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Indigenous Culture
When Nature Is Larger Than Life
Imagine the humbling pause each of us felt to behold the faces of three naked and bruised whales just a few inches away from our own. For two solid weeks the global village never lost eye contact with these three neighborly ambassadors representing the mysterious tribe of great whales.
January 1992Bad Magic: The Failure Of Technology
An Interview With Jerry Mander
In this culture, we have science and technology as religion. We no longer have a religious or philosophical basis for making choices regarding the evolution of technology. All those decisions are made in the corporate world.
November 1991The White Man’s Vision-Quest Journal
It was dark by the time we got to camp. I felt as though I were entering another time zone. There were campfires and tepees set up. (Just as you had envisioned, Sarah, when you predicted that I would be traveling to Dakota!)
August 1991The Marvelous Adventure Of Cabeza De Vaca
In the days that followed, in my first desolate confrontation with slaughter, I saw a far-off light, heard a far-off strain of music. Such words serve as well as any: for what words can describe a happening in the shadows of the soul?
March 1991Defending What You Love
An Interview With Edward Abbey
But still, when all other means fail, we are morally justified — not merely justified, but morally obligated — to defend that which we love by whatever means are available. If my family, my life, my children were attacked, I wouldn’t hesitate to use violence to defend them. By the same principle, if land I love is being violated, raped, plundered, murdered, and all political means to save it have failed, I feel that sabotage is morally justifiable.
August 1990Descent Into The Mother
This Mother appears in many cultures as a two-sided figure capable of both creation and destruction, of nurturing and annihilating. When we give ourselves over to the Mother we have no individuality, no consciousness.
July 1990The Legacy Of The Wild
An Interview With Gary Snyder
Another way of seeing the world would be to say our monuments would be our wild areas. Leaving behind wilderness for the future would be the monument of our civilization.
April 1990The Trip To Manmad And Other Stories
This dusty, hot Saturday, I have the privilege of meeting a very significant person: a mad, starving, nearly naked little girl who picks through the garbage outside a whorehouse on the outskirts of a dusty Indian town.
March 1990Elmer Slow Bear
In a man of his size and complexion, however, many found the reserve unnerving. Mr. Cody, the history teacher, referred to him in private — with more than slightly nervous humor — as “My Bad Conscience.” Also, as “Doom.” Most people called him Elmer, and stayed out of his way.
December 1989Separate Vacations (Voyeurs In A Strange Land)
I was aware early on that we were on separate vacations, you in a sun-drenched country on the cusp of the rainy season, and I as lost as a piece of luggage, fallen into some dark, sludgy place, a certain waxy glaze over everything.
September 1989
