'Listen to your heart': Indigenous elders channel tough love in Earth Day film

Indigenous elders from Alaska to Australia have come together to deliver some tough love in a new film for Earth Day: the human race will only survive if we start putting our minds at the service of our hearts.

Produced by Academy and Emmy award-winner Jeffrey D. Brown, Wisdom Weavers of the World was shot in Hawaii where Ilarion "Kuuyux" Merculieff, an Alaskan Unangan leader, gathered a dozen other elders to hold councils and ceremonies in November 2017.

"Mother Earth is crying for her human children," Merculieff says in the documentary, shot against a backdrop of volcanic slopes and surf on the island of Kaua'i.

"She has lived for billions of years. She'll live for more. It's a question of whether or not we human beings are going to live."

With Wednesday marking the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, a milestone in the emergence of the environmental movement, indigenous peoples are increasingly at the forefront of global struggles against habit destruction and climate change.

The four-day gathering of elders concluded that such problems will only be solved through a fundamental shift in human consciousness, rather than a constant striving after purely political or technological fixes.

"The world is looking in the wrong directions for answers," Merculieff told Reuters television by video call from Anchorage, speaking from a room decorated with traditional drums.

"We have thousands more environmental organisations in existence today than we had 30 years ago and yet Mother Earth's life support systems are coming to the edge, and no one is asking why. The elders are saying that we must look inside, rather than outside, for the answers."

Leaders who joined the gathering included Zhaparkul Raimbekov, a snow leopard shaman from Kyrgyzstan, Lorenzo Izquierdo, a Mamo spiritual priest from Colombia's Arhuaco people, and Mona Ann Polacca, a Hopi-Havasupai-Tewa elder and founding member of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers.

The 14-minute film can be seen for free from 1700 GMT (1 p.m. ET) on Wednesday through the Wisdom Weavers of the World website and social media channels, with translations in 12 languages. Merculieff and other elders will be hosting a virtual gathering open to the public at 1730 GMT.