“You cannot discover lands already inhabited,” is a maxim that permeates the excellent book, Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery (InterVarsity Press, 2019), by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah. It is a blatantly obvious statement of fact that eludes or has eluded so many people who accept Christopher Columbus as the discoverer of the New World.
Over the past decade I’ve made a number of short films about the Unist’ot’en, because I believe in their struggle and also because out of all the climate activism I’ve seen in Turtle Island, theirs has the potential to block the largest chunk of greenhouse gasses coming out of Canada’s tar sands and fracked gas projects. This is because their camp stands in the way of a proposed “energy corridor” that would bring fossil fuels via multiple pipelines, to ports in the Pacific for export to Asian markets.
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you.
— Matthew 7: 1-2
It’s a modest apartment in Newport where I sit with Susan Swift to go over “quite the life” as any listener might say about this feisty, spiritual and articulate, world-traveling woman.
The hitching post Susan and I tie our respective philosophical steeds on is “philosophy” and “fate,” although we could have brought in a whole team of other steeds to pull the conversation toward all spiritual directions.
The French journalist Angèle Savino lived in Venezuela for thirteen years, during which time she followed closely the conflict between the Yukpa and the major landowners. “After Chavez decided to hand over the land to the Yukpa, the assassinations ensued” – she confides. Convinced that in Venezuela, the indigenous struggle for land is also that of the peasants, Angèle Savino has long developed the idea of making a documentary that pays tribute to these men and women murdered with impunity. This documentary is called “Hau Yuru”. She tells us more in this interview.
*****
In the central interior of the Canadian province of British Columbia is the unceded territory of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation. A corporate entity, Coastal GasLink (CGL), abetted by colonial-government structures, is preparing to lay a pipeline in this territory. The Dinï ze’ and Ts’akë ze’ (hereditary chiefs) did not grant consent for this; in fact, the proposal from CGL was unanimously rejected.
