental connection of soil and life is expressed in different ways; in some, the first human is fashioned from material produced by earth - carved from wood, moulded out of cornmeal, shaped from seeds, pollen and sap.
‘You are what you do’
- On the 25th anniversary of its release, a new edition has been published.
- They bring renewed urgency to his message that “we have to see ourselves in a different relationship with the rest of nature”.
- The major crises we face – “pandemics, climate disruption and biodiversity loss” – “all have roots in our lack of recognition of our place in nature”.
- One of these is Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, emblematic of a “new generation of young people” fighting for climate action.
- I don’t want your hope […] I want you to act as you would in a crisis.
Indigenous worldviews
- Of course, those familiar with Indigenous knowledges and worldviews will recognise Suzuki’s view of human-nature connection is not at all new.
- As he acknowledges, it has been at the heart of Indigenous worldviews for millennia.
- Indigenous ways of teaching could be beneficial for all children
Indigenous perspectives are central to the discussions in The Sacred Balance, although the sense in which non-Indigenous sciences are presented as a “corroboration” of ancient, continuing Indigenous wisdom and knowledges feels outdated amid contemporary postcolonial and decolonising critical discourses.
- We already live in the presence of the model and the guidance of Indigenous worldviews, which marry science with spirit, gift and responsibility.
- at a time when 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity is safeguarded by Indigenous Peoples, yet they legally own only 10% of the land mass, this book recognises the imperative for Western science to learn from Indigenous knowledge.
Wins and losses
- But he notes that,
no matter how many wins we celebrated, new threats arose: protected land nibbled away, mining and logging allowed in parks, halted projects renewed and environmental legislation overturned. - no matter how many wins we celebrated, new threats arose: protected land nibbled away, mining and logging allowed in parks, halted projects renewed and environmental legislation overturned.
- What matters now is that “we shift from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism” and “reformulate” our legal, economic and political systems.
A form of devotional reading?
- Perhaps a book we read for information in 1997, is now read more for love; the need to be informed has transformed into the need to be encouraged.
- Amongst these is the practice of devotional reading, or partaking in a “calibrated daily dose of ideas”.
- Wall Kimmerer suggests The Sacred Balance “sows a vision of the future we want to live in, with guidance to get there”.