The fundamental difference between civilized and indigenous ways of being is that for even the most open-minded of the civilized, listening to the na… - Derrick Jensen

If your community is founded on an injustice, that injustice cannot be questioned.

We’re going to suggest what is for this culture a radical redefinition of what it means for an action to be “green” or “environmental,” which is that the action must tangibly benefit the natural world on the natural world’s own terms. Not that the action helps fuel the industrial economy. Not that the action makes your life easier. Not that the action seems like a success, such that it helps you not feel despair. The action must tangibly help tigers, or hammerhead sharks, or Coho salmon, or Pacific lampreys, or sea stars, or the oceans, or the Colorado River, or the Great Plains.

I have heard people suggest that because humans are natural that everything humans do or create is natural. Chainsaws are natural. Nuclear bombs are natural. Our economics is natural. Sex slavery is natural. Asphalt is natural. Cars are natural. Polluted water is natural. A devastated world is natural. A devasted phyche is natural. Unbridled exploitation is natural. Pure objectification is natural. This is, of course, nonsense. We are embedded in the natural world. We evolved as social creatures in this natural world. We require clean water to drink, or we die. We require clean air to breathe, or we die. We require food, or we die. We require love, affection, social contact in order to become our full selves. It is part of our evolutionary legacy as social creatures. Anything that helps us to understand all of this is natural: Any ritual, artifact, process, action is natural, to the degree that it reinforces our understanding of our embeddedness in the natural world, and any ritual, artifact, process, action is unnatural, to the degree that it does not