Shamanic Wisdom for the Anthropocene Age
We are living in the Anthropocene age: the new epoch of geological time in which human activity is considered such a powerful influence on the environment, climate and ecology of the planet that it will leave its legacy for millennia. The Anthropocene is notable as being human-influenced, or anthropogenic, based on overwhelming global evidence that atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric and other Earth system processes are now altered by humans. In the Anthropocene, humans move from a biological to a geological agent. The Anthropocene is distinguished as a new period after or within the Holocene, the current epoch, which began approximately 10,000 years ago (about 8000 BC) with the end of the last glacial period.
Now that the age during which all human civilization developed is ending, it might be time to pay more attention to the experience of those whose world has already ended -- indigenous peoples. Depending on how you count them, there may be up to three hundred million indigenous people still on the planet. Most are survivors of colonialism. The genocide of the Native Americans was the beginning of the modern world for Europeans, but the former remain as veritable end of the world experts. Models for restoring our relationship with the Earth exist in the cultures of indigenous peoples, whose values and skills have enabled them to survive centuries of invasion and exploitation. Read more.
