Rita Wong
Canada is a haunted house
Let’s start with love and respect for the land and rivers giving us life and sustenance. Our home, this earth, has sustained us for thousands of generations. Remember to feel at home. Alert. Alive. Attuned to one another and the beings we coexist alongside with. Be a good neighbour, or a relative, who reciprocates with gratitude for the gift of life, starting with your mother and extending to the fresh (and polluted) air, clean (or polluted) water, simple food, songs and stories that nourish health. This is the baseline for an interdependent humanity.
Then imagine someone moved into this home, forced you out, and not only that, stole your children and killed many of them. The children who manage to survive remember being abused, punished for speaking their language, and in many horrifying cases, raped. Why did the settler do these horrific things? If they killed the people here, they thought they could take and control the land. They don’t care that these relatives are part of the land, inseparable from the land. They don’t respect or centre the land as is. They don’t understand that what they did severely diminishes them. The land thefts happened, and they continue to be attempted in contemporary forms. Crown title is a burden on Aboriginal title.
Many who moved into this haunted house called Canada did not know this history. Regardless of whether we knew or not, here we are, and we have to deal with it. It’s everyone’s responsibility now, if we’re here.
The robber barons don’t want to address their wrongs because they think the story of their power and wealth are more important than the worldview where we and the land are all equal and deserving of love and respect. Where our shared humanity means amends for the past still need to happen both intrinsically as humans but also in order for us to all care for a livable earth. This worldview, this deep interdependency, is one of the best parts of being human, crucial for our collective survival.
This is why people in Victoria and Vancouver stand with the Lax’yip Firekeepers and the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs as they speak up to protect the lax’yip from fracked methane gas extraction that fuels mass extinction. We invite you to start a local chapter of Friends of Gitxsan and Gitanyow too, wherever you are. These land guardians are on the front lines of the struggle for climate justice, and what happens to them will affect us all, for better or for worse. If you value clean air, drinkable water, and predictable weather, stand up against fracking wherever you are. Be a breath of fresh air. Work with those who are regenerating the health of the land. Resist its destruction. As the Unist’ot’en say, heal the people, heal the land.
Let’s start with love and respect for the land and rivers giving us life and sustenance. Our home, this earth, has sustained us for thousands of generations. Remember to feel at home. Alert. Alive. Attuned to one another and the beings we coexist alongside with. Be a good neighbour, or a relative, who reciprocates with gratitude for the gift of life, starting with your mother and extending to the fresh (and polluted) air, clean (or polluted) water, simple food, songs and stories that nourish health. This is the baseline for an interdependent humanity.
Then imagine someone moved into this home, forced you out, and not only that, stole your children and killed many of them. The children who manage to survive remember being abused, punished for speaking their language, and in many horrifying cases, raped. Why did the settler do these horrific things? If they killed the people here, they thought they could take and control the land. They don’t care that these relatives are part of the land, inseparable from the land. They don’t respect or centre the land as is. They don’t understand that what they did severely diminishes them. The land thefts happened, and they continue to be attempted in contemporary forms. Crown title is a burden on Aboriginal title.
Many who moved into this haunted house called Canada did not know this history. Regardless of whether we knew or not, here we are, and we have to deal with it. It’s everyone’s responsibility now, if we’re here.
The robber barons don’t want to address their wrongs because they think the story of their power and wealth are more important than the worldview where we and the land are all equal and deserving of love and respect. Where our shared humanity means amends for the past still need to happen both intrinsically as humans but also in order for us to all care for a livable earth. This worldview, this deep interdependency, is one of the best parts of being human, crucial for our collective survival.
This is why people in Victoria and Vancouver stand with the Lax’yip Firekeepers and the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs as they speak up to protect the lax’yip from fracked methane gas extraction that fuels mass extinction. We invite you to start a local chapter of Friends of Gitxsan and Gitanyow too, wherever you are. These land guardians are on the front lines of the struggle for climate justice, and what happens to them will affect us all, for better or for worse. If you value clean air, drinkable water, and predictable weather, stand up against fracking wherever you are. Be a breath of fresh air. Work with those who are regenerating the health of the land. Resist its destruction. As the Unist’ot’en say, heal the people, heal the land.
*BIO*
