Belonging: A Culture of Place by bell hooks Read Free Book Online

groaning for redemption, for release form fear, guardedness, a state of alertedness, a predatory state. Nature longs for release. Creation groans for deliverance like the humanity that inhabits it. In the biblical book of Romans we are told, “The creation itself will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).
    As we work to redeem nature, to rescue and preserve our natural environment so that future generations may be at home here we claim our own salvation as witnesses and as custodians. Writing about integrating her Native American and European ancestry in the essay, “Becoming Metis,” Melissa Nelson tells us how a commitment to deep ecology was a perspective that served her even as it was the more holistic visions offered by Native traditions which provided for her a spiritual, philosophical, and political foundation from which to grow. She explains: “To indigenous peoples, the basic tenets of deep ecology are just a reinvention of very ancient principles that they have been living by for millennia before their ways were disrupted, and in many cases destroyed, by colonial forces. To learn who I am today, on this land, I live on, I’ve had to recover that heritage and realize a multicultural self…By studying the process others have gone through to embrace the cultural richness of diverse backgrounds, I have come to understand the importance of decolonizing my mind.” We must all decolonize our minds in Western culture to be able to think differently about nature, about the destruction humans cause.
    With prophetic vision Enrique Salmon explains in “Sharing Breath” that “Cultural Survival can be measured by the degree to which cultures maintain a relationship with their bioregions. Ecologists and conservation biologists recognized an important relationship between cultural diversity and biological diversity…. Cultural histories speak the language of the land. They mark the outlines of the human/land consciousness.” Our vernacular Kentucky language resonates with the richness and warmth of our land. When we open our mouths, generations can be heard as though we are indeed “speaking in tongues” as we embrace collective unconscious remembering our ancestors, remembering their love of the land. It is that love which must lead us again and again to do all that must be done to stop mountaintop removal, to recover the beauty and function of coal without laying waste the earth. The culture of Appalachia cannot live if our mountains are dead. We cannot look to the hills and find strength if all we can see is a landscape of destruction.

4
Touching the Earth
    I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all these things. I have found them to be reason enough and — I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations and generations.
    Lorraine Hansberry
To Be young, Gifted, and Black
    When we love the earth, we are able to love ourselves more fully. I believe this. The ancestors taught me it was so. As a child I loved playing in dirt, in that rich Kentucky soil, that was a source of life. Before I understood anything about the pain and exploitation of the southern system of sharecropping, I understood that grown-up black folks loved the land. I could stand with my grandfather Daddy Jerry and look out at fields of growing vegetables, tomatoes, corn, collards, and know that this was his handiwork. I could see the look of pride on his face as I expressed wonder and awe at the magic of growing things. I knew that my grandmother Baba’s backyard garden would yield beans, sweet potatoes, cabbage, and yellow squash, that she too would walk with pride among the rows and rows of growing vegetables showing us what the earth will give when tended lovingly.
    From the moment of their first