My daughter leapt into the world

After nine months of uterine back flips

(and back pain)

Writing graffiti

on the walls of her womb

Head-first-diving into life

like a supernova.

*

My daughter dove into existence

on a day when all over the world

people were dying before they lived

not paying attention to their wide, wondrous world.

She cried out to them

(I heard her)

Wake up! I am here!

*

My daughter brought forth her world on a day like any other:

the wide, soft earth cried out beneath the suffering of her children

who–some of them–took their blink-of-an-eye existence & danced upon suffering

singing Calliopean songs of rebirth.

Even on the day her father tearfully called his mother

sitting by his brother’s deathbed.

We needed some good news, she said.

*

My daughter brought forth an entire universe

from her speck-of-dust soul–

We had waited so long for her:

Since the day I saw her mother,

on that porch,

drinking homemade wine

So many years ago

*

Since the day when I watched my own little brother

(my daughter will do better than I did)

come home from the hospital

Since the days when the ancestors wandered over seas and mountains

to lose themselves

and to find

Each other.

*

Still longer, we have waited:

Since the days when the entire universe was written

in a single book

–the original speck-of-dust–

& danced its dance, sang its song

& wrote its new poem: stars pressed across the sky

(is this what you painted on the walls of your womb?)

*

& now, you are here:

Like the rest, you will get only a blink of an eye

(I cannot lie)

but we’ve waited for you so long

to sing your Calliopean song.

We needed some good news:

& you are it.

September 18, 2013

From the website of a student of Brian Swimme’s; https://theodorerichards.com/http:/theodorerichards/the-day-my-daughter-was-born-part-ii-a-gestational-epic

New Zealand—Aotearoa, as it is known to the indigenous Maori people—the Whanganui River is now a legal person. Photo By Aidan

In a land where corporations are considered people, it’s a bit of a leap to imagine nature attaining the same status. But as Brendan Kennedy reports for Cultural Survival Quarterly (December 2012), in New Zealand—Aotearoa, as it is known to the indigenous Maori people—the Whanganui River is now a legal person.

“Indigenous peoples around the world often struggle with governments that do not recognize their view of the natural environment,” writes Kennedy. Where the Maori strive to conserve and enhance, non-Maori typically seek to industrialize and maximize profit. Thus, indigenous worldviews often directly conflict with non-indigenous practices of property ownership. Awarding the river personhood status, then, is a significant victory for the Maori.

According to the new agreement, the river will have two guardians—one appointed by the Whanganui Iwi tribe and one by the British Crown—that promote the physical, ecological, spiritual, and cultural rights of the river.

Such an agreement has few precedents, however. While the news brings hope, Kennedy warns of the possibility that the river’s guardians might restrict Whanganui Iwi rights to the river with no room for recourse. Still, he calls the agreement cause for “cautious optimism as Indigenous Peoples continue to fight for the recognition of their views of the natural world.”

Here is another article about this river and topic: https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/i-am-river-and-river-me-implications-river-receiving

May 24, 2013

Dolphins gain unprecedented protection in India

India has officially recognized dolphins as non-human persons, whose rights to life and liberty must be respected. Dolphin parks that were being built across the country will instead be shut down.

India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests has advised state governments to ban dolphinariums and other commercial entertainment that involves the capture and confinement of cetacean species such as orcas and bottlenose dolphins. In a statement, the government said research had clearly established cetaceans are highly intelligent and sensitive, and that dolphins “should be seen as ‘non-human persons’ and as such should have their own specific rights.”

The move comes after weeks of protest against a dolphin park in the state of Kerala and several other marine mammal entertainment facilities which were to be built this year. Animal welfare advocates welcomed the decision.

“This opens up a whole new discourse of ethics in the animal protection movement in India,” said Puja Mitra from the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations (FIAPO). Mitra is a leading voice in the Indian movement to end dolphin captivity.

Indian officials say it is morally unacceptable to exploit cetaceans in commercial entertainment

“The scientific evidence we provided during the campaign talked about cetacean intelligence and introduced the concept of non-human persons,” she said in an interview with DW.

Indiais the fourth country in the world to ban the capture and import of cetaceans for the purpose of commercial entertainment – along with Costa Rica, Hungary, and Chile.

Dolphins are persons, not performers

The movement to recognize whale and dolphins as individuals with self-awareness and a set of rights gained momentum three years ago in Helsinki, Finland when scientists and ethicists drafted a Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans. “We affirm that all cetaceans as persons have the right to life, liberty and well-being,” they wrote.

Dolphins are naturally playful and curious, which has made them popular with aqurium visitors

The signatories included leading marine scientist Lori Marino who produced evidence that cetaceans have large, complex brains especially in areas involved in communication and cognition. Her work has shown that dolphins have a level of self-awareness similar to that of human beings. Dolphins can recognize their own reflection, use tools and understand abstract concepts. They develop unique signature whistles allowing friends and family members to recognize them, similar to the way human beings use names.

“They share intimate, close bonds with their family groups. They have their own culture, their own hunting practices – even variations in the way they communicate,” said FIAPO’s Puja Mitra.

But it is precisely this ability to learn tricks and charm audiences that have made whales and dolphins a favorite in aquatic entertainment programs around the world.

Seaworld slaughter

Disposable personal income has increased in India and there is a growing market for entertainment. Dolphin park proposals were being considered in Delhi, Kochi and Mumbai.

India’s growing middle class is hungry for entertainment

“There’s nothing like having a few animals on display, particularly ones that are so sensitive and intelligent as these dolphins,” said Belinda Wright from the Wildlife Protection Society of India in an interview with DW. “It’s a good money making proposition.”

But audiences are usually oblivious to the documented suffering of these marine performers.

“The majority of dolphins and whales in captivity have been sourced through wild captures in Japan, in Taiji, in the Caribbean, in the Solomon Islands and parts of Russia. These captures are very violent,” Mitra explained.

“They drive groups of dolphins into shallow bay areas where young females whose bodies are unmarked and are thought to be suitable for display are removed. The rest are often slaughtered.”

Mitra argued that the experience of captivity is tantamount to torture. She explained that orcas and other dolphins navigate by using sonar signals, but in tanks, the reverberations bounce off the walls, causing them “immense distress”. She described dolphins banging their heads on the walls and orcas wearing away their teeth as they pull at bars and bite walls.

Tanks terminated

In response to the new ban, the Greater Cochin Development Authority (CGDA) told DW that it has withdrawn licenses for a dolphin park in the city of Kochi, where there have been massive animal rights demonstrations in recent months.

Will the ban on captive dolphin exploitation lead to more protection for other highly intelligent non-humans?

“It is illegal now,” said N. Venugopal, who heads the CGDA. “It is over. We will not allow it anymore.”

He said the government hadn’t lost money on the development but declined to comment on how much the dolphin park was worth.

Boost for Ganges River dolphin

It’s possible that India’s new ban on cetacean captivity will lead to renewed interest in protecting the country’s own Ganges River dolphin.

“I hope this will put some energy into India’s Action Plan for the Gangetic Dolphin, which is supposed to run until 2020,” said Belinda Wright from the Wildlife Protection Society of India. “But there’s been very little action.

She said the ban was a good first stop, but warned against excessive optimism. “I’m very proud that India has done this,” she said. “I’m not trying to be cynical but I have been a conservationist in India for four decades. One gets thrilled with the wording, but I don’t think it’s going to turn to the tables.”

“But dolphins for now are safe from dolphinariums, and that’s a good thing,” she added.

1. The universe, the solar system, and the planet Earth in themselves and in their evolutionary emergence constitute for the human community the primary revelation of that mystery whence all things came into being.

2. The universe is a unity, an interacting and genetically-related community of beings bound together in an inseparable relationship in space and time. The unity of Earth is especially clear: each being of the planet is profoundly implicated in the existence and functioning of every other being of the planet.

3. From its beginning, the universe is a psychic as well as a physical reality.

4. The three basic laws of the universe at all levels of reality are differentiation, subjectivity  and communion. These laws identify the reality, the values and the directions in which the universe is proceeding.

5. The universe has a violent as well as a harmonious aspect, but it is consistently creative in the larger arc of its development.

6. The human is that being in whom the universe activates, reflects upon, and celebrates itself in conscious self-awareness.

7. Earth, within the solar system, is a self-emergent, self-propagating, self-educating, self-governing, self-healing, self-fulfilling community. All particular life systems in their being, their sexuality, their nourishment, their education, their governing, their healing, and their fulfilling must integrate their functioning within this larger complex of mutually dependent earth systems.

8. Genetic coding is the process through which the world of the living articulates itself in its being and its activities. The great wonder of the creative interaction of the multiple codings among themselves.

9. At the human level, genetic coding mandates a further trans-genetic cultural coding by which specifically human qualities find expression. Cultural coding is carried on my educational processes.

10. The emergent process of the universe is irreversible and non-repeatable in the existing world order. The movement from non-life to life on the planet earth is a one-time event. So too, the movement from life to the human form of consciousness. So also the transition from the earlier to the later forms of human culture.

11. The historical sequence of cultural periods can be identified as the tribal-shamanic period, the Neolithic village period, the classical civilizational period, the scientific-technological period, and the emerging ecological period (Ecozoic Era).

12. The main human task of the immediate future is to assist in activating the inter-communion of all the living and non-living components of the earth community in what can be considered the emerging ecological period (Ecozoic Era) of Earth development.

Used with permission of Thomas Berry

(This list also appears in Thomas Berry and the New Cosmology, ed. By Anne Lonegran & Caroline Richards, Twenty-Third Publications, Mystic, CT, USA, 1988, pgs 107-108)