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What is Sustainable?

Explore sustainability through Western and Indigenous worldviews, emphasizing responsibility, relatedness, and spirituality. Learn how different traditions view nature, resource management, and ethics.

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What is Sustainable?

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  1. What is Sustainable? • Meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs • In Native American tradition we are supposed to consider seven generations • “Developed countries”: integrates economic growth and social development with environmental protection

  2. Contrasting Worldviews • Western Philosophical Tradition • Temporally Oriented: sees current place in history in relation primarily to time • Views history as linear and progressive • Indigenous Philosophical Traditions • Spatially Oriented: sees current place in history in relation to local places • Views history as non-linear

  3. What Makes up a Worldview? • Yupiaq scholar Oscar Kawagley Understand the concept of worldview by answering the following questions: • 1) What is real? (metaphysics) • 2) What can we understand? (epistemology) • 3) How should we behave? (ethics) • 4) What is pleasing to the senses? (aesthetics) • 5) What are the patterns upon which we can rely? (logic) Compare between Western and Indigenous Traditions

  4. A Sense of Responsibility • One thing often left out of contemporary concepts of sustainability is the very real sense of responsibility for future generations • This was built into rituals and ceremonies that constituted much of the spiritual realm of Indigenous peoples

  5. Placating Nature • Both the size of Indigenous Populations and length of time they spent interacting with particular places are underestimated • More people lived in Western Kansas 200 years ago than live there today • Resource shortages were always possible • In variable environments worked to minimize the chances of shortages

  6. Development of Rituals • Respect for nature does not mean lives cannot be taken • Livelihood dependent on taking lives • Must recognize and honor the sacrifice • Apologize and give thanks

  7. Conservation Must be Personal and Emotional • Recognition that the Natural World is providing for you and your family • All Things are Connected: By consuming the plant or animal you prove that you and it are connected and related • Made of the same materials • Products of the same creative process

  8. Relatedness and Sustainability • Accept Relatedness among life forms • Caring for them as part of your community means allowing their lives to continue • Sustainability becomes personal

  9. Connectedness and Sustainability • Improper Impact on the system can cause long-term problems • This is because all elements of the system are connected • Polluting or wasting can damage system resulting in failure of sustainability

  10. Sustainability and Spirituality • Only by caring for the earth and natural systems can we really sustain them • Economic interests must not prevail over the needs of future generations • There is only One Earth

  11. Does Not Preclude Change • Nature is constantly changing • There is no Stable point or equilibrium • Must ensure that change does not mean destruction • All of NA has been impacted by humans

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