Caroline Griffith, NEC Executive Director
On September 30, the NEC participated in the 3rd annual Migrations/Migraciones Festival hosted by the Arcata Playhouse. The festival is a walking procession through Arcata with cultural offerings in parks and natural locations throughout town. Here is an excerpt of the offering from the NEC, given in the woods of Potawot Community Garden, surrounded by real birds and paper birds hanging from trees.
The mission of the Northcoast Environmental Center is to promote understanding of the relations between people and the biosphere and to conserve, protect, and celebrate terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems of northern California and southern Oregon. We’ve been around for 52 years, and for the first half-century or so, we were focused on mostly traditional conservation issues. In the last couple of years we have shifted that focus towards environmental justice, and looking at the ways that social and economic forces impact the environment, the way environmental changes impact social and economic forces, and how the harms and profits are unequally distributed.
The paper birds around you were crafted for a protest of the Yuba County Jail that I attended with Centro del Pueblo in early 2020. At the time, the Yuba County Jail was the northernmost immigration detention center in California. Although California had outlawed private immigration prisons, they were still holding migrants on behalf of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in county jails with the general population. Here you see one bird for each person being held for ICE at that time. Since then, the Yuba County Jail has stopped holding migrants. What that means is that migrants are now being held in other places. Last week ICE released its latest data on the number of people in its custody, which reported 35,589 people are currently in ICE detention, an eight percent increase from last month.
Climate Migration
There are a lot of reasons why humans and animals migrate. Increasingly it’s to escape the impacts of climate change. A 2018 World Bank report estimates that up to 143 million climate migrants may be forced from their homes by climate change impacts by 2050. Scientists agree that we should take immediate action to hold warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius or else face increasingly dire consequences. If we do nothing, 1.5 degrees is imminent, 2 degrees could happen as soon as 2050, and 3 degrees could occur by 2080.
The link between climate change and the racial injustice of who is affected is clear to most of us, but one aspect of environmental justice that we don’t often talk about is fighting human supremacy, the idea that human needs trump the needs of other species and take precedence over the needs of our plant and animal relatives. So, in addition to gender and racial equity, we also advocate taking an ecosystem-wide view, which looks at humans as part of the environment, to see how we can advance species justice and stop thinking of humans as the only species with a right to thrive, and all other species as incidental to that. According to the Audubon Society, there are 44 species of local birds who migrate to or live in our area who are at risk of losing habitat by 2080 if we don’t slow the pace of climate change. As they are forced to search for suitable habitat and climate conditions elsewhere, they’ll have to head out into the unknown, just like many of the humans who currently undertake migrations to find safe, hospitable places to be.
Bird Body Meditation
As the description of this procession said, we are walking together in a shared journey, connecting ourselves to the ground, to those who walked on it before us, and to those still to come, so that we can cultivate a deeper understanding of ourselves and those around us, and I want to extend that understanding to the more-than-human beings who migrate through our community, and explore what we have in common with them and what we can learn from them.
First we have to get in the right frame of mind by getting out of our very human heads and into our animal bodies. Think about the birds in your community, birds that are residents here or who migrate to be here in the winter. Think about where they live, what they eat, and who they hang out with.
Connect yourself to the ground. Imagine that all of the hairs on your body are feathers and feel the wind moving around you, the sun warming your feathers. Are you a water bird? A song bird? Do you have long, strong feathers like an eagle? Or downy feathers that muffle sound like an owl? Listen to the leaves and the other birds around you. Smell the water in the air. Sense all of the movement around you and the vibrant world that you are so lucky to get to be a part of.
Animals migrate for many of the same reasons that humans do, the search for food or water, the need to reproduce. Sometimes they are forced to migrate because of drought, hurricanes, flooding, earthquake, or volcanic activity, but for the most part it is cyclical and happens with the seasons.
One of the ways that many species know it’s time to move onto the next place is the change in sunlight and the position of the sun. Close your eyes and sense the sun. Our migration today is taking us south. Based on what you know about our relationship to the sun at this time of year and where you feel the sun to be, turn your body to face south.
Much of our transportation as humans is getting to work or school, or shopping. Think about the movements that you make throughout the day. Birds don’t go to work or school or the grocery store, because their work and school and food are mixed all together and everywhere around them. When they go out into the world to get their needs met, they have very specific ecosystems that fit those needs. They can’t just move to any town with a grocery store, because it might not have the specific food they eat. Because of this, they are very connected to and influenced by the places that they move between.
Think about a place that you love, that you associate with a particular time of year that is part of a seasonal movement that you make. It could be the backyard at your grandparents’ house that you always go to for the winter holidays, or a river that you visit every summer, a special place you like to hike as the wildflowers come out in the spring. Or, during this fall season, think of a place that you love that you associate with fall, that makes you feel that cusp between summer and winter, light and dark, and that unique feeling of aliveness that comes when you know that winter is coming. Can you imagine the smell of that place? The way the sun casts shadows that time of year? The sound of the plants around you moving in the wind?
Now imagine that you don’t get to go to that place anymore, that due to circumstances outside of your control, you can’t make that seasonal trip anymore. Does that make you feel angry? Sad? Helpless? Give yourself a moment to experience that feeling and honor it as valid and true. Most scientists advise against anthropomorphizing animals and assigning human emotions to them, but for the sake of this exercise and seeing through new eyes, try to imagine how your bird-self feels? What grief and hardship exists in you when you can’t access that specific, special place anymore? Let that feeling define the depth of your love for that place, that particular ecosystem, that helps you define the passage of time, the seasons of the year, and your place in the world. For birds, just like for humans for the majority of our existence on earth, these places aren’t just nostalgic, they are the source of life. Using your bird-mind, let the pain that you feel, the pain that comes from the depth of your love for the place that you are at risk of losing, deepen your connection to the ecosystem that nourishes you. Sit and feel that love, that connection, for a moment.
Moving Forward
So what do we do with that love? How do we move forward when we know how much is at risk and how much work needs to be done? We are fortunate to live in the Pacific Flyway, one of the major north-south migration paths for birds, so we have a lot to lose if we do nothing to lower our emissions and curb climate change. Think about those 44 species of local birds who are at risk of losing habitat by 2080 if we don’t slow the pace of climate change. I want to acknowledge that this is really heavy and it’s hard to look at it head on, especially because it feels like such a huge task to change the systems that need to change. But luckily there is work that we can do. Here in Humboldt County, 53 percent of our climate altering emissions come from transportation, so it’s clear that the way we get around has an effect on the larger world. Since migration is a form of transportation, and we are undertaking a practice of moving under our own power, just like our friends the birds, I want us to take some time as we are doing this today to think about movement and how we move through the world, both literally and figuratively, and how we can influence systems and change the way we get around. As we walk together today, I invite you to enjoy the air, the sun, the rain, the wind. To feel the temperature change and see your town from a different point of view, outside of a car, moving at a human pace and to enjoy “transportation” as it has been for much of human existence.
How We Travel
Most of us have been forced into the agreement that we need to move quickly from place to place. We didn’t get to make this choice. Over the last hundred years this has led to a reality in which cities are built around streets, streets are for cars and cars are the way that we get where we need to go. This doesn’t have to be the way it is. I challenge you to think about how you can break that agreement and honor our bird relatives by changing the way you get around in the world. We talk a lot in the environmental world about individual change vs. systems change, and it may seem like a handful of people deciding to drive less won’t have an impact, which is true. But we do have influence over our flock, and if enough of us move in the same direction, we can bring the rest with us. So as we continue on our journey, I invite you to think about how you can expand this radical act of moving through the world slowly, collectively and thoughtfully into your everyday life. As an act of solidarity with the birds.