DUNE LANKARD on the Day the Water Died /86

Valdez Exxon Oil Spill, Photo courtesy of NOAA

The capitalist mentalist sees an opportunity to exploit in every disaster. Everything is a chance to jump a buck. What can we learn from this mentality? How do we, earnest lovers of life, see an opportunity for recovery, resilience, lasting change in every disaster? From disaster into conservation opportunity, and conservation into economic opportunity. Dune has made a living demonstration of resource conservation over exploitation as better economics ~ to continue to catch fish means preserving what gives fish life. We cannot continue stealing from the future, and the bad economics of doing so are swiftly coming home to roost in climate change, environmental degradation, and the collapse of resources.

Dune Lankard

Rather than despairing, Dune Lankard has worked creatively to leverage assaults to land into structural changes for his people. The ecological disasters that are the certain consequences of capitalism can be catalysts to change mentalities and economic systems. Since the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, Dune has worked legally to spare enormous amounts of land from further extraction. He has insisted on implementing voices of conservation within the business and law of native resource management. Dune’s determination to take on lawsuits, with visionary alternatives to the status quo, has made the wildest possibilities of conservation happen in Alaska. He has turned cultural corners from the forced corporatization of native people’s relationship to their water, tree, and fish kin.  

There is a tremendous opportunity for earth protection at hand: the majority of land that has fossil fuels has native people standing on it. Native people are speaking up for their way of being on earth. When the herring rebounds, the ecosystem that hinges on their well-being will too. Our orientation towards life must move herring-ward, forest-ward, river-ward.

♫ Music is “Sorcerer" and "Opening" by Tonstarttsbandht.

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