We stand in support
of the Wet'suwet'en people,
land defenders, protecting
the living waters
running through their
unceded traditional territory.
Water is life!
The peaceful protectors
will be taken away to jail;
the armed defenders
of corporate criminals
wield all the power
with the complicit government.
Water is life! falls on their deaf ears. Dollar signs shine in their eyes.
The water, wild and pristine,
makes its winter passage,
caught between its protectors
and those whose god is money.
Water is life! we cry. A feather is held up: we come in peace.
A peaceful warrior waits
for the moment
the barricade is breached
and armed men swarm
the people of the living waters.
Water is life! Our duty - since time immemorial - has been to protect it.
The world is upside down,
when the oil and gas of death
is more important than
the water we need for life,
when the money gods rule
and the only water around
is the land and its people
weeping in protest.
In Načiks (Tofino) we are standing by for a solidarity response in support of the Wet'suwet'en people, should they be forcibly removed from their unceded traditional territories some time this week. Militarized police are being mobilized. Hereditary chiefs have been given notice to clear the road into their territory. The RCMP have set up an exclusion zone, an occupied blockade preventing media from access, also stopping supplies, food and medication from reaching the people.
In this strange age we live in, the protectors of the land are viewed as criminals, while the criminal corporations and complicit governments who are destroying our future hold the power. History - if we survive long enough to have a history - will tell a different story.
Standing Rock has come to B.C. as Coastal GasLink is determined to push a 670 km natural gas pipeline through the territory and across the fresh water sources of the Wet'suwet'en people. The proposed project will run across the province to the B.C. Coast, and then be tankered down the coastline. The hereditary chiefs are in opposition; they served the company with an eviction notice from their unceded traditional territories. Many B.C. residents oppose the pipeline, standing with the Wet'suwet'en people, in a time of climate crisis, when fossil fuels should be left in the ground, and clean energy systems developed. The threat of leaks and spills is not "if" but "when".
Premier John Horgan says "The project will go through." RCMP are authorized to use lethal force if necessary. The Chiefs are seeking help from the UN, which earlier in 2019 declared the rights of aboriginal people to their lands and territories.
Supportive Chief Judy Wilson of the Neskonlith people, commented, "We have to change, to ensure that our young people have a future. That's what the land defenders mean when they say we need to protect the land and the water. Globally, there has to be an awakening now."
B.C. Green Party leader Adam Olsen visited the hereditary chiefs this past weekend. He said change can't happen until federal and provincial decision-makers sit down with the hereditary chiefs. B.C. Premier John Horgan has declined to meet with them. "The rule of law will prevail," he said.
Prime Minister Trudeau (nicknamed Crudeau by the environmentally aware), by not recognizing UN-recognized rights of Aboriginal people to their lands and territories, is in violation of conventions he signed at the United Nations.
As always, when it comes to corporate money, all other rights and concerns are set aside. Yet government leaders continue to talk about Canada's important relationship with First Nations. The forked tongues of the LongKnives have not changed much; colonialism remains alive and strong in Canada.
Old southern legend tells of bottle trees, where evil spirits were said to get trapped in the bottles, keeping them away from the houses; they were destroyed by the morning sun. When the wind blows, and a sound emerges from the botles, it was said to be the moans of the evil spirits.
African slaves began hanging bottles in trees in the American south in the 17th century. They usually chose crepe-myrtle trees, significant to them through Bible references, representing escape from slavery and freedom.
As I protest captivity, I took poetic license and had good spirits freeing themselves from the bottles, rather than being trapped.
On the anniversary of his death - January 15, 2011
I feel it coming, this poem
I will birth
on the nine year anniversary
of your passing from this earth.
So close to tears, I realize, of course, it is you.
Just how much, how long, I'd miss you,
back then I never knew.
Like a burrowing owl,
you have lodged in my heart,
a prickle-burr that hurts,
from which I do not want to part.
You live there, night and day,
in a corner labeled Grief.
From the missing and the being-gone
there is no relief.
Ghost voices whispering on the wind,
and wolf howls in my dreams,
you look right into my sad heart;
your wolf-eyes gleam.
The barn owl says to light the lamp
on the windowsill for you.
But how will you find me in this place
that was never home to you?
I'm homeless in the universe, alone, without you
and I fear you're out there somewhere,
feeling homeless too.
Lead me back, wolf-spirit,
to the land we loved together.
I will walk there again
as we did in any weather.
When I can hear the rhythm of
the turning of the tides,
my spirit may still find a home
once more, where peace abides.
Maybe your ghost shadow
will accompany the hours
as I walk forever beaches that,
for a time, were hours.
*** *** ***
I went to bed and slept, and then they came:
four beautiful, white, snowy wolves
who already knew my name.
The first came close -
oh, the beauty of her face!
pushed a friendly nose towards me,
as I stood still, accepting,
but respectful of her space.
We were at the beach, the wolves and I.
A visitation from the spirit-world
of the not-alive,
and from deep within my spirit,
which needs both wolves and ocean waves
to thrive,
because it has never been enough
simply to survive.
The barn owl called sleepily
in the early light to wake me.
Four white wolves live within me now,
never to forsake me.
And you?
big, black, laughing, hilarious
creature of the dawn?
You're in my heart
forever now.
You are never
fully gone.
Hard to believe it has been nine years and I still miss him so much. I accept this is a permanent condition. We were soulmates. When I wrote this the first time, I was living at my sister's where Pup never visited. I wondered how he would find me.
I looked at life
with blue-sky eyes
for most of my many years,
with hope and trust
and dreamy sighs,
watered well with tears.
But now my gaze
is singed with brown,
like the forests that I love.
Burning creatures, burning towns,
sky fiery red above.
Like kangaroo and koala,
I don't know which way to turn.
My heart can't take the pain
of watching
as the wild world burns.
for the Sunday Muse : I am heartened that people are heroically helping the animals, and dropping carrots and sweet potatoes down to them. I just don't know what to do with this much grief at what is happening, to the animals, the people, and the land.
