This series, Voices from the Land, brings together opinion pieces led and written by Indigenous peoples from around the world. Through these commentaries, we share our lived realities and reflections on urgent issues shaping our time — environmental destruction, our relationship with nature, and systemic injustice. We write from the heart of our communities, where the impacts of these urgent crises are deeply felt, but also where solutions are rooted. Through this series, we speak from our territories, and ensure our truths are part of the global conversation. While the world searches for solutions in carbon credits, experimental energy and piling on pledges, beneath all this noise a quieter truth has always existed. The answers to our planet’s issues already live within the wisdom of those who never forgot how to live in reciprocal harmony with the Earth and those who call her home. Many Indigenous peoples across the world have been practicing sustainability since long before the word existed. Many of our elders’ teachings are rooted not in ownership, but in kinship. Not in dominance, but in care. For us in Samoa, this balance is guided by the sacred understanding of vā. What to us is the “space between.” In Western thinking, space often separates. But in our world, space connects. The vā is the invisible thread between people, land, ocean, ancestors and future generations. It is the pulse of a relationship and our responsibility is to teu le vā, to tend to it with care. When we talk…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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