Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with NatureOsprey OrielleLake. Ashland, OR: White Cloud Press, 2010.

Abstract

Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature Osprey Orielle Lake. Ashland, OR: White Cloud Press, 2010. Principally informed by her experiences living along Northern California's Mendocino County coast, her artist's perception of the world and numerous crosscultural journeys, Uprising for the Earth shares Osprey Orielle Lake's vision for a necessary greening of human cultures. In grounding her vision, Lake discerns models of creative equilibrium in nature, which are supported by diversity and gender-balance. She contends that the current ecological crisis is calling on all of us to personally integrate such participatory models, rediscover our indigenous senses and reconnect all our human cultures with nature. Lake argues that the required act is one of reconnection because all of us necessarily came from cultures that, like aboriginal cultures in the United States, at one time lived in harmony with the rhythm of nature. She holds that recovering this proper sense of our place within nature points the way forward for our cultures today. It is through such means that Lake hopes we will come to see the folly of the smooth, easy highway of over consumption that we have set ourselves upon, which is leading towards planetary ruin, so that diverse positive paths, though smaller and less defined, can come together to form an Earth-honoring global human culture. A key rejoinder for Lake is that this Earth-honoring global culture would not erase human or biological diversity as per the trends in consumer culture today. Indeed, according to her vision, local cultural stories are required to contribute to the grand story that would sustain the Earth-honoring global culture as a life-enhancing partnership. In the face of domination and destructive models of human organization, technology could help establish the communicative linkages that are necessary to share alternative and hopeinspiring stories. For instance, she cites the networking potential of the internet in this regard. However, Lake also emphasizes that it cannot be a TV documentary about nature or cultural diversity that brings about the required transformation. Beyond TV, there is urgent need for actual physical encounters with nature and the human other to foster the necessary cultural renewal to effectively respond to the grave sustainability problem at hand. Simply put, we need more stargazing time, story time, hiking time, tree time, wilderness time and less screen time in office cubicles so that we can learn from each other and from nature in order to re-awaken the creative imagination required to carry our cultures into a sustainable future. …