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.
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.