Exploring the Potential of Cultural Change and Sharks with Dominica Zhu

Dominica Zhu is an impact strategist, advocate, and humanitarian. She is also the Founder of Global Wisdom Collective (GWC), a group focused on protecting traditional ecological knowledge and key cultural lifeways pertinent to and alongside indigenous and diaspora communities that would otherwise be at threat of extinction. GWC serves as a “bridge for native nature-based societies so that the human connection to our Earth is given voice, and is preserved and protected in a way that honors the core integrity of all communities.”

Shark Allies first connected with Zhu over discussions surrounding the cultural significance of sharks in China, to gain perspective on the fin trade’s devastation and explore uncharted routes to their protection. As an Asian diaspora individual with indigenous roots across China and Vietnam, Zhu humbly and eloquently dissects the conflicting viewpoints within her culture’s generations towards fin soup, helping to illuminate a path forward. Tackling environmental issues requires everyone to have a seat at the table. Dominica’s interview embodies this importance of including every voice to create a sustainable future. To quote Yusef Komunyakaa, American Poet and Dark Waters writer, “Nature teaches us how to see ourselves within its greater domain. We see our own reflections in every ritual, and we cannot wound Mother Nature without wounding ourselves.” 

In 1970, Earth Day was born out of the energy surrounding student anti-war protests and sparked a movement after witnessing the destruction of BP’s Santa Barbara oil spill. April 22nd was chosen to serve as a campus teach-in day, but when the country caught wind of this significance, 20 million Americans took to the streets to protest industrialization and the grave health impacts it has on humanity and the planet. 

This Earth Day, while it is extremely important to take time to connect with the natural world, we also challenge you to return to the day’s activism roots. Stand up against the big corporations exploiting the world’s resources and its inhabitants, bring the tough conversations to the surface to inspire growth, and like Dominica and the Global Wisdom Collective, strive to understand the larger scope to create change. Use your ears, and then your voice.  

SC: What are your views on the way your culture perceives sharks and the traditions it was rooted from? 

DZ: This is a great question, and one that is difficult to answer. What I know about this topic was passed on to me from my elders around the urban parts of mainland China, so I can speak more from that perspective. Growing up, I understood that eating shark fin soup was a delicacy that was relished for what it symbolized- wealth, status, and elitism. It was often served in banquet halls and weddings.  The sharks hold cultural value, but not for its spiritual or ecological magnitude that they deserve, but simply because they are  incredibly lucrative and they make you look rich by having it on your dinner table. 

This topic is extremely important and conflicting to me. In my role as founder of Global Wisdom Collective, we work to protect traditional knowledge as our most sacred societies understand the humble and reciprocal relationship we must maintain with Nature in order to survive. In this case, although the practice of consuming shark fin soup is a part of a cultural tradition, it is destroying the ocean ecosystem, and hence, ourselves as well. It is very hard to support a tradition that is rooted in purely capitalistic pursuit and cruelty. 

SC: What did you wish was different and why? What is the untapped power here? 

DZ: I believe an understanding of the impact that the shark fin trade and the slaughtering of sharks have on our oceans need to be more widely known, and the reality of where are at need to be more explicitly painted. The reality is that killing and serving sharks makes people a lot of money, and it's fueled by a mix of both greed, unconsciousness, exploitation of the poor, amongst many other factors. From my perspective, I believe the fact that this is linked to so-called cultural traditions makes it even more confusing and cruel and sends mixed messages to those who are continuing the practice, and makes it harder to stop. The supply chain exists because there are still enough people at the top saying that this needs to be a “luxury’ item. Those perpetuating this practice are likely not even aware of how endangered sharks really are, or what their possible extinction means for all ocean life and human life. I’ve tried to explain this to my own members of my community, time after time, and it's taken a series of conversations and illustrations to help connect the dots of what we are facing now in terms of what this tradition has cost us with the dissemination for so many sharks. 

I believe there is huge potential to disentangle perpetuating a practice in the name of tradition, culture, and prestige, and an opportunity to show that the stopping of this cruelty is the real show of class and status. To not have shark fin soup on the dinner table is a show of consciousness and humanity, of elitism, if you will. 

SC: Why should people care about the impact of the shark fin soup industry? 

DZ: We can’t afford to look past the enormous and devastating impact of over hundreds of millions of sharks being slaughtered yearly. The truth is not pretty and we are driving these precious animals that are crucial to the survival of our ocean marine ecosystems into extinction. Without sharks, we are looking at a deteriorating ocean health. Without the ocean, there is no human race. It really is that simple.  

SC: Do you think the next generations can influence their elder’s views? What role do you feel your generation and the youth have in shifting these perspectives?

DZ: I absolutely believe that our current generation and the generations succeeding us have a huge role to play in reversing this cultural norm. I believe with the vast access to resources and knowledge that we have in the global mind, we now understand what is at stake for our sharks and our oceans when they are decimated. I feel with enough awareness of this issue within the youth, we can begin to focus on this. 

Asians still make up a majority of the world’s population, and there is even more untapped power with Asian-Americans and the diaspora youth that are in touch with the ecological impact of all of this to stand up against it. The youth are prioritizing the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss, because it is our futures and all the generations’ futures at stake. We have the power of our stories, and our shared communion with nature.  We can have those hard conversations with our loved ones at the dinner tables, we can show them what we are concerned for and what we hope for. We can speak to restaurant owners, and our politicians and continue to push for policy change. There is also opportunity for intergenerational knowledge sharing from the youth to elders so that their perspectives can also shift as well. 

SC: What is your message for fellow individuals involved in protecting sharks and what is possible in this space? 

DZ: In general, I see there is untapped power in shifting the values of our society to honoring all life forms and great potential in moving away from making human consumption of natural resources the center of decision making. I believe a lot of our work is refunelling the priorities, decolonizing institutions, and reshifting the power and dynamic when it comes to this. Our generations can spread the message that sharks deserve to live - simply because they are ancient, they are living, and they have a purpose on our planet. 

Indigenous communities and our traditional knowledge and millennium years of history in preserving and protecting our earth and its biodiversity and our tried and true approaches in planetary healing must be prioritized. Funding needs to be allocated towards indigenous communities and recognition towards the communities that have depended on, protected and co-existed with sharks for thousands of years. It is vital to lean on their leadership and ensure they are at any decision making table. With a history that dates back to over 450 million or so years ago, sharks are indeed our elders that deserve to be unmeddled with and treated with dignity. 

I also believe there is much that can be accomplished when we break down the silos, eliminate our egos, and put the Planet first. There needs to be a collective shift from an economics-frame to one that prioritizes the upliftment of all life on the planet. 

From an Asian specific standpoint, there is also potential in empowering the youth to connect back to the land and connect back to our natural world and usher the protector of nature within every Asian to come forth. Being so populous, just by sheer numbers, we can be more influential than we think in this space. I have found that as humans, we are more inclined to protect what we connect to and understand. If we are disconnected from our existence with nature, then naturally, we will not see the need to protect or care for the Earth. I think there is space to hold tradition and also be conscious of how, as a human race, we are overcrowding all planetary resources. After a while, our actions, our habits, and our so-called cultural traditions rooted in exploitation and harm of nature must change. 

SC: Anything else you’d like to share? 

DZ: I appreciate the opportunity to share my perspective! Please feel free to check out our work and chat further at https://globalwisdomcollective.org/.