Original Peoples

I am deeply indebted to the Coast Salish people, the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam nations on whose unceded lands I think, teach, learn, and write. With my heartfelt gratitude.

When the Province of British Columbia recently issued the biggest salmon farm expansion in over a decade, they knew the public were not onboard with the decision.  A petition with over 110,000 signatures was recently delivered to the Premier.
However, the Norwegian-based companies each courted a First Nation chief and council and once they made their deals, the Province of BC felt it would be clear sailing to grant leases, despite the public demand that this industry get away from our wild fish.  Four more salmon farms were given tenures to release tons of waste daily.

The Aha Makhav believed that the god Matevilya created all life forms on the sacred summit of Spirit Mountain. This high point in the Newberry Range now looms over the towns of Laughlin, Nevada, Bullhead City, Arizona, and Fort Mohave, Arizona. The rich Colorado River bottom land, stretching from what is now Hoover Dam southward for more than 200 miles, was home to the Aha Makhav for untold thousands of years.

A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will ‘thingify’ them—make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military to protect them. All of these problems are tied together.  What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, ‘America, you must be born again!’
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The news media recently reported that the Mashco Piro Indians in the Peruvian Amazon have been pushed out of their environment of evolutionary adaptation that they have occupied for at least 600 years because of commercial concerns and natural resource extraction (same old story.) An added complication here is that the Mashco Piro are the last uncontacted tribe in this area of South America. In the interests of holy preservation, why cannot these people just be left to themselves?

The Self or Anthropos quaternio symbolically represents what we cannot, in fact, see. Carl Jung’s Aion, Volume 9 of his Collected Works brilliantly describes the Self and shadow archetypes as quaternios. Archetypes only become visible through their symbols, not themselves as such. Anthropos is a reflection of the “higher Adam” (Self, or the center of the unconscious) and occupies the upper apex of the diamond-shaped quaternio which is joined at its base by a mirror image of itself.  Thus, the diamond appears to be two pyramids attached at their bases with an apex point and a basal point.

Our friends at Unist’ot’en Camp got visited by Klanada’s swiniest and we dropped everything and went to their territory to provide video support, as we have been doing for the past five years. We helped produce a couple of videos that got over half a million views and helped the Unist’ot’en get media attention, and much needed financial and physical support. The situation is rapidly developing and we will continue to support this shining example of grassroots Indigenous resistance.

On July 20, 2015 the United Nations Human Rights Committee in its 7 page Concluding Observations Report adopted a number of critical observations of Canada’s human right practices, treatment of indigenous people and criticized Harper’s policies on Immigration and treatment of refugees. The Report was termed “A wake up call” on Canada’s human rights performance.

“British Columbia,”1 a province wrought through the genocide of First Nations2 and theft of their territory has been beset with several forest fires this summer that has at times choked urban centers with ash and particulate.

What is the value of an apology? Can repentance come via symbolic gestures? As you sit upon this land taken by coercion and force from Native Nations and worked by the labor of enslaved Africans do you feel a pang of guilt? Is it enough guilt to inspire genuine contrition, or is your hope that the symbolism of a lowered flag can manufacture an emotional sense of sacrifice? In our age of reality television where appearance trumps all and we tend to frame issues and foster solutions that are filled with empty rhetoric can we find real, lasting solutions?