To me there is a difference between stewardship and ownership. "Ownership" is linked to exploitation and stewardship involves responsibility to future generations. Stewardship does not leave out anyone as long as they care for the earth. "Ownership" leaves out a lot of people including the ones to come. Being born somewhere doesn't mean much to me as a claim, caring for the earth does. Colonialism to me means the taking the earth away from stewardship into ownership. By stewardship I mean that we live with the earth that future generations have the same opportunities we have in terms of survival. The forests are a good example, my daughters won't see amazing stands of old growth I have seen because (and how many know this) the Japanese use old growth for concrete forms which are burned after one use. I don't want to know where people are born, I want to know how they relate to the earth and the ones to come and how they relate to injustice. A story:
There was once a town that was under a spell, everyone prospered as long as one child was kept in darkness and pain. Everyone knew the child was there, everyone knew that she would spend her whole life in one long agony in the darkness until she died and another child was chosen to take her place. Most didn't like to think of it. Of those who did, there were those who left the town and those who worked to get the child out of the dungeon.
For each of us, how we relate to injustice is an important question to answer as we grow.
(P.S. In my discussion with conservative economists, the "child" can be seen as the 3% of the population considered expendable by the formulators of economic policy. It is understood to be that part of the population that suffers when certain adjustments are made in interest rates or unemployment. As one of them put it, "don't you think it is a good trade off to sacrifice 3% for the rest of us." No, I don't. There is more than enough for everyone if we stop rewarding the greedy and ruthless.)
So my point is not where were you born but what kind of person are you?
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