During the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, Dahr Jamail – an American award-winning journalist and environmental advocate – and Stan Rushworth – an elder and retired teacher of Cherokee descent living in Northern California – interviewed several people from different North American Indigenous cultures and communities, generations, and geographic. Their featured collection of interviews offers us a wide variety of perspectives on a much more integrated relationship to Earth and all human and non-human beings.

Turtle Island is a term used by some Indigenous peoples, primarily those in North America, to refer to the continent. This name stems from various Indigenous creation stories which describe the landmass as being formed on the back of a giant turtle. The concept of Turtle Island is deeply significant in many Native American cultures as it reflects their spiritual beliefs and relationship with Mother earth.

As inhabitants of these lands for thousands of generations before the arrival of European conquistadores and colonizers, Native Americans carry in their ancestral memories the rise and fall of great civilizations before ours. They have much to teach us about surviving collapse and healing our broken relationship with Mother Earth.

While ExxonMobil led the charge and narrative in denying global warming by the burning of fossil fuels, Indigenous leaders alerted political leaders of this new threat to Mother Earth. The following quotations are taken from the chapter “Early Warnings” in the featured book We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth (USA, 2022, pp. xi-xxi).

In 1976, perturbed by the continued destruction on Mother Earth, threatening humanity’s existence, Hopi Elder Thomas Banyacya (1909-1999) addressed the United Nations Habitat Forum in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada:

The time has come to join in meaningful action. Destruction of all land and life is taking place and accelerating at a rapid pace. Our Native land is continuing to be torn apart and raped of its sacredness by the corporate powers of this nation…. We do have an alternative to this. Mankind has a chance to change the direction of this movement, do a roundabout turn, and move in the direction of peace, harmony, and respect for land and life. The time is right now. Later will be too late.

In 1977, Muskogee-Creek Elder Phillip Deere (1929-1985) went to the United Nations in Geneva to deliver his message about the right relationship towards Mother Earth and the consequences of violating that relationship. In his 1978 speech, called “An Understood Law,” he said that the lack of respect for the natural world and its peoples could not work, either for itself, its constituents, or its habitats.

I see, in the future, perhaps this civilization is coming near to the end. For that reason, we have continued with the instructions of our ancestors…. This society is confused. I can see that as a bystander…. A confused society cannot exist forever. The first people who came here were lost. They are still yet lost!

In 1982, Mohawk Chief Jake Swamp-Tekaronianeken (1940-2010) founded the Tree of Peace Society, choosing the white pine tree as a symbol of the Haudenosaunee people. His message was one of healing. He often spoke of the grief carried by almost all people of the First Nations here and worldwide, a grief born in all the destruction that has ensued and their separation from each other and the natural world.

In 1990, the Kogi people of highland Colombia reached out to the BBC to produce a documentary film to share with the world, From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brothers’ Warning. Their vision of the adverse effects of colonization made them break self-imposed isolation long enough to sound their warning. 

The Great Mother created the world in water. She makes the future in it. This is how she speaks to us. We look after Nature. We are the mamas [seers/leaders of the community] and do this here. And we mamas see that you are killing it by what you do. We can no longer repair the world. You must. You are uprooting the Earth. And we are divining to discover how to teach you to stop.

We Are the Middle of Forever places Indigenous voices at the center of conversations about today’s environmental crisis. The twenty interviews in this collection are presented in the order of their occurrence, not by theme: strength, a sense of permanence, living from the heart, awareness, trust, and more. In the coming months, I will feature the insights and ancestral wisdom shared by each participant for consideration.

On January 7, 2026, our current leadership issued a Presidential Memorandum withdrawing the United States from sixty-six international organizations, conventions, and treaties that are contrary to the interests of our nation. All organizations dealing with climate change, the environment, and related issues are on the list:

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
• International Renewable Energy Agency
• UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries
• UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UFCCC).

When you sell your soul to Big Oil, you’ve got to deliver.

Faced with yet another setback in global collaboration and cooperation, we the People of Earth cannot afford to flounder. Our children, grandchildren, and future generations are counting on us to repair our abusive and broken relationship with Mother Earth. As the Kogi people repeatedly admonished in their 1990 documentary film:

Think, think, think of the Great Mother. At night before you sleep…think what you’re going to do the next day. What things need to be done and how you’re going to do them. Think it through.