One of the things I do with kids is, what do you do to welcome each season? And what are you grateful for? Because I mean the larger message in this country is, ‘Oh, November is gratitude month and we think about Thanksgiving,’ and then we’re pulling out these fake myths about the Wampanoag people and Thanksgiving, and it’s like, no, just learn to practice gratitude on a yearly basis, right. Every day, every month, every season. All humans come from tribal peoples, and there are definitely certain groups that have evolved away from that.
But if you look at that and you are attached to giving thanks for that sun coming up, that allows you to live. If the sun does not come up and does not create photosynthesis with plants, you’re not living. There’s such a chain-reaction of all these different things, right? If it does not warm the earth, then you are not able to move around. There are many very basic things that we do not put emphasis on, and I think that’s why we have the climate change crisis that we do now.
It’s that we’re very much — in a broader sense — divorced from and detached from what sustains us, and what sustains our lives. But the more attached you are to being grateful for those things, the more you want to protect them.
