Art for the Sixth Extinction
The Shards Project
Since 2003, Earth Tribe TV, has collaborated with WomanKraft Art Center (Tucson, AZ), to create
“The Shards Project”. 

Each year clay shards (see photo) are created by people of all ages, The names of Earth’s life forms, extinct or highly endangered, are inscribed on clay, fired, and taken to a memorial in view of Wheeler Peak in the Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada.   The shards are laid beneath this mountain because it houses the planet’s oldest creatures, the Bristlecone Pines.  One tree was needlessly killed in 1964 to determine its age.  Dendrochronology proved its age to be over 5,000 years old.

An Affirmation for the Sixth Extinction

To all the plant and animal beings my kind has destroyed forever
I impress your names in clay because it makes me feel better about myself.
To all the beings without a common name,
To all the common names who no longer have speakers to vocalize them,
To all the speakers of common names who have no beings
to speak of, to, for, about or with,
To all the scientific names that were created and used once
before the being described was destroyed forever.
To all the beings never named by anyone,

May your dream presence be a mystery school.
May any fragment of any name be a mantra of insight.
May the mischief of my life be small.
May I nourish the cause of a diverse living splendor.

The future is not the past.