Arts of Persuasion

The concluding chapter reasserts the value of cultural texts—from rock art to fiction written in the current year—as a resource when we consider options at this critical stage of the Anthropocene. The places visited through time and via their literature and art—India, Southern Africa, Ireland, Australia and New York City, each chapter with a unique focus—all had early peoples who revered the natural world, were more apt to share their land communally than claim ownership, and in various ways still offer models for its preservation. But their oral traditions have been difficult to access, and women’s voices, widely suppressed. All five locales were affected by colonization and settler populations that introduced new agricultural techniques, species, structures, cultural values, literature, and art, often extracting natural resources for benefit abroad. This study reveals the value of children’s cross-cultural perspectives found in literature. Some promising directions are emerging as museums reconsider how their collections were assembled, revise assumptions behind their historical interpretations, and invite more diverse artistic interpretations of place. While we are not about to return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, we can spend more time outside, plant trees and even some of our own food, shop and work locally, encourage rewilding of the landscape, write and create works that revere this place, the earth.