Undercurrent Page 4
the distant hills she hears amanda nahanee tell the story wild rice used to grow where chinatown is now she invokes its return
q’élstexw
q’élstexw
the city paved over with cement english cracks open, stubborn Halq’eméylem springs up
among the newspaper boxes and mail receptacles in the shade of the thqa:t
along the sidewalks lined with grass and pta:kwem waiting to grow anywhere they can
around the supermarkets full of transported food – kwukemels, tomatoes, chocolate and chicken.
under the wet green shelter of chestnut and p’xwelhp leaves
carried on the tricky wings of skwówéls, also known as qukin, gaak, gwawis, setsé7 and more in the languages of this land
more to tree & bracken & cucumber & oak & raven than meets the stiff I
root & stomach & seed speak glottal, gut & gift
return
take a st.and
sewage wafts up at the corner of fifth and st. george
slosh gurgle downhill through indifferent pipe grid pipe grind
your teeth pipe miles and miles of pipe underneath our feet
smell water rushing under the manhole covers
one pipe carries drinking water
another carries away your toilet flush
pipe down, pipe plastic, pipe slime, pipe
time
corner the hydrant bursts chlorinated
water shoots exuberant into sky
coincidence, haunting, or the stubborn stream’s refusal to be confined?
what’s lost? not just the streams but the people
who stole them from the salmon who swam them
re-pair tributary with daylight
twin riparian zone with home
detourne st. george toward chief dan george
Geswanouth Slahoot’s spirit knows these unceded streams
Snauq Staulk, te Statləw
地下水
alpha bets, language gambles, on
land
asks, what’re you so
scared of identity for?
it’s like being scared to say, you’re a blade of grass
in a lawn that’s
gonna get mowed
declare yourself or not, you’ll get cut down & grow back, cut
down & grow back,
cut down & erode
in the colonial rut
unless you ask hey, who imposed these
lawns & do i really
want them?
traded for forests & prairies & organic
garden
futures
the big combine’s coming on down, petroleum products chugging into our lungs & people with many names or no names gotta keep in mind the ground underneath is what really feeds us
the ground was stolen
through lies, deceit, conceit:
how does one handle two, three, four-
faced adversaries?
the tricks
with the knife
i’m learning to do:
splice languages
barter carefully
call it gaia or gravity,
respect the land, mother’s worth
inner compass, outer radar
seek shelter in meditation bowling community gardening farmers’ market friends meeting conversing in boisterous classroom reading library quiet stretching yoga’s studio inhale
rumpling sleepwarm bed exhale squeezing hotly crowding leafy park smelling salal patch resting futon firmly soft armchair beach banyan tree coral reef cafe aerobics working out
bicycle riding kayaking verbing kitchen laundry poncho shawl hugging howling powwowing concerting guitar spa deli choir artist-run centre nightclub dojo theatre bar pavilion patio
porch alley stairwell balcony corridor campus chatting room naturopathic clinic scooping litchi ice cream picnicking jazzing festival kissing slow nuzzling quick independent bookstore
dictionary sutra swallowing water tasting honey sitting restaurant walking-in closet study window sill rice cooker curbside walkway salty-wet dreaming rubbing gently promenading
midnight mountain hiking rendez-vous lovers’ arming parade overhang bus stop video projector strike annual general meeting quilting bee potluck cooler hamper basket
community centre gymnasium hostel tending orchard grove cookbook riding train sauntering flip flops muumuu miso bowl wok night market skeining wool peeling pomelo
hot empanada warm bannock flipping magazine anthology entering subway salad teahouse feast house longhouse bathtub pounding piano braiding hair opening thermos plantain
poultice diving into stew lake campsite well unfolding secrets sketchpad notebook creek
dispatches from water’s journey
一
i live at the west entrance of a haunted house called canada
whose hungry ghosts, windborn spirits, call us to conscience
when the truth & reconciliation commission arrived
thanks to the concurrent exhibition, net-eth: going out of the darkness
i heard the story of a local artist, a survivor of the residential schools,
who earlier in his life used bullets as lead to draw his art
another artist pointed out that her family’s healing time is different from the trc’s schedule
when i walk the path of the rainway in my neighbourhood, as i did today
i feel the quick press of clock time, monkey mind
the slow depth of stream time, gut strong
the push pull of moon earth, street sky
an imperfect dance can still bring together
the broken, the dead, the scared & the scabbed, the makers & remakers
the children, the elders, the families, the storytellers, the witnesses
we walk this path, aching to heal, somehow
dirtied hands, stumbling feet, agile hearts, determined faces
knowing that reconciliation needs land restoration to ground itself & grow
sometimes faltering yet steadily recovering, we lean into this necessity
rising from the watersheds we become together when we drink from them
underneath all the words, we are one troubled water, learning to heal ourself
二
Close to its headwaters, Staləw, otherwise known as the Fraser River, is clear translucent jade, liquid magic.
Fraser Crossing is the farthest point along the Fraser River that one can reach easily by car, without taking a day’s hike into the Rocky Mountains. I went there on a trip to pay my respects to staləw, which, in its ceaseless flow for roughly twelve million years, has created the landscape on which I live, otherwise known as Vancouver.
At Fraser Crossing, what I found, in addition to the beautiful, burgeoning river, shocked me: a high-pressure petroleum pipeline had been built underneath the river.
There in the so-called “protected wilderness” of Mount Robson Provincial Park, the Trans Mountain Pipeline has already been very busy. In fact, the old 24"-diameter pipeline has been joined by a new 30"- to 36"-diameter pipeline alongside it, accelerating the extraction of oil from the tar sands. The expanded pipeline runs from Hinton, AB to Tete Jaune Cache, BC.
What the river taught me on this trip is that it is in danger from petroleum.
三
travelling with the stalwart Keepers of the Athabasca
we go to learn, to fulfill our responsibilities together
where wild cranberries, blueberries, labrador tea
grow together in the bush alongside five lakes
and a pond of healing waters
at the 2011 Keepers of the Water gathering
hosted by the Northlands Dene First Natio
n
a small community of less than a thousand Dene people
with huge hospitality, kindness, care
generously welcomed us with bannock and stew
we feasted on campfire caribou and juicy trout
elders spoke of surviving hydro dam destruction,
tar sands, uranium mines, global warming
the need for unity and action
love for sacred water
curious children came, asked questions
an elder said, when i speak of water, i don’t mean
the rivers and lakes, i mean the women
women are water, yes
四
Former World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin famously said that future wars will be fought over water, in the way they’re being fought over oil today. Wars are already being fought over water, in that water scarcity intensifies existing tensions that we might perceive as political or religious from an androcentric lens. But water also presents both an opportunity and a requirement for communities to work together to protect it, and in so doing to simultaneously honour ourselves, our relations to one another. As such, it forms a critical nexus through which to reimagine ourselves and our cultures.
By contemplating the relations and interdependencies that are enacted through water, we can participate in water ethics, walk an inviting path to peace, a way to rethink and address the conflicts and injustices that logically arise when water is conceptualized as an object and commodity to be transported and sold to whichever customer can afford to pay. Grasp it, and it slips through your fingers. Share it wisely, and your communities prosper. Water is our living connector, a gentle yet powerful way to be in relation to one another.
for Gregoire Lake
which way does the wind blow?
our tents are ready to sleep in
360
when we arrive in the dark, tired
lead
having made hundreds of sandwiches
mercury
for the Healing Walk
cadmium
in the fresh morning
hexavalent chromium
i dip my hands into you tentatively
arsenic
thankful to camp on your shores
aluminum
amidst mosquitoes, mud & grass
zinc
knowing you hold airborne toxins
thallium
from the tar sands
nickel
though you look placid, peaceful
dibenzothiophenes
you hold bitter, bitumized depths
phenanthrenes
protracted violence has been done to you
fluoranthenes
to your fish, your birds, your dwellers
benzanthracenes
a lake is surrounded
anthracenes
though not usually in this way
pyrenes
i wish i had met you in better times
chrysenes
but i am grateful to meet you at all
trace metals
even in our compromised states
antimony
we remember why we are here
365
* note: Terms on the right are drawn from Evaluation of Four Reports on Contamination of the Athabasca River System by Oil Sands Operations, prepared for the Government of Alberta, 2011
detritus
dada-thay
the big sacred fire burns, night & day,
despite the radioactive waste leaked by
dada-thay, Dene for “death rock,” uranium
open-eared, open-hearted
i arrive in Wollaston Lake
home of the Hatchet Lake Denesuline
walk lightly, gratefully, here on the edge of
Saskatchewan’s biggest lake
one of its hundred thousand lakes
overlooked & underestimated
by those down south
who desecrate the water for the mines
further north
a village of widows
mourn husbands
lost to the brutal industry
for atomic warfare
they understand responsibility
when western governments don’t—
they apologize to the survivors
of Hiroshima
& Nagasaki for death
rock taken from their homelands
without knowledge
of the consequences
further south
cancer-ridden Navajo
with over 1300 abandoned
dada-thay mines
refuse to allow any more
death rock mining
on their homelands
in contrast to Saskatchewan
the Saudi Arabia of uranium mining
digging & burning up
what rightfully belongs to the future
leaking its deadly mess
into our nervous, drenched bodies
In 1985, roughly two hundred Indigenous people and their allies blocked traffic in and out of Rabbit Lake (now the world’s second largest uranium mine) and Collins Bay, documented in Miles Goldstick’s book, Wollaston. Canada is one of the world’s largest exporters of uranium, due to northern Saskatchewan, epicentre of the mining. Because uranium radiation is silent, invisible, without taste or smell, its carcinogenic effects may not be immediately apparent, but take time to unfold in people and animals.
In August 2010, I participated in the Keepers of the Water IV Conference in Wollaston Lake, northern Saskatchewan. This remote community can only be reached by barge/boat or airplane as there are no roads that go directly there. People say that the water is clean enough there that you can drink it right out of the lake, which I saw people doing. Wollaston Lake is the largest of the hundred thousand lakes that sit within Saskatchewan’s boundaries.
Generously hosted by the Hatchet Lake Denesuline First Nation, the conference structure was as fluid as the topic of water itself. A one-hour elder’s panel on the conference schedule spontaneously expanded into over eight and a half hours of testimony over two days, as twenty-three elders spoke movingly of how important water is, how cancer caused by mining has killed many family members, how uranium mining and tar sands expansion is poisoning the land. Any elder who wanted to speak was given time, and the way the telling unfolded was an excellent lesson in patience and community love; over and over in different ways, elders stressed the importance of working together to respect and protect the water.
As Dr. Manuel Pino points out, the “dendritic patterns of the water ways” mean that the wastes and tailings do not remain contained underground but leak out into the environment, eroding Indigenous people’s food sovereignty as game and fish become contaminated over time. For this reason, the Navajo decided in 2005 to refuse to allow any more uranium mining on their lands. As a water-soluble metal, uranium “emits radiation until it stabilizes into lead in 4.5 billion years” (Jim Harding, 2010). Its short-term benefits in terms of energy result in long-term problems, as no one really knows what to do with such long-lived toxic waste.
As one of the conference speakers, Bob Patrick, pointed out, we can’t talk about energy without talking about water. As it keeps moving, water connects all forms of life in its ceaseless flow.
Fed freshly hunted caribou and local whitefish, I tasted how delicious the land’s provisions are. And I worry about the long-term effects for the Dene people eating wildlife caught in proximity to the uranium mining. What is the relationship between those of us who live in the south and our friends, sisters, brothers, cousins in the north?
the north is hot the ice roads are melting i hold my hand up to catch some uv rays burn baby burn sings the road’s shoulders this is an inferno of the mining industry’s making & the presumption of consumption the r
oads follow the mines into hell hold us hostage with refrigerators computers cell towers minivans & suvs the everyday paraphernalia of the twenty-first century in the anthropocene, digging the earth inside out cracking her bedrock bones for a quick shot of gas to burn, a blip in the planet’s four billion years, little blip with a big footprint instigating glacial retreat & acidic oceans someone will thank us for this: the cockroaches who will inherit what’s left whether or not you see the mines you belong to them & they to you we’re not going to shut up, we’re water bodies, going to shut down what has stopped making sense when we could mine landfills richer in minerals & precious metals than boreal forests, or make biochar
enough: flood out Moloch & ignite the eighth fire
sleepless in Somba K’e
for the Coney River, otherwise known as the Yellowknife River
precariously perched on once-infinite ice & sweltering in broken records
so many degrees of industry intrusion on the front lines of global warming dying
along your banks thousands of people speak, sing, shout in eleven languages & more: Chipewyan, Dogrib, Gwich-in, North Slavey, South Slavey, Cree, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, Inuinnaqtun, English, French…
illuminated by the midnight sun, you flow regardless of the Giant Gold Mine’s steady leak of 237,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide, the bustle of unionized Ekati diamond mine workers, the repeated dramas of visitors, hunters, bureaucrats, researchers, tourists, more miners, students