Why changing clocks runs counter to our nature

IT'S THAT TIME again. Time to wonder: Why do we turn the clocks forward and backward each year? Academics and scientists, politicians, economists, employers, parents — just about everyone you interact with this week — are probably debating a wide variety of reasons for and against daylight saving time.

- RACHELLE WILSON TOLLEMAR GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

The reason is right there in the name: It’s an effort to “save” daylight hours, which some express as an opportunity for people to “make more use of” time while it’s light outside.

But as an Indigenous person who studies environmental humanities, this sort of effort, and the debate about it, misses a key ecological perspective.

Biologically speaking, it is normal, and even critical, for nature to do more during the brighter months and to do less during the darker ones. Animals go into hibernation, plants into dormancy.

Humans are intimately interconnected with, interdependent on and interrelated to nonhuman beings, rhythms and environments. Indigenous knowledges, despite their complex, diverse and plural forms, amazingly cohere in reminding humans that we too are an equal part of nature. Like trees and flowers, we also need winter to rest and summer to bloom.

As far as humans know, we are the only species that chooses to fight against our biological presets, regularly changing our clocks, miserably dragging ourselves into and out of bed at unnatural hours.

The reason, many scholars agree, is that capitalism teaches humans that they are separate from, and superior to, nature — the point on top of a pyramid. And, I argue, capitalism wants people to work the same number of hours year-round, no matter the season. This mindset runs counter to the way Indigenous people have lived for thousands of years.

Indigenous views of the world are not the pyramids or lines of capitalism but the circles and cycles of life.