Transcript:

Heres a program from our archives.Ambience, Dawn ChorusEvery form of life on our planet is interconnected. But where do human beings fit into the scheme of things? I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.Oren Lyons is one of the chiefs of the Onondaga Council of the Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy.Lyons: Indigenous cultures of people that have been in one place for a long time take on the very essence of where they live. They become very much a part of it because they depend upon the diversity of life around them. Plants and trees are a community, they need one another. You cannot take one without damaging the community, and changing the community. Insects and frogs, for instance, and fish, they are dependent upon one another. There's a chain that occurs. If you are going to interfere with that, then you're going to change something and you may change it very dramatically. The problem with human beings is they don't really understand how their activities, like rings in the water from a pebble thrown into a still pond as you watch the rings circle out, those rings move out into the future. So, when we have a Chernobyl, that's a boulder in the pond. When we have this burning of the oil in Kuwait, that's a boulder in the pond. And all of our activities, like raindrops on the pond itself, human activities, they're affecting the future. And so people have to think in those terms.This archival program is part of our thirtieth anniversary celebration. If you want hear more, check out our podcast. Im Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.