This is the fourth article in my series about our changing Earth from interviews with Native Americans shared in We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth, edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth (USA 2022). My presentation does not follow the order of the interviews.

#4: Shannon Rivers (Akimel O’otham) – Balance
      (Chapter 10, pp. 140-158)

Shannon Rivers, a member of the Akimel O’otham (River People), talked with Dahr and Stan in October 2020 from his humble office at the Indian Health Center in San Jose, California. Born in 1966 and raised on the Gila River Indian Community in Southern Arizona, he grew up in poverty, typical of Indigenous reservations.

His stepfather, who entered his life when he was about six or seven years old, was a Korean War veteran. He had an ugly hump on his shoulder from a bullet wound in his collarbone, which shattered and never healed correctly. He drank heavily every day, then awakened at 3 a.m. to work in the cotton fields in the Arizona heat, seven days a week. Though he sobered up around the time Shannon was twelve, there were still issues and dysfunction in the family.

Despite the extreme poverty of reservation life during his youth, Shannon’s parents decided to stay. Many Native families left, including many of his relatives, spreading across the country.

People were moving all over the country, people were leaving. And the reason why that story is significant, is that even then environmental and climate change were impacting those of us living along the Gila River. When the European settlers came, they started damming our rivers upstream, in towns like Florence, Arizona, and even further northeast of us.

Housing development in Phoenix and Tucson further destroyed the traditional ecosystems that kept the soil in place and hindered the spread of dust. This dust later caused a respiratory sickness known as Valley Fever. Without water and their traditional food crops, their way of life became impossible. So, incentivized by the government, the people relocated.

My mom said that she would not leave because her trauma from dealing with Christian and Catholic people was so devastating that she was afraid of them…. And my mom was a little girl when this happened to her, so my mom never left the reservation. Never. And she’s seventy-plus years old now, and she’ll more than likely die there.

Shannon’s family existed on government commodity foods. When they were lucky, they would also get beans, tortillas, and hot dogs. He pointed out that this is what happens to Native people when their environment is destroyed or altered. The destructive impacts from the climate crisis adds a new context to their situation.

There is a legacy of environmental destruction that has happened since the settlers landed in 1620. Since they came from the south in the 1500s, there has been a legacy of environmental destruction.

Though the Southern Arizona Water Rights Settlement Act (SAWRSA) was signed in 1982, it was not until 2008, after years of his tribe fighting back for their water rights, that President George W. Bush signed an executive order returning water to them. You can learn more about the major irrigation project that has restored water to the Gila River in a video (7:28 minutes) published by This American Land in 2018.

Shannon, too, left the reservation because there was nothing for him there. He considers himself one of the lucky ones among his friends to get out before being trapped in drug and alcohol addiction. With a degree in environmental science, he serves for several years now as a Native American Traditional Cultural Advisor to the Indigenous inmate populations at the county, state, and federal prisons in Arizona. He is also a delegate and participant at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) held at the UN headquarters in New York City. As co-chair for the Global Indigenous Peoples Caucus (GIPC), he has conducted and hosted lectures on the UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) at the State Capital in Arizona and for Arizona State University. He is also active in political and social justice actions in Central and South America.

In his work with incarcerated Indigenous people, Shannon talks about the balance of “natural law.”

[T]rying to be harmonious is the most difficult thing. The balance is already there. It’s us as human beings that are destroying this balance. It is us, the two-legged, that are constantly greedy and looking for something that can move us up the scale of economic stability.

Unlike the Western concept of asking God for forgiveness when we’ve done wrong, Native people have the concept of balance.

How do we balance ourselves?… So, we as Native people need to look beyond the concepts of a White, Christian, male patriarchy, because that destroys our balance with Mother Nature. Natural law influences our thinking, and this is why we must go back to it.

Shannon explained that being out of balance comes when we see each other and other life forms as separate beings.

We’re so out of balance that we will negotiate around whether it’s okay to cut through one of our sacred mountains back home to build a freeway. We’re so out of balance that we allow the government/state actors to come in and destroy our rain forest and our water systems.

He further emphasized the critical necessity of balance.

This [COVID-19] pandemic has shown how weak we are as a country, how weak we are as people, how unbalanced we are as people that we would argue against something like a pandemic and say, ‘No, I don’t want to wear a mask because it violates my sovereignty.’ No. If you had balance, you would understand.

Shannon stressed that it is time to listen to the people who know.

Listen to the Hopi, listen to the Navajo who tell us we are destroying the natural balance, the natural law of our spiritual relationship to that mountain [in Arizona]. As a human being, you’re trying to interfere with something that you shouldn’t interfere with, just to expand a ski resort, just to increase your economic growth, just to increase economic development in the city of Flagstaff [Arizona].

Shannon pointed to the contrast between how non-Native people see land as a resource linked to the economy, while Native people see it as a means of survival, and a way of living “for,” rather than “against.” Across our planet, we’re destroying ecosystems and elect political leaders who say:

Oh yeah, we agree with you, keep cutting those trees because we need our nice furniture. Let’s create this massive farm in the Amazon and cut down all these trees and build these cattle ranches.

He contrasted this mentality with the way in which Native people only took what was needed when they used to hunt buffalo and other wildlife.

That traditional ecological knowledge is not just based on ecosystems; it’s the way we try to balance ourselves with the animals and the plants and the water systems upon which our livelihood depends. It is how we survive, and how we have survived.

He also reiterated the concept of land ownership as contrary to the natural balance of who we are, and what we are in relation to Mother Earth. He cited the need for building community centers and gardens, which would take care of people and their families for generations to come.

For Native people worldwide, the struggle is great for those who are trying to maintain balance between our ecosystems and our economy.

They’re up against this huge machine of devastation, and that devastation is capitalism. Capitalism is a machine. It’s hungry and we keep feeding it, and we’re starving. We’re starving for something else other than capitalism. We’re starving to survive, and we’re starving for that balance. We’re starving for that prayer. We’re starving for that song.

We [Native Americans] are ecological warriors. Mother Earth will balance herself. Whether or not we get to see that balance, and whether or not it will happen in our lifetime, we don’t know. In the meantime, we have to slow the growth of this capitalist machine, and we have to stop it. We have to say, ‘Wait a minute, we’re destroying what we’re trying to build for our children.’

Thinking of his nephews and nieces that he loves deeply, Shannon added:

This probably won’t happen in my lifetime. Justice is a slow process, right? Justice through the lens of Indigenous people that have that moral compass, that have that idea of balance, that have that idea of relationship building and interconnectedness between the Earth and our love for our fellow two-legged and four-legged and winged brothers and sisters. That’s the moral compass that I believe that we bring into the prison systems, and that we bring to the reservations. I believe that we can bring it to people around the world.

*  *  *  *  *  *

Have I achieved the kind of balance with Mother Nature that Shannon describes? I’ve a sense of our spiritual interconnectedness with each other and with non-human life. I know that our survival depends not only on combined human effort, but also on the diverse ecosystems and planetary systems of Spaceship Earth. Yet, I cannot claim that I live in harmony with Mother Nature. I’m part of the “capitalist machine.”

In my elder years, it’s easy to consume only what is essential for my health and well-being. My adult sons take care of their own needs. I’ve no grandchildren or grandnieces and nephews clamoring for the latest toy or techno gadget. For several years now, I’ve committed to a vegetarian diet. I conserve water and energy, though the energy company thinks I can do better. I splurge on buying printed books (not good for the trees) and garden supplies (not good for its plastic packaging).

I’m an urban dweller, pampered by the ease of buying what I need in large grocery stores and shopping malls. Plastic is everywhere. I re-use and re-purpose, wherever possible. To live plastic-free remains out-of-reach. I cannot give up trying to do better.

Through the ways of living that we’ve created for ourselves since the Industrial Revolution, we humans have caused an imbalance in the planetary systems that make life possible on Earth. More and more extreme weather events will continue to upend our lives. Fighting among ourselves, building walls and fences, exterminating others to seize their lands, coveting foreign oil and rare earth mineral reserves, amassing billions of dollars in personal wealth, and fantasizing of colonizing a distant dead planet will not save us from the fury of Mother Nature that we’ve unleashed. 

We all have to do better. There’s too much at stake.

Click on links below for previously featured interviews:

#1: Raquel Ramirez (Ho-Chunk, Ojibwe, Lenca) – Awareness
#2: Alexii Sigona (Amah Mutsun) – Stewardship
#3: Terri Delahanty (Cree) – Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine