Reconnecting with Gaia to Understand Humanity’s Collective Trauma: Learning from Grandma Belah and Yungadhu

Abstract

Climate change has been described as an existential crisis for humanity. Much has been studied and written about the biophysical and economic factors contributing to climate change, but very little on the psychology of its human-induced origins. In a self-reflective viewpoint influenced by working with Aboriginal people in Australia and connecting deeply with its landscape, this paper explores what connection with nature really means and why some of humanity lost it. It is argued that an alternative avenue for understanding humanity’s existential crisis is to see it as a trauma problem. At the beginning of the Holocene, several cultures around the world, at around the same time, switched to a food storage economy triggered by a rapid change in climate. Little research has explored the psychology of this change, with most focusing on it being an evolutionary success because of the civilised pathway it enabled. However, this paper suggests that it might also be seen as a traumatising process affecting generations of people for millennia and fundamentally altering many people’s relationship with the planet. It is proposed that understanding the psychological origins of the human drivers of climate change could enable collective healing of our relationship with the natural world and that this is necessary to realise planetary health.

1. Introduction

From its point of definition in 2015 [1], the concept of planetary health has emphasised the interconnectedness of human health and place at all scales [2]. A key aspect of this is the human situation in place, our co-dependence with nature, and thus our relationship with the planet. The principles of planetary health address our connectedness with the planet through nature relatedness, emphasising: “…(the) importance of emotional connections to the land, to nature and its biodiversity…” and “…understanding how emotional relationships with place and planet are developed…” [3] (p. 3). An additional principle is planetary consciousness, which is stated as relating to: “… self-awareness, cultural competencies and critical consciousness…”, focusing on equity towards all of life [3] (p. 3).

The aim of this paper is to explore these concepts in the way they are experienced at a personal level and linked to the planetary crisis facing humanity. Through a process of self-reflection, this paper explores aspects of the paradigm shift necessary to reimagine our relationship with the planet, hereafter Gaia, in recognition that the planet exists as both a biophysical system and one that, for many, is also sentient and intelligent [4]. It is acknowledged that invoking the concept of Gaia comes with several challenges of definition [5], be they scientific explanations of the concept [6] or appropriation of Indigenous people’s concepts [7] due to the melding of ontological world views [8]. The purpose of this paper is not to engage in these definitions but rather explore the personal experience of being in a relationship with a planet that I recognise as being a sentient biophysical entity. The word Gaia is therefore adopted for this paper largely due to the absence of any other word in English that captures any form of my own experience of referring to a sentient planetary being.

To explore these concepts, this paper draws on Indigenous concepts of health that emphasise not just relatedness and connectedness between humans and Gaia but the existence of a complex web of reciprocal relationships between everything in the biosphere that operate on physical, emotional and spiritual levels, resulting in something where the conceptual mental separation between humans and Gaia does not exist. In exploring Māori concepts of health and well-being, Eames [9] (p. 11) highlights that for Māori, health is defined not in terms of self or the human collective but in terms of the health of everything around and connected with one’s self and humanity. This paper takes that Māori concept and moves from humanity’s relatedness and connectedness with Gaia to a deeper exploration of our relationships with her. In working with Indigenous concepts, it is acknowledged that while Indigenous people hold stewardship of understanding humanity’s relationship with Gaia and have been advocating for collective engagement with it for a long time [10,11], addressing the value change necessary in non-Indigenous cultures begins with self-reflection within non-Indigenous cultures. It is for that reason that this paper seeks to respect the call from Indigenous people and commit to that self-reflection and sharing it in the spirit of the special issue of nurturing connected consciousness.

2. Background

I am a cultural scientist. However, despite adopting the label of cultural scientist, it is still difficult to define what it is to be a cultural scientist. For me, cultural science is a concept that reflects a kind of action research [12] that works closely with Aboriginal people and their wisdom in Australia. As such, being a cultural scientist is not something you become through a qualification from a course or university degree. Some have defined cultural science as “… a new theoretical and methodological approach to the study of cultural structure, dynamics and use” [13] (p. 34). However, my approach to cultural science is different. It is an applied science, which is something much less about how cultures function and much more about cultural activation. In my case, being a cultural scientist is about working with the wisdom of Aboriginal cultures in Australia by problem-solving how to support Aboriginal people apply their cultural wisdom to environmental management and planning. That means contributing to carving out a space for Aboriginal people to do what they need to do as part of their cultural obligations and responsibilities to care for their traditional lands [14].

In Australia, Aboriginal people often refer to their traditional lands as Country [15], which is a term that embodies not just the physical landscape and its biodiversity but also the people and, most importantly, the spiritual sentience and intelligence of everything in those landscapes and all the relationships between everything in them. Recognising Country means engaging with a far greater concept than just a biophysical world governed by natural laws. Cultural science, in this sense, is about researching a process of change in environmental programs that embrace other forms of knowing and doing [16], and enabling the environmental, health, cultural and spiritual benefits that flow from that [17,18,19]. In this context, cultural science is linked to a global movement to embrace Indigenous wisdom as part of realising planetary health [20].

It is not a wisdom I speak from with any form of authority as a non-Aboriginal person. This paper is not about Aboriginal wisdom or its application; that is a story for Aboriginal people to tell. Rather, it is a story about how I have changed because of committing to understanding Aboriginal wisdom and surrendering to how it has transformed me. My role as a cultural scientist means I am deeply immersed in Aboriginal culture, such that my personal knowledge is inevitably shaped by the Aboriginal wisdom I have been privileged to have been exposed to. It challenges what it means to be a ‘scientist’, for I do not speak as a cultural knowledge authority as a cultural scientist; that responsibility sits with Aboriginal Elders, knowledge holders and Country itself. Instead, I am an enabler. As I practice it, cultural science is about working through all the systematic challenges of enabling Aboriginal wisdom to contribute to the key challenges of our time. My research is transdisciplinary [21] because Country does not recognise ‘disciplines’. Thus, I research across the areas of fire management, management of threatened species, water management, heritage management and climate change.

It is this personal space that I speak from in this paper, under the encouragement of Ngyampaa Elder Mick Kelly, with whom I have collaborated closely for twenty years. Our shared dream is that humanity re-engages in its relationship with nature—with Gaia. My personal journey on that re-engagement is the subject of this paper.

I also describe that personal journey in recognition that Indigenous research cannot be undertaken as an outsider [8,22]. When you have demonstrated an ability to listen, act with sincerity and integrity, and be trusted, then you may be invited to sit in a circle of Indigenous Elders and knowledge holders. Accepting an invitation to sit in such a circle comes with responsibilities. There are protocols to learn, understand and follow. But also, who you are… who you really are… becomes an obligation to be. Wisdom is shared and exchanged. Your place in kinship is established [23] and you accept the role of being who you really need to be: intellectually, culturally and spiritually. Only then are you ready to speak within and from that space.

Being a cultural scientist is this, too. Whether of Aboriginal descent or not, it is challenging to find your voice and communicate it in a way that is authentic, respectful, humble, true to yourself and mindful of the circle you sit within and all the connections you speak from. It is not straightforward to do so in a conventional academic-style paper. It is necessary to break with many conventions. It requires a story, a first-person narrative, emotion and, thus, vulnerability. As someone who was trained as a scientist, it takes some courage to speak from that place. I hope, as a reader, you can respect that. But it is also an opportunity, an opportunity we may need to explore more given the times we find ourselves in.

3. Grandma Belah

In the semi-arid region of southeast Australia grows a tree called Belah (Casuarina cristata). It is of the family Casuarinaceae and is endemic to southeast Australia. I have been visiting a place containing a grove of this tree for twenty years (Figure 1). When I say grove, I mean a patch of Belah that is 100 hectares in size and surrounded by a landscape dominated by Mallee, which is a form of eucalyptus vegetation (several different eucalypt species) that grow in shrub form with multiple stems springing from an underground lignotuber to a height of 8–10 metres. By grove, I also mean the appearance of many Belah ‘trees’, which are potentially a single multi-stemmed Belah organism. In this region, Belah primarily propagates itself through suckering and only very rarely initiates new trees from seed, many of which do not reach maturity [24]. Due to this, this landscape creates ‘groves’ of Belah, which can be a single Belah ‘tree’. Belah grows very slowly in the semiarid climate of the region [25], and it is the largest of any grove in the area. It is, therefore, possible that this 100-hectare Belah ‘tree’ is a very, very old organism. A further unique characteristic of Belah is the whistling sound it makes in the breeze; it is a tree with a voice [26]. It sings. When you stand in this grove of Belah, appreciate its scale as an organism and its age, and hear its song, you begin to appreciate being in the presence of something very wise. Everyone who visits the place feels it. I have come to know this patch of Belah as Grandma Belah, and my love for her runs deeply within me.

4. The Research—A Process of Learning

The grove that is Grandma Belah is on a site that is 12,500 hectares in size, located in southwest New South Wales, Australia. The site was established as a place to enable the continuation of Aboriginal cultural activities and ceremonies as part of Aboriginal approaches to land management in partnership with scientific methods. This was in recognition of the work of the late Rick Farley [27], who founded Land Care in Australia [28], and for whom the site is named the Rick Farley Soil Conservation Reserve. Understanding how to unite Aboriginal cultural and scientific approaches to land management has been the focus of research at the site, embracing Elder Albert Marshall’s concept of two-eyed seeing [29,30].

The research began as a question about how to solve long-term social engagement in environmental programs. For anyone who has been involved in community-based environmental management, the challenge of getting through from one funding cycle to the next will be a familiar one [31]. There is initial enthusiasm till the end of the first funding cycle. Momentum drops. People lose interest. A core group of dedicated people keep it going till another round of funding is obtained, and the cycle continues until those dedicated people tire and the original plan withers away.

In the rangelands of Australia [32], environmental cycles operate over decades. A few good years can be interspersed with many years of below-average rainfall. There can be a long delay between implementing an environmental management action and the impact it has on the landscape. In such landscapes, the 3–5-year funding cycle makes it difficult to see the fruits of your effort. Without seeing that impact, maintaining community interest in an environmental program can be difficult.

The research conducted at the site sought to explore if there was another way to maintain that momentum. For the Aboriginal people I share management of the site with, the answer was simple—Aboriginal culture. Our idea was to embrace the culture of local Aboriginal people who have been occupying the region for over 40,000 years [33]. Here, living their culture unabated, groups of people who had been through an ice age adapted successfully and came out the other side of climate change [34]. At the time of European colonisation, Aboriginal people were thriving here [35]. Clearly, there is something to learn from the wisdom of a culture that has successfully made it through such change. Our ‘experiment’ was to commence an environmental program that enabled Aboriginal culture at its core. The hypothesis was that a strong, vibrant Aboriginal cultural program would showcase the ways environmental programs could become more socially sustainable.

Funding was obtained in 2016 to begin our research focused on Aboriginal cultural land management for the endangered Malleefowl (Leipoa ocellata), Yungadhu in the local Ngyampaa Aboriginal language. The approach included a focus on traditional burning practices [36,37], and the use of this as the basis for community involvement in a long-term environmental program. The site had ample space to implement mosaic-burning practices to support the Yungadhu habitat [38], had active Yungadhu nests and was remote, meaning that cultural activities could be experienced without the distraction of normal daily life. Connecting with Country [39] was a central part of the whole program.

However, embracing an action-research [40] approach sometimes means things do not always go to plan. Country had other ideas. Although the concept of the project began in 2012, in 2013, a lightning strike ignited a wildfire that intensely burnt two-thirds of the site. Overnight, all the Yungadhu left the area, and no signs of them (birds, tracks or active nests) were observed on the site throughout the research project, or indeed for another five years after that. Thus began a research project on Yungadhu, without any Yungadhu.

5. Learning Through Ceremony

It quickly became apparent that measuring the impact of cultural land management on the local Yungadhu population was not going to be the main outcome of the project. However, it was never meant to; the objective was about social engagement. Thus began a deep exploration of what enables a program to fully activate Aboriginal cultural practices based on spiritual wisdom. The challenge was reporting outcomes to a funding body operating within a scientific paradigm. The answer was not about trying to blend Aboriginal and scientific knowledge or for one form of knowledge to validate the other [29,30]. Rather, it was about a process of learning by doing, as everyone involved was on a journey. For Aboriginal people, that involved realising cultural activation founded in identity, and for those trained in science, accepting working with other ways of knowing. Under Elder Mick Kelly’s guidance, we found it was performing ceremony that made this possible. We began revitalising an ancient ceremony around the Yungadhu. At every camp, and often multiple times during each camp, we would conduct the ceremony with all participants present [41].

The ceremony revolves around a design that is made on the earth. Once it is dark, fires are lit to illuminate the design, and everyone assembles around it and sits on the ground. The ceremony involves sharing the meaning and story associated with the design. It involves understanding how the different components of Country are connected, including people. These involve deep discussion and learning about key concepts such as kinship, Country, Aboriginal Lore and The Dreaming [42]. For non-Indigenous people, these concepts involve an un-learning: a letting go of a frame of knowing based on separation [43]. The ceremony becomes a reflective discussion, with everyone present offering to reflect and contribute. It is not uncommon for tears to be shed, deep emotions to be shared, and long periods of silence to fall over the space. It always moves those who attend. The ceremony is different every time, as it is a different conversation each time. However, the intention and learning are always the same: to enable re-engagement with an ancient wisdom founded in connection.

The ceremony is often conducted before cultural burning takes place, which is a night-time activity of putting fire into the landscape for the health of the Mallee vegetation (Figure 2). The ceremony sets the values and understanding necessary for all participants to contribute to working with fire culturally and spiritually. Thus, the burn itself becomes a ceremony, and everyone there (children and adults alike) acts with a sacred responsibility that reflects their connection gained through participating in the Yungadhu ceremony. In this way, there is a process of learning followed by a process of experiencing and applying.

The deep learning about connection and relationship with Country that occurs in the ceremony only really makes sense when it comes to life in the process of putting fire into the landscape. The knowledge of Elders like Mick Kelly directs the cultural burning activity, but everyone participates regardless of background, gender or age. It creates a moment of collective action that operates as a partnership with Country. Fire supports the health of Country, and when applied with understanding and love toward Country, Country responds with new life and abundance. The activity shows how fire has a dynamic that can be worked with, understood and learned from without fear. The activity rekindles a relationship between people and Country, bringing the meaning of the ceremony into full focus. For many, often for the first time in their lives, a real living reciprocal relationship with nature is felt.

What we found was that people would come back to the research site, often at their own expense, just to experience the ceremony and burning again [41]. They would come back to feel that connection to Country and its spirit. To be part of the community connected with the project. To sit around a fire and laugh till their sides hurt. To cry and heal. To spend time in quiet contemplation about who they really are as human beings. Having watched this occur many times at many camps, it is a process of remembering rather than looking. A process of allowing what already exists within each person to come out rather than a search for something that exists outside them. You see people rediscover who they are.

6. My Journey

To explain that connection, I have come to anticipate with child-like excitement every visit to the site, and I cry every time I leave. I live 1000 km away from the site, so I do not get there as often or for as long as I would like. But every visit is special, and there have been many. I dream about it. The place is now a part of my identity, and I feel I have become a part of it’s. It is here the research necessitated a departure from the conventional objective scientific method. I had been invited to sit in a circle. That circle included Aboriginal Elders, scientists and Country all existing together. The circle was not just people; it was everything in that place, and the circle existed through the web of relationships between everything in that place.

I had been sitting in the circle and not realising it from the beginning. I had been part of the ceremony the whole time. I had come to know the place so deeply that I could feel its moods, its character. I knew every plant and every animal. I could read the wind. I had taken responsibility for putting fire into that landscape. I had cried and bled on that landscape. I also sang and danced there. In short, I had fallen in love with this place. Not a romantic kind of love. The kind of love that we hold with our family. So, there was no way I could participate as an outsider observing and interpreting the ‘experiment’. Rather, it meant reflecting deeply on who I am as a human being as part of sitting in that circle in that space.

Sitting in the circle of this place is, therefore, both a privilege and a responsibility. It means acknowledging that the wisdom of Grandma Belah is ever-present and contributing as we sit in the camp. It is her song that sings me to sleep at night when I am camped there. It means accepting that the wildfire happened for a reason and that Yungadhu’s absence was Country’s way of enabling us to learn. It involved understanding that whenever we put fire into that landscape, it is a sacred act. It required committing to going back to the places burnt, observing what happened and taking responsibility for our mistakes, of which there were a few necessary lessons. In the areas we had burned, it meant observing the new growth following rain. Some things come into flower. New animal tracks in the sand are visible. There is a cause for celebration and the need to feel and be part of that excitement. As new food becomes available in the plants and animals, there is a responsibility to accept and consume those gifts, and then those gifts are returned to the earth when relieving yourself onto Country. It involves embracing the ups and downs, such as the joys of abundance following rain, and the sadness of drought. It also means being fully aware of the sentience embodied in everything there, from the grain of sand beneath your feet to the massive ancient organism that is Grandma Belah. It is all one big collective circle that I had reawakened to being a part of.

At this point, the experience is no longer just an intellectual one. I had accepted my place not just in a circle but in a family. It is welcoming and inviting, but there is accountability too. Questions are asked of you, and expectations are created; not all those questions come from people. For me, this was an expectation to go deeper. To really commit and understand my relationship with that place. Not just emotionally, but spiritually. It is difficult to describe objectively and intellectually what this feels like; it is just… a calling. Something that comes from inside you. It is like crossing the threshold of your family home to sit in it with everyone there, and they are all looking at you intently. They are not speaking, but you know what is on their minds; now it is time that we really talk. This hit home to me one day when I watched some colleagues walking through the Belah. I watched as they felt a call to sit under a particular Belah stem. They sat in its shade and were quiet and contemplative. It was then that I realised that this was what I needed to do. Grandma Belah was showing me. She was asking me to sit for as long as it takes, to really listen, for whatever that produces. No questions. No more observing as a scientist. No longer existing in separation. Just come, sit, and listen.

7. Sitting with Grandma

Thus began a two-year journey to work out what that ‘sitting’ really involved. It involved seeking guidance and blessing from Elders. It meant asking permission from Grandma Belah and working out what asking permission from a tree even means! It also involved cold-contacting a scientist who had also embraced connecting with plants spiritually [44], forming a friendship, and accepting guidance in the process of sitting. Guidance is important because sitting is not easy. It requires commitment and a willingness to surrender and be vulnerable. During it, you can barely feed yourself, and you cannot be tempted by distractions. It is her space and has been for many hundreds, if not a thousand years. I was a guest in the process of becoming family. So, I was obligated to drop my ego and ask, “can I do this thing I feel a calling to do?” And thus, it involved letting go of everything I thought I knew as a scientist and as a human being. Up to this point, my experience at the site was always full of busyness, preparing and performing the ceremony, conducting burns, undertaking biodiversity observations and recording the experiences of participants; in short, being a scientist. But now, Grandma Belah was asking me to drop all that. To come, sit and just be in silence, isolation and complete focus.

There was a lot to learn, or rather un-learn, like having patience. A tree does not have a ‘voice’. So, you cannot just walk up and ask permission to do something based on a calling you feel. There are no words that ring out commanding what to do, or not do. You need to listen in a different way. To listen with your heart and intuition. For the longest time you do not know whether there is any communication at all. Years in my case. Whatever there is, you doubt because your mind is trying to evaluate if it is ‘real’. It challenges you to just let go and trust what your feelings are saying.

An analogy here is the feeling of love. At that early phase of a parent and baby, something is shared. Both parties feel it. It is a knowing that cannot be expressed in words. You just know and have a sense that what you feel is reciprocated. It all occurs in non-verbal communication and trusting your feelings. Eight billion people around the world are proof that something happens at that moment, and we trust it without question. Why not trust it with a tree?

Thus, over that two-year period, on each visit, little by little, that ‘feeling’ deepened, clarified and became a trust that the tree wanted me to do this. Once that feeling of communication was established and was surrendered to, a dialogue began. But not one as you might expect. On at least three visits, I would set up my camp where I slept in the Belah grove. Each time, I hoped for a sign, an indication that the calling I felt was reciprocated. But each time, it was silence. It was not until the fourth trip that I gave in and said out loud while standing alone in the Belah one evening: “I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to do. But I just want to sit with you…nothing else, just be with you.” And then, from somewhere, I had the feeling of “Ahhh… now you are starting to get it”. It was only then that I had fully surrendered, let go of expectation, and was actually listening.

The process of sitting, for a week in my case, was challenging but deeply insightful. Once the commitment is made, it is a process that needs to be seen through to its conclusion, a conclusion you are not in control of. The process enables deep reflection and guidance from sources you cannot identify or control. In that space, there is nowhere to hide. You are stripped bare. Every thought, every action and every feeling is explored in detail. Not with judgment but with deep honesty, which is hard to convey. Until the real question emerges: who are you…?

8. Looking into the Mirror

“Who are you?” is a key aspect of the ceremony that is performed with Yungadhu. To support Yungadhu, and for Yungadhu to support you, it is necessary to know who you really are. What are you connected to? What are you part of? Where did you come from? Where are you going? If you do not know these things, then you cannot hold the fire stick responsibly and put fire into Country. Until you know who you really are, you do not know how to be in your relationships with everything in Country. Despite the fire being something the Australian landscape needs [45], putting fire into the landscape is an act that impacts everything there. Thus, applying fire responsibly is not just about what you know about fire behaviour, about biodiversity, about the weather and about landscape history [46]. It really concerns who you ARE within that landscape. Can you observe and feel how the landscape is responding? Can you be humble enough to not burn at all if the moment is not right? Are you able to maintain awareness of the impact that fire is going to have on everything in that space? Can you trust that Country is working with you and that you are working with a landscape that has sentience and is working in partnership with you? Taking that responsibility means accepting your place in the web of relationships you are accountable to within Country [47]. This is why living all those relationships reciprocally requires a deep understanding of who you really are.

I have contributed to and led the Yungadhu ceremony many times and guided many people to explore the question of who they are. You can see silence fall over people when, often for the first time, they really open themselves to that question. There are no ready or quick answers—it is the beginning of a journey. A journey I began at this place twenty years ago. But only once I was fully stripped bare, fully exposed and removed from all the facades I had surrounded myself with, could I really get to the core of who I am.

Although the process of sitting is a lot of doing nothing, like meditating, it is harder than it sounds. The mind and body are both wanting their drug of busyness. It takes a few days for that to really settle, for the silence to really come. Once you begin to immerse in that silence and fully surrender to it, you find yourself looking into the mirror. Not literally or even figuratively, but metaphorically. For me, that meant really seeing, for the first time, the traumatised person I was. I will never forget that moment. The morning sun was just breaking the horizon, giving the long grass a golden glow. I was tired from a night of being tested in my dreams. I sat and leaned back against the Belah. It was surprisingly comfortable, like cuddling with your grandma. A voice came into my head saying simply, “let it all go”. I began to cry. I cried uncontrollably for over an hour. Emotional trauma was released that I did not even know existed. It was quite profound, and for the following days, that emotion was released and examined with kindness, honesty and truth for the first time in my life. In so doing, it made space for new knowledge and understanding to enter.

So, who am I? Perhaps you are wondering. Well, what the sitting process enabled me to relearn is that who I am is not just about me, as in my ego-me. Rather, my identity exists in how I am connected. My ‘I am’ exists in all those connections. I am both a point in that web of connections, and at the same time, I am the whole web. My ego-self and the web are inseparable. Thus, I am the Belah. I am Yungadhu. I am also the crow. I am the eagle and snake. I am the dirt. I am the air. I am connected to everything in that space where I was sitting. Their fate is my fate, and we are both made from the same essence. At the same time, I am a father, a son, a brother, an uncle, a husband, a colleague, a mentor, a student and a cultural scientist. I have those kin relationships not just with people but with all the more-than-human in that space, too [15]. I am Gaia, and I am stardust. I am all these things at once.

That is not to say that I am literally these things; that is ego thinking. It is that when you really allow yourself to be fully immersed in the connections, it feels like knowing what is happening in your family but without speaking with or being near them. It is like when you think about someone in your family, and all of a sudden, the phone rings, and it is them. There is an entanglement where the boundary between you and everything else is blurred. One transcends into the other. Thus, my realisation was how I am embedded in that entanglement with everything.

Most significantly, in realising this is who I am in a much fuller sense, it is not an exercise of then sitting in wonderment at it. This is because it is not enough to believe that the nature of those connections is real. It is not enough to romanticise those connections and admire them with awe. It is not enough to theorise or attempt to validate them. It is time to engage with them. To step up and take responsibility for them. To be accountable within those relationships and redress the nature of them. This is where the hard work really begins.

9. Unpacking the Trauma of My I Am

Accepting my I am, that I am everything, and yet, at the same time, I am an ego with independent free will, means accepting that I am, therefore, both humanity and just a pinpoint of experience within it. I am also the current expression of a long lineage. Answering the question of who I am means first understanding where I come from. As I sat with Grandma that week, I began to see what I had been missing. I had lost a depth of connection to nature and Gaia that I felt my European ancestors had, based on how Aboriginal people feel it [48]. Cultural evolution, based on Darwinian theory, says that we overcame and adapted because of those things that make humans unique [49]. By focusing so much on what makes us unique [50], as the other, sitting there, I could not escape thinking, what have we forgotten about how we are the same? Tears poured out of me again, and even now as I write this, about how deeply moving the love of Grandma Belah felt to me, and how I had not seen it for such a long time. Where and how had I lost this connection with Gaia?

The importance of this question can be seen in the impact of our disconnection from nature. Be it our health [51], our impact on biodiversity [52], or now, the realisation that climate change has become an existential crisis [53,54]. We are now faced with a new form of trauma [55], because for perhaps for the first time in humanity’s history, there is a realisation [56] that we might have sown the seeds of our own extinction [57]. Knowing this is the situation and knowing it is based on a separation from nature [58], is not the issue. The issue is accepting that our relationships with Gaia are where we need to find healing [59].

Thus, part of understanding who I really am meant understanding what drove my ancestor’s separation from nature. Without really understanding the cause, we can only treat the symptoms of our condition, as is becoming to be understood in systems healthcare [60]. Sitting alone in nature, in deep immersion with her, gives you a different perspective. Nature can be merciless; reflect on the experience of any animal that is the prey of another. Yet she also nurtures and provides for us. Our relationships within Gaia are complex and multi-dimensional, so this is not about a romanticised view of nature [61]. Nature’s lore, as Oren Lyons refers to it [62], is not something we can prevail over; it is not something to be trifled with. Nature is something we are in an inescapable relationship amongst, and our healing of that relationship space means understanding deeply all the dimensions of that space.

The understanding of my relationship with Gaia was most apparent when sitting with Grandma Belah. For example, having to wait two years before I was ready to listen revealed the need for patience in the relationship. Or, on the night of arrival for the sitting experience, I stepped backwards against a log and deeply punctured my leg on a branch, which affected the tendon such that I had no option but to sit, and I realised I needed to understand humility in the relationship. Or on one of the days when I was attacked by ants and had to strip naked and reflect on accepting pain as part of the relationship. Or a year later, upon returning to the site for the first time since sitting, only to jam my finger in the car door the moment I was about to step into the Belah, ripping a fingernail off completely and bleeding onto the soil and yet experiencing no pain; to understand that sometimes the relationship required the giving of myself and this is not painful. All these things, while seemingly coincidental, could also be seen as Grandma Belah enabling me to relearn and reawaken to all the dimensions of my relationship with her and Gaia. Once the sentience and intelligence of Gaia are fully realised, a whole new level of humility becomes apparent.

10. The Origins of Separation

So, I wondered, how did my ancestors lose this relationship? The words of an Elder I sat down with a decade earlier re-emerged, where it was explained to me their view that colonists had come to Australia to remember what they had forgotten. Those words now made profound sense. I am descended from people who lost their relationship with Gaia. That relationship with Gaia became completely broken, to the point that sitting alone in the bush has now become terrifying; it is a challenge of ‘survival’. We imagine our ancestors as ‘survivors’, and overcoming survival is seen as one of our greatest successes. We have become so dependent on a social economy of living separate from nature that we can no longer imagine living with it [43]. But it was not always this way. Whether it was by some definition of agriculture or not [35,63], at the time of colonisation, Aboriginal people in Australia were thriving because they were connected with Country. That connection had seen them successfully navigate the last ice age to become the oldest living culture in the world [64].

Since sitting with Grandma Belah, it has increasingly occurred to me that the origin of my ancestor’s relationship breakdown with nature began approximately 12,000 years ago. To make a very complicated story short, current research indicates that at the inception of the Holocene, as the climate became influenced by fluctuations in the Milankovitch cycle [65], some places around the world experienced increased seasonality [66]. It is this increased seasonality, more pronounced than we experience now, that most likely led to a similar response at around the same time in seven cultural areas around the world [67]. That response was to store food rather than follow its abundance. Storing food necessitates storage and managing those stores, which means becoming sedentary [68]. Becoming sedentary introduced new challenges, which people solved in the seven regions in various ways [67]. However, the overall effect has been a decline in biodiversity [69], a reduction in diet variability due to the investment in domesticating selected plants and animals [70] and an increase in competition and conflict [71] as lands were transformed for agricultural food production to provide for an exponentially growing population. It led to an overall decline in health [72].

Sitting under the Belah tree, though, I am wondering, what really happened in this critical moment in the history of humanity? Regardless of the mechanism of the origins of food storage, it was a choice that some people decided to make. What drove that choice? As tears poured out of me, what struck me was that it was a choice born out of trauma. Like a child who, in the perceived absence of love and security from their parents, develops co-dependency [73], the emotion pouring out of me felt like a release of the pain of losing trust in the world that I once loved unconditionally.

Some have labelled the origin of food storage and its extension of agriculture as humanity’s biggest mistake [74]. I would, however, suggest it was a perfectly reasonable response that some people made as part of dealing with the greatest trauma they had ever experienced. For the first time, some people around the world decided to shift their faith from the abundance provided by Gaia to faith in themselves and thus created what Charles Eisenstein refers to as separation [58]. This, I felt as I cried, represents an emotional trauma we have been carrying across generations for millennia. We dress it up as an evolutionary success, as a moment to champion, to somehow be proud of. But really, it set in motion a pathway that led to becoming the driver of an addiction to consumption that has systematically overtaken humanity [75] and fundamentally altered how much of humanity relates to Gaia [76].

Charles Eisenstein says: “None of the world’s problems are technically difficult to solve; they originate in human disagreement” [77]. However, I would suggest that human disagreement stems from the unresolved trauma of those who separated from Gaia and the effect this has had on the process of social change [78] over millennia. It invokes a different form of intergenerational trauma [79]; one that is millennia old and has spread around the world, fuelled by the process of colonisation [80]. It has become so embedded in what we now know that the Anthropocene has been defined to describe its impact on a geological time scale [81].

But this is not a criticism of civilisation because to do so invokes more eco-trauma [82] and incites blame. Rather, as I had to do while sitting with Grandma Belah, it is necessary to be truly honest and face the impact of our own actions on the planet [55]. As we begin to see that our future depends on the concept of planetary health [83], perhaps it is also time we begin looking at a process of addressing the collective trauma in our relationship with Gaia. To do so would offer us a space to look at our circumstances globally from a place of compassion, empathy and understanding. This was the gift Belah gave to me. A gift that could only be accepted through committing to complete honesty and acceptance of myself.

11. Understanding Our Trauma

If the shift in some cultures to a food storage economy reflects a trauma response and represents a pathway to the dysfunctional relationship much of humanity now has with Gaia, then how do we begin to understand and hopefully heal that trauma? Given the crisis Gaia is facing, there is an imperative to do so. There are some emerging research areas that are beginning to explore aspects of positioning our relationship with Gaia differently. One is to begin the collective self-reflection necessary to understand the collective trauma carried by humanity. Some of that might be further research to understand a scale of inter-generation trauma that has not been conceptualised before. Doing so could open a potential dialogue between global health research and the humanities using critical theory [84], essentially expanding the scope of understanding how humanity got to where it is and how that informs our approach to planetary health. It might also reshape some of the assumptions in the principles of planetary health [3]. It is challenging in any health situation to move from addressing symptoms of ill-health to addressing its root cause in all its physical, psychological and spiritual dimensions. But this is perhaps what we need to start doing. Recognising that one of the key relationships affecting humanity’s health is the relationship much of humanity has with its mother: Mother Earth.

The nature-relatedness principle in planetary health could, therefore, be expanded. Although it is well established that time spent in nature supports human health and well-being [85], and we can understand that in terms of the biophysical and psychological processes [86], it does not answer the question of why it is important. One reason may be that at some deep level, reconnecting with Gaia is not just about maintaining health but healing the deep trauma that is carried in much of humanity. Like any trauma-healing process, humanity needs to engage with a key aspect of its relationship with Gaia: trust. That trust is being tested as the climate changes, and it is triggering responses of fear and anxiety [55]. However, perhaps these are old fears. Fears we have been carrying for millennia, and only now, due to humanity’s own actions, are being triggered once again.

The first and perhaps most fundamental step in a possible healing process might be for humanity to show itself some self-love. Health and love are connected [87], as is health and self-love [88]. In exploring how humanity suffers collective trauma, perhaps the first step in a process of healing is forgiving ourselves. The values change that Oren Lyons says humanity needs [62] may go much deeper than just our relationships with Gaia and learning to collectively love her again. It may go to a place where humanity can love itself again. To reimagine ourselves as something other than survivors of a scary and unpredictable environment. To do so would mean taking greater responsibility for being in a complex, but ultimately nurturing relationship where we are not at the top of a pyramid of life [89] (p. 4). For humans to exist within Gaia on a geological time scale, these are the aspects of our relationship that we need to collectively solve, and solve them with love, kindness and mutual understanding. It is my dream, after sitting with Grandma Belah, that we, existing in a separation mindset, can take those steps.

There remains a challenge of how to test a hypothesis about the origins and implications of some people’s separation from nature from a trauma perspective. The thesis of this paper is that the ability to reimagine a humanity-level reconnection with Gaia (as a fundamental principle for planetary health) requires a deep understanding of how and why we have emerged where we have in our relationship with the planet. That is a transdisciplinary problem [21]. To address it as a trauma question first requires engagement with questioning the success of the journey separation has been on—which is a philosophical question about the definition of success [90]—and perhaps a recognition that the planet is revealing a different opinion to our own egos. Additionally, unpacking the trauma itself is a psychological question, one that potentially challenges concepts of nature-relatedness [91] to go deeper and understand the emotional and spiritual dimension of connection, that it is not just a human need but a choice, and thus, what affects the choice.

It is perhaps the basis of the choice that is the most critical issue because we are again facing a choice: to remain in separation or accept and reimagine our connection within Gaia. My personal reflection spoke to me about the need to first explore whether a trauma exists; prior to my experience, I did not even realise that it might exist. There is a wealth of collective intelligence in the academic community who can conceive of ways to test and evaluate the trauma-based hypothesis I have posed. But it begins with a more basic question: are we really willing to ask ourselves the question of who we are within a sentient biophysical world and who we want to be? That is what my experience made me face, and in order to test the question, we first must be willing to ask it. My experience and the vulnerability that went with it revealed that it need not be a question to fear.

12. Conclusions

Suggesting that much of humanity has a trauma problem toward Gaia may seem radical, but we do have somewhere to start. My experience of working with Aboriginal people in Australia has given me gratitude for the stewardship of nature they have carried through to today [92]. But more importantly, it has given me even deeper gratitude for their stewardship of our relationship with nature [93,94]. There is a lot we, in separation, can learn from Indigenous people if we can accept our humility in doing so. Although our experience of nature may be declining globally [95], the benefits of nature in the process of human healing are becoming well recognised [96,97]. Additionally, the importance of such benefits is being more deeply understood the more we partner with Indigenous people and the more-than-human in research [15]. Despite this, it is not Indigenous people’s role to heal humanity’s relationship with Gaia; it is a task that those operating in separation need to address within themselves through listening, unlearning and healing. For me, that meant sitting under the Belah tree and taking the very first step, which was acknowledging the possibility that my ancestor’s separation from nature was traumatic. And doing so without judgement. Just acceptance.

Acknowledging a separation from nature is an important first step toward evaluating who we really are in this world, something which those in separation perhaps assume too much about rather than really getting in touch with internally. Getting in touch with who we really are is challenging because it questions the very foundation of our way of being. With the crisis humanity faces, it might be argued that either we take that step of internal reflection voluntarily or the unfolding change will force it upon us when our options are reduced. Either way, addressing changes in our environment that we have created (if that is acknowledged honestly) necessitates change within. Without providing answers, it is my hope that this paper, around the theme of this special issue, can inspire others to also engage in self-reflection and promote safer places for it to be done collectively and in academic settings.

While there is an enormous amount of work being undertaken on how we adapt to climate change [98,99], only more recently have we begun the process of collective inner reflection and consideration of our values [100], and applying approaches like mindfulness to addressing societal pro-environmental behaviour [101]. Exploring cultural values for those operating in separation is developing through concepts like regenerative cultures [102]. Complimentary work also resides in the recognition of environmental legal personhood [103] which acknowledges the sentience and rights of Gaia. The real challenge, though, goes somewhat deeper. The path of healing may ultimately require a process of collective self-forgiveness [104] and valuing our relationships within Gaia. This is more than valuing in natural capital accounting terms [105]. It involves valuing the relationship itself, which could take the form of something like the measurement of happiness at a national scale [106,107], but based on a nature-relatedness. All these efforts reflect positive steps toward acknowledging the existence of humanity’s relationship with Gaia.

Recognition of the relationship with Gaia is one thing; healing that relationship, and thus our trauma with it, is another thing entirely. Like everything with climate change, consideration of a global healing of trauma connected with our relationship with Gaia is a huge task. However, it may open some doors to alternative approaches because it would involve a pathway of kindness and forgiveness, something that is the very foundation of all trauma healing. It is somewhat linked, but different to, arguments for applying the relational turn in the humanities and sustainability science [108] in that, although the complex web of relationships is acknowledged, our agency within those relationships is of the utmost importance, and it is, therefore, our values and self-reflection that become critically important. This is a challenge for how planetary health is conceived and progressed through observational and self-reflective research on the collective healing of our relationship with Gaia.

Sharing this perspective in a self-reflective narrative is how I personally honour the kindness and understanding shown to me by Grandma Belah and the Elders. They have helped me understand the trauma I believe I inherited from my ancestors. I am a different person because of what I have learnt from Aboriginal people, their cultures and Country. Cultural science, as I practice it, also exists because of that learning. In doing so, there is a pathway to perhaps accepting alternative forms of knowing in how we research, understand and heal our relationship with Gaia. It is my hope that these ideas can expand the spectrum of research within planetary health research.