Planting the Future: The Spiritual Legacy of Wangari Maathai

Abstract

This concluding chapter pursues a deeper understanding of actions taken by Wangari Maathai to maintain spiritual connections between everyday life and the environment. We do so by explaining how traditional spiritual beliefs and her unique individuality inform her motivations to protect the environment. Our understanding of Maathai’s individuality is informed by Callicott’s (1994) articulation of individuality in the African outlook. Callicott observes that individuality is not only “counterbalanced by community identity but one’s unique individuality is defined in part by one’s social relationships and expressed through social interaction”(p. 166). Social relationships and interactions in Maathai’s life are embedded in spiritual values that support her preferred solutions to save the environment. This idea of “embedded individuality as a nexus of communal relationships”(Callicott, p. 167) and awareness of modes of interaction between the living and the non-living, might be the germ of Maathai’s spiritual legacy. Additionally, we believe Maathai’s embedded individuality has strong relevance to her charismatic leadership and networking skills that garnered support for her “local message with a global reach”(Gorsevski, 2012, p. 7). Broadly, we explore how Maathai’s work captures an African psyche by coalescing cultural and spiritual values associated with communal life, nature, and indigenous ways of knowing in relation to the environment.