Reconnecting with Gaia to Understand Humanity’s Collective Trauma: Learning from Grandma Belah and Yungadhu

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an exceptionally well written article (I have only minor comments about sentence structure or wording in a very few places).  It is a great piece of self-reflective writing that tells a compelling and interesting story.  It is extremely well referenced, which is unusual in self-reflective writing or viewpoints. Importantly you have brought out of your personal experience and academic knowledge a new way of looking at human history and our separation from nature. Your identification of climate trauma passed on through millennia brings with it new possibilities for approaching the healing that is desperately needed now in our own time as we face existential climate challenges.  This paper also grounds and expands key notions held within the emerging field of planetary health.  It is an extraordinary contribution. 

The following comments emerged during my read through.  They are offered here both to encourage and perhaps help clarify your very important messages.

Lines 50-4: This is an important idea about self-reflection in non-Indigenous cultures and an elegantly stated call and commitment of the paper.

Line 66: possible typo - apply or applying??

Line 82-3: you are making an important distinction between Indigenous peoples’ story of their cultural wisdom and your own story of understanding and surrender.

Lines 107-115: as a reader, I applaud your courage and ability to clearly speak your dilemmas and the need for this ‘viewpoint’ paper

Line 134 (and preceding section): your description of Grandma Belah is evocative, touching.

Line 194-5: a clear and admirable statement about culture and science working together.

Lines 292-4: well stated difference between scientific observation and truly being within /experiencing Gaia.

Lines 401-4: important call to engagement and responsibility as result of relationship within nature.

Lines 417-18: a most important question that is seldom asked; to wonder how one became so disconnected.

Line 419: it seems like jumping away from the above important question to begin identifying the impacts of disconnection.  Perhaps this could be framed a little to signal to the reader that you are not abandoning the important question.

Line 519: the phrase ‘there are a few possible steps’ leads me to want an identifiable set of steps that I could take away from the paper. However, in the paragraph(s) that follow I found it difficult to identify steps within the context of further explanations.  Perhaps this could be sharpened up and made a little clearer.  OR perhaps revise the alerting phrase about ‘a few possible steps’.

Lines 547-9: The sentence structure here seems a bit awkward, i.e., two linked phrases

Line 552-3: does ‘we in separation’ mean 'we separately' or 'we living in separation'?  I see subsequently that this is an important phrase, but initially I could not parse it.  Perhaps clarify?

Line 562-63: sentence structure? “As is our understanding…”

Line 595-96: “Something that I hope...” typo??

Author Response

Please see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Let me cut to the chase: this is a brilliant, engaging, and profound read, and a much needed contribution to the emerging literature on relational approaches to Planetary Health. I was moved by the author's courage and vulnerability in sharing their own learning journey in such exquisite and moving detail. The real (or added) import of the paper, in my view however, arises from 3 intersecting aspects:

1. sustainability and climate change are, at their root, not so much technical problems as relationship problems, much of humanity having fallen out of right relationship with themselves, each other, and the more-than-human world. This in itself is not an entirely new realization, as Indigenous peoples have been saying this for some time, and this is being increasingly understood by non-Indigenous advocates of Planetary Health also. It is nevertheless a message that bears repeating, especially in the form this paper has taken. This paper addresses that reality head on, not just as an intellectual understanding, but as an impetus for deep engagement with Gaia/Mother Earth in a way that points to what collective healing might look like.

2. it models how non-Indigenous scientists, authors, thinkers (and, well everyone) might respectfully engage with Indigenous ways of knowing and being without appropriation, romanticization, or over-intellectualization. Thankfully the author addresses their positionality early on, as well as the need for non-Indigenous authors to engage respectfully and deeply with these issues.

3. it takes a trauma perspective, reinterpreting the historic separation of humans from nature (that many are coming to see as being at the heart of the challenges of the Anthropocene) as a response to the challenges of emerging seasonality that required the storage of food and the development of approaches to agriculture (what the author of Ishmael/Story of B calls “totalitarian agriculture” and “taker culture) that over time emphasized exploitation and productivity, necessitating a loss of appreciation for sentience and stepping away from ways of being based on living in sacred reciprocity with all of life.

Through the author’s own journey we come to better appreciate both what is required of us in these times but also what is possible, as well as the messy non-linearity of the journey and the need for this to be a collective enterprise as well as a personal journey.

I very much appreciated the author’s discussion of the importance of knowing who we (really) are, and why that matters. And found myself wishing they would point out how and why the dominant system is so oriented to ensuring that we don’t really get in touch with who we are (because of what this would require of us).

Of course one article cannot do everything. The author says little about the fact that the entire growth-oriented economy is oriented to making money rather than meeting human (or ecosystem) needs. Presumably changes at that level will flow from the kind of rekindled kinship relationally the author calls for. More surprising, perhaps, is the lack of mention of the so-called “relational turn” in sustainability science(s), something that seems closely aligned with the focus of this article.

Author Response

Please see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Peer-review of ' Reconnecting With Gaia to Understand Humanity’s Collective 2 Trauma: Learning from Grandma Belah and Yungadhu’ (in Challenges, manuscript # 3399425)

General Comments

This is an elegantly written Viewpoint manuscript which provides an important opportunity for learning from Indigenous cultures, and self-reflection. The Viewpoint also offers a novel hypothesis, one that suggests that the historical detachment from nature, especially as it was accelerated during the Holocene, is an enduring trauma. The author presents provocative ideas that should stimulate deep layers of planetary health discourse. It is a good fit for Challenges and should be published after major revisions. The word ‘major’ here really means minimal attention to some details. The author is to be commended for this effort.  Here are some recommended changes. 

1.         The opening line of the article states that planetary health originated in 2015. However, reference #2 of the opening sentence of the article, as I read reference #2, challenges the idea that planetary health began (in academic discourse, or institutional concern) in 2015. Please correct the opening lines of the manuscript so that references #1 and #2 are in alignment with the content of those references.

2.         The term Gaia, which is a critical part of the overall manuscript, is introduced in the second paragraph of the manuscript with only minimal attention to its definition. In order to set the stage for what is to follow, some expansion of the idea/definition of Gaia seems necessary. Have a look at a perspective piece from Banderjee and colleagues for food for thought on Gaia and a critical analysis of the term in this context.

Banerjee SB, Arjaliès DL. Celebrating the end of enlightenment: Organization theory in the age of the Anthropocene and Gaia (and why neither is the solution to our ecological crisis). Organization Theory. 2021 Aug;2(4):26317877211036714.

3.         Lines 192 to 195 currently read “This wasn’t just about trying to blend Aboriginal culture and science; or for one form of knowledge to validate the other. Rather, it was about creating a space where Aboriginal cultural values and practices could be fully operationalized, and for science to walk alongside in partnership.”

This seemed jarring. What is meant by ‘science’ here? Whose science? What science? As currently written, the reader might think that ‘western’ science is going to walk alongside Aboriginal culture, and not quite grasp that there is Indigenous wisdom and separate but overlapping Indigenous science. This concern is heightened because in lines 86-90 the author was essentially positioned as the scientist (or speaking for science) distinct from the Elders and Aboriginal community.

Have a look at the timeless letter written by leaders in Indigenous science -- A Letter from Indigenous Scientists in Support of the March for Science

https://milkweed.org/blog/a-letter-from-indigenous-scientists-in-support-of-the-march-for-science

4. Lines 234-236 – “your vs. their” - perhaps this should read “laugh till their sides hurt” since the author is referring to community members.

5.    Maybe touch a little more on the history of domestication, some of the reasons why it had advantages, so that there is just a little more balance to the Viewpoint. This doesn’t need to be a lot, just a sentence or two. See

Diamond, J. (2002). Evolution, consequences and future of plant and animal domestication. Nature, 418(6898), 700-707.

5.         For this reviewer, the most significant revision, one that can take this manuscript to the “next level,” is to delve deeper into the hypothesis presented—i.e., that the historical nature disconnect is an enduring unhealed trauma. This is an idea worth expanding upon. So much has been written around Alvin Toffler’s famous book “Future Shock” (revisited recently by Barry Jackson - Jackson BL. Future Shock Revisited. Postmodern Openings. 2019;10(3):102-16) and yet it is easy to wonder, after reading the current manuscript, whether or not the shock of upending millennia of nature connection in a relatively brief period is far more consequential than the shock of computers and air travel!

While the author presents some excellent opportunities for healing (e.g., non-romantic love, forgiveness), the central hypothesis in the manuscript is sort of left dangling without queries on how it might be tested. One avenue might be to explore the primary validated instruments used to assess relationships with nature, the Nature Relatedness Scale and the Nature Connectedness Scale. Do these scales provide hints at enduring trauma? Could they be revised to bring researchers closer to the idea of enduring trauma?

Have a look at the recent work of Crystal Smith and others. It could be that people who are highly connected to nature, yet living in westernized post-Holocene cultures, are shouldering the burden of enduring trauma.

Smith C, Allen A, Schaffer V, Kannis-Dymand L. Nature Relatedness May Play a Protective Role and Contribute to Eco-Distress. Ecopsychology. 2024 Mar 1;16(1):71-82.

Curll SL, Stanley SK, Brown PM, O'Brien LV. Nature connectedness in the climate change context: Implications for climate action and mental health. Translational issues in psychological science. 2022 Dec;8(4):448.

Have a look at the overarching themes in relation to climate trauma

Pfeiffer S. An exploration of interpersonal violence among Holocene foragers of Southern Africa. International Journal of Paleopathology. 2016 Jun 1;13:27-38.

Author Response

Please see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for making the revisions.