In Honor of the ‘Chief’
Peace-of Eden Series no. 16
In the Zulu language ‘Induna’ means ‘Chief’. Recently Induna was shot, a 50-year old Elephant bull who lives in a fenced wilderness space in Kwa-Zulu Natal. He was a gentle giant who courteously communicated with curious caring whenever the game vehicle rumbled and shook into his presence. He went at his own pace, he was his own being. He took time to greet us, engage eye-to-eye, and never violated our space. When we were together, we shared space. I was never afraid of his great, lumbering bulk. Why was he shot? He was doing what elephant bulls do, they look for females in oestrous so that they can pass on their genetic prowess to the next generation. His testosterone-lead search for receptive and enticing Elephant cows took him across the Swaziland border where, like a modern day Pied Piper, he was followed by groups of gleeful children and cautious adults. He was carefully monitored and never hurt anyone, his only crime was to help himself to the crops of a few rural farmers along the way. I understand he may have been shot by Swaziland officials, but one bleek Tuesday he was shot by a Spanish head hunter instead. His great bulk lumbered to the earth. His lifeless tusks and feet traveled back to Spain, the meat off his body given to the local staff and what remained of this great Chief was shamefully buried deep in the earth where he fell. Tearfully I mourn his gentle, generous spirit, but even more so, I mourn what we have become.
It is Modern Man in his quest for land that inhibit the natural pathways Elephants used to walk; it is Modern Man who has forgotten that we genetically, soulfully and spiritually evolved in adaptation to nature. Together with the Pickfords, who wrote the book about the Okavonga Delta, called Miracle Rivers, we need to reflect:
“If we cannot use our reason to hold ourselves in humility and accept with grace our partnership with all the earth (and each other), then we will not be able to perceive that man, like the dinosaur, is expendable. Ultimately in the vastness of time, man is on trial here, not only as a species, but also as a vehicle to determine whether reason was an advance or a tragic evolutionary mistake.”
On a recent ‘Wisdom of Elephants’ Ecotherapy Experience that I was facilitating, I was sitting on a bench with the couple I was spending time with to help them interpret ‘Wisdom from Nature’. We were watching the Elephant Matriarch lead her herd to the lake water to drink. Almost in single file they made their way down to the waters edge. Around me I could hear the sounds of the Fish Eagles, an Impala snorting, the whirr of Quella swarm past, and the gentle rustling of wind in the bush reeds. These sounds seemed to encircle and contain me, they were enriching and strangely harmonious, they were so different to the intrusive or nerve-grating city noises of squealing brakes, metallic scrapes or the angry, frustrated retorts of busy people.
I became aware that there is a linear way of relating within species, the couple and I, connected on the bench, within families, the ranking systems in Elephant, Dolphin, wild Meerkat, Wild Dogs, Baboons and within many other animals species with social behavior. And then there is a circular way of relating across and between species, ways in which we touch and enrich each others lives that we will never fully understand. Modern Man is the dominant predator on this earth, because of the intelligence we possess. We have the power to shoot an animal as big and as powerful as an Elephant in the head, just because we can. So, we need to take extra care and responsibility not only for what we do to ourselves and others within our own species, but across species as well!