When we are bound in a system of reciprocity, not return on investment, we will be closer to being the kind of ancestors future people need.
“Seventh Generation thinking obligates us in this generation to make decisions that we think are in the best interests of generations seven into the future…And when you think about the really wicked problems that human beings face…I think those kinds of problems really require us to think with more vision.”
Loew said this philosophy is interpreted differently across Native communities, and even within communities. Some communities, she said, interpret Seventh Generation to include three generations forward and three generations back in addition to the present generation.
“The other thing that’s kind of interesting about Seventh Generation thinking is that it also means you look back with gratitude,” Loew said. “So the decisions that my great-great-great grandfather made when he signed two of the three Ojibwe session treaties, he was thinking about my generation and understanding that the land that he was being coerced into giving up — the reservation — was not going to be large enough to sustain the generations that came after. So we were one of the few tribes that insisted on the right to hunt, fish, and gather on the land that we were giving up.”
Of course, the Seventh Generation Principle is part of a larger worldview that stands in stark contrast to modern ways of thinking in terms of commodities. Loew cited examples of Seventh Generation thinking during our interview, especially the sustainable logging and forestry management practices of the Menominee Tribe in Wisconsin. Over the past 160 years, Menominee Tribal Enterprises has been sustainably logging the Menominee forest, resulting in more trees in the forest than it had before their lz
