“Will youth take up the challenge — “grasp the nettle” as it were — or will they follow the example of their parents and grandparents?”
Last week we parsed some excerpts from Autobiography of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, or Black Hawk, Embracing the Traditions of his Nation, published in 1833. The author described the seasonal cycles of his Mississippi Valley village in the 18th and 19th centuries, before the Lewis and Clark expedition.
In David Holmgren’s over-lengthy mea culpa for Baby Boom depravities inflicted on the planet, he writes:
By many measures, the benefits of global industrial civilization peaked in our youth, but for most middle-class baby boomers of the affluent countries, the continuing experience of those benefits has tended to blind us to the constriction of opportunities faced by the next generations: unaffordable housing and land access, ecological overshoot and climate chaos amongst a host of other challenges.
These are all things that previous generations were warned of by Massasoit Ousamequin, Tecumseh, Sitting Bull (Húŋkešni), Wovoca, Geronimo (Goyaałé), Cochise, Crazy Horse (Čháŋ Óhaŋ), Black Elk (Heȟáka Sápa), Chief Joseph (Hinmatóowyalahtq̓it), and many others, so one need not place too much blame on the boomers. Still, the postwar period was an inflection point.