As renowned Indigenous architect Douglas Cardinal said:
Before the Europeans came and imposed their “market economy” on this land, the Indigenous peoples had adopted the maternal economy, the “gift economy” based on loving and caring for each other. This was the basis of communication, language and trade. Status in the Indigenous cultures depended not on how many resources one acquired and kept; on the contrary, status depended on how much one could give to others. It reinforced the value that human beings were loving spirits clothed in flesh.
Their societies respected the contribution of women and the elders who gifted the children and the community as a whole, with the stories of the people and the wisdom of their culture. They moulded their society around gift-giving. They lived seeking constant equilibrium with nature-based environments seeking to take only what was needed to balance life with others, including all life-givers and Mother Earth herself.
They saw that the resources of the water, land and the air were gifts from our Mother Earth and the Creator of all life in this amazing blue planet where we are all connected.
The greed and selfishness of the patriarchal system goes further; how has this society treated our Mother, the Earth? Her bountifulness is gifting us with everything we need. How do we reciprocate?
The system voraciously exploits her gift to the point that we are destroying all life on this planet. Through our waste and pollution, we are annihilating the life of the oceans, the forest, the land, the air. The system is creating destruction, with our ravenous factories and irresponsibly built environment.
This is the market’s idea of “progress.” How to heat up our planet until we kill our host Mother Earth, so that humanity extinguishes alongside.
Loving, caring, encouragement, respect, gratitude, humbleness … these are the elements humans require when facing difficulties… we can only survive when we concentrate on loving and caring for others. When we give the supplies available to people that need these resources to survive, so that we can all lay the foundation for our future.
We must understand that we have put life on this planet in jeopardy and we can only survive the crisis we have created by returning to the maternal economy of the Indigenous gift-giving worldview, which kept the resources in balance and harmony with the natural environment.