Start saving the planet "in your backyard"

"The truth is not inconvenient -- it is deadly"

Dr. Wildcat speaks to a group at the Plaza
library on April 21, 2010.

Dr. Daniel Wildcat spoke to an audience of 130 people in the Truman room at the Plaza library April 21, reading at length from his book "Red Alert!: Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge." He commented on a range of topics from climate change, to the contradictions of development and "progress," and how Native Americans are especially equipped to provide advice on changing course on solving the crisis.

"The status quo is not good enough," he emphasized, suggesting at several points that the book is not a romanticized report on Indigenous experience and traditions, but challenged people to "start in your backyard" in observing and acting on the climate crisis.

Some of us have so well-insulated ourselves from the inconvenient and uncomfortable features of the natural world, we fail to see that in the process we have isolated ourselves from the convenient, comfortable, and beautiful features of that same natural world of which we are one very small, but powerful, and now destructive part. (from Red Alert!, page 10)

(from left) Cheyanne Ingram, Executive Director of the
Heart of America Indian Center (HAIC), Ken Forbes,
HAIC food pantry coordinator, Dan Wildcat, and Joel
Jones, Plaza library manager.

He honored Indian elders and academic and environmental colleagues in the book and during the talk. He also recognized Haskell Indian Nations University students, who "expect more than their parents" in working for economic and environmental justice.

Wildcat was encouraged to see more than half the audience raise their hands to his question "how many are growing tomatoes?," acknowledging the importance of taking small steps in communities to grow food.

Dr. Wildcat highlighted recent success in protecting life at sacred places, such as blocking efforts to build a long pipeline to transport water for making artificial snow at Snowbowl resort in the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona. He also acknowledged how Haskell students and others have halted the building of the South Lawrence Trafficway through the sacred sites and wetlands just south of the Haskell campus. "How do we save sacred sites? We use legal, economic vehicles," Wildcat noted, adding "it's not just about the sites, it's about protecting life -- animals, plants in those places."

Wildcat donated proceeds from the book sales to the Heart of America Indian Center in Kansas City.

Teddy Tatum (left), HAIC
board member and Nori
at the Red Alert!
book reading April 21.

Cheyanne Ingram, Executive Director of the center spoke about the history, programs, and activities of the center before introducing Wildcat. She recalled her own connection to Haskell as a student of Dr. Wildcat's.

The center provides important social services and programs for Native American community members, plus provides cultural activities and meeting places. Cheyanne pointed out that the center is growing and continues to serve a more active community.

Humility, not hubris, is the personal characteristic most associated with our knowledge-bearers, faith-keepers, and wisdom-keepers in North American indigenous traditions, a humbleness that acknowledges how pitiful we humans are in the big picture of life on Earth. We need a lot of help to become competent, mature members of humankind and our larger, more extensive ecological kinship relations.
    Yet how can any member of the species that is responsible for the monumental destruction of so much life on the planet during the last two hundred years make any claim to saving the planet? To be honest, we, humankind alone, cannot make such a claim. We will have to call on the help of our relatives. (from Red Alert!, page 135)