Project Link: https://sacredheadwaters.substack.com/
Sacred Headwaters is a bi-weekly newsletter that aims to guide a co-learning process about the existential issues and planetary limitations facing humanity and about how we can reorient civilization in a way that will enable us to thrive for centuries to come.
The goal of this newsletter is to provide a deeper understanding of the issues, what’s at stake, and how we might approach mitigating them, up to and including restructuring our civilization to live within the bounds of the earth system. Each newsletter will include an annotated list of articles — targeting one or so hours of reading every two weeks (it’s a bit closer to two this week) — and a book recommendation. Feel free to bite off as much as you can chew. I hope these readings will help you understand and explore what a meaningful and sustainable life looks like and encourage discussion and dissemination of information about the ecological crises confronting humanity.
What’s in a Name?
The Sacred Headwaters — or Klabona — is a region of northwest British Columbia in Canada; it is a vast wilderness, one of the most biodiverse regions in Canada, and the source of three of North America’s largest salmon-bearing rivers. It’s also under constant threat of industrial development, including, most recently, massive-scale open pit mining that puts the entire ecosystem at risk. The Sacred Headwaters is emblematic of the overarching challenge we are facing — learning how to live within earth’s means as part of the earth system instead of separate from it, depleting it. It’s also a place where we can find lessons about how to do that. The First Nations have lived there for thousands of years, harvesting salmon and other natural resources in a sustainable cycle. Indigenous culture has much to teach us about what real sustainability looks like, and we need to open our minds to every learning opportunity if we’re going to continue inhabiting the earth for the foreseeable future.
Interested?
Head to the newsletter website to subscribe and if you find it valuable, share with friends and colleagues.
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