This bears repeating: Humans are not inherently toxic and destructive. Humanity is not a cancer.
My friends, this is THE GREAT LIE.
It is one totalizing, homogenizing, globalizing, colonizing culture based on domination, capitalism and separation from nature that is destroying the world.
The fact that this culture has colonized the minds of 95% of humanity still does not mean "we" are humanity. We are still one culture - NOT humanity itself.
Indigenous cultures have been resisting this colonizing, globalizing culture every step of the way, and their resilience and survival in the face of such a force should give us profound hope for the future.
A primary reason indigenous cultures are so consistently erased from our collective awareness is because they are living proof that we are not humanity; that we are still just one particularly destructive monoculture. The very existence of indigenous ways of living and belonging to the world exposes the great lie.
As Daniel Quinn taught me, this is profoundly good news. If "we" were truly humanity, then it's true, we might be doomed. But since we're not, there is hope.
The only thing that gives our culture its power is the unexamined ideas and beliefs in our own heads.
Change that, you change everything.