Réveiller les esprits de la terre

This book starts from a multiplicity of experiences and knowledge: from shamanism to totemic rites, from struggles for land rights to practices aimed at becoming-territory to resist the acceleration of destructive policies of living environments. For the Warlpiri and their neighbors in the central Australian desert, the spirits of the land, water, and air are angry when humans do not respect certain laws of balance, which for these guardians of sacred sites are at once social, environmental, and cosmological. This ancestral wisdom can be found in many situations all over the planet. From Australia to France, from the Limousin Mountains to the Zad of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, via French Guyana and Polynesia, Barbara Glowczewski tells the story of these multiple strategies for “resisting disaster” by showing the creativity of the struggles that are taking shape today against a predatory relationship with the land that has become hegemonic. The observation common to these experiences invites us to promote new alliances to awaken the spirits of the earth and better defend all that lives on it.