We are having a movie day at the Darebin Intercultural Centre today. It is a screening of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. We provide lunch before and the attendees were discussing the countries they come from: Malta, China, Vietnam, India, Ireland and Italy, most of how arrived as refugees , many of them asylum seekers who arrived  in our country by boat.

Hanh, our elderly vietnamese who attends our events and was an asylum seeker who arrived by boat back in the 1970’s was sharing about how she was helping the new intake of Syrians who are arriving in our country because they have nothing. And she said how she could relate to that and how poorly our planet is set up so that all people survive.

It led to a conversation about the sustainability of our beloved planet, so I am enquiring into what has been said and done over the years in regard to this. Lets have a look:

1. I watched a discussion on A T.V. showed called Q and A the other night with a scientist and a politician discussing Climate Change. The politician said that it had been made up by NASA. The scientist asked him did he believe we had landed on the moon, and who was responsible for that.

2. Point taken, Prince Ea has a few words to say about this: Sorry.

3. Will there be an Amazon Forest in the future for our children and grandchildren to visit. In the past 40 years 20% of the rainforest has been cut down. Here are 20 Facts about the Amazon.

4. They say that everything is music, what tune what is happening in Syria playing:War, what is it good for?

5. Anna Lappé is an author and educator, known for her work as an expert on food systems and as a sustainable food advocate. The co-author or author of three books and the contributing author to over ten others, Anna’s work has been widely translated internationally and featured in many journals. With her mother Frances Moore Lappé, Anna co-founded the Cambridge-based Small Planet Institute, an international network for research and popular education about the root causes of hunger and poverty. The Lappés are also co-founders of the Small Planet Fund, which has raised nearly $1 million for democratic social movements worldwide, two of which have won the Nobel Peace Prize since the Fund’s founding in 2002.Anna’s research on sustainable agriculture has taken her from Brooklyn to South Korea, China, Bangladesh, India, Poland, France, Italy, Mali, Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, and beyond.

6. Sustainability depends on us all, stop using plastic bags, throwing rubbish in the streets, purchasing pre wrapped items from supermarkets etc. etc. etc. : Sustainability Song.

7. One  of my favourite songs is by Paul Kelly , From Little things, Big Things grow. It depicts the action of an indigenous tribe in Australia and their battle for their land with Lord Vestey, a British landowner: Here are the words: 

Gather round people let me tell you’re a story
An eight year long story of power and pride
British Lord Vestey and Vincent Lingiarri
Were opposite men on opposite sides

Vestey was fat with money and muscle
Beef was his business, broad was his door
Vincent was lean and spoke very little
He had no bank balance, hard dirt was his floor

From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow

Gurindji were working for nothing but rations
Where once they had gathered the wealth of the land
Daily the pressure got tighter and tighter
Gurindju decided they must make a stand

They picked up their swags and started off walking
At Wattie Creek they sat themselves down
Now it don’t sound like much but it sure got tongues talking
Back at the homestead and then in the town

From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow

Vestey man said I’ll double your wages
Seven quid a week you’ll have in your hand
Vincent said uh-huh we’re not talking about wages
We’re sitting right here till we get our land
Vestey man roared and Vestey man thundered
You don’t stand the chance of a cinder in snow
Vince said if we fall others are rising

From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow

Then Vincent Lingiarri boarded an aeroplane
Landed in Sydney, big city of lights
And daily he went round softly speaking his story
To all kinds of men from all walks of life

And Vincent sat down with big politicians
This affair they told him is a matter of state
Let us sort it out, your people are hungry
Vincent said no thanks, we know how to wait

From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow

Then Vincent Lingiarri returned in an aeroplane
Back to his country once more to sit down
And he told his people let the stars keep on turning
We have friends in the south, in the cities and towns

Eight years went by, eight long years of waiting
Till one day a tall stranger appeared in the land
And he came with lawyers and he came with great ceremony
And through Vincent’s fingers poured a handful of sand

From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow

That was the story of Vincent Lingairri
But this is the story of something much more
How power and privilege can not move a people
Who know where they stand and stand in the law

From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow

8. There are many quotes like this, pointing to the fact that how we treat the earth is how we are treating ourselves and future generations. Mahatma Gandhi said it in the 1940’s, we do not appear to have learnt much: I am that I Am.

9. Ralph  Marston (February 16, 1907 – December 7, 1967) was a professional football player who spent a season in the National Football League with the Boston Bulldogs in 1929. 

10. Indigenous wisdom from people who lived on lands for thousands of centuries is often ignored these days as primitive, I think thats a damn shame: Elders Wisdom.

11. We hold ourselves superior to all other creatures on the planet, and wipe countless species out each year, when will they turn on us?

12. Arnie, the terminator in the good guy movies about coming back to protect the leader of humanity from the machines knows how the planet will survive, unfortunately the Australian government does not. The Terminator.

13. William Andrews McDonough is an American designer, advisor, author, and thought leader. McDonough is founding principal of William McDonough + Partners, co-founder of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) with German chemist Michael Braungart as well as co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things and The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability—Designing for Abundance, also with Braungart. McDonough’s career is focused on creating a beneficial footprint. He espouses a message that we can design materials, systems, companies, products, buildings, and communities that continuously improve over time.

14. The profit mongers of the world seem to think they can do anything to our planet. What they fail to realise that the earth will still be here long after the human race disappear from its surface as many other dominant species have: Earth Song.

15. Zinn described himself as “something of an anarchist, something of a socialist. Maybe a democratic socialist.” He wrote extensively about the civil rights and anti-war movements, and labor history of the United States. His memoir, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, was also the title of a 2004 documentary about Zinn’s life and work. Zinn died of a heart attack in 2010, aged 87.

How do we sustain the world if we continue with tribalism and fighting wars over it. Sustainability must  include all things on the planet being equal.

Namaste until next time my dear friends.