“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children.”
— David Suzuki
Suzuki used this phrase as the manifesto of his work. It traces back to Indigenous wisdom and became the foundation of the organization he created in 1990. Behind it is his childhood experience of loss: if a government can take your home overnight, humanity can lose a planet in one generation.
I was six years old when my family was ordered to leave home. We were Japanese in Canada. There was a war. They put us in an internment camp in the mountains of British Columbia. My father lost his business. My mother lost everything that did not fit in one suitcase. I was told I was an enemy of my own country. After the war I swore I would never stay silent when some people are considered less valuable than others. I became a geneticist. Then I realized that genes mean nothing if you destroy the environment in which they operate. I spent fifty years trying to explain a simple thing: we are part of nature, not its masters. If you take, give back.