Week 3: Culture, Creativity and Sustainability (Apr 15 to 21).
Creatives arrive first. Before policy shifts and systems change, artists, musicians, poets, and storytellers name what we feel, grieve what we have lost, and imagine new possibilities into existence. Art is a gift that can help us heal, speak truth to power, and shape what happens next. The stories we tell about the Earth determine how we treat it. This week we center creatives whose profound work helps us to reflect, connect, and build a different world.
Voices of This Generation
We hear the Earth’s story told through music in the work of Xiuhtezcatl Martinez (pronounced Shoe-Tez-Caht) an Aztec Indigenous hip hop artist and climate activist who began speaking at city councils at age six and addressed the United Nations General Assembly at fifteen in English, Spanish, and Nahuatl. His music blends Indigenous roots with hip hop to move hearts before minds. Follow and join the youth led global movement he helped build called Earth Guardians.
Centering Right Relationship
The ancient wisdom of the land also lives on through the voice of Dr. Lyla June Johnston a Dine and Tsetsehestahase musician, poet, and scholar whose work heals the relationship between people and the Earth through song, ceremony, and story. Her doctoral research reveals how pre-colonial Indigenous nations built regenerative food systems across Turtle Island for thousands of years, proving that sustainable abundance is not a new idea, it is an ancient one waiting to be remembered. Her TED talk is an informed entry point into her vision of returning to right relationship with the land.
The future of earth centered storytelling is being shaped collectively by Climate Storytelling 2075 a radically multidisciplinary group of young artists, scientists, and storytellers from around the world envisioning a sustainable future through animation, photography, film, speculative fiction, garment design, music, and sculpture, each rooted in cultural heritage and environmental justice. By imagining the world in 2075, they are doing exactly what the Seventh Generation Principle calls us to do, making decisions today with those yet unborn in mind. Explore their work and invest in the next generation of earth centered creators at Climate Futures Studio.
“The biggest issue we face is shifting human consciousness, not saving the planet. The planet does not need saving, we do.” – Xiuhtezcatl Martinez
Reflection: Which artists, musicians, or storytellers help you feel connected to something larger than yourself? Let us know whose work is helping you imagine a different world.
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