24. A Duty of Care

Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world

Diana Beresford-Kroeger learned “a duty of care” for the natural world from her Celtic aunties and uncles, as she writes in To Speak for the Trees. Today we listen to three more Indigenous voices on how their communities build care for land and people into the fabric of life. These three are Dr. Mary Graham on how Aboriginal relationships begin in the land; Claire Hiwahiwa Steele on caring for land and people in traditional Hawaiian society; and Oren Lyons on the Great Law of Peace of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, of North America. Among each people, caring for land and people is how to be a human being—how to live peaceably with others and how to survive in a sometimes challenging natural world. We also look, for contrast, at how caring for land and people, while handed down in Celtic tradition, got lost in European history and did not form the foundation of law in the young United States. So how to bring love and care back into public life? Lots of questions and lots of ideas on where to go from here!

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