Learning the value of respect on Haida Gwaii

By David Suzuki

I spent a week around July 1 in a cabin on one of Haida Gwaii's remote islands. I was there to celebrate a birthday – not Canada's, but my grandson's second. And what a blessed time it was, hanging out with him without the distractions of email, phone calls, or television.

When I got involved with First Nations communities in remote areas, one of the first lessons I learned was about the importance of respect. Without respect for each other, we don't listen and we fail to learn. Instead, we try to engage in conversations set within the perspective of our values, beliefs, and ideas. It's what led to the depredation of Europeans in the Americas, Africa, and Australia. It's what led to catastrophic disasters when explorers failed to listen and learn from local people during expeditions to the Arctic, down the Nile, and into the Amazon.

But respect should extend beyond our fellow humans, to all the green things that capture the sun's energy and power the rest of life on Earth, to the birds, the fish, the rivers and oceans, the clouds and sky, to all the things that make this planet home and nurture our species.

It rained every day but one on Hotsprings Island where we stayed. It's a rainforest, and that's to be expected. We dressed for it and went out at low tide to tickle geoduck siphons. My grandson squealed with delight as each clam ejected a jet of water to withdraw into the mud. The jumble of seaweed at water's edge formed an astonishing collage of colour and shape, and we peered under leaves to find crabs, sculpins, and starfish.

I was overwhelmed with the thought that this diverse miniature community of animals and plants had flourished for millennia, co-existing and interacting in ways we have yet to discover. All over the world, life has found ways to survive and thereby enable human beings to exploit the abundance and productivity that developed within diverse ecosystems.

Human beings are a clever animal, able to overcome our deficits in size, speed, strength, and sensory abilities with curiosity and inventiveness. We now know we're not alone as tool makers, but no other species has been blessed with the incredible resourcefulness and creativity to make tools such as ours.  To read more go to www.leamingtonpostandshopper.com.