by David Suzuki
Aboriginal people in Arnhemland performing for The Sacred Balance
In a simple gesture, Lewis said, “I want to give you a name—Karnemeyu. It means ‘holy mountain'.” Receiving a name is the highest honor I can imagine. It means far more to me than receiving an honorary degree from a university. What surprises me is that of the names I have received from aboriginal peoples, three have meant “mountain.” Simon Lucas, a Nuu-chah-nulth from Ahousat on Vancouver Island, gave me my first such name, Nuchi, meaning “mountain,” and the Blood Tribe near Lethbridge, Alberta, gave me the name Natooeestuk, meaning “sacred mountain.”
I was browsing through children's books in a store in Australia and came across one of several books written by Percy Trezise, a white man, and illustrated by Dick Roughsey, an Aboriginal artist. As I read the book, I found this pairing of a Caucasian and an Aboriginal intriguing. I saw that Percy lived in Cairns, so when Tara and I were in the city, I called him. He invited us to drop in, and when we did, he was happy to talk about his life.
Born in 1923, Percy had grown up believing Aboriginal people were primitive, almost subhuman; that was the prevailing attitude of the day. When he was an adult, he met Dick Roughsey and quickly realized the artist was very talented. As he began to spend time with Dick, he learned the horrific cost of bigotry and became committed to showing the world that Aboriginal people are neither primitive nor unintelligent.
A professional pilot, Percy started to explore the northern parts of Queensland and to locate rock paintings all over the territory. These lands aren't empty; they are filled with evidence of thousands of years of unbroken use by the original inhabitants. By the time he died in 2005, Percy had contributed vastly to the documentation and preservation of Aboriginal culture and rock art and was an artist himself.
One of our greatest regrets was a trip Percy arranged for us that never happened. His son is a pilot, and Percy arranged for us to meet him and fly to one of the remote areas where Percy had documented and mapped hundreds of rock paintings. We were on the plane and strapped in when the announcement came that the weather was too inclement to risk flying.
BYRON BAY IS HIPPIE heaven on the east coast of Australia. I was met at the airport by a lawyer who was volunteering to help my book tour. On the drive into town, I casually mentioned that I had heard there were a lot of hippies and pot smoking in Byron Bay. Bam, he pulled a joint out of his pocket and asked if I wanted a toke. I turned it down, of course, but it looked as if Byron Bay was my kind of place. My talk was very well received, and we sold a lot of books. Before saying goodbye, the man who had picked me up handed me an envelope, which I shoved in my pocket and later threw into my suitcase.
The next day I had time to go snorkeling in the gorgeous bay that gives the place its name. The water was amazingly clear, and I spent most of my time simply floating among massive schools of sardines. There were turtles, seals, and lots and lots of fish. At one point I felt a burning across my cheek and after frantic wiping found an almost invisible tentacle of a bluebottle jellyfish. I ended up with a red line across my face, a small discomfort for a wonderful swim.
I forgot about the envelope from the man who had picked me up the day before and flew to Sydney to change planes to fly to Perth. As I got out on the tarmac, I noticed a sign warning that dogs were used to detect illicit materials. Then I remembered the envelope, so as soon as I got into the airport terminal building, I whipped into a men's room and threw it away. I came out whistling, and there was a dog! It approached my bag and immediately went at it. The dog's handler was a woman who recognized me and, pulling on the leash, said apologetically, “I don't know why he's so excited.”
“Well, I did have some mangoes in there this morning,” I suggested. “That must be it,” the officer said, and she rather brusquely pulled the dog off my bag. Poor thing was only doing its job, but ever since, when I go to Australia, I ask my hosts how the mangoes are.
IN ALMOST TWO DECADES of visiting Australia at least twice a year, I have come to think of it as my adoptive land. It is a continent of extreme contradictions. Any tourist may be impressed with gleaming, modern cities, yet most of the country is virtually uninhabited by whites. Australia is an island continent where a rise in sea level as the planet warms will have an enormous impact. The climate, already tropical and subtropical, will grow increasingly warmer, but the federal government repeatedly refuses to act seriously to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Canadians envy Australia for its quantities of sunlight, yet the government fails to exploit this free, nonpolluting energy to make Australia a leader in solar technology as Germany and Denmark are with wind power.
Australia is a major exporter of wheat and rice, two crops that are not indigenous to the continent and require vast quantities of severely limited water. The flora and fauna of Australia set the nation apart with its unique biodiversity, yet exotic species, introduced accidentally or deliberately, continue to wreak havoc on local populations.
The history of Australia over the past two centuries has been one of decimation of the Aboriginal people, a deliberate attempt to eliminate them by killing or through assimilation, and a climate of racism has led to enormous problems for the survivors. But as the twentieth century ended, Australians overwhelmingly wanted justice and reconciliation for the Aboriginal people, and it is my sense that there is a growing appreciation for their knowledge and art.
Islands, even large ones like Australia, impose boundaries and acknowledgment of limits. Being bound together by the constraints of water, land, and biodiversity, Australians have an opportunity to confront the major issues of our time as a unified country. Unlike Canadians, who must constantly refer to or compare ourselves with our neighbors to the immediate south, Australians aren't as psychically hampered. The twenty-first century truly offers the chance for Australians to realize their future as the lucky land.
chapter ELEVEN
STARTING THE DAVID SUZUKI FOUNDATION
IN MY EXPERIENCE since I had become swept up in it in the late 1960s, the environmental movement worked for clean air, water, soil, and energy, for a world rich in diversity in which life flourished in abundance, and for sustainable communities and a way of living in balance with the rest of the biosphere. But to achieve those goals, we often had to try to stop destructive activities.
So it seemed ironic that we were always fighting against things—against testing underground nuclear explosives in Alaska, against drilling for oil in stormy Hecate Strait between Haida Gwaii and mainland British Columbia, against further damming the Peace River at site c in northern B.C. for hydroelectricity, against clear-cut logging, against pollution by pulp mills. As the chief executive officer of a forestry company once wrote, environmentalists seemed “anti-everything.”
As an academic with tenure at the University of British Columbia, a good grant, and a great group of students, I had a wonderful life. I had tremendous freedom, no time clock to punch, and no boss watching my every move. So long as I carried out my teaching and administrative work and directed my students, I could spend most of my time having fun, though to me that meant spending seven days a week, often till 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, at the lab. The freedom that academia offers enabled me to get involved in both civil-rights and environmental issues, and I began to throw myself into controversies.
In the 1970s, as host of both Science Magazine on television and Quirks and Quarks on radio, I was in a good position to explore a variety of issues, especially those related to race and the impact of modern genetics and technological advances on medical care. I spoke out on them, supported the peace movement, and opposed the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War. In British Columbia, it was impossible to avoid being drawn into environmental battles over pollution, clear-cut logging, and mining.
As an activist I operated in a helter-skelter fashion, getting involved when asked or when I saw something that triggered my interest. I could be useful by signing petitions, writing letters of support, giv
ing talks to help raise funds or highlight issues with the public. But I was unfocused, helping out when the opportunity presented itself and acting as an individual.
Being high-profile brought some danger. When we were in the heat of the battles over logging, a bullet was fired through the front window of my home, my office was broken into twice to get at my computer; once, in Haida Gwaii, while I was jogging along the road outside the logging village of Sandspit, a truck was turned at me and I was driven into a ditch. Tara and I often felt very vulnerable and alone, and we worried about our children's safety.
During my fourth and last year (1978–79) as host of Quirks and Quarks, Anita Gordon had become the producer, and she continued in that role when Jay Ingram took my place. In 1988, with environmental concern making headlines, Anita asked me to host a CBC Radio series on the subject. I agreed, and we received the go-ahead to do five shows that were broadcast in a series called It's a Matter of Survival. Traveling to conferences in North and South America, Europe, and Asia, I interviewed for the program more than 150 scientists and experts from many countries and fields about environmental problems and how the world would look fifty years hence if we carried on with business as usual. Most of those interviews were conducted in an intense period of about four months, and I could suddenly see with crystal clarity that the very life-support systems of the planet were being destroyed at a horrifying rate and on a grand scale.
This new perspective galvanized me with a sense of urgency that has only increased over the years. The radio series conveyed the magnitude of the problem as well as the uplifting message that by acting now we could avoid the fate we were heading toward. The series evoked an incredible response. More than sixteen thousand letters came in, most ending with the plea, “What can I do?”
Until then, my standard response to such a query had been, “I'm just a messenger telling people about the crisis that is happening. I'm afraid I don't have all the solutions.” But this time Tara said, “David, we've been warning people about the problems for years. This response shows we've reached a lot of the general public, but now people feel helpless because they don't know what to do. You've got to go beyond the warnings and start talking about solutions.”
I didn't like assuming that responsibility, but I could see she was right. It's one thing to hear a dismaying report, but it's another thing altogether to track down experts, organizations, and articles that might offer answers. In raising the alarm, I now also had to provide something that would help people take action if they were so motivated.
This truth was brought home to me by another experience. Noam Chomsky, the famed linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the strongest critics of American foreign policy, gave a talk to a full house at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver. I chaired the event, and like the audience, I was enthralled by his analysis and insights. But during the question-and-answer period, he refused to recommend courses of action, organizations, or even books to read, saying that people had to find the material and make up their own minds. That helped me to realize that Tara was right: by informing and alarming people, I had a responsibility to suggest potential answers.
As well, many of our friends were anxious about strains on our ecosystems and had begun to challenge us to lead an initiative, perhaps to found a new organization. With their help, Tara and I drew up a list of about twenty “thinkers” who were committed to environmental issues but who had diverse skills and points of view; we invited them to a weekend retreat to discuss whether we needed a new, solution-oriented group. About a dozen people could make it, and in November 1989 they gave us three days of their precious time.
We gathered in the idyllic setting of Pender Island, one of the Gulf Islands in the Strait of Georgia between Vancouver Island and the B.C. mainland. The lodge where we met was close to the ocean and had an orchard and paths we could wander while discussing ideas. Tara and I were pretty naive about how to run such a meeting; at first we had no facilitator or written agenda, only questions and a sense of urgency. Luckily, Vancouver writer Stan Persky, known for his incisive analysis and his expertise at meetings, took over as chair.
I talked about my sobering and motivating experience working on It's a Matter of Survival and the enormous public response it received. Then I asked two questions: “Is there a need, an important role, for yet another environmental organization? And if the answer is yes, what would its focus be and how would it differ from other groups?”
The brainstorming participants were outspoken and irreverent, leading to vigorous, productive sessions. We agreed that most organizations we knew had sprung up as a result of a crisis—to oppose the spraying of a school yard with herbicide, to fight a factory polluting the water, to protect a treasured forest about to be clear-cut. But each crisis is merely a symptom or manifestation of a deeper, underlying root cause. Even if each crisis is resolved, we are no closer to long-term balance with our surroundings unless we get at the cause. An organization was needed to focus on root causes, so that steps could be taken to produce real change.
We agreed it should be a science-based organization. We would not do original research or give out research grants, but we would use the best scientific information available and hire scientists to help write or edit the papers we wanted to produce. Further, we would emphasize communication: we would learn how best to deliver this top-quality information to the public. Successful communication would be as important as the science itself. I have always believed this, which is why, as a scientist, I chose to go into television.
At the meeting on Pender Island, we also decided not to accept government grants or support—a decision that had enormous ramifications. Such support can become a substantial part of an organization's budget. But government priorities change easily; organizations are often told they could qualify for further grants if they would just shift their focus—and before anyone realizes it, the promise of continued funding is directing activities. We also decided that if companies offered us money, they would have to demonstrate a genuine commitment to environmental sustainability before we would consider accepting funds.
In the early days of the organization, the decision to abstain from government support made life difficult. We could have had several employees paid by Canada Manpower (the federal employment insurance system at the time) and grants to help us get up and running, but we chose to use only the money Tara and I were putting in. We stuck to that decision, and it gave us the freedom to speak out without worrying about jeopardizing our funding.
The group at Pender Island then decided the name of the organization should be the David Suzuki Foundation. I objected. It seemed conceited, and I was not in this endeavor to be remembered in perpetuity. It would also be an enormous responsibility to ensure that an organization carrying my name remained true to the values I believed in, as also shared and expressed by those at our retreat.
The counterargument was twofold. First, my profile in Canada had been built up over many years of working in science and the media and of speaking out, so my name would immediately tell people what the foundation stood for. If we named it the Pender Group, for example, we would be starting from scratch. Second, it might be possible to translate the reputation my work had created into fuel for the new organization. The viewers and readers who liked my work might send funds to support the initiative. It was a long debate, lasting many months, but in the end I had to acquiesce.
Miles Richardson, then president of the Haida Nation, was one of the first three board members, along with Tara and me. One of the strengths of the foundation from the beginning has been strong aboriginal input. Chief Sophie Pierre, the powerhouse administrator of the Ktunaxa-Kinbasket Tribal Council, attended the retreat with her little boy. Norma Cassi, outspoken young member of the Gwich'in First Nation of Old Crow in Canada's Yukon Territory, also joined us. A number of other key people had spent years working with First Nations communities.
By the end of the weekend, the Pe
nder Island retreat had created a new organization. Now the challenge was to get it off the ground. But predictably, after the enthusiasm of the first gathering, everyone went back to their work. They were, after all, engaged scientists, lawyers, professors, and writers with far too much on their plates to begin with. Eight months later, nothing had happened.
Tara decided to get on with it. She met with a respected accountant to learn what had to be done, and she paid for a lawyer who by September 1990 had established our legal status as a charitable organization. Shortly after that, she found space for an office that was formally opened on January 1, 1991. Now the David Suzuki Foundation really existed.
The office was above an automobile repair shop and was cheap, but the gas and paint fumes seeping up through the floor each day must have been a serious health hazard. The roof leaked, the wastebaskets were populated with mice, and everything we had in the office—a raggedy collection of furniture and shelves—was borrowed or donated. From this bare-bones setting we were going to take on the world. It was a place where the original founding group could gather and where volunteers could drop in to work, which they did from the first day. We were gratified to see how willing people were to spend hours and days helping, but now we had to figure out what to do.
One of our first organizational arrangements proved unworkable, and it was my fault. At our founding meeting, we had decided to create a two-headed organization: an institute, which would carry out projects, and a foundation, which would have charitable status and raise funds for the institute. Each would have its own board. I had wanted to free the project arm from worrying about fund-raising so it could focus exclusively on its work, and I thought my best role would be to raise the money to get things done. The problem was that the institute board just wanted to bash ahead, and people became frustrated because we didn't have the money to do it, given that initially all the cash was coming from Tara and me. I didn't begrudge the money, but I wouldn't be able to provide enough for the projects we wanted to develop. I had to get busy helping the foundation raise funds.