Rituals for Climate Change: A Crip Struggle for Ecojustice - Review
Rituals for Climate Change: A Crip Struggle for Ecojustice by Naomi Ortiz, published by Punctum Books 2023
In Rituals for Climate Change, Naomi Ortiz blends full-hearted poetry and personal reflections. These are words whittled into wisdom for a time of climate crisis. Interweaving questions of disability justice and ecojustice, Ortiz ask, “what does it mean for / my body / this ecosystem / to be unapologetically disabled?” (191).
This book shows the complexities of ‘loving hard’ while honouring grief. Ortiz describes the rituals of witness through which they hold relations with the natural world. This is a land that’s “never been ploughed over or stripped away” (49), the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and environs, where the reader joins company with red squirrels, ponderosa pines, tarantula hawk wasps, bobcats, coyotes, palo verde trees, and mud turtles. Here monsoon rainclouds crack open to dissolve the gasping heat.
Ortiz shows how nature offers us timescales for approaching a changing climate and unjust world. The deliberate, steady pace of the saguaros cactus takes a century to reach 4-5 meters, and only then begin to grow its first arm. By two hundred years it can reach 12 meters. “I learn how to stay alive / embody slow growth” (70). At other times, change can be rapid. After rainstorms roll through, “whole deserts shift from brown to green” (52).
The natural world is, Ortiz writes, “in the edge between this world and the next” (41). This is a time where small rituals become increasingly necessary, as we are besieged by grief and heat. In a rapidly changing climate, there is no “ready or not ready / only happening now” (46).
One insight hit me the hardest in reading this book. This was Ortiz’s understandings of interdependence and ableist ideas of control. The body is “ground zero / for how we are instructed to control the world” (43), they write. By contrast, interdependence, is “a human ecosystem of precarious survival” (75). Nature provides countless examples of such ecosystems of mutually dependent survival, the “complex beings who both give and need help, unfurl wings, sprout flowers, survive together” (76)
Ortiz’s articulation of interdependency is one of the most astute I have ever read. “What does it mean to give and receive in bountiful but sometimes in inadequate or incomplete ways?” (75). The insights Ortiz offers stem from the everyday relations of mutuality that people with disabilities cultivate for both surviving and thriving. They write:
the nature of interdependence means that we show up in support, when we can in [a] large ecosystem. The effort of give-and-take can be shared, passed around many people. Ideally, this means that care will be there in some form when it's needed, even if actions fall short, are piecemeal, or feel small.
What I've learned from watching interdependence unfold is that it doesn't leave relationships or family systems pristine. It is a random introduction of disruption, puts demands on our time and energy, and risks vulnerability. The thing about interdependence is that it requires sacrifice from both sides. It is a practice of both loss and of liberation.
Sacrifice can feel like a scary thing to consent to. We live in a world that extracts, demands, and takes. In our jobs, schools, and other social structures, competition means the same thing as participation. We do not get much practice consenting to a loss. Yet, if we want mutual liberation, then we need to be prepared for some loss of time, resources, energy, as well as a willingness to receive support. To have sources of support to turn to. (75-6)
In Rituals for Climate Change, the tenacious reach of ableism within our societies becomes clear. Ableism is fundamentally built upon a fear of vulnerability, Ortiz writes. And a fear of disability is woven into the language used to describe environmental destruction. Living with disability means not fitting within dominant economic structures and extractive modes of value. “Disability is a forced exploration of every system that Man has created to help those who cannot function in capitalism” (60).
Ortiz has altered my understanding of the relationship between loss, paying attention, and finding way towards climate justice. They show me how to notice both the tiny and monumental ways through which nature is trying to survive. Many of these observations hit me right in the gut. “Without water / leaves are a luxury” (143). Despite the seemingly prickly resilience of the desert, Ortiz notes that in this age, land needs “something outside of itself in order to live on” (87).
Crucial for ecojustice, Ortiz writes, is figuring out an “ability to simultaneously grieve while also wholeheartedly have confidence in life” (149). We have a duty to “believe in mending” (154).
One lesson I take to heart in reading this wonderful book is to take seriously rituals of grief, to honour them, but also use them as a way forward. “Grief is my foundation for a tenacious wild fight” (184). Ortiz writes:
We all grieve in our own way
With the rains, soil lets go, surrenders, washes away
Some people
pretend it does not affect them
hike old paths forever changed
Others
focus full hearted
on silhouette and pray
(143)
