A Native-Led Care of the Environment Workshop

Hemaima Wiremu led an RC care of the environment workshop in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. As a notetaker I was flummoxed [confused] for the first day as I tried to capture what she was saying, because some of it was not in sentences or even in words.

Hemaima spoke (and sang) to the body. She aimed right at the belly and bypassed the analytical mind. I had to put the pencil down and let her stories and presence gently seep in on a level that is not describable. She, and the other Indigenous people there, brought us all together in a new way.

I felt like she took us out of our whiteness for a while and gave us a little experience of an Indigenous perspective. I’ve come away hitched [turned] in a different direction.

Her courage, combined with our preparedness as RCers to face our racism and bring care of the environment into our “way of living,” was quite something. It was refreshing to someone embroiled in the “white middle-class” environmental movement in Sydney.

Hemaima said that RC is a rare network—focusing as it does on caring for and liberating all humans while at the same time addressing climate change. She suggested that with the ideas and processes of RC, we are “guardians” of the human race.

Kit Shepherd

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia


Last modified: 2019-05-02 14:41:35+00