using film to shape thought

A friend recently put a poem to music as part of a fundraising album to support First Nation assertions of rights and title over their lands. I decided to put some simple video images to the words in order to submit it to our regional Skeena Wild Film Fest - in which hundreds of people watched it on the big screen - and was voted 3rd best short film.

I find this poem to inspire a pattern of thought that transcends the pro-capitalist growth-industry vs. enviro-sustainability dichotomy by inviting the listener/viewer to examine their own assumptions and biases - as evidenced by the material waste accrued by our lifestyles that witness our continued behavioral choices.

if this is all to wordy for you, watch the video for yourself.

storied food

stories become prayerswhen we eat the storied food

and know the garden that the beets are from
the hands that planted the seed and
those that saved the seed

and know the fish's stories of nets and hooks
the deer's fate and the tired hands that brought it home

...

it's only since industrialization
that we've become isolated and our prayers necessarily anonymized
to give thanks to those who've prepared this food is to forget those people

so let's define local in social and spiritual terms - of experience -
so that our prayers can be expressed as stories once more

as we know our food we become more able to know the land
and with that embodied knowledge we become more ready
for our own death, knowing that throughout our embodied life
we consume the land
and in death, the land consumes these bodies

thoughts on resistance and human-ness

Resistance towards destructive industrial projects is most effective when considered an actualization of human responsibility. The story told by media (industrial society) splits resistance into racial groups of 'First Nations' and 'Settler peoples' that are usually described as 'Environmentalists' and 'Terrorists'.

But here we stand, together, in a Responsibility forgotten/suppressed by those designing and guiding projects adverse to human and ecological well being.

This Resistance to socially and ecologically disruptive projects that further concentrate wealth and power while degrading the places that we live in nuanced terms. Decentralized power is possible when diverse peoples work from their unique places (ie. the goal is not to 'become one/the same') creating poly-politic. That is, a politic suspended within and between a diversity of peoples organizing from a shared human responsibility to maintain the ecosystems that support our life, and to nurture this world to become better for those yet to come.

here is a short video showing what this can look like on the ground from Friday April 25th 2014
http://vimeo.com/92986130

It is my experience that neither Aboriginal or Settler communities share homogenous political views. Resistance transcends race and becomes the friction between (1) a worldview of profit motivated by greed and (2) a worldview of meaningful work, stewardship of place, and enjoyment of life.

A common argument seems to be 'well what about jobs? do you expect us to all live on welfare?'

I acknowledge that I experience privilege, however we're not stopping at resisting pipelines and mines. These individual projects are symptoms of the dominant political/financial systems that profit from human suffering and environmental degradation. The goal is not to return to a past, but to move from where we are towards systems that reward human and ecological well being. A society positioned to create thriving places.

The lifeline of the pipelines, from fracked aquifers, transportation, liquidification, and eventual consumption are symptomatic of a profit driven worldview at odds with the good life that people in this area know. My hope is that articulating the over arching project of cultural change - from profit at the expense of people and place to responsibility for people and place - we are better able to actualize the joy of being alive as we resist the archaic profit driven way of being at odds with our social and ecological communities.

In this one life that we have - let us live joy and responsibility. We have all been born into a human responsibility for this world we will leave to those yet unborn. May our resistance to the immediate industrial threats to place inoculate ourselves, our communities towards creating systems that support, maintain, and deepen the good life where we are able to live out our existence on the land in the best ways that we know.

there are many opportunities to come out on the land. It's beautiful out here!!
Here are links to background video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5x6k5yvq5k

and action camp
http://unistotencamp.com/

Contact me for details

where I'm from

We are each from places
We are all part of families that connect us to the beginning.

We are also alive in geographies
Though the sustenance of our living may be more widespread as
the food that I eat is from Hazelton, Saskatchewan, California,
the clothes I wear from new zealand wool, woven in the united states
natural gas from alberta heats my house
electricity from ... bakes my potatoes and powers this computer...

I am largely ignorant of the places and people that sustain my life

I honour the living places of my life and accept the responsibilities to worship the earth through my living. I feel a praise/grief in my living relations - for this is where I'm from - and this may be more significant than tracing one's heritage.

It's time we deepen into relationship with the actual stuff of our lives so as to exhibit what others will describe as culture, emerging from the ways that we relate with life

Michale Stone suggests this as a deepening materialism in this short ted talk.

15 years before I heard about Oka

I was crying in a university class, ashamed that I had not known these histories. We were watching a film that chronicled the conflict at Oka, that happened when I was 8 years old. I was 23 by the time I knew my government had waged war on my behalf against the First Peoples.

It took me 15 years before I was aware that Canada had been at war with Indigenous people inside the country I called home. Haven't heard of Oka? find the CBC History here. I stand in solidarity with all people who reserve burial grounds as sacred, and especially with those at Oka who resisted the expansion of a golf course proposed to do just that.

I'm writing today so that we can make sure that Elsipogtog is a story that is explored and written by conversation with friends and family NOW. That we choose to go beyond the stereotypes embedded withing our Canadian psyche and listen to a people (mostly women) who are saying Stop to cracking the land to release gas.

I stand in solidarity with the people of Elsipogtog, having only briefly visited the beautiful forests, rivers, and oceans at risk of destruction during our honeymoon recently. It is my understanding that the Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Acadian, and Settlers who are standing to protect ground and surface water. This is not a racial issue, but one of humans protecting the source of our lives - the earth. We are all welcome to join in living for the earth, the water, and the air. It is time to exercise our human responsibility to life.

The 'fracking' process of percussing the earth with chemical laden water to crack the earth and allow gas to be harvested seems sketchy at best, and catastrophic at worst. (click on blue words for more info)

'gasland' is a documentary that shares people's experiences in the united states who have been affected by these developments. I am concerned that future films will document this process in Canada (Although Damien and Caleb have already begun to document this in North Eastern B.C. with the film Fractured Land)

The conscious canadian is continuing to put out solid analysis of energy issues in B.C. and Canada. this article outlines some adverse experiences of fracking.

And finally, the camp at Elsipogtog has a website to convey information- and they are accepting donations by a paypal account.

Please spread the word - history is written each day, and in each moment. Let's ensure that Canadians are informed about the actions our governments take on our behalf - and the behalf of the earth. It is far more worthwhile investment to maintain, and enhance, the ecologies that we live and the water that we drink, then allow texas based companies fracture the land to extract gas at the expense of that which sustains us.

We need to be able to live and pay bills without jeopardizing the earth that sustains our life.

I really don't care what you stand for - but stand for something, otherwise you'll fall for anything - including the idea that LNG is clean, Fracking is safe, and that we don't need to change the ways we are living.

We are part of this story. We are writing our legacy, what are you going to do ?

Social Compost

I've left a couple gardens behind as I move from place to place.
Although I find it difficult to move as much as I have, it's the compost that I find particularly difficult to walk away from.

Compost isn't really anything - this  noun describes an active, regenerative process that sustains soil based life, which is our life as omnivores.
Compost describes the digestion, the reconstitution, of refuse into the stuff of next year's garden.
Compost requires certain simple care - including more carbon than nitrogen, moisture (but not too much), turning (once or twice), and time.
The mass of a compost pile will insulate itself throughout the winter - I've seen compost steam when opened, I've found charred mass from too much heat in the belly of a compost pile. Digestion.

I can see that I've been born into a history - a time and place - that is impoverished, social cycles that haven't been renewing - something disrupted. Great harms of the past scattered through our collective (un)consciousness unable to compost.
I first noticed this from the outside, finding myself in other cultures around the world where cultural legacies were active capital for new friends of my generation - rice paddies built and maintained by families for hundreds of years. What is it that I inherit, born into an erosive time characterized by assumptions that we are individuals - a strange idea that has become a norm.

I can imagine a social compost - a process by which we live through the legacies we have been born into, rather than avoid, pretend, deny, or react to.
What could a social compost look like? With appropriate mass and composition to create the fertility for the next generation - how do we reconcile whatever is there for us to live this life with deep tranquility and reverence? For this is what I believe we describe with the word peace. And for me this is the goal.

this life is to take part in that which is bigger than our self
and so I carry this body to these places to exercise gratitude by realizing the shrinking difference between myself and place as this body exchanges oxygen with carbon dioxide and tree breath.

Walking over land helps my body accept that which I find difficult to acknowledge.
My heritage and cultural legacy - the questions I have about colonization and the way those who have come before me had assumed a dominance - that continues today largely unquestioned.
I try to walk often - along roads, up mountains, down to water - to find myself in the places I call home, because it allows me the time to arrive when I get to where I'm going.

Today I asked,
"How do I introduce myself in a good way?"
And we laughed, and laughed, because nobody had ever asked that question before.

I think it has to do with walking. It's a human speed and helps conversation. It's also an earth speed, and allows for mushroom finding and berry eating.
Today I can't decide which I enjoy more. Thimble berries or blue huckleberries. Life is good.

Roche de Boule trail, Hazelton B.C.
click for larger view

story myth philosophy

The stories we tell - or believe - create the world we experience

would you believe me if I told you that the trees in the forest help each other, that there is a story of symbiosis that surrounds us, that through the pavement emergent life patiently reclaims her relationship with the son.

Philosophy is hypothesis
and it's time for us each to bring our philosophy into awareness so that we can test them in our gardens and relations.
tend the soil and the plants with these emerging, living philosophies hidden in your thoughts and actions, relations and words and adjust them until your grandchildren's grandchildren can continue to garden in that way

don't rush
this life is a series of perpetual begins
so begin now with the humus of life that we find ourselves in with the words and actions of parents and billboards, memories and dreams,
grow a garden in the process of refining your philosophies
so that our living increasingly sustains and promotes life

there is a way
a way for us each to live appropriately within our lives governed by the natural laws that we are able to learn through all that sustains our life. As we listen to our gardens the waters, plants, animals, wind, and sun become teachers that draw out the philosophy embedded in our living so that we may become better to decide

find patience
slow yourself
and listen

giving up hope

I've given up trying to save the salmon and the trees
as I've decided to fight for sustenance and breath
cause in the grief of the moment I've seen the forest mirror my lungs
and the salmon's body become my own expressed through my living

I've given up trying to save anything
by coming alive to the inseparable existence of being

Fox asked

I woke
having dreamt of a fox
and I needed to tell a friend.

conveniently I knew a married man who had been wed by a fox so I sent him an email.


I recounted to him that

i had found her near water
in a quiet spot
of what felt like a national park.

it was daytime
and i was carrying this black fox
with grey/white flecks
around in both my arms.

she seemed calm and content
i remember her slow breathing
as her body pressed into mine

I passed by people paddleboarding
down a steep river, akin to a waterfall,
and was amazed.

i met up with some other people
and a man told me that
the fox i was holding was an old female.

I realized she was a grandmother

there were other foxes socializing
with each other near where we were talking.

i put the fox down
and became worried
so we caught her
even though
she wasn't running away

As i held her again
i realized that it was crazy
to be holding this fox
as she is alive
in her own life

i put her down
and she asked me
'how are you guys running?'
to which i responded
"not enough"

it was a neat way to start the day

waves

love words if you will,
drink the music of poetry
revel in the poet

but know that you are loving yourself
as we see our reflection in this world

the real poem exists in
the living inspired by
these words

the real poem is
alive in your
living

for as much love
as exists between us
we are simply distracted
by the ever moving oceans of our
souls as we
swell and crest on this
oceanic planet

let us remember the shapes
of these moments and let go
as we eventually,
gracefully, reach the shore and
splash on to the face of
the great mystery

Both the United Nations and Amnesty International have commented on current politics between the colonial Canadian state and Aboriginal peoples.

What I find especially interesting within the coverage of these events is the inability of commentators to differentiate between the imposed political systems, that being the band council and AFN, and traditional leadership.

Conversations within the western, imposed, democratic structures are a part of the divisive project of the colonial state. It is within the limited scope of engagement that is the problem.

An ethical space of engagement is at stake here. It is time for political business to take place in the lodges and long houses across this land. I was proud to see Nathan Cullen seated at a feast I attended as a guest in Massett last year.

We are not talking about 'Canada's first nations'.
It is the numerous nations across this continent that host Canada.

let's redraw the maps in our minds and imagine a radically new ways of being with each other. The goal is of diversity, though our systems are of homogeneity.

Imagine an expectation that Canadian leaders inherit their leadership names through feasting and holding potlatch, or by being selected by their grandmothers and aunties who had watched them since infancy. Imagine having a political system imposed on us - it might just look a bit like things used to across the pond before the knowledge carriers were killed (witch hunt) and the land subdivided (enclosure) and god institutionalized (within the adopted eastern christianity).

what are our roots
when we dig in our gardens?

what are our roots
when we look at the old ways?

we've been disrupted from the places we've lived for a long time now.
and the archeologists can see it in the ruins.

our own earth based past is smiling at us
and the prayers of our ancestors remain largely unoticed

prayers of healing
that we live in good ways for our own
grandchildren's grandchildren

may the rivers always flow
and the grass always grow

beyond our years

a story of thoughts

a small thought of being
'better than'

a seed of disconnection

an innocent perception of being
'better than'

denies one's self - and the other -
of their own unique existance
through comparison

what of co-existing, of one's
distinctness within
all of creation?

not realizing that we can only be
who we are and therefor

can there be comparison? or
only 'difference' and to
accept an inevitable plurality.

...
everything makes sense from everything
...

to transcend duality and dichotomy
which blend diversity into
assimilation

to be one's self is to shine
to reveal a piece of clarity from
deep within

words buoyant from within
one's being
to emerge as light as
one speaks one's truth

to be one's self is the
distinct power of co-being
co-creating
existing
...
'better than'
an obsolete concept when
we become sensitive to the
ways that

I am the only me
and you -
you are the only you

now let's get on with
being

Alive

Cotton mills

1802

Those first cities found orphaned children

Kept them in poor houses of London

Only a little more than 2oo years ago

Those children were moved up stream to the cotton mills – fuel of industrialization.

Where I’m from

It was those boys

9 years old, younger

12 hour days

6 inches from the ground

Little fingers sorting

Tying - Trying to be human in

The laboring heart of an inhuman

Industrial way of being.

I wonder if Gandhi knew this

When he spoke of home spun

a century later.

non-cooperation

swadeshi boycott of foreign goods

Non-violence

Khadi – home spun thread

Home made clothe - the old way.

Despite the cost of time

in comparison to British clothe

Swadeshi

non-violence

non-cooperation

Did he know that

Where I’m from

It was the boys

9 years old, younger

the one’s who needed to be loved most

12 hour days

little fingers

tying

and for the first time

wearing clothes made by

strangers

Swadeshi

Non-cooperation

To make these clothes for my

Family, with my son playing at

My loom is

Swadeshi

Non-violence

“and like a slave

her feeble helpless pow’rs

are doom’d to work

at least for thirteen hours”

it was 1802 when

those doctors said

“wait”

it took them 17 years

To legislate a work day from

5am through 9pm with

1½  hours for meals

5am through 9pm

Except if

there was drought

or the mill broke –

And they had to catch up on

the orders.

By 1835 there was some

1 000 cotton mills in England

135 in Scotland

29 in Ireland

237 000 people they estimated

½ were women older than 13

13.2% were children younger than that

“and like a slave,

her feeble helpless pow’rs

are doom’d to work at least

for thirteen hours”

Did Africa know then

That bundles of used clothes

Would dress a continent

Out pricing those hand made

Fabrics

Hand died fabrics

Colors of home

Where I’m from

They used to work those kids

To the bone

“and like a slave,

her feeble helpless pow’rs

are doom’d to work at least

for thirteen hours”

No wonder my people bet their lives

By getting on those boats to

Reach a shore only to discover

People wearing royal buckskin clothes

Because where I’m from

The kings family owned the

Forest and the deer

1785

King George the third

“No man henceforth shall be in possession of …”

“Imprisoned a year and a day…”

“And after that expires

He shall abjure the realm of England”

While we worked 5 – 9

Fed tea

And fish and chips

From oceans already become

Thread bare.

Between 1755 and 1773

2 601 152 lbs of deerskin

were shipped to England from

savannah, Georgia

“and like a slave,

her feeble helpless pow’rs

are doom’d to work at least

for thirteen hours”

The children who needed love the most

Were trapped in the heart of an

Industrial machine

Abused by a society lost to

Itself –

And those boys became fathers

And those girls became mothers

Of generations of cultural orphans

Spiritually lost within

A machine driven world

Where god became an idea

Packaged by religion

And the machine keeps

Chugging along

…

Inform yourself from

A time when the most

In need were nurtured

Identify with a time

When your people

Acted from love

Towards each other

And the planet

Nov. 25^th, 2012

Fire broke out in a Bangladeshi factory killing 112 workers who couldn’t escape as there was no fire escapes.

The clothes we wear today are not much different than 200 years ago.

Speak to the silence in the weave of our clothes.

We may think that

200 years looks differently

but is it not just a wolf in sheep’s clothes?

Find the time when Your people Acted from love towards each other and the planet, own that history, we’ve been fighting all along.


...  ...  ...

here's a rare color video of
1927 London england

potlatch

conducting business
at the intersection between
privilege and responsibility
abundance and gratitude

The first time this name would
be held by a women in
89 years

on our way home
i realized

that knowledge never needed to be
written down - because history
is held in the living beating heart
of a culture that knows how to
feast itself

it was more like a wedding
this new chief
becoming married to the people

and
600 people listening
from 2 pm till past 10

rights of leadership
responsibility of leadership

and I thought of how we
conduct business in my tradition
and the discord of question period
in a house of, commons?

adversity - criticism - voting
positioning - exerting power over

the heart of a society
no longer directed by the sun
and the rhythms of our mother
who will be the one to feed our
children.

and she
would be our priority if we
lived for our children
but we've got a bit caught up
in our own perpetual adolescence

Ben's Academic Work

The author locates the field of social work within an emerging literature surrounding the role of non-aboriginal people in decolonization. Locating assimilative thinking in the assumptions (#3 Figure 1) and obliviousness (#4 Figure 1) this paper explores Settler ontology – reflected in individual thoughts, social structures, and policy.

(( Figure 1 ))

	+	-
+	( 1 ) Know that I Know	( 2 ) Know that I don’t know
_	( 3 ) Don’t know I Know	( 4 ) Don’t know that I don’t know

Making use of three cultural examples of Indigenous concepts of self from Okanagan, Haudenashonee, and Lebanese traditions, the author questions a lack of guiding principles for Settler society. Focus is then turned towards an emerging ‘trauma informed’ literature that synthesizes the effects of adverse experiences on individual, family, and community developmental trajectories. From within these fields of neurobiology and psychology the author distills principles of respect, agency, the ability to love and be loved, as relational principles for healthy children.

Substantiated from within western thought, the author provides a framework to challenge the thoughts, service delivery design, and policy embedded within Canadian society to prioritize children and the generations to come. Without the future in mind our society is lost. Within this focus based on principles based in human need exists the possibility to live in a pluralist society described by Ermin (2007) as ethical space.

swift as

let's run through life
as curious as foxes
teasing one another.

light

floating on snow

so that the sight of
us
    and our tracks
           by daylight may
    inspire
      curiosity
           awe
              and smiles

wind

standing at the birth place of this watershed

mountain whispered wind ()
and that
consciousness materialized like a thunderhead birthed by breath

boots on august snow
gifting that mountain eloquence wrapped in beautiful words
i found the task as light as a feather
and just as powerful

for the winds of gratitude can lift stones from earth
just as winter wind freezes water in a crevice causing a crack

and that's how it was
thanking mountain for being
brought my gratitude to wind
as alive as she is on my skin

and her traumatic breaking power
patiently reducing mountain into that
periodic table of the elements

elements

carried by water over landscapes
to forests and gardens that
nourish this body
that carried me to say
- thanks -

...

Do that everyday
First Thing
she would say

...

we would gather in that frigid blackness before dawn
in ceremony, in preparation
creating beauty
to help him rise

eloquence

it was years before i realized that ceremony is what you do.
ceremony is no one thing, but the wind inside our voices when we speak eloquence
our words of gratitude

...

do that everyday
First Thing
she would say

...

that mountain whispered wind into
consciousness and I watched these thoughts closely
to catch them on this page

Robson Glacier 2012

false choices

false choices permeate my life.

even this bicycle imbued with contradiction.
I value drinking water - and another person's water is comprimised by the mining, refining, and fabrication of this steel frame, these ball bearings, this rubber, leather, or grease, it is mother water, mother earth.

Even in a bicycle there is grief
and that's ok. it's time we collectively slow down and bring our whole selves to our lives
It's ok.
let's start by accepting everything the way it is.
Everything.
And in this simple action of acceptance we become able to make change

Every action
Every way we conduct ourselves is a choice
and today I will stop assuming the false choices and bring my whole self to the ever present decision of how I choose to conduct myself through this life,
this one life

for who knows....

the fall sun

they would ask her for healing, and if it were spring time they would help her plant the garden. Summer time they would help tend the crops. During the fall the beans would need shucking, the dry corn, the squash.

During the winter they would speak while sharing meals and keeping warm.

The most significant things we can accomplish are also the most simple, in a way.
The beans, the corn, the seeds.

rattlesnake pole beans

The seeds are also the most complex. Plant's memory. Plant's language.

Just as he spent those years on the trapline to meet himself again after those years of school. After being taken apart. These simple tasks become complex when we allow our whole selves to become a part of the task - a part of the experience.

To resensitize to what it means to be alive.

Cultivate these opportunities in your life so that you become larger, growing out of your body into the water, soil and air. into the plants and animals, into the sun

one day, I pray, we will look at the sun together and see ourselves..

barley left - oats right