Though EVs emit fewer greenhouse gases than fuel-powered vehicles, their batteries require more minerals - especially lithium, which is also used to make batteries for smartphones and computers.

Unlike its neighbors Chile and Argentina, Bolivia has yet to become a major player in the global lithium market. In part, this is because its high-altitude salt flats aren't suited to the usual extraction method, solar evaporation.

But that looks poised to change: In January 2023, state company YLB signed an agreement with the Chinese consortium CBC, which includes the world's largest producer of lithium-ion batteries, to introduce a new method called direct lithium extraction.

It may prove an economic boon. But since colonial times, the legacy of mineral abundance in Bolivia has also been one of pollution, poverty and exploitation.

While some residents are hopeful about the potential benefits of the growing lithium industry, others are concerned about extraction's local impact. In particular, direct lithium extraction demands a great deal of fresh water, potentially endangering surrounding ecosystems as has happened in other parts of South America's "lithium triangle."

A rapid escalation of lithium extraction in the Bolivian Andes also represents a looming clash between two fundamentally different views of nature: modern industrial society's and that of the Indigenous communities who call the region home - a focus of my current research collaborations and dissertation project.

The Pachamama

Bolivia is home to 36 ethnic groups across its highland and lowland regions. Aymara and Quechua peoples comprise most of the Indigenous communities in the Andes Mountains.

For these cultures, nature is not a means to human ends. Instead, it is seen as a group of beings with personhood, history and power beyond human reach. For example, the female divinity of fertility, to whom people owe respect, is the Pachamama.

Since she sustains and secures the reproduction of life, Andean Indigenous people make offerings to the Pachamama in ancestral rituals known as "challas" that seek to reinforce their connection with her.

Similarly, highland groups recognize mountains not as a set of inert rocks, but as ancestral guardians called "Achachilas" in Aymara and "Apus" in Quechua. Each Andean community praises a nearby mountain whom they believe protects and oversees their lives.

In Uyuni, for example, where one of the two new lithium plants will be constructed, Indigenous communities acknowledge the presence of these sacred beings.

To this day, worshipers in nearby Lipez region explain the salt flat's origin with a traditional legend: It is the mother's milk of their Apu, a female volcano named Tunupa.

However, religious concepts such as "sacred" or "divine" do not necessarily capture the relationships that Andean Indigenous people have long established with these more-than-human beings, who have been known since pre-colonial times as "huacas."

These entities are not considered "gods," or thought of as dealing with otherworldly beliefs. Rather, they are treated as integral to people's earthly everyday life.

For instance, before meals, Quechua and Aymara peoples throw coca leaves or spill their drinks on the ground to share their food with these beings as a sign of gratitude and reciprocity.

Lifeless matter

In industrial societies, on the other hand, nature is understood as something external to humanity - an object that can be mastered through science and technology.

The modern economy turns nature into a source of raw materials: morally and spiritually inert matter that is there to be extracted and mobilized worldwide. Within this framework, a mineral like lithium is a resource to be developed in the pursuit of economic gains for human beings.

In fact, the history of these competing notions is deeply entwined with the history of the colonial era, as different cultures came into violent conflict.

As the Spanish discovered the mineral bounty of the so-called New World, like gold and silver, they began an intensive extraction of its riches, relying on forced labor from local people and imported slaves.

The concept of "raw materials" can be traced to the theological notion of "prime matter." The term originally comes from Aristotle, whose work was introduced to Christianity via Latin translations around the 12th century.

In the way Christians adapted his idea of prime matter, everything was ordered by its level of "perfection," ranging from the lowest level - prime matter, the most basic "stuff" of the world - to rocks, plants, animals, humans, angels and, finally, God.

The Catholic Church and the Spanish Empire later used this medieval understanding of matter as something passive, without spirit, to justify the extraction of resources during colonial times.

The closer things were to prime matter, their argument supposed, the more they needed human imprint and an external purpose to make them valuable.

This notion was also used by Christian colonizers who were intent on destroying traditions that they saw as idolatrous. In their eyes, reverence toward a mountain or the earth itself was worshiping a mere "thing," a false god.

The church and the empire believed it was critical to desacralize these more-than-human beings and treat them as mere resources.

This flattened vision of nature served as the basis for the modern economic concept of raw materials, which was introduced in the 18th century with the birth of economics as a social science.

The road ahead

Bolivia's lithium projects pose a new potential clash of worldviews. However, extraction initiatives have faced severe setbacks in the last few years, including social protests, the 2019 political crisis and a lack of necessary technology.

The Chinese deal represents a new milestone, yet its outcomes are still uncertain: for the economy, for local communities and for the Earth.

Today, electric vehicles are widely considered part of the solution to the climate crisis.

Yet they will necessitate a mining surge to meet their battery demands. If societies really want a greener future, technological shifts such as EVs will be just part of the answer, alongside other changes like more sustainable urban planning and improved public transportation.

But in addition, perhaps other cultures could learn from Andean relations with nature as more-than-human beings: an inspiration to rethink development and turn our own way of living into something less destructive.

• Mario Orospe Hernández, Ph.D. Candidate in Religious Studies, Arizona State University.
• The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.
• First published in RNS
• Republished with permission

Paradis studied the traditional beliefs of the First Nations peoples for a long time before he began adding some of their elements - like the sun dance - into liturgical celebrations.

"I'm still a novice, but I'm incorporating indigenous dances and practices that allow me to express my Catholic faith differently," he explains.

"But there are questions: does God want me to get so close to indigenous spiritualities? It's a long road of reflection.

Second Vatican Council

Louise Royer of the Archdiocese of Montreal says a tentative movement towards inculturation took place after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

"It introduced practices and symbols of traditional spiritualities," she says.

"Many of the faithful resisted this movement because they wanted to distance themselves from what could be perceived — and had been presented to them — as pagan practices. But the movement continues."

Indigenous spiritual practices were demonised and outlawed in Canada until the middle of the 20th century. Christianity was promoted.

Effect on indigenous peoples

A member of the Abenaki tribe says she had no choice but to be Catholic as a child.

"At the time, it was like we needed to silence our beliefs. But the priests didn't know what we had in our heads, who exactly we were praying to," she recalls.

"As my grandfather used to say, whether you say 'Great Spirit' or 'God', they are not two different figures," says an anthropologist originally from an Abenaki reserve north of Montreal.

Father Peter Bisson says the Society of Jesus has made more efforts over the last decade to better understand First Nations spiritualities.

He began studying the topic in 2008 - the same year Canada set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to better understand the effects of residential schools on the First Nations peoples.

They heard that indigenous children forced to attend these institutions were forbidden from speaking in their native languages. Many were abused and thousands died.

The Commission concluded with recommendations for greater equality.

Indigenous beliefs and Catholicism

Bisson has deepened his understanding of indigenous beliefs by organising discussion groups chaired by First Nations peoples.

"It's just listening, not a discussion. It's not about solving problems like those caused by residential schools.

"We're leaving behind our old habits from colonialism, of wanting to offer them something, as if we know more than they do... It's a humbling challenge for the church."

Indigenous peoples more naturally emphasise the spiritual aspects of life, he says.

"Their relationship with nature is clearer, more direct. And now, with the ecological transition, we need the help of indigenous spiritualities to reintegrate a strong spiritual connection between us and our environment.

"I have two hopes: the decolonisation of our Christian mindsets, and ecology. If we are more interested in nature, we will listen more to natives and their beliefs, and we will understand each other better."

Source

• La Croix
• Image: Canadian Encyclopedia

The first Europeans to arrive in the Amazon were "invaders," she said.

"They never asked permission of mother nature or of the people who lived there. They imposed the cross and the Bible. That caused a great deal of resentment," and in some cases forced indigenous peoples from their territories.

But when the pope, during his 2018 visit to Peru, asked Amazonian people to tell the church how it should walk with them, "that was a question that asked permission," she told Catholic News Service.

Pijachi, an Ocaina Huitoto woman who is not Catholic, said that when she heard that, she spoke to the elders of her people, who approved of her participation in presynod gatherings as long as the church respected indigenous cultures.

"The elders said that first the Catholic Church and all churches must recognize us as having a right to our own culture and customs, our own spirituality," she added.

"They must not impose themselves and change" those beliefs.

For many indigenous peoples, evangelization meant relocation from their territories to church-run communities known as reductions, as well as the loss of their languages and traditions, she said.

"The pain is alive and still there."

The culture and spirituality of Amazonian indigenous people remain strong "as long as we have our territory, our rivers, our sacred places, food and our seeds, the elements of our rituals," Pijachi said.

She said she sees the synod as an opportunity to talk with "a great friend, a great elder, (Pope) Francis, who can carry our voice" to places where it otherwise would not be heard.

Environmental destruction by extractive industries such as logging, mining and oil companies has been a recurring theme in the synod.

"The people who come to extract (natural resources) don't live there," Pijachi said. "They live in Europe; they live in mansions in the big cities. All they're interested in is money."

The damage to the environment "is a spiritual death and a cultural death" for indigenous people, she said, adding that some whose actions or policies result in destruction are Catholic.

"The same person who received first Communion, who was married in the church, is the one who is cutting down the forest, who does not understand respect for creation," she said. "The same one who was baptized, who went to confession, who received Communion, who goes to Mass on Sunday is the governor of a state and pays no attention" to how public policies affect people.

"I asked (the bishops), ‘Is that important to you?'" she said. Pijachi addressed the synod assembly Oct. 9. Continue reading

The doyens of New Atheism taunt believers. The late Christopher Hitchens asserted that "religion poisons everything" and Richard Dawkins has asked whether "religion is the root of all evil".

Any fair consideration of Aboriginal spirituality makes these assertions look like another form of white cultural imperialism. We all owe the Aboriginal community a duty to try to immerse ourselves in the spirituality that formed their culture and binds their communities to this day. This immersion will help inform us of how indigenous and non-indigenous communities can more successfully co-exist. Read more

Sources

• Dick Gross in The Sydney Morning Herald
• Image: Sathya Sai Baba

Dick Gross has written and broadcast about living and dying without a god for over a decade.