HEALING THE EARTH, HEALING OURSELVES

Agkabannuag

July Issue

Jeffrey Tangonan Acido

HEALING THE EARTH, HEALING OURSELVES

During the past several months I realized that I have been falling in love again and again with the majestic mountains of Hawaii. The language of trees and the winds speak to me; it is a language of knowing: the trees knowing the winds—and the winds knowing the trees—even before I existed. It is a language steeped in mystery and magic—as it is a language of a life fully lived.

One moment the wind is warm and the leaves of trees rustle with a soft whisper and in the next it gives you chill on your face, wiping off the sweat on your forehead. During one long and arduous climb to the mountaintop, I realized how heavy is our responsibility to take care of our Mother Earth. I realized how sacred is our relationship with the one that has provided for us the food and water we need to survive. When we talk about the mountains, oceans, and the skies we are necessarily talking about the sacred; when we talk about the sacred we are referring to the mute witnesses of this sacredness: the mountains, the oceans, the skies. And yet, this is one lesson that is not easy to learn. For here we are increasingly in the cloud of unknowing with respect to the care we ought to give Mother Earth and its mountains, oceans, skies. Here is a geography of carelessness. Here is a geography of pain too!

Increasingly and violently the skin of our Mother Earth (the Ina a Daga for the Ilokanos, and the Papahanaumoku for the Hawaiians) is being pierced and poisoned by the United States military. I do not say this lightly nor do I want to engage in a philosophical conversation. This abuse we inflict upon Mother Earth is not a mythology in the Western sense. This pain is real. And Mother Earth is hurting.

The pain is being felt here in Makua Valley and Waiakane Valley, among other places in Hawaii. It is felt in the Gulf of Mexico where thousands of barrels of oil continue to kill life in the waters, sky, and land. It is felt in the Ilokos and Mindanao where trees are being felled and shipped to the West. The largest and most merciless of the culprits is the U.S. military where it continues to bomb the face of our Mother Earth. One needs only to walk in Makua Valley where shrapnel and live bombs have yet to be cleaned up. These mountains and valleys hold in themselves the water of life. Again and again the mountains are drilled and put in pipes that divert unnaturally the water from one place to another, in the end starving the kalo (taro) farms of the natives so the U.S military can wash their laundry and keep those uniforms crisp and clean. This water is also used to keep green the many golf courses built on the living ancestral bones of the indigenous peoples of Hawaii. Can you imagine building a golf course over Punchbowl cemetery in Hawaii and Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D.C? What outrage will follow! To the U.S. Military life is cheap for the people in Hawaii, Okinawa and the Philippines.

The psalm of the Hebrews—a sacred text borrowed by the Christians—reminds us that we are made “intricately woven in the depths of the earth.” That is to say we are made of the same mud and dirt we inflict violence on. We inflict violence in the womb that gave birth to us. What a horrible way to die! Many have taken the popular route of recycling; setting multi-colored bins that separate recyclables and compost, paper, and plastic. I am not against this though the peace movement reminds us that ‘if the U.S. military does not stop polluting our earth it won’t matter how many of us recycle.’ The 10-cent reward will not heal the wounds of the land we live on; we must move beyond the evils of profit motive in dealing with our problems and relationships.

Because we value the land with less and less sacredness we in turn value our selves with less and less sacredness. On the same mountains and hills of Makua Valley you can see human shaped targets to be shot at with the most sophisticated weapons. A slogan like ‘one shot, one kill’ is used as motivation. A shot to the head is perfect, a shot to the heart will do. Soldiers are made to practice on human shaped targets so that life itself becomes a target; life itself is a threat; cardboard cutouts of human beings are made to condition the shooter to think that shooting the ‘enemy’ is like shooting a cardboard. And like the human shaped cardboard the ‘enemy’ has no best friends, no father and mother, no emotions of joy and sadness, no birthday parties to attend, it does not eat food, drink water or sleep to rest, only stand there waiting to be shot.

There are many who say that the U.S. military gives us our freedom. We should then ask what kind of freedom is worth killing other human beings over? What kind of freedom do we achieve by destroying our earth?

The Ilokanos say, Agbiag! as their own way of acknowledging that life as a value is an a priori one. Indeed, it is fitting to say Agbiag! and mean really, Long live! Agbiag! is the Ilokanos’ declaration that life needs to be affirmed, and always so.

Indeed we must always affirm all forms of life. And to affirm life is to practice peace. Peace can never be—can never come about—through the murder of innocent people and the rape of our Mother Earth—the greatest tragedies we have to bear with each day. But despite the horrible atrocities of human beings I continue to believe in the vast possibility of world peace.

In peace, we will have a chance to take care of Mother Earth, to nourish back to life this universe that has sustained human life.

In a conversation about peace, one of my friends remarked, “talk of peace is wonderful but imaginative at best.” The comment was meant to temper my idealism. But it also showed his cynical way of looking at life. That friend has accepted that there will always be war and assumes that it is part of human nature to be engaged in wars. He is wrong about war and he is wrong about our human nature. But he is right about peace—it is wonderful and imaginative. Peace must start from our great ability to imagine a reality that is empty of innocent lives sacrificed and the great earth torched.

Peace is not wishful thinking nor is it an abstruse philosophical treatise meant only for those wishing to be abstract or utopian—for those wishing to remain unengaged with the issues that affect our communities.

To practice peace is to practice what our great wisdom traditions and religions have been striving for—community, love, grieving, sovereignty, sharing, struggling.

To practice peace is to acknowledge that we have the right to our own body and land.

To practice peace is to speak freely the language of our ancestors in our homes, workplaces and schools.

To practice peace is to hold accountable the West in its excessive consumption of 75 percent of the world’s resources.

To practice peace is to first lay down our weapons without waiting for the ‘enemy’ to disarm.

To practice peace is to invoke not just our civil rights but our sovereignty rights—a right that goes beyond the U.S. constitution—a right that calls on the higher principle of love and self-determination for all peoples based on their relationship to the land.

To practice peace is to remember and continue our Ilokano and Hawaiian ancestors—Gabriela Silang, Father Jose Burgos, Jose Rizal, Queen Liliuokalani, Abigail Kuaihelani Maipinepine Campbell, Joseph Nawahi and the Kanaka Maoli nation—and their lived resistance to colonization and occupation.

Indeed we must acknowledge that we cannot be cultural practitioners if we do not continue the spirit of resistance started by our ancestors.

Finally, I say that peace is faith that has taken the leap of optimism into a reality that has yet to be unraveled. In other words, we must move and breath towards a reality that is not based on practicality but with creative, imaginative, and radical love.

Mahatma Ghandi once said, “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”

Our responsibility now is to sing the song of freedom and dance the dance of justice.