On Feb. 12, at Shaughnessy Heights United Church, there was a dialogue featuring Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan Kaplan, director of Inter-Religious Studies at Vancouver School of Theology, and Rev. Ray Aldred, director of VST\u2019s Indigenous Studies Program. Held under the rubric of Shaughnessy Heights\u2019 Reconciliation Matters initiative, The Teachings of the Land: Our Oldest Relative explored the spiritual relationships between people and land.<\/p>\n
Aldred, who is from Treaty 8 territory in northern Alberta, said his understanding of the land has been formed by his Cree upbringing and his life study of indigenous wisdom. Asked about the title of the talk, he said, \u201cFor us, the land is part of the family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kaplan spoke of the Jewish people\u2019s connection to the land of their birth, Israel. A self-described \u201cborn urbanite,\u201d she also spoke of her personal spiritual connections to the land \u2013 hiking in nature or learning from her husband how to grow food \u2013 and what she called the \u201ceco-theology\u201d of the Bible.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first chapter of Genesis takes us through the creation of an ecology, where everything is interconnected and blessed by the Divine,\u201d she explained. \u201cThe first human is called \u2018Adam\u2019 in Hebrew, which is not just a random pleasing sound, but comes from adamah<\/em>, red clay dirt, and means \u2018the red clay dirt person,\u2019 the \u2018earthling.\u2019 The Hebrew Bible is an indigenous text, which tells us \u2018how to walk well on the land,\u2019\u201d she said, using a phrase of Aldred\u2019s. \u201cThe Book of Leviticus, for instance, teaches us to consciously let the land rest \u2013 the commandment of Shmitah<\/em>, where the land has rest from farming every seven years. The Hebrew Bible teaches that the ecosystem belongs to God, not to us. It is not ours to come in and displace peoples and animals and to take what we want.\u201d<\/p>\n When Kaplan attended a course of Aldred\u2019s in 2016, she said she realized she was a \u201crank beginner\u201d in eco-spirituality. \u201cHunter-gatherers were specialists in sustainability,\u201d she said. \u201cThey were not primitive; they are the next level.\u201d<\/p>\n Kaplan also discussed the view of some that First Nations were one of the lost tribes of Israel, a view Aldred had also jokingly referred to earlier. Although lacking historical evidence to support it, commented Kaplan, \u201cit works as a metaphor for a similar history of displacement.\u201d<\/p>\n Aldred made another biblical allusion when speaking about how early Europeans were greeted by some Ojibwe as \u201cAnishinaabe<\/em>\u201d (which literally means \u201cpeople\u201d) but they refused the title. \u201cReminds me of another story about some other people who didn\u2019t want to be what they were created to be, but wanted to be God,\u201d Aldred commented with a grin, referring to the story of Adam and Eve.<\/p>\n Aldred spoke a lot about the need for humility and the renunciation of certainty in order to find a relationship both to land and to other people. \u201cYour perspective is always limited, it is always just \u2018your perspective.\u2019 You need other people, other creatures, to learn from. The Creator is giving us an opportunity to learn humility. If we miss that chance,\u201d Aldred warned, alluding again to a biblical text (Leviticus 18:28), \u201cthe land will spit you out.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about practices of connecting to the land, Kaplan suggested learning about the local ecosystem, spending time exploring it and getting to know the unique creatures who inhabit it. She also spoke about connecting to members of one\u2019s own tribe in order to cultivate a sense of home, and about getting to know the indigenous peoples of the area.<\/p>\n Aldred discussed the importance of really listening to the land so we can make better decisions as a community. Noting that Mary was Jesus\u2019 mother, he asked who Adam\u2019s mother was. \u201cThe earth was his mother, and the earth cared for him and cares for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Aldred also said that indigenous people reverse Maslow\u2019s hierarchy of human needs, which places basic needs like food and lodging on the bottom and spirituality and community at the top, as being less necessary. \u201cGet your spirituality right,\u201d said Aldred, \u201cand everything else will be right. Take care of your relationship to the land, and take care of your neighbours.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about the ownership and economic use of land, Aldred said, \u201cWe belong to the land, it doesn\u2019t belong to us.\u201d He noted that treaties, in the indigenous understanding, were less about the division of land than about how it should be shared. \u201cOf course, we should enjoy and make use of the gifts of the land,\u201d he said, \u201cbut, in our decisions, we should think seven generations ahead \u2013 that\u2019s 225 years into the future. That might take a little more time, but it\u2019s worth it to our grandchildren.\u201d<\/p>\n Matthew Gindin<\/strong> is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the <\/em>Forward and <\/em>All That Is Interesting, and has been published in <\/em>Religion Dispatches, <\/em>Situate Magazine, <\/em>Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Feb. 12, at Shaughnessy Heights United Church, there was a dialogue featuring Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan Kaplan, director of Inter-Religious Studies at Vancouver School of Theology, and Rev. Ray Aldred, director of VST\u2019s Indigenous Studies Program. Held under the rubric of Shaughnessy Heights\u2019 Reconciliation Matters initiative, The Teachings of the Land: Our Oldest Relative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6806,3956,218,2172],"class_list":["post-23274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local","tag-eco-theology","tag-first-nations","tag-judaism","tag-torah"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}