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Who Are You Calling Endangered Anyway- Another View of the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement

By Charles Wagamese

There are parties left out. If we showed this to attick, what would happen? A blink?

If we laid it out there on aki …what response would the land show?

There are pivotal parties left out…

In a book called Wisdom of the Elders it says,” if biodiversity and ecosystem integrity are critical to salvaging some of the skin of life on earth, then every successful fight to protect the land of indigenous people is a victory for all of humanity and all living things.”

That profundity written in a 1992 national best seller appears to be left out also.

A defensive response might go taps shkgo/like this.

That’s weemtigoozih for you. Weemtigoozih means those who come for the wood. 

This is where a full box, section 35 relationship has taken us?

Weemtogoozih deliberately leave individual Canadians (themselves) out of Supreme Court decisions and government policy. The recent consultation and accommodation self delusion says only governments are bound to respect aboriginal and treaty rights….

Canadians acting as Industry and environmental proponents are therefore legally enabled to enact a terra nullius. From protections from frauds and abuses in the Royal Proclamation to reserve land title vested in the Queen, a fifth column of societal disregard for aboriginal land rights had always been used by Europeans as a positive factor for themselves in land relations.

The doctrine of discovery tenet, Indians can’t have property rights, is a subtext to any arrangement with Canadians these days…..

The “victory for all humanity and all living things” we indigenous and Canadians are seeking likely lies in Anishinbemowin, in the Ojibway language. In that manner of understanding; rights don’t exist- duties do.

These duties, these traditions, which maintained a way of life for millenniums don’t exist just to be recognized and immediately thereafter surrendered.

They are to be implemented, lived, and led into a nation to nation context for mutual benefit including- in this case- a wiser place in Creation.

What you just heard will never be heard from any elected indigenous leaders. In my experience, any Indian in a business suit has more than one tie around their throat…

Being involved in land relations struggles at Grassy Narrows- all we are doing there is disputing culturally. One culture says a clear cut is needed and is a good thing. My culture says 80 years for the land to be restored so precious land culture can be transmitted is genocide…

There is no cultural middle ground. So clear cuts go ahead…

How can we, all together, as a singular human culture solve this?

How does one set of sentient beings see the universe with certainty? How do they base societal relations in that also?

What causes other humans to act in uncertainty..as though the earth will fail and love amongst humans can’t be counted on?

What causes the human spirit to create both perma cultures and civilizations that disappear?

Jim Greene one time killed a deer while driving to Shoal Lake. He asked an elder what that meant. The elder said,’ oh don’t worry. That one feels sorrier for you than you do for it.”

Between us we figured this is what that elder stated. “We go too fast in this life. Our human life pace destroys.”

Again from Wisdom of the Elders..” the ecological impact of industrial civilization and the sheer weight of human numbers is now global and is changing the biosphere with frightening speed.”

As human beings are any of us qualified for this?  In this so called Holocene Epoch we have all caused the extinction of 20 thousand to 2 million species in the 20th century. We all together have wiped out 50 per cent of the forests in the last 25 years.

Maybe the attick clan people should be warning their relatives’ that the wrong kind of help might be on the way.

If industrial civilization and sheer weight of human numbers is the tipping point- who decided and how did they conclude that right now, in this overall critical time, to focus first on caribou via this agreement?

From the back cover of that book, the Wisdom of Elders…” For Peter Knudston and David Suzuki the future of the planet depends on joining of two worldviews- the aboriginal and the scientific.”

They reference a,”remarkable public statement titled, ‘Preserving and Cherishing the Earth; An Appeal for Joint Commitment in Science and Religion’.

Knudston and Suzuki call the signatories to it ‘scientific elders’. Sure sounds like that to me…

Albert Einstein once said,” you can’t solve a problem with the same mindset that created it.”

I’d give tobacco to that venerable Elder and ask- “do we have any chance to get what the agreement seeks within the present monetary system?”

Is capitalism a failed human experiment we must leave behind as soon as possible?

An Anishinabe Elder says, ‘there is a difference between knowing what to do and how to do it.”

This is a huge responsibility these NBIA groups of humans have signed up for. Without means to receive help from aki and, or attick and having turned their backs on holistic knowledge, how will they get done what they hope to do?

What to do is easy. As far as attick goes, quit wrecking its land. Stop cutting so many mihtig.

How to do that is tougher because biodiversity and eco systems go at a different speed than stock markets.

How do we slow down and quit running over the deer world?

Reading a letter from one of the agreement signatories in defense of the NBIA didn’t help.  All you do when in campaign mode is keep repeating what your good intentions are. The nefarious motivations are never exposed or made known until it is too late…

Is this a good deal, is it not?

Since we can’t plumb the invisible moral universe in other folks all we can do it hope they achieve their loftiest intentions……

I ask those sentient beings not a signatory to the NBIA if anyone can ever be excluded from earth relations and societal challenges? And does protest position us as though someone else has something we need? And what about the unshakeable inner peace they say true wisdom reveals?

My own left out feeling also includes unresolved ego/anger, individual life issues stuff…

Where are we at with human population growth anyway? Where are we with our own simplicity and frugality?

Aki and attick are in charge. Out where the difference will be made there they are probably still reading the press release about the deal….

A few days ago my wife and I wife went to the grandkids grade 2 reading group class. The teacher pulled out a beautiful oversize book called the Web of Life.

Another time we marched in protest from the pulp mill in Kenora to the federal MP’s office. Along the way we passed that same school. The kids spotted our placards. They started walking alongside us inside the school yard fence (we were across the street) chanting, “save the trees, save the trees.”

That reading group was a mix of indigenous and non indigenous learners. The chanters who walked with us were all white kids.

The Aboriginal Healing Foundation produced a study that says this.

We need to move beyond a culturally encapsulated view of things. To me this says we are all in this together as sentient and spiritual beings.

That same study also says to do otherwise is to continue to marginalize. That what happens to Indians doesn’t happen to normal people. And if all those darn Indians would become normal like us, life would be better for them…

Right now, those who are outside the agreement are marginalized. Normal is corporate and capitalist.

So who are we calling endangered anyway? With extinction facing us in our human being faces… we are arguing about who amongst us can save other life forms?

Is this agreement wise enough and deep enough for that?

As far as being left out… the Buddhists say to understand the cause not the effect. Those you can spend lifetimes chasing around apparently…

Cultural divides and marginalization’s got us to the where we are today. Is it too late to repeat those mistakes?

And just who is calling who endangered anyway?