It is that time again. Time to wonder: Why do we turn the clocks forward and backward twice a year? Academics, scientists, politicians, economists, employers, parents – and just about everyone else you will interact with this week – are likely debating a wide range of reasons for and against daylight saving time.But 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 when 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.AdvertisementAdvertisementBiologically 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, which 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 are beings who also need winter to rest and summer to bloom.As far as we 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 – like the point on top of a pyramid. That, and I argue, that 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.The nature of time and workIndigenous views of the world are not the pyramids or lines of capitalism but the circles and cycles of life.AdvertisementAdvertisementConcretely, time correlates with terrestrial and celestial changes. Historic records and oral interviews document that in traditional Indigenous cultures of the past, human activity was scheduled according to nature’s recurring patterns. So for example, a meeting might have been scheduled not at 4 p.m. on Thursday, but rather at the next full moon. Everyone knew well in advance when that would arise and could plan accordingly.Such an acute sensitivity to nature’s calendar has symbolic meaning, too. To look up and see the Moon in the sky at night is to see the same Moon that someone once saw centuries ago and someone else will hopefully see centuries into the future. Time is interwoven with nature in a sense that far exceeds Western understanding. It embodies past, present and future all at once. Time is life.[embedded content]In this Indigenous context, daylight saving time is nonsensical – if not outright co …
