Sustainable/Sustainability/Sustaining
The popular American consciousness began to consider sustainability “in three distinct periods” since World War II, but this project is most concerned with the third wave, which “began in the mid 1980s and focused on transnational issues such as global warming, biodiversity, ozone depletion, and acid rain” (Allen 33). This third period revealed the conflict between environmentalist goals and that of economic developers to the American mainstream consciousness, and birthed the idea of “sustainable development”. As defined by the National Commission on the Environment, sustainable development is “a strategy for improving the quality of life while preserving the environmental potential for the future” (Allen 33, cite deeper tho). While sustainable development was first recognized by Western power structures only a few decades ago, sustainable living and agriculture have not only been on the minds of Black and Indigenous communities for millennia but are central tenets to farming practices and cultural traditions.
Westerners generally understand sustainability “as a corrective, a counterbalance, and directly tied to climate change,” but what if sustainability and sustainable living and development were understood as a tradition of nourishment and an opportunity for continued sustenance for our descendants instead of a restricted way of life as a way to correct our mistakes (Jeremy L. Caradonna 3)? For Patty Loew, author of Seventh Generation Earth Ethics, understanding the Native American conservationists, land stewards, and activists through a strictly “‘environmentalist’ label was too limiting and not really accurate,” instead using sustainability as a term that is grounded in a desire to nurture the future of both the environment and the Native nations they’re a part of (xi loew). Instead, sustainability can be understood as something grounded in the Ojibwe Seventh Generation Philosophy, which “cautions decision makers to consider how their actions will affect seven generations into the future” and other Native cultural traditions (xv loew). Indigenous models of sustainability understand that preserving the integrity of the land and ecosystems we are a part of is just as important as preserving the cultural practices of ancestors for descendants to inherit and continue.
The root of sustainability and sustainable is sustain, which is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “1. To give support or relief to / 2. To supply with sustenance: nourish … 4. To support the weight of,” and so on (merriam webster). Sustaining—and sustainable living in turn—entails not only the continuance of something for future benefit, but the ability to receive nourishment and sustenance in the present. Building a sustainable future requires us to first create sustaining environments in the present, which in turn requires a return to the principles of Indigenous agrarian traditions, hunting, fishing, foraging, and other methods of living off the land that have existed in ecological harmony and fueled cultural ideals of nourishment and healing.
