Today I had the luxury of enjoying time with my child who is home from college for a brief visit. As wonderful as it was to have a day off of work, it felt wrong to enjoy a “holiday” celebrating two colonizers. This feeling was particularly strong for me this year. You see my child is now pursuing their education on the un-ceded lands Canada calls British Columbia. It is a place where a significant struggle for Indigenous rights is unfolding. I feel a responsibility to encourage them to educate themselves, to be a good guest, and to support the self-determination efforts of Indigenous peoples who put their lives on the line to protect their territories and culture. I signed a pledge in support of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation and made a contribution towards their legal fees. Information about various ways you can support can be found on the supporter toolkit page here.
I write this statement of solidarity today, hoping my voice can in some small way honor ongoing Wet’suwet’en resistance to the colonial violence being carried on behalf of Coastal GasLink and other pipeline companies and their investors, many of which have ties to the United States. If you haven’t been following the Royal Mounted Canadian Police’s armed invasion of Wet’suwet’en lands, I encourage you to check out the hash tags #ReconciliationIsDead and #ShutDownCanada. Also take twenty minutes to watch the short documentary film, Invasion. It describes Unist’ot’en Camp’s decade-long project to build a healing center and protect their lands and water.
I’ve been trying to sit down and write for several weeks but keep putting it off. I’ve been preoccupied mapping the Negroponte brothers, technocracy, and Blockchain education. Each dot on each map reveals some new horrific facet of the larger puzzle, making it hard to focus and tell the story that needs to be told. My praxis has been to digitally swim in this toxic brew of militarized transnational global capital. It helps me learn the terrain, so I can interpret it for others. The toxicity, however, does take a toll.
An antidote over the past few weeks has been watching from afar the powerful stand taken by the Wet’suwet’en people against the pipeline companies. They have steadfastly and at great personal risk opposed the Canadian corporate state, which professes to be a leader in sustainability while continuing to partner with extractive industries that are intent on devastating Indigenous lands and waters. In a video last week, Freda Huson of Unist’ot’en Camp said they intended make their stand and expose the lies. They would bring the darkness to light.
As a mother, it was incredibly moving to see these matriarchs confronting riflemen and dogs and helicopters. The women of Unist’ot’en Camp were taken while in ceremony honoring the lives of missing and murdered women lost to the petroleum industry. They were taken as they stood in ceremony, living links between ancestors and future generations. It brought to mind Regina Brave’s treaty stand at Standing Rock. The sacrifice of these women exposed the brutal violence upon which colonialism rests.
There is no doubt in my mind that the world is at a crossroads. Will the masses follow the scorched path of technocracy or will we uphold Indigenous sovereignty and pursue a different course? I hope that mothers of the world will recognize this is the time to choose the latter path, the green one. This week my feed was filled with images of Michael Bloomberg and Freda Huson. The former is the face of faux “techno-green” capitalism that intends to kill the planet to further enrich oligarchs through initiatives like LNG. The latter embodies a worldview that centers self-determination for Indigenous and oppressed peoples and collective healing for people and planet.
It gives me hope that so many across North America have risen up to join with the Wet’suwet’en people in calling out Canada and Trudeau on their treacherous actions. The amount of direct action and disruption caused shows how powerful people can be when united in struggle. Let us tap into that power to build a world based in right relationships. Let us to bring the darkness to light. As we in the United States drown in coverage of the upcoming presidential election, we should keep in mind that the leaders we actually need may very well be the Freda Husons.
Reconciliation is dead; revolution is alive.
Well said. Thank you for sharing. One feels helpless, yet does what we can.
In Sodarity,