“A World Not Our Own to Define”: Ecological Solutions to Global Catastrophe in the Works of Barry Lopez

Abstract

In this article, I look at the multigeneric writings of Barry Lopez, namely Arctic Dreams (London: Vintage, 1986) and Horizon (London: Vintage, 2019), as well as two collections of his essays published posthumously in 2022. Of central importance to ecologists, Lopez’s writing foregrounds the beliefs and practices of indigenous peoples around the world. In their confrontations with the frightening realities of climate change and the devastation of the earth, they never lose hope for changed ecological perspectives that will result in the salvation of our threatened planet. For them, and for Lopez, such awareness must always encompass responsibility towards our fellow human beings because, as Pope Francis declared in his encyclical Laudate Si of May 24, 2015, “A true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (Amitav Ghosh, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. London: John Murray, 2021, p. 233).

Keywords:

• First Peoples
• cultural diversity
• human and non-human worlds
• indigenous languages
• climate change
• the Dreaming
• community