In the historic quest for wealth which has shaped our world, the global North has displaced aboriginal peoples from the lands which they inhabited. Currently, debt and structural adjustment entwine with trade and investment liberalization to threaten Aboriginal peoples life and livelihood. These are relationships in need of Jubilee restoration. In our search for wealth, we also pursue policies which devastate the Earth and its web of life, source of all food, water, shelter, warmth, and beauty. Yet commercial logging, mining, farming, and fishing all deplete this natural wealth, in some cases to the point of exhaustion or extinction.
Widespread pollution is a bitter inheritance of the last century s wave of industrialism.
This deficit in its extreme expression is not only a resource deficit, but the death of a living process, not simply the death of a living process, but of the living process. We are thus indebted to the Earth for the sustenance it offers our bodies and souls, and we owe the Earth for the damage we have inflicted on it. This year, we will seek to address our debt to the Earth for the damage we have done, and for the unequal way in which that damage is disproportionally suffered by developing countries while rich countries profit. The Jubilee texts tell us call on us to restore the land to its rightful inhabitants and to provide restorative Sabbath for the land. In this year, at the dawn of the new millennium, this is a challenge which some will hear as threatening, and others will hear as hopeful.