What is Melanesian Way Conservation?
"Spirit-Led Conservation" is also defined by Whew Kotokay, the living Melanesian conservation elder as the Melanesian Way Conservation. It means the leading emphasis for conservation in Melanesian is the spirit-hotspots.
What is the spirit hotspots?
Spirit hotspots are the places of significance, or the names or the persons, or the clans or the concepts that are important, containing some spiritual values, that primarily gives, sustains and embraces life as a whole. "Life as a whole" means, the lives of all communities of beings.
All Communities of Beings means the spirits, plants, animals, matters, scapes, and humans.
Storylines and hotspots
The hotspots are very well mapped, documented and passed down on oral stories from generations to generations, within each family, clan tribe.
Of course, there are so many variations of stories from persons to persons, from families to families, from clans and tribes. However, these variations only occur or deliberately narrated by story holders in order to make the stories more attractive, more personal, or more secretive.
The primary benefit is the storylines are well kept and well mapped. It needs collective efforts to put on the table and find the dots among all stories, to create one storyline, big map for all Melanesia.
Why Storylines and Conservation ?
Melanesians protect nature based on stories. 'There is a story....., so we cannot cut that tree!", or "There was a story told by ...... regarding the lake, so ......."
Melanesians do not protect natural environment out of fear, because of global warming, climate change, bio-diversity degradation, endemic species, invasive species, or any other modern prescribed reasons for conservation.
Melanesian Elders' Responses to Modern Rationale for Conservation
Once I, Whew Kotokay, innocently introduced to my elders about global warming and how people in Hong Kong are suffering from air pollution, and how the land is not so big for growing food. Many times I invited my fellow Melanesian elders to visit big cities across the globe so they can see how bad it is life in cities.
What did I get?
I got the unexpected responses. One elders told me, "Can we offer them home in our island? We have very big empty land. I feel very sorry about them.
Another elder told me, "If they are scared of running out of food or air to breathe, we need to bring them over, we cannot lay back and hear their sad stories all the time. We need to act the rescue them from global warming.
The Melanesian Way Conservation is Holistic Approach to Conservation
where human beings are as nature, acting upon our being nature, for our own collective being and existence.
