There were some ways in which Europeans had a completely different attitude to things than the Indigenous people of North America they encountered when they first had contact with each other. For one thing, as I have been saying, they had a completely different attitude to nature. Closely associated with that, was that they had a completely different attitude to property—at least real property (land and buildings). Europeans believed in private ownership of land. That idea was foreign to Indigenous people. Indigenous people believed in tribes or first nations having rights to land. Not individuals. That has had a profound impact. The idea of private property is part of capitalist society. At least it has always has been so until they encountered the Indigenous people and recently, with the rise of capitalism in Communist countries or formerly communist countries such as China.
The Indigenous idea of property held in common was blessed by the Parliament of Canada when it enacted the Indian Act in the late 19th century as it tried to assert jurisdiction over First Nations in Canada. That notion is still part of the federal law in Canada since then, even though it has been criticized by some.
Professor John Moriarty though considers the issue from the perspective of a poet. As he said:
“It is time now in western Europe to reinstitute Commonage consciousness. We have to reinstate it in a way that would reinstitute a new sacrament. Unless we reinstitute commonage consciousness, then we are going to continue to inflict appalling damage to the earth. That is a story that could take us into an ecologically better way of being on the earth.”
When Moriarty went to the hills in Connemara Ireland and saw no fences, he was awe struck. Moriarty noted how people thought it was a big deal to take down the Berlin wall between 2 European political systems, communism and capitalism. Was that really such a big deal? John Moriarty did not think that was a big deal.
However, Moriarty thought “it was hugely important to take down the wall between us and blades of grass, between us and trees, between us and the stars, between us and everything that is.” That is an entirely new attitude to nature, at least for non-Indigenous people.
Talking about an Indigenous nation in North America, Moriarty said
“the Blackfeet did not see the difference between them and the buffalo. They saw what was common between them and the buffalo. And what is common is grace. What separates us in a way is trivial but what we have in common is grace and immense.
Moriarty wants to take us back from our “us and them consciousness” to a commonage consciousness and then we will be walking the earth in a more beautiful way.”
Moriarty says the world will not reveal itself to a scientist who confronts it only as a scientist, or to a theologian. The world will reveal itself to a Saint Francis of Assisi who will walk out naked into the world and says “Brother sun and sister moon.” Some Christians had a similar point of view.
We must recognize that we are all kin with all creatures on the earth. As he said, “What else is this Blackfoot Indian story but an amplification of the story of Saint Francis of Assisi?”
We must learn that the sun is our brother. The moon is our sister. The fire is our kin. We must consider what we have in common. Consciousness is common. Moriarty liked the idea of the English novelist and writer D. H. Lawrence who said we should “take a great arc back into the past and come forward.”
As Moriarty said, “It is only to someone who walks beautifully on the earth that the earth will reveal itself.”