One of the surreal things about the environmental apocalypse is that we see it coming. In fact, it is already here. The polar ice is melting. Water levels are rising. Weather patterns are changing. Droughts and storms are intensifying. Crops are failing. Yet even as reports like [the IPCC's] keep coming out, sounding the alarm over and over like the ringing of a bell, our response is slow, almost sporadic, as affluent nations seek to meet the crisis while maintaining their standard of living. In the meantime, poorer nations continue to destroy their own ecology in an attempt to reach those inflated standards. A truly united, consistent and sustainable response eludes us. We seem stuck in the headlights of an oncoming disaster without knowing how to move. Perhaps the Dreamer can show us an answer. Not in more scientific reports but in a spiritual shift of the heart. In the covenant at the core of the Washani creed, Smohalla employed very graphic language to describe Mother Earth. He equated the relationship between earth and humans being with the reality of any mother who has given birth and raised children. He described activities such as mining or farming as a violation of her body. In this way, Smohalla like many other Native American prophets sought to anthropomorphize the earth as a living being with whom we have a very intimate relationship. He used dramatic language precisely because his opponents, the American business and military interests, used just the reverse: they sought to negotiate on the basis of inanimate objects, natural resources, and financial quantifiablity. There was no room in their worldview for a personal relationship with the land or the rivers. They were just things. Things to be plowed up, cut down, or dug out. The utilitarian vision of the environment was as far as they could, or were willing, to see.
--We Survived the End Of The World: Lessons from Native America on Apocalypse and Hope by Steven Charleston