We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving. The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
Albert Einstein
I don’t know how many times I’ve read this quote. I would think, that sounds good, and then move on. That’s the very thing I am asking you to not do. We hear so many people talking about so many things, so many crises, we end up tuning them out. Basically give up. Continue living as best we can. Don’t change ourselves or the world.
Please don’t just move on.
We cannot afford not to change. We will not survive if we do not change now.
We are witnessing the collapse of so many systems. Our environment, political and economic systems, social safety nets, healthcare and education. Many are dealing with broken families, mental and physical health problems, addiction, not finding a faith community or spiritual support.
Here’s the thing: These reflections — these emergencies — are all connected. The colonial mindset that claimed a God-given right to steal children, land and resources was the same logic that built an economy based on limitless extraction and consumption, creating the climate catastrophe.
It’s urgent that we see these connections clearly. Because we need transformative change in this country, and we need to get to work on it immediately.
Here’s how it might start: For more than 150 years, settlers have taken the riches of this stolen land and turned them into money. In the 21st century, we simply can no longer afford that 19th-century thinking. We need to build a new economy in a hurry.
That means we need a fundamental change in the values that govern our society.
Fires, graves and reflections on a new story for Canada By Avi Lewis, Canada’s National Observer, July 9th 2021
I know so many well intentioned people. And my heart breaks every time I fail to get them to understand they are caught in a trap. As long as they think and work in the context of current systems, nothing new can happen. Remaining in the systems perpetuates those systems.
This is a diagram I’ve been working on to conceptualize current systems and alternatives. We have to reject capitalism, and move to Mutual Aid, LANDBACK, abolition of police and prisons, and renewable energy now. These things are discussed in detail on the new website, LANDBack Friends. https://landbackfriends.com/
Change is difficult, scary. But I imagine you find the situation we are in now frightening. So many people have lost their idealism. Do you remember how that felt? To be searching for who you are? Believe you could change the world?
This is the time to begin again to search for who you are. Then you will change the world.
LANDBACK Friends 
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