Papatuanuku's Breath

By Nathan Gray

Covid-19 is the biggest disruption to human life over the past century. As the world confronts this dire public health emergency, many of the enforced changes will see the collapse of economies and industries worldwide. However, at the same time the natural environment is securing much needed breathing space from a species that has ruthlessly plundered every ecosystem towards mass extinction in its indomitable and mindless hunt for the dollar. What changes can humanity embrace through the tragic brunt of this pandemic that will give our species and planet a more sustainably viable path moving forward? How can we facilitate the innovative thinking and major structural change of society and its values required, to enable us to move forward with a more equitable everyday reality?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781716610301

Book preview

Papatuanuku's Breath

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Nathan Hoturoa Gray

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Nathan Hoturoa Gray, (Kai Tahu, Rangitaane, Waikato [whangai]) completed a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, Post Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing, and an LLB (Law Honours) at Victoria University, Wellington and on an EAP Scholarship at UC Davis, California. 

After serving as a lawyer in California, Alaska and Saipan, Nathan became an adventure journalist exploring the social intricacies of over 85 countries.  His articles have appeared in National Geographic, TNT UK, Tu Mai Magazine, Lucire, Metro Beijing and Hollywood's P3 Update.  Nathan’s first book: First Pass Under Heaven - One Man's 4000km Trek along the Great Wall of China is a Penguin Best Seller.  Ranked in the top ten alternative travelogues ever written the journey was also shown on the National Geographic Channel.

His second book:  The Age of Fire looks at where the human species is heading into the future and his third book is about the excitement and controversy of Brazil and the FIFA World Cup. Having made over 500 literary and motivational talks worldwide, his 4th book The End of Adolescence showcases his best freelance journalism articles over the past twenty years.  He recently wrote Working Together: Cultural Practice in the Theatrespace commissioned by Playmarket and completed a literary guide: Writing and Marketing your Book Internationally to help first time writers through the hurdles of writing, editing, publishing, distributing and marketing their book. 

Nathan served 5 year terms on Te Waka Toi: the Maori Arts Board of Creative New Zealand and Nga Taonga: Sound and Vision - New Zealand’s foremost audio-visual archive.  He currently lectures study abroad programs for Michigan State University in New Zealand and Hawaii and his vision is to inspire others to courageously follow their dreams spreading valued and authentic ideas out into a global audience.  As a final note, Nathan received a Creative New Zealand grant to research and write Papatūānuku's Breath, which given the Earth's precarious state is his most important work.

See www.greatwalldvd.com

ISBN: 9781716610301

Copyright © 2020 Nathan Hoturoa Gray. All rights reserved

Acknowledgments

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I would like to thank Te Waka Toi, the Māori Arts Board of Creative New Zealand for supporting this literary work as the country went into its first ever, historic lockdown on March 25th, 2020.  Enormous appreciation also goes to my wife, Jeanette McGuire and our son Oliver whose ongoing tautoko and aroha is key to the completion of such an emotionally challenging but vitally important subject matter for our ever-changing world:  Te Ao Marama.

He mihi maioha ki ōku nei tīpuna, kia awhina me ārahi i ahau.  Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Chapter 1:  Nature Fights Back

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Maybe the virus represents the disregard the universe has for our species’ sense of entitlement.

- Dr. Alex Kazemi

On the 9th of March, a prior Age, I headed by Ferry to the South Island of New Zealand with my wife and son along with 16 of our students from Michigan State University.  We were commencing the final phase of a 75-day Conservation Medicine study abroad program which looks at human, animal and ecosystem health through the lens of culture.  Today was Day 46 and was taking us into one of the more remote parts of New Zealand.  We had just finished out the first phase of the program where students collect soils throughout the North Island and analyze them in the science labs of Victoria University in the hope of finding novel antibiotic compounds used in the fight against emerging diseases worldwide.  Our last leg takes us to Resolution Bay, which lies on the outskirts of the pristine Marlborough Sounds. Living in rustic cabins, our secluded bay was only able to be reached by boat, (or a 3-4 day walk if hiking there along the Queen Charlotte Track.)  This idyllic realm, renowned for Dolphins, Eagle Rays and Blue Cod swimming beside the wharf, its green bioluminescence mystifying the water at night, and a galaxy of stars so clear it was the ultimate escape from the real world.  You could even see the alien-like line of Elon Musk's satellites projecting out in unison deep into the night-sky - a project that aimed to help secure internet for the technologically untouched.  Much like those remote places of the world that can never switch on to the world wide web, Resolution Bay also had no cell-phone reception, nor internet, and thus was the perfect place to hunker down in a school camp like setting as our students completed their second major research assignment assessing the effectiveness of mammalian trapping regimes in the region. The traps, having been set up by local conservation communities such as the Endeavour Inlet Conservation Trust, served to rejuvenate endangered native bird populations in the region and help to rebuild our threatened ecosystems for ours and future generations.

It was a grey Monday morning as our study group took the three hour ferry from the creative capital through the lush vales of pines, native trees and farmed grassland on route to Picton.  Upon arrival in the gateway town to the South Island we caught a private launch run by Eko Tours to drop us at Resolution Bay.  As we headed up through the emerald inlets towards the remote northern most realms of Queen Charlotte Sound  the world was just starting to grapple with the reality of the Coronavirus pandemic.  Over 100,000 cases had been recorded worldwide and a worrying tally of almost 4,000 deaths.  Our program had been tracking the trajectory of the virus everyday as part of the course assessment - in particular observing China's strict yet successful authoritarian approach to prevent the unnervingly fast pace of viral transmission.  Their mortality rate had been sending the initial shockwaves throughout the planet officially posting almost 81,000 cases and 3,123 deaths since its first cases were reported in late December.  Yet while regions like Hubei province where the initial viral epicenter of Wuhan resided were still in absolute lockdown, surrounding provinces like Shanghai and Chengdu were beginning to slowly reopen again for business as the threat there seemed to have subsided.  Italy was beginning to show signs as the next country to significantly suffer with almost 10,000 cases and approaching 500 official deaths.  Yet with the case count approaching 1,000 a day it suddenly exploded to over 3,000 cases a day, thus becoming the next major hotspot of the world media's focus.  (Especially given that an initial outbreak in Daegu, South Korea, that had recorded 7,500 cases and 50 deaths, had like China, seemingly managed to keep the virus under control through the utilization of enormous testing and contract tracing measures.)  Word had also got out that the virus was emerging (potentially seriously) in Iran, (although their government had been blatantly denying it), and the National Basketball Association in America was in earnest discussions about suspending its 2020 season. 

On our side of the world, Tom Hanks had just reported ill with the virus while shooting a film in Australia.  Given the influx of tourists to New Zealand via flights from everywhere bar China, as well as over 130 visiting cruise-ships throughout the tourism season, (a well-established petri-dish of disease transmission), there was a sense around the community that the virus had already established itself on New Zealand's shores.  With members of the tourism industry falling ill, but not yet able to be tested upon presenting themselves to our local hospitals, (limited testing capacity meant people were only able to be swabbed if they had returned from the hotspots of Iran, China, South Korea or Italy), there was an official Coronavirus count in the country of just 5 cases.¹

When we came out of our realm of isolation 5 days later - we entered back into an entirely different reality.  The World Health Organization had finally put their foot down and labeled the Coronavirus a global pandemic.  President Trump had ordered all flights closed between the USA and Europe.  And, most alarmingly to us, Michigan State University, along with most Colleges in the United States had just cancelled all global study abroad programs effective immediately.  We had just four days to get our students out of the country by the 17th of March as per firm instructions by the Administrative Director of Education Abroad.  Our next program, being taught in Hawaii in July had also been cancelled.  If it weren't for being able to still teach our current study abroad program online via Zoom - I would have been totally out of a job right there and then. 

My students were shattered, heartbroken that they were going to miss the final three weeks of their once in a lifetime experience, especially visiting the glaciers, alpine mountains and fjords of the visually spectacular South Island of New Zealand.  Emails were being sent from their parents to the University Administration critically questioning why their kids should be sent back into the fire of the USA where the official death count of 22 was starting to rise, when New Zealand had no mortalities at all and still just 5 confirmed cases. Due to our geographical isolation this was probably one of the safest places in the world.  As we rallied to get our students on rapidly diminishing flights out of Nelson just three days later, I will never forget that dark day of awareness when we got back to internet and cell-phone reception after completing the statistical recordings of our mammalian footprint assessment research project in Resolution Bay.  It was, ironically, Friday the 13th of March, and the emotions around the group were a swirling maelstrom of denial, anger, sadness and resignation. Yet in hindsight, it was probably a blessing in disguise.  On the 14th of March the government advised that all those traveling to New Zealand should self-isolate for two weeks before exposing themselves to others and ultimately disrupting everyone's travel plans. Given our university group had been on the road since January 24th in Auckland, the Far North, Hobbiton, Hamilton and Rotorua not to mention a month in the capital city of Wellington - we fitted the bill for having potentially picked up the virus by visiting all these tourism hotspots.

After the announcement by the World Health Organization (WHO), the New Zealand government completely shut down the cruise-ship season - terminating the jobs of most of my former tourism co-workers whose industry had been decimated.  Two days later, on the 16th of March, the day we managed to fly our students out, the government imposed a mandatory 14 day self-isolation quarantine requirement for anyone still entering the country. (Only Israel was maintaining such a strict border requirement.)  Despite only 520 countrywide tests having been conducted at this time with 8 official positive cases, (Ministry of Health statistics later on showing that there were an additional 87 unfound cases during this time), it was a jaw-dropping report from the Imperial College of London that showed the possibility of thousands of potential deaths that ultimately influenced the adoption of much stricter governmental border policy.²  With this mandatory border entry requirement clearly not being respected by incoming tourists, the government immediately closed the border to all non-New Zealand residents on midnight the 19th of March, the most forceful border measures imposed in the world at that time.  The government also hinted at the suggestion of a full country lockdown at some stage in the future.  In the meantime, my wife, son and I 'acted' as if we had the virus, heading immediately into voluntary self-isolation in the remote South Island havens of Punakaiki and Kaikoura making contact with no one.

Two days later, on Saturday March the 21st, Jacinda Ardern delivered a televised address from the Prime Minister's office, (the first time since 1982 that an Oval Office-style speech had been given), announcing the Covid-19 Response Alert Plan involving four stages, the final being full lockdown.  A strategy that had been agreed to by cabinet the day prior opting to follow Singapore's successful government response to the virus as opposed to Italy where community transmission had now got completely out of hand with over 41,000 confirmed cases and a death rate of 3,405, (eclipsing China's official numbers, and where New Zealand was potentially statistically heading.)  Given that New Zealand was now in Level 2 lockdown during this announcement which still provided for free movement domestically, epidemiologists and public health experts such as Dr. Baker from Otago University made ongoing waves over the media that the country should immediately go into Level 4 lockdown due to the country's minimal testing regime and a non-viable contract tracing system to reduce the spread.  (Ministry of Health statistics again showed later down the track that there were already 287 cases in the country by this day, but only 39 had been officially identified.) 

By Monday afternoon on March 23rd, and with only 102 confirmed cases, (but actually 433 in the country according to later Ministry of Health records), the government listened to its scientific experts, especially once it was confirmed that two, possibly three of the cases had resulted from community transmission and thus 'highly likely' that the virus was spreading rapidly throughout the country.  Jacinda Ardern ordered the country to go into an immediate Alert Level 3 lockdown - schools closed, except for those children whose parents were essential workers, and only essential businesses allowed to operate.  Meanwhile everyone had just 48 hours grace to pack up their businesses and get 'home' to stay put over the next four week period as the country prepared to enter the full Alert Level 4 lockdown.  Had we stayed on with the program, ignoring the University order to evacuate - it would have made getting our students out of the country an absolute nightmare - especially as one-way flights back to America started to soar as high as $10,000 each, if you were able to actually find any.  For those who were unable to find flights out before the Alert Level 4 lockdown commenced, they faced the prospect of being stuck in the country for an indeterminable period... 

My wife, son and I made our way back to our residence in Wellington by taking a plane in Blenheim during the afternoon before the shutdown commenced.  We had cancelled our original trip returning home via the Picton Ferry on the 27th of March because the return booking was two days after lockdown and we didn't want to risk getting trapped in the South Island with no accommodation.  Instead we had managed to book the flight, 5 minutes after we watched the Prime Minister's lockdown announcement on television, in our attempt to beat the masses securing their flights back to their preferred site of habitation. Despite a few minor hiccups, (it actually taking two days after the lockdown had started on the night of Wednesday the 25th of March for all returnees to clear the ferry terminal's backlog), everyone in the country obeyed.  Even those that were homeless were housed in hotels they could never have dreamed of in their former lives of hardship - as the exodus of tourists meant these places were now available for the 'team of 5 million' to successfully self-isolate. 

The decision to 'go hard, and go early' by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern; (highly respected in times of crisis based on her pervious dealings with New Zealand's worst mass shooting a year prior and the recent eruption of White Island killing 21 visitors/guides), was backed up with a multi-billion dollar package by Grant Robertson, the Minister of Finance to help closing businesses survive the ensuing Level 4 lockdown.  The government package gave respite to help keep their workers on the payroll by generously giving out $585 a week to all employees and strongly recommending a holiday on payments of their rents and mortgages if it was desperately needed. The plan was not just to 'flatten the curve' to ensure that our hospital system did not become inundated causing the death rate to skyrocket as was occurring in Italy and now Spain, but to attempt to 'stamp out the virus' altogether - and doing so by turning the capitalistic cogs of society on its head and locking everyone away for at least a 4 to 6 week period.

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I had been beating my head against a brick wall, it seemed, trying to get my readership over the past 15 years to take notice of the enormous environmental damage caused by the clear overpopulation of our species and our obscenely unsustainable consumerist habits.  Just observing the daily numbers of China's, Europe's and America's booming sales for trading 'stuff', (heralded by most politicians as an incredible success for humanity,) utterly sickened me to my core.  The output of plastic pollution alone had created a garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean bigger than Texas, (or over 9 times the size of New Zealand).³  As average temperatures soared over the past two decades, climate change rampant with drought, severe once in a hundred year storms occurring almost annually, mass human migration due to an inability to farm and increasing levels of civil volatility and unrest - our planet was clearly paying a un-repairable price for such a staunchly capitalistic approach, one that was not only wrecking our only home, but destroying any hope for our children's future.  And yet the idea of this virus, and knowledge of the havoc it was causing to similar communities like ourselves, (not just in undeveloped nations), was enough to stir us into almost immediate change, essentially reconfiguring our very values and imaginations.  What seemed impossible over the past two to three, even four decades - had actually become thinkable in the space of just a week.  Our species was actually capable of exercising swift and widely felt change as we retreated to our abodes like ants avoiding the onslaught of a month-long monsoon.  It was as if Nature, or Papatuanuku - (the Earth Mother herself) - had unleashed a virus that had complete disregard for our species' sense of entitlement, imposing upon us all one additional and all powerful Commandment:  'Thou Shalt Not Destroy - Or Be Destroyed.' 

With some of history's largest recorded wildfires sweeping across neighbouring Australia only a couple of months prior, (estimated at killing over 1.5 billion of their precious wildlife and charring millions upon millions of square hectares of land), this was but one of the closer environmental ravages resulting from humanity's excesses now coming to the fore.⁴  I remember seeing the orange dust from the smoke of Australia's bushfires that had floated thousands of kilometres across the Tasman sea lining the snowy mountain peaks of the South Island during an earlier Natural Science Study Abroad program I had been leading over Christmas and New Years.  As the sun turned a bizarre stain of red in the hazy, smoked-fuelled horizon, although the effects of the planet's pain were playing out before us, the true impact was only being felt over in Australia, and thus, like all of society who doesn't see it as their problem until it directly affects them, we all just continued to go about our day soon forgetting that a once-in-a-generation event was unfolding. 

Whether you call it the Sixth Mass Extinction, the Anthropocene, or even the Great Acceleration - our species has long been out of synch with the biosphere and environment - burning our ecological capital as if it were disposable income.⁵  Whether through a combination of industrialization, reckless consumption and mass reproduction - species extinction caused by humanity has been at an unprecedented scale.  It comes as no surprise that Nature is finally delivering us a glimpse of what this actually feels like with the neutral yet deadly wiles of Covid-19.  Having one's habitats shrunk to the four walls of our threatened nests as we all shunt willingly into our respective lockdowns, one can only presume that we have long had this day coming, and this enforced mass awareness imposes a much overdue shift in our thinking.  Our imaginations, our heart-felt values have been decades behind the current reality, stuck in the institutional wiles of market driven neo-liberalism which came to the fore in the 1990s and early 2000s but clearly was no longer fit for purpose as we entered the 2020s.  The almighty 'slap' delivered by the Earth Mother herself has been a swift rebuke to put us all back in line - lest we continue to venture recklessly beyond our descendants’ ability to repair her deep, painful wounds.

The March Madness of 2020 will forever be seen in history - not as a celebration of the competition of some of the greatest NBA basketball players on the planet - but a defining line where the cogs of progress were put on hold and globalization was forced to enter an entirely new orbit. And yet, civilization it seemed, was actually coming to terms with our place in this obscene historic period, this Covidian-era; especially as we watched in horror as the global death rate surged towards 100,000 through April.  The majority of humanity, aware that the systematic destruction to our planet was now a direct threat to ourselves, were actually recognizing that to avoid mass termination there was a need to flatten the curve - and do it fast - no matter the cost and disruption to our former lives.  For to pause even a few days, as was being clearly demonstrated by of our fellow brethren in Italy, Spain and most recently in New York, ultimately equates to the annihilation of thousands upon thousands of more human lives. 

Countries' histories are being assessed and judged in real time in the Covidian-era because so much is at stake and is changing so quickly.  Bad decisions will be remembered, political careers and legacies lost and gained.  Good, honest journalism outlining the facts have never been so important, especially as the need for public health information is vital for people's survival. The ongoing battle against the enormous propaganda machines spewing out false narratives left, right and centre to bend the masses to its various agendas would be responsible for you and me losing a spouse, parent, friend or grandparent to the disease.

Yet it must be acknowledged that we have been warned of these historic times by scientists all the way back to the 1960s.  It's just that the advent of what was probably once seen as a science-fiction styled 'pre-apocalyptic dystopia' has now become chillingly real, forcing us to 'reawaken' to the immediate dangers of this present moment.  And for many of us, we can truly feel the emotions surrounding it, because it genuinely is historic and we are standing right in the crux of it.  Science is to be ignored at one's peril.  We have no choice but to obey it.  And yet our stupendous social and technological experiment that has enabled 7.8 billion people to exist upon this one and only planet has only been made possible by the ongoing and successful, even miraculous workings of the scientific community's technological innovations.  Without it, and its once-upon-an inconceivable shift in agricultural and medical playing fields, this unnatural human population accomplishment would be completely untenable - totally self-destructing as soon as we outbid our allocated environmental resource.  And yet we are still here.  To contest these undeniably crazy times. 

Will those limits that we have been constantly warned about (and for the most part blindly ignored), actually now be sustainably followed?  Given the currently precarious state of both our biosphere and natural environment - so intimately connected with the progress of our civilization, has this global pandemic finally humbled our ambitions and made us amenable en-masse to changing our systematically ingrained destructive habits? 

Why are we even beginning to take action?  Is it because we can feel the spectre of this invisible enemy lurk upon us as we observe the daily death statistics in real time?  Or has it finally hit close to home, that we are mortal beings - and by mortal I mean potentially dying within the next month, and this fear of the unthinkable has compelled us to reassess our profit driven motives?  The Covid-19 era has delivered us with a chilling ultimatum where the denigration of our planet from climate change and other human induced ravages are no longer seen as a distant event - somewhere beyond our known horizon.  It is right there staring us in the mirror, and it's never turning away again.⁶

It is hard to predict exactly how long our lives will be upturned trying to overcome this invisible viral menace.  Some countries will certainly take longer than others - as the moral lessons that this global pandemic unleash take longer for some societies to come to grips with - especially those addicted to money - or whose protective institutions have been eroded by the rule of an uncaring notion of capitalism or other corrupt form of leadership.  Yet it is the manner in which our individual nations respond and the lessons garnered that will be key in setting up