Part One: Dirty Water

As of January 1, 2016, there were 135 drinking water advisories in effect in First Nations communities (that is to say, on “Indian Reservations”), across Canada.  This is excluding British Columbia, where another 26 drinking water advisories were in effect as of February 29, 2016.  If you actually read through the advisories, you’ll notice that many have been in effect since the mid-1990s and have no sign of not being in effect any time soon. Altogether, over 109 communities are impacted.  It’s hard to know the exact figures because many communities do not have a population listed but, based upon the information available, we can estimate that this impacts over 75,000 people.  Over 75,000 Indigenous people living in conditions of poverty we tend to associate with some of the poorest nations in the two-thirds world — we are talking about people who lack buildings with heat or insulation (despite living near the arctic), who lack running water, and who cannot drink or bathe in the water that is available to them.

Continue reading →

A lot of rich Christians are celebrating the forgiveness of their sins this weekend.

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

I have been thinking about Eduardo Kohn’s book, How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human along with Ye-weh-node’s teachings in Language of the Stones and elsewhere.  I have been thinking about what Glen Coulthard says about the connection that the Yellowknives Dene feel with the land — that the land does not belong to them, but they belong to the land — and how this is a common belief amongst the various Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island.  And I have been thinking of the words I heard from a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Elder who said, “We have different languages because we come from different lands.  It is the land that gave us our language.  We speak because the land gave us speech and different lands speak differently.”

Continue reading →

1.  Sorrows, Joys, and Bullshit

First of all, there are the wounds, the traumas, and the irrecoverable losses.  There are the children taken by the agents of government, the innocence taken by the hands of men, and the physical mobility taken by the front bumper and rear left tire of a careless driver.  These wounds are the great sorrows.  They are the ones that leave empty spaces on our insides and our outsides, where parts of our selves used to be but no longer are.  Or, as is so often the case with deaths and dyings (for Death is not so much The End as our constant companion on the way there), they leave spaces inside of us filled with the presence of a person who is no longer with us bodily.  Every day, you are present with me, but as an absence.  Every day, I remember what I used to be able to believe, but believe no longer. Every day.

Second, there are the great joys.  The moments of beauty that leave us breathless — waves smashing on rocks that send spray thirty feet into the air, the embrace of a lover, deer that come from the woods by the river and walk and stand and stare as though they are unafraid, and trees that remember and still sing of what there was to see before we were here.  These joys are a balm upon our wounds.  They are comfort in the midst of our sorrows.  They are moments when we can rest or revel in these bodies that we are and that are, no matter how marked, still so very much alive.

First the great sorrows, then the great joys.  Things go in that order.  When we are hurt we awaken to the world as a place into which we have been thrown — a place that is foreign and alien and Other.  Consciousness — of the kind that arrived all those years ago when a man and woman ate from a tree called the knowledge of good and evil — begins here.  But it doesn’t stop there because, when we are loved, we learn that we can also call this world good.  So first the great sorrows and then the great joys.

Continue reading →

The First Part: Surveillance & Audiences

I was thinking of going offline to get away from the distraction and the all-pervasive surveillance but then I got worried I would miss my f̶r̶i̶e̶n̶d̶s̶  audience.  I mean, sure, I want to be spectacular — look at me! look at me! — but I want to be spectacular on my own terms.  I want to show you myself so that you respond by loving me, not so that unseen but always present – and we know they are always present, they are in the very coding of these pages – audience members will manipulate me or punish me or find ways to take my money.  But if I can’t have the audience I desire, I suppose I’d rather be exploited than ignored.  And I guess I’d rather have someone peeping in my windows at night than have nobody ever think of me at all.  I’ll turn on all the lights and leave the curtains open when I’m changing if that’s what it takes.

~

Once upon a time, two people “made love on the living room floor/ with the noise in the background of a televised war” but smart bombs have given way to smart phones and instead of television we have Skype or snapchat or tinder or grindr and if we can’t warm ourselves with someone else’s body, we can make love to ourselves with their image.  I’m not alone if I’m watching someone else.

Of course, we’re still bombing the life out of all kinds of other people, but it’s old news by now.  Perpetual war is kind of taken for granted.  War and loneliness are pretty much all there is anymore.  It’s so perfectly normal to be so utterly isolated.

Isn’t social media a wonderful panacea to living a life where we spend the vast majority of our time working bullshit jobs and surrounded by people we hardly know or care about?  Fuck, I’m too tired and busy and stressed and broke to ever be able to set aside time to spend with love ones… but 65 people wished me a happy birthday on Facebook! And the ads have been getting ever better at showing me things I want to buy with the money for which I have traded my life, so that’s nice.

~

I remember talking to some sex workers who started when they were very young (14 is the average age of entry into sex work in Canada).  When they first started and people told them they were being exploited (if they had anybody in their lives to say that kind of thing to them) they would laugh and point to their new fur coat or new jewelry or point out they were already making more money in a few months than most people make in five years… but two years or ten years or twenty-six years (40 is the average age of death for a sex worker in Canada) down the road, they often looked back and thought, yeah, I really was being exploited.  But, by then… well… a lot had happened by then.

Seems to me that Social Media has a similar relationship with us.  We’re so enamoured with the things it gives us, it makes it easy to forget that we’re getting fucked.

But our pages are eternal – there’s no slide from high track to low track, from private jets and Fortune 500 CEOs to five dollar blowjobs behind the Carnegie Centre, from living it up to dying – so maybe we’ll never have to know.

Continue reading →

We didn’t think they’d rise
And even if they did, we figured they’d understand
That we only voted strategically
—–Our hearts were elsewhere
———-I’d have voted Green if it wasn’t such a waste
—–But anyone but Harper sounded too good to pass up.
———-How can we be to blame
—————When we voted him out?
We didn’t think they’d rise
And even if they did, we figured they’d understand
After all, we drove a Prius
—–And bought organic, local-grown
———-Fruits and vegetables
—–And our hundred dollar sweaters
———-Were purchased through a fair trade arrangement
—————Between the store at the mall and a village in Thailand
We didn’t think they’d rise
And even if they did, we figured they’d understand
That although our tax dollars purchased bombs
—–We rather wished they’d didn’t
———-Plus there’s a peace sign on the bumper of our Prius
—–And although we funded the murder of entire villages in the Middle East
———-We sponsor a child in Mexico
—————Her picture is on the fridge next to the ice dispenser
We didn’t think they’d rise
And even if they did, we figured they’d understand
That although we’re middleclass settlers
—–We visited Occupy encampments
———-And dropped off socks at the shelter at Christmas
—–And we applauded idle no more
———-Even though we have no Indigneous friends
—————They just didn’t seem to be around
We didn’t think they’d rise
And even if they did, we figured they’d be merciful
Even though we were not
—–Because we wanted something different
———-And used gender neutral language
—–Because that wasn’t really us
———-We didn’t pull the triggers
—————Or fly the planes or give the orders
We didn’t think they’d rise
And even if they did, we figured they’d be merciful
Because surely there cannot be others as cruel as us
—–With no regard for the lives of children
———-Or the bodies of women and men
—–It’s not our fault they were downwind
———-Of Tar Sands or Chemical Valley
—————Or Free Trade agreements and Private Property
We didn’t think they’d rise
And even if they did, we figured they’d be merciful
Because our kids at least are innocent
—–Although theirs were too before we killed them
———-Or maimed them or took them away
—–But that’s not the point
———-We didn’t think they’d rise
—————We hardly thought of them at all