Beached on Haida Gwaii

Norma Kerby sent me this gathering of poems after celebrating the launch of filling Station's northern BC writers edition in Terrace last week.

Beached on Haida Gwaii

in Hecate Strait, winds can blow over 150 km per hour

shallow waters waves tower more than 10 meters high

in Hecate Strait, any boat is a toy for the winter storms

           

Months after Randy Morrison spent eighteen hours in the frigid waters of Hecate Strait

building Randy Morrison with eighteen hours of torture in Hecate Strait

                                    W.C.B. ruling suspended  his claim

                        legs   in pain    skin burns from salt in stinging spray

                                           a doctor claims it's in his head

but they will be appealing        Randy Morrison           through shifting

            apparitions of bearded men that shout from boats of

            cold emulsion oil and ice like frozen drops of

                                            Caribbean sherbert lime

shipwrecked

lady at the store said

            he drove the boat full-throttle into the beach

                                    that or drown he told the insurance company

but in town they all know

buybacks and lack of quota

make fishing like wishing        to win the lottery

                                                                           beautiful lines       all wood

                                                                                                she fills with sand each tide

                                                                                    lists to one side

                                                                                           beached

excised

in the fast cold sweep

                                    of the flying wind

nightmares are flung into

                                                irrelevance they

            tumble off across the dunes so quickly there is no time to say goodbye

else

            do not be angry

when i say that i love the wind

                                                it was only that i would

                                                            fly

                                                                                    like a gull

                                                                                    hung suspended in the storm though

there was a gale

             wind so strong i

                        could not move but

                                                behind the dune

                                                a flock of seagulls

                                                waited

too windy even for them

soupfin shark

the shark had thrashed

a hole in the sand

                                                caught by the storm and

                                                falling tide

                                                it died in the

                                                sun

long bullet body

crescent slit of razor teeth

white skin scraped pink

                                                in cold north waters

                                                so odd

                                                a beast

                                                the currents sweep

                                                from other shores

glass ball

there

                                                                        caught between two cobbles

                                                                                    green glass

                                                                        base of a fishing float

            long journey from Japan bobbing across on foamy rollers

                                    winter storm     glass ball

                                                                                    smashed against the rocky shoals

                                                                                                pulverized to crystal sands

                                                except the bottom          dimpled where

                                    the master paused

                                       drew in his breath before he blew the           perfect bubble

                                                            emerald

                                                                     it glistens

                                                     green as cold Pacific waters

scallop

it was only a

                                                            tiny shell

                                                            pink and finely fluted

fairy scallop we called it

not knowing how such a                                  delicate

                                                            wing

                                                            landed on the cobble beach

in the gloom of the office it sits

on

the window sill

speaking of                                          winds so fierce

                                                            there was nothing but

                                                            the land and the ocean

                                                            fighting

Tlell

there are dunes

shifting dunes

                        moved by winds so wild

                        you lean

                                                a triangle into the frenzied

                                                fury

                                                waves curl back in funnels there are

dunes

with feral cattle

ancient village sites where once the

Haida raced before the storm

                    before the smallpox came

village on the shore

living on the fringe of the ocean

                        knowing that the edge of

                                    the sky    is the edge to

                                                    the other edge

                                                    of the ocean

N. Carol Brown - an anniversary

Prince Rupert's N. Carol Brown writes:

 

it is almost a year since I attended the Joint Review Panel in Prince Rupert. Since that time I have helped edit The Salmon Recipes book, which is having great success, and I feel that I have contributed to the movement to keep the north and ocean Oil Pipeline and Tanker Free. I revisited a poem that I wrote then and thought I would send it on to you. At the time I was very angry with the government of Canada and felt nothing deserved upper case letters except the original native concept of village. My hope was that readers would understand the concept and that maybe the people on the panel would hear the hope too, and revisit the vision of a village for our whole country.

Written for Presentation at the Enbridge Joint Review Panel, February, 2012, Prince Rupert

(Kanata is an aboriginal word meaning village or settlement)

i stand before you to bear witness

that the best minds of four generations

will express their love for this northern land

in canada : Kanata is

land/settlement/village

from the beginning

all that is expressed, all that is uncovered

whether beautiful, barren, bestial or disordered

honours this land, its people, its exploration and discovery.

respect the past, pioneers of the future.

love the land, air and sea, the rivers in between.

this land is not a political party, a race, religion or corporation.

be not an opponent of this land and its living celebration.

i am one small voice in the wilderness/city

joined with others i become a herd,

a flock, a migration - one echoing symphony that travels,

savouring  mountaintop,  valley and ocean,

only pausing a lightning strike in time

to rest on the waterways of our future.

n. carol brown

Congratulations to the BC Home Team!

The Super Bowl is played in a matter of hours. The residents of BC have been fighting to have their voices heard by the Joint Review Panel for many months.

Some wonderful person tallied the results from the JRP community presentations and we're pleased to announce a winner - of the 1161 people who made it through the complicated process to speak, only two spoke in favour of the Enbridge proposal.

Thanks to all the people who did speak - your stories and understanding and knowledge - your hearts are on record.

Bravo!

Sacred Headwaters - Skookum Wawa

As the oral statements at the so-called public hearings of the Joint Review Panel wrap up, we all need a little encouragement to overcome the depressing spectacle of locked doors and police officers surrounding this increasingly bizarre process. On Feb. 2, communities of the northwest will be gathering in Terrace to celebrate the withdrawal of Shell's plans to drill for coal bed methane in the Sacred Headwaters. Congratulations to all of those who worked so hard to pull this off - and thanks for all you're doing to help fight this next threat to the last wild salmon watersheds in BC.

When Ali Howard was swimming the length of the Skeena to draw attention to the threats Shell's plans presented, I wrote this poem to celebrate her achievement. Those of you from points inland might need a bit of background for the Chinook terms. I grew up on the south coast of BC where Chinook terms were commonplace: The ocean was the salt chuck; the wild rapids near Egmont on the Sechelt Peninsula  are called Skookum Chuck, which means powerful water. In 1975, Gary Geddes edited a collection of writing about the northwest, which he fittingly titled Skookum Wawa - powerful talk.

Skookum Wawa

 

Mountains.

Green meadows.

Spring grizzly grazing

in water welling through rooted sedges.

Waiting water

meanders until flatness finally falls,

falls in three directions.

Water becoming:

becoming Spatsizi, becoming Stikine, becoming Tahltan

becoming Nass, becoming Nisga’a

becoming Skeena, becoming Gitxsan, becoming Tsimshian,

the ancient submerged heart pumping

            oxygen

            salmon

            life into this land.

Bright children leap laughing

to fall, to follow,

to trace in faith one great artery on its way

into the wide arms

of the salt chuck.

Chinook talk

their talk

skookum wawa.

4000 Reasons Not to Build the Northern Gateway Pipeline

4000 Reasons Not to Build the Northern Gateway Pipeline (via Desmogblog)

The Northern Gateway Pipeline Community Hearings are nearly complete, with two remaining sessions scheduled in Kelowna and Vancouver at the end of this month. Come February, the Joint Review Panel will move into the "Questioning Phase" of the final hearing, scheduled to end in May of this year.  The…

Salmon Chowder - Architect Theatre

Georgina, Jonathan, Anita, and Jennifer are inviting you to come and join us for an Information Session/Salmon Chowder Evening!

On Thursday, January 24, we will share some of the recorded interviews we conducted on our journey throughout Northern BC. We will share experiences from the trip, answer your questions, and serve you salmon chowder.

It's a free event!
But please RSVP to
contact@architecttheatre.com
by January 21.

Looking forward to having you there. If you can't make it to Vancouver, feel free to extend the invitation and send someone in your stead!

SALMON CHOWDER Show-And-Tell
Thursday, January 24
5.00pm - 7.00pm
The Russian Hall
600 Campbell Avenue
Vancouver, BC

Join our Facebook Event Page.

Resolve to stand firm, together, in 2013.

I had a wonderful visit in mid-December from a two of the actors (Georgina Beaty and Anita Rochon) from Architect Theatre working on The Pipeline Project, which is a theatre development project about, you guessed it, Enbridge's Northern Gateway proposal.

They were on the road through northern BC in November and December and came to spend a couple of hours in Driftwood Canyon. We (I!)talked as we walked across the arched bridge over Driftwood Creek and later over a cup of tea back around our kitchen table. It made me realize how long I’d been living here, how many environmental projects we’d been involved in over those years, and how the stories are still the same. Threats of economic disaster if we don’t do what is being asked of us, while industry insists that what we ask in terms of safeguards or alternatives is impossible. Neither has proved true.

Anita Rochon
(photo courtesy project facebook page)

Telkwa, for example, is still a thriving community even without a coal mine or coal bed methane. It is possible to take the lead out of gasoline, it is possible to shut down beehive burners, and it is possible to create a park in the Babine Mountains. And, praise be, there will be no fracking in the Sacred Headwaters.

This last important victory demonstrates that it is also possible for First Nations to work with the non-native community – both on economic projects like the Kyahwood Forest Products and the sale of salmon at Moricetown and on environmental campaigns to protect wild salmon from fish farms or oil spills.

This was not the case when I moved to Smithers in 1977. It was still a regular practice for the fire chief to ask town council for permission to have his crew practice burning down “derelict” buildings – buildings that were often shelters for otherwise homeless Wet’suwet’en. It was not uncommon for Wet’suwet’en to be asked to leave stores and restaurants. Back when they were called Carriers.

Things have, in many ways, changed. Beautiful totem poles stand in front of Smithers Secondary and Northwest Community College. The Office of the Wet’suwet’en is located in downtown Smithers. The Dze L K’ant Friendship Centre owns the building that used to house the jail. School District 54 has just published Niwhts'ide'ni Hibi'it'en – The Ways of Our Ancestors: Witsuwit’en History and Culture Throughout the Millennia. 

Turn the crank and you can hear, among other things, a Wet'suwet'en greeting here at Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park.
(photo courtesy project facebook page) 

The Wet’suwet’en went through a long process educating both themselves and our community about their history and culture. Work began in earnest in 1984 when the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en launched a suit that claimed ownership and jurisdiction over their territory and led to an exhaustive recording of traditional knowledge that has left us all the richer. Even though Chief (sic) Justice Allan McEachern wrote an insulting decision denying even their existence as a people, the process of gathering that information, of talking to each other, had a very powerful and positive effect. We all knew what had happened in the past, knew that steps had to be taken to repair the injustices of that past. And the Wet’suwet’en demonstrated clearly that they still existed and held onto many political and cultural practices we had pretended were in the past. The Supreme Court’s overturning of McEachern’s decision on Delgamuukw and Gisday Wa was welcome, of course, but a transformation had begun.

Which brings me to the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel. While it will be disappointing, we shouldn’t be surprised if the panel makes a decision as insulting and misinformed as McEachern’s was. But it will be too late.  We have listened to the oral presentations from community members and read the technical evidence and cross-examinations from interveners. We have spoken to each other and there is no going back. We have heard hundreds of stories from across the province and we know how many of us oppose this project. We have educated ourselves and each other about the sham economics of the project and the environmental impacts of tar sands expansion, pipeline construction and oil spills both globally and locally. We cannot “unknow” this.

This is part of what I said as I poured tea for two young actors sitting around a table that had seen hard labour in the offices of the Telkwa Foundation, the Smithers Human Rights Society, and the home of Walter and Peggy Taylor, people who stood up against social and environmental injustice throughout their long lifetimes. We are honoured to be able to sit at this table every day and gather energy from those who have come before us.

So raise a toast to what we’ve learned this past year, and make a resolution to stand firm, together, in 2013.