Lessons from fish: Salmon-centered adaptation planning

Watersheds and intertidal areas are good physical representations of the figuratively complex and boundary-spanning work involved in climate adaptation governance. And when we zoom in on the exchanges/processes occurring in the spaces between land and ocean, valuable insights into liminal governance processes reveal themselves, as well as good advice from the natural world on how to re-tool our broken relationships with other living things.

Upper Pitt River, August 2023

Stewarding abundant fisheries and safeguarding fish habitat are not only important measures of community well-being, they are also expressions of laws and sovereignty. My research explores how multi-level climate networks can learn from traditional fisheries experts - and the fish themselves - on how to connect with one another in boundary-spanning work. I am interested in the realm of possibilities that arise when we explore the spaces in-between, and I see transboundary rivers and coastal waterways as unique sources of inspiration for governance innovation.

As climate adaptation planners continue to grapple with the inevitable challenges that emerge when multiple levels of government seek to co-govern shared spaces, fish are there to offer important lessons in cooperation, flexibility, and power-sharing. When we plan for fish and fish habitat from a place that respects legal pluralism, a range of useful trade-offs and co-benefits will reveal themselves in both physical and conceptual environments - strengthening ecosystems of support and mutuality across species, scales, disciplines, and worldviews.

How hot is too hot? Reflections from a climate hellscape

I didn’t need the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to release their latest climate assessment report to know that climate change is here now, or that it will only get worse. Did you?

For years – well before last month’s Heat Dome – Indigenous and settler communities in Canada’s dry-belt have watched as the landscapes around them change. When the web of Interior watersheds flood during the spring freshet, or during ensuing wildfire seasons, it can feel like BC’s rural communities are often left to fend for themselves during back-to-back climate calamities. We didn’t need the IPCC to tell us that our governments weren’t doing enough to prevent the worst of it. 

Last spring, I wrote about how people along the Bonaparte River came together to provide mutual aid, offer advice and help their friends along the river’s edge during 2020’s record-flood season. Although my experience this year was far more traumatic, coming face-to-face with the impacts of climate change has made all of this feel more personal, and it has me wondering:

How bad do things need to get before our governments treat traumatic climate events like the emergencies they are? How hot is too hot?

Cumulative impacts & climate worries

Our place (on the border of Secwepemcúĺecw and Nlaka'pamux Territory) is situated in one of the only desert landscapes in Canada, part of a unique collection of shrub-steppe microclimates where desert hallmarks like rattlesnakes and black widow spiders dwell in a backdrop of sagebrush and cactus. The drive from the coast takes you from rainforest to grasslands in less than four hours, and it doesn't feel like anywhere else.

Nearby Elephant Hill is now a light green with regrowth after the 2017 wildfire ravaged its silhouette from trunk to backside. Local rangelands specialists and Indigenous land-use experts (like Secwepemcúl'ecw Restoration and Stewardship Society) have made a major impact, but it still doesn’t look the same. The flat-topped hills and hoodoos are now cut through, and expansive grasslands now feel both sci-fi lunar and sun-beaten apocalypse. 

Even a settler like me can see how much the area has changed. Fewer salmon are seen spawning in the Bonaparte River, and the steelhead no longer swim past you while you take a dip at the Thompson River. The public can't access the Ashcroft Slough anymore since the Terminal cut off access. Trucks trundle past at a regular pace, filled with livestock, farm equipment and fertilizers. From the hill behind our house, the valley that used to look like it went on forever up the Thompson now looks like an open-pit mine filled with parked railcars and massive storage facilities that make up the Ashcroft Terminal (the second largest inland rail port in Canada.) 

The trains never stop, ever – there is a constant stream of rail traffic, no matter how hot, no matter how high the risk of ignition. We worry about what would happen if a train were to derail and fall with all of its toxic chemicals into the river, or send a spark into an unkempt ditch, but all we can do is hope for the best.

  
Close to home

The day before the village of Lytton burnt to the ground on June 30th, the small town made the news for beating Canada’s all-time heat record. That week temperatures had been steadily climbing from the mid to high 40s and our little meteorological set-up in Ashcroft, perhaps an hour’s drive from Lytton, actually read 50°C on June 29th.

My relatives in Norway were calling, checking in on me, knowing I lived somewhere near Lytton. They were asking how the place was doing, how I was doing, and if it really was that hot.

I tried to tell them about how the wind felt like a hair dryer and blew through our dying, yellowed birch trees. Or how the crackling of dry grass and the sounds of the cicada’s high-pitched whir had replaced beloved birdsong. How the doorknobs on the inside of the house were too hot to touch. I told them how much I missed Norway’s cool summer nights.

I have described how my heat stroke left me feeling dull and damaged, but just as upsetting is thinking back to the fear and worry I felt leading up to my heat injury. I am haunted by the memory of trains screeching along the rail lines on either side of the Thompson River at 48°C. My stomach churns when I remember that on the same day that Lytton was razed by fire (fire that experts say was likely sparked by a CN train) the fire alarms were going off inside of our house. It was emergency sensory overload. Being just 80 km away from ‘Canada’s Hot Spot’, my experience feels eerily similar to what one Lyttonite described as perpetual oven door open temperatures. That is: simply too hot. 

Underserved and overlooked

Although the residents of places like Lytton, Lillooet and Ashcroft are accustomed to severe heat, that doesn’t make our experience with climate-driven heat waves or wildfires any less severe. These are low-income rural communities living on unceded, unserved territories. They are towns with many Indigenous residents and elders, living on land that has been repeatedly parceled up by expansionist-Canada; its railways and forestry, mining and mills – and by its colonial land-reserve system that has left both literal and figurative scars across the lands. 

These disproportionately affected towns dot a now-defunct gold-rush corridor. They are mostly lacking major emergency healthcare facilities, and are definitely not built to withstand an onslaught of climate-fueled disasters. A recent study from the Canadian Journal of Forest Research confirms just how devastating wildfires are for rural communities, and even more so for Indigenous people – as those living on First Nations reserves now make up nearly one third of all wildfire evacuees across Canada.

Leading up to the unprecedented heat forecast for the Heat Dome, people across BC were offered a totally inadequate, one-size-fits-all heat warning from the provincial government; 'Stay indoors with the AC on, stay hydrated, wear a hat. If you have to evacuate, go stay with friends or family...' The assumption that everyone has a social safety net, or friends with extra rooms and air conditioning was not only insulting, but totally irresponsible.

There were no location-specific public outreach recommendations, no health care mobilization plans, no heat injury information or patient follow-up. Rather, the formal approach to heat so hot it’ll make your mind melt was: ‘fend for yourself’.

Residents of the Thompson Nicola Regional District (TNRD) explained how precarious their situation was, but it still took the BC government 21 days after the Lytton fire to declare a state of emergency. That’s three weeks spent waiting for the government to recognize the severity of the situation for at-risk residents. That’s three weeks despite the BC Coroners Service’s early report on heat-related deaths from the Heat Dome, despite the rising number of fire evacuees struggling with the logistical challenges of finding temporary housing throughout the province. Despite wildfires tripling in size. Three weeks. 

And, just like communities kicked into gear during last year’s flooding season with little to no help from the government, so too have they mobilized during this year’s heat waves and wildfire season. Local alert systems were put in place through a check-on-your-neighbours phone tree, other neighbourly supports were mobilized by the mostly-volunteer Ashcroft Hub. Along the Skeetchestn Reserve, in Spences Bridge and in Ashcroft, local volunteer firefighters and Indigenous controlled-burn experts fended off blazes, some using filled kiddy pools and buckets. 

But even the most skilled community members dialing out updates through active Facebook groups (or the good luck of having an extremely hands-on, communicative mayor like Barbara Roden) can't make up for the gaps left by real planning measures. All of this is unsafe and unfair, and based on past experience, it's to be expected.

Who is in charge here?

Without government coordination for climate-related heat and emergency events, we all saw what happened. The Heat Dome took the lives of over 500 people, not counting deaths from wildfire smoke, and as of early August over half a million hectares have burnt by wildfires that have displaced thousands of people.

That’s not to mention the billions of dollars it will cost to rebuild, or the billions more it will cost to put adaptation measures in place. This province is woefully unprepared, and the provincial government’s Climate Emergency and Preparedness Plan looks like a vague consolation, when what our communities need are concrete plans. 

Think of how many lives we could have saved had we been given the proper tools to care for ourselves and each other. Think of how many hundreds of thousands of hectares of grasslands and forests could have been saved if Indigenous fire management expertise hadn't been left out of fire-fighting efforts. 

In the BC interior, the impacts that industry and climate change have on our communities are no longer abstract. But nothing could have prepared me for the heartbreak I felt on the night of June 30th, skies black with smoke watching as ash fell from the sky onto my skin from the Lytton fire. 

Rural poverty and environmental racism have kept these towns and villages out-of-sight and out-of-mind for too long, and living here makes it easy to feel abandoned. Feeling invisible is made worse when visitors make their way through wrecked towns, stopping to take photos or to fill up hotel rooms, without offering to help. Many wildfire evacuees have to pack up multiple times as evacuation orders continue in the towns where they’ve sought refuge. Knowing that this may happen over and over during a single fire season makes the future seem like a terrifying place, full of re-lived trauma. 

When the IPCC’s latest report confirms just how dire the situation will become next year, and the year after that, indefinitely – it’s easy to lose all hope. When you drive along the highway for hours alongside Trans Mountain pipeline (TMX) construction, it’s easy to become enraged. When the federal government has the audacity to treat us all like children with their oil-revenues-will-pay-for-climate-plans justification for building TMX, it’s easy to feel crazy.

Why do stories of climate pain (as seen around the world this past month) need to be put on display in order to spur real action? Why won’t governments treat their commitments to rural communities with the same urgency as they treat threats to industry? Threats to the market? Why are we still pumping money into the fossil fuel industry when they are the ones most responsible for this mess? 

Surely there’s another way. 

 

West Coast’s Climate Law in Our Hands program knows that planning for climate impacts and uncertainties must involve accountability from our governments and major polluters. We also look for different ways to include the public on important consultation processes around BC’s climate plans. You can join the conversation by signing up to receive updates, and if you have personally faced injuries from climate change, we’d love to hear from you as well.

For a list of all wildfires currently burning in the province, visit http://bit.ly/2HCKBod. For updated evacuation orders and alerts in the region, visit the TNRD dashboard at https://bit.ly/3dcIk0L.

Top photo credit: Julia Kidder (View of Lytton Complex Fire from Ashcroft, July 2021)

Author:

Julia Kidder - Communications & Engagement Specialist

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action

‘In order to redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission makes the following calls to action;’

I'm sharing these because I want my family and friends who are settlers in 'Canada' to read through each of the TRC's 94 Calls to Action. There is so much to go through, but this is a good place to start.

You can find both: ‘Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future’ (Summary of the Final Report of the TRC) and the Calls to Action documents in the links below. Share them widely and however you are able to. These reports are in the public domain so anyone can share them without request for permission.

We need to deepen our understanding of these stories. We need to sit with them and let them sink into our memories so that when we raise our voices to demand justice for Indigenous people, we are doing so in a good way. If you have kids, help them to understand this ongoing history as well.

This should be required reading for all Canadian settlers. (Which is actually called for in Action item 63; Developing & implementing K-12 curriculum and learning resources on Aboriginal peoples in Canadian history + the history and legacy of residential schools and building student capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect.) That, and many other of the Calls to Action have not been met. On 'Missing Children & Burial Information', the there are 6 TRC Calls to Action that haven't been met - read which ones are still on the government's 'to-do' list from Khelsilem here.

Part of believing survivors is taking the time to hear their stories. Think of the excruciating trauma that had to be unearthed over the course of the TRC - the least we settlers can do is to read through these testimonies, and then learn about the 94 actions we can to take.

No more looking away. No more denial. No more wondering ‘what really happened’. These violent stories are the foundations on which this country was created. Please take the time to read them. Share with others and discuss your role, reflect in silence, learn each of the Calls to Action by heart so that you can articulate them when they're not being met. And because the government is lazy, remember; applying them in your own life is just as important.

Demand justice for Indigenous people.

Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future’ (Summary of the Final Report of the TRC)

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada | Calls to Action

Watered down promises do more harm than good

By Julia Kidder & Eugene Kung for West Coast Environmental Law

 
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The federal government has an over-promising problem, and it’s doing more harm than good. On Sunday March 21st, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Canada officially missed its deadline to end all long-term boil water advisories across the country. As we mark the 2021 edition of Canada Water Week, 58 long-term boil water advisories remain in effect in 38 First Nations across the country.

This is a shameful state of affairs for a country as wealthy as Canada – and as recent expenditures show, it is not about the lack of funds, but the absence of political will and the prevalence of environmental racism.

For many ‘Canadians’ the idea of a drinking water crisis is at odds with our water-rich, coast-to-coast, rivers-n’-streams identity. It goes against our particular ‘brand’ of statehood, where plentiful resources and access to clean environments seem like rights that would be afforded to all.

Canada is also home to the second largest reserves of fresh water per capita in the world, and most people do have water running clear from their taps, which makes the abundance of freshwater both real and imagined, buffering the Canadian government – and the public – from the harsh water-realities facing many First Nations across the country. Canada is one of two OECD and G8 nations without a legally enforceable national drinking water quality standard, despite such a standard being defined as a ‘best practice’ by the World Health Organization.

Like other instances of environmental racism, on-reserve water crises and boil water advisories don’t just interrupt daily life, they come with major cultural losses, and put rural and underserved Indigenous communities at higher risk of health issues like cancer and gastrointestinal disorders from exposure to toxic chemicals, heavy metals and water-borne illnesses. COVID-19 highlighted unequal health burdens facing underserved communities, and made it clear that access to clean water and hand-washing were vital first steps to reduce community transmission of the virus.

So, why – during the COVID-19 pandemic – has delivering on water promises been seen as less essential than something like, say… building an oil expansion pipeline (that risks further polluting drinking water, will worsen climate change and cost taxpayers billions of dollars)?

When resources for other infrastructure projects like the Trans Mountain pipeline are consistently made available, but the government can’t seem to find the time or money to end boil water advisories – we have to ask: is oil really more essential than water?

Systemic racism

Canada’s forced relocation of Indigenous people to the reserve system that makes up 0.2% of Canada’s land mass created today’s water crisis. On-reserve water systems are continuously polluted, destroyed, or diverted by resource development and extraction projects.

To make environmental racism worse, contentious pipeline projects like Trans Mountain and Coastal GasLink put waterways and aquifers at risk of pollution throughout many Indigenous territories. The products that will be in those pipelines – diluted bitumen and fracked gas, respectively – use enormous amounts of water and energy just for extraction. Taken together, it’s no wonder land and water defenders have rallied under the banner ‘Water is Life'. Image credit: Issac Murdoch & Christi Belcourt

  In 2016, Human Rights Watch released its Make it Safe report, which found Canada to be in violation of global human rights obligations for not delivering water (a basic human right) or repairing aging water infrastructure systems in Indigenous communities. In the same year, the federal government committed to spending $1.8 billion over five years to permanently end the water crisis on First Nations reserves.

While $1.8 billion over five years ($360 million/year) seems like a lot of money, it is only a fraction of the $4.5 billion that the federal government found quickly (and without public process) to purchase the Trans Mountain Pipeline system in 2018. Combined with the rising construction costs, Canadians can expect to shell out more than $20 billion for an oil pipeline that will likely become a stranded asset before it is paid off.

The COVID-19 pandemic also lifted the veil on the myth of austerity and exposed the illusory nature of fiat currency. Canada spent more than $240 billion in the first eight months of the pandemic. This was the right thing to do to meet the immediate economic and health crisis caused by COVID-19. Similarly, it is the right thing to do to end all boil water advisories in Canada. The COVID-19 relief brings the drinking water issue into sharp focus: the problem could be solved tomorrow if the political will existed.

Pam Palmater writes:

The question that needs to be asked is what sort of mindset allows this crisis to continue? It cannot be explained by political orientation as both Conservative and Liberal governments have failed to remedy the issue for decades. Perhaps we need to look back at the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls which found that governments in Canada treat Indigenous peoples as less worthy of basic human rights. Until we confront the racist underpinnings of government laws and policies—like funding policies for water systems on reserves—we will never end the water crisis in First Nations.

Canada’s failure to meet successive deadlines sends a clear message to Indigenous communities that ending the water and human rights crisis simply isn’t a top priority. Additionally, government efforts just aren’t good enough if they don’t come with an acknowledgement of the systemic racism in colonial systems leading to a normalization of chronic underfunding, economic displacement and the heightened health risks/proximity to polluting industries in historically marginalized communities across the country. Continuing work on projects that cost tens of billions in taxpayer dollars, will worsen climate change and pose risks to nearby communities – while criminalizing Indigenous opponents to those very projects – shows how the government continues its colonial cycle of abuse, and makes it ‘ok’ for local water, lands and livelihoods to remain the casualties of economic gain.

Whose recovery is it anyway?

This week is Canada Water Week, and it also marks one year since Canada locked down in preparation for a year of unknowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, we’re all familiar with ‘bubbles,’ ‘social-distancing’ and the vital role that ‘essential work’ plays in our everyday lives. So, what is essential work?

According to the BC government website, "Essential services are those daily services essential to preserving life, health, public safety and basic societal functioning. They are the services British Columbians come to rely on in their daily lives."

The Canadian Constitution Act, 1982, Section 36(c) says: “Parliament and the legislatures, together with the government of Canada and the provincial governments, are committed to … providing essential public services of reasonable quality to all Canadians.”

While this section has had mixed results in the courts (for example: CBA legal aid challenge), it is hard to imagine a more essential public service than drinking water, with potable water being as reasonable a quality measure as you could hope.

When the federal government announced that it wouldn’t be able to meet its drinking water deadline, Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller said that COVID-19 had caused delays for the construction of water projects, taking full responsibility and acknowledging that the crisis remains a "top government priority." However, with hundreds of billions of available government dollars for COVID relief, industry subsidies and projects like Trans Mountain, the $1.1 billion from the Indigenous Community Support Fund (ICSF) and $1.5 billion in new investments for clean drinking water in First Nations come across as a tacked-on afterthought.

Loss of trust

The impacts of the drinking water crisis don’t just impact the environment and physical health. In its report on the children and youth who died by suicide in the Pikangikum First Nation between 2006 and 2008, the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario noted that while the government can count how many water advisories exist, they aren’t able to measure their impacts on spiritual and mental health or on cultural and educational mobility. Yet these factors can cause “stamina, endurance, tolerance and resiliency [to be] stretched beyond human limits.”

For water advocates, a cycle of apologies, funding re-assessments and failed deliverables are part of a worrying trend, where Ottawa says one thing, and does something else entirely. And, while construction on risky and expensive projects like Trans Mountain, Coastal GasLink and the Site C dam was able to continue, some community leaders alleged that governments had lost sight of what ‘essential’ actually means. Others voiced their concerns over keeping construction sites and work camps open during the pandemic – something that was likely to contribute to a rise in transmission to communities where elders and knowledge-keepers were already at heightened risk.

After more than 250 members of the Neskantaga First Nation were evacuated to Thunder Bay in October 2020 it became clear that not only had the government failed to deliver on water promises, but that their measure of water insecurity may actually be making things worse. As noted in the Queens University Gazette, focusing on “eliminating long-term on-reserve drinking-water advisories diverts attention from the equally devastating impacts of short-term advisories, lack of running water, as well as the anticipated effects of climate change on drinking water quality.”

In ‘Water is Medicine: Reimagining Water Security through Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Relationships to Treated and Traditional Water Sources in Yukon, Canada,’ researchers found that trust in government to deliver on promises had become so eroded that many First Nations who had dealt with water-related trauma would drink less water than they should, or avoid tap water all together (even if clean water was coming out of their taps).

While Canada does not have a legally binding national drinking water standard, Health Canada has issued overarching Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality. The jurisdictional tapestry is no excuse: the federal government has a fiduciary duty for on-reserve issues (meaning the government must do what is in the best interest of the First Nation), but only the provinces and territories have legally enforceable standards that do not apply on reserve.

This discombobulated framework for securing drinking water makes it virtually impossible for communities to demand accountability for the cultural, health-related and economic losses they face. So, when the Indigenous Services Minister shares his regrets, or spends time promoting a new government website as a way to ensure accountability, it comes across as an empty virtual offering lacking urgency. When communities who need target dates and long-term solutions receive more interim measures, it does nothing more than band-aid the crisis and feed into a growing mistrust.

What’s next?

The Auditor General’s latest scathing report repeated what First Nations allege: that negligence and a lack of oversight from government has led to a ‘lowest bidder’ system for contracting work, often leading to flawed or incomplete maintenance work on water treatment facilities, leading to further deterioration.

With no regulatory regime in place, no new deadlines set, and outdated measures for success, Indigenous communities are left with more questions than answers on what will happen next. Canada’s expressions of sympathy, remorse and reconciliatory vows to do better are repeatedly undone when they commit to building other, less essential projects like Trans Mountain. Ottawa’s choices make them appear out of touch, like they’re content to take one step forward on reconciliation or climate change, and then take ten steps back.

For Neskantaga First Nation (who have gone without clean water for over 25 years), or for the Semiahmoo First Nation in South Surrey, who may finally be near the clean water finish line (after having endured a boil water advisory since 2005) bathing in contaminated water, doing daily chores or raising families without clean water are emergencies. And, while COVID-19 has fundamentally altered our view of public health issues (for better or for worse), it has also shone a light on what Ottawa chooses to prioritize in relief and recovery efforts.

From claiming to take action on climate change while building oil pipelines, to the countless failed commitments to Indigenous peoples, Ottawa’s overpromising needs to stop. It's Canada's apparent inability to keep the drinking water crisis in First Nations as a top priority that has us scratching our heads and wondering why oil and gas projects continue to get the go-ahead, but securing a human right with basic infrastructure keeps getting stalled.

Like land acknowledgements, there’s a fine line between what’s meaningful, and what’s performative.

Fragmented Realities - for ORB.exchange (2020) →

Read the full article here.

“I hold the very simpleminded view that everything is related to everything else-and that everyone is related to everyone else, and that every species is related to every other. The only way out of this tissue of interrelations, it seems to me, is to stop paying attention, and to substitute something else-hallucination, greed, pride, or hatred, for example-for sensuous connection to the facts. I think it is not the world’s task to entertain us, but ours to take an interest in the world.”

― Robert Bringhurst

You’re walking down an arid corridor with sage brush flanking your sides. Dust kicked up. Crickets whistle-chattering. The grasshoppers clack their winged bodies in short dry grass. Honey bees, hornets and wasps congregate in fever on a sun-beaten pear. Some train cars are more audible than others. Where two rivers meet, in the middle of the desert – my bustling world exists. Like a new metronome. The coyotes and the ravens laugh.

I make sure to tell people that my decision to move to our small family farm in Ashcroft happened before Covid – as if that in some way legitimizes the decision, letting people know that I didn’t flee the city to a privileged retreat, although in effect – that’s what I was able to do. Initially, the plan had been to come and try our hand at farming. It has become something else completely. We brought our dog and re-adopted my late mother’s old horse, Jack, and spent the season experimenting with the land and now we’re planning ways to share it – so that it can benefit more people than just us, a land co-op, rest stop, a place to connect with nature, and an offering of rest or renewal. Since this moment in time requires us to ricochet seamlessly between states of being, I know that I am not alone in seeking synergy now more than ever.

FRAGMENTED REALITIES

There are floods, but there is sunshine. The cherry blossoms were so beautiful and the pollinators swarmed in spring. The climate crisis could displace over 1.2 billion people by 2050. Tahlequah, the Southern Resident Killer Whale just had a calf off the BC coast. Ruth Bader Ginsberg just died. The latest report on biodiversity says animal populations are being pushed to the edge. Over 1 million creatures now face extinction. Australia is on fire. No, the Amazon is on fire. California. Oregon. Our backyard. The last ice shelf in the Canadian arctic has collapsed and my heart cracked as it fell into the sea. It’s as if there are almost too many opposing realities to consider that a single reality exists at all. 

Now, I know very little – in fact, almost nothing at all – about quantum mechanics. But according to a theory called Wigners Friend – it has been suggested there is no such thing as objective reality, and something in that theoretical frame appeals to me. Moving beyond considerations of a felt state of cognitive dissonance, this theory describes how two hypothetical scientists observe one particle of light existing in two states. The “superposition” of this particle means that the photon’s polarisation (or the axis upon which it spins) is both vertical and horizontal at the same time. “However, once one scientist in an isolated laboratory measures the photon, they find the photon’s polarisation is fixed at either vertical, or horizontal. At the same time, for someone who is outside the laboratory and is not aware of the result, that unmeasured photon is still in a state of superposition.”

So, would it appear that these two different/conflicting realities are both true? It’s as if there are almost too many opposing realities to consider that a single reality exists at all.

 
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STEPS FOR INVENTING THE FUTURE:

Step 1: I plan backwards from perfect – What do you want the world to look like? How is it made up, who is in control? What kinds of plants or animals do you see in this world? What kinds of technologies do we use? Find your self somewhere in this perfect world you have created and begin planning backwards from there.

Step 2: If you found yourself imagining some combined role for your future-self in this future world – what do imagined roles encompass? How much time do you spend with your friends and family? How do you seek joy? Are you actively working to dismantle structurally unjust systems? When do you rest? Do you grow and foster systems that benefit others?

Step 3: Try to find out who the experts are in an imagined role. Read them. Think of ways to support their work. Find their contact information, and try to get in touch. As it turns out, we may very well be able to reach out to someone who is doing exactly what we think only exists in this perfect future world – and they are doing it right now. Think: Interdisciplinary research, Indigenous futures in media, traditional laws that support the protection of the environment, etc…

Step 4: Listen. Find mentors. Ask for guidance. Think: Investigation is free.

*bear in mind that growing into adulthood during peak consumer capitalism may have instilled a sense of competition in you, or more invisibly – the need to feel unique. It’s ok to do something that somebody else already does. Do not be discouraged that you will not be coming up with a brand new idea – instead find out how you can empower those who are already doing the work. Connect them with others, share their ideas. Apply ‘old’ knowledge to new challenges.

Step 5: Invite your friends, your family and your loved ones to have conversations where they share what their perfect futures look like – find where you may disagree, find out what has caused divisions, can you see any common ground? Decolonize your mind. Declutter your social life. Take a break from social media, go for a walk alone, and think about getting to this step, and think about every thing you have learned.

Then, repeat steps 1 through 5 indefinitely.

White settlers with access to ‘property’ need to be coming to the table with options for #LandBack-in-action

Hey, just a thought; White settlers with access to ‘property’ need to be coming to the table with options for #LandBack-in-action.

I may not have much to offer; Jack may be an old horse, and this land surely needs work - but if you’re like me and interested in planning for a livable future, this is the time to expand on potential, and to come up with alternative arrangements to land ‘ownership’.

Non-hierarchical decision-making is anti-capitalist. Supporting one another using a variety of tactics can offer paths to decolonize. Pooling resources together is power. Building the solidarity economy, like being anti-racist, like love; this is an action.

So, here I am on a little patch of land on a gathering point for two vast territories, with an offering; If you know of anyone who is traveling to or from land and water defense frontlines, or simply in need of a safe space - please use our home as a stopover - stay for rest and respite, or as a port to stock up and gather steam & supplies. Use the contact form on this website to reach out.

ThIs is a moment of upheaval and scarcity and polarization and a time to stop turning to those in positions of power to fix things. We’re capable of building an exquisite future if we work together to expand the parameters of what we think is possible. Learning from others. The time for hugely substantive changes from the ground up is now. The time for building relationships based in mutual respect is now. #landback is now.

The constraints are all shifting - and those shifts present such a massive risk if we’re unprepared (which we are) but when we connect resilient threads as part of a fabric/network we can not only prepare ourselves, but we’ll find joy that comes with seizing opportunities for change + the additional joys of organizing for food sovereignty and co-operative land-use planning.

Do you have a summer house or farm? Consider sharing it.

There are blue skies here again, things aren’t all smoked out and it’s time to crystallize intentions, to get busy imagining the future that we all want and need. I’m seeing a future where this dirt is shared and becomes soil, existing in part of a network that operates in resistance to the commodification of livelihoods. First, to #defendthesacred, to say #nopipelinesonstolennativeland and beyond.

*Shirt from #1492landbacklane horse from my mum Siri

Can we design our way out of a world in crisis?

PRODUCING GOODS DESTINED FOR THE DUMP JUST ISN’T WORKING ANYMORE.

For too long - our markets have been designed in a way that promotes wasteful consumer practices, and exploitative modes of production. We’ve seen what effects these short-term growth models have had on our communities and environments, and it’s hard to keep up with the facts and figures about what gets wasted at each level of the production chain.

Nearly 90% of the biomass on the planet is directly or indirectly covered by systems that intend to feed us, clothe us and house us. The most recent UN report on biodiversity tells us that over 1 million species face extinction because of human-caused habitat loss. We have 10 years to deal with catastrophic climate change. The list goes on…

Identifying how all of these issues will affect the future means that sometimes we have to look to the past for guidance on how to redesign our societies. This is the silver lining of human error - a glance back at history’s major tipping points provides us with blueprints to design the big changes that we need for a more livable future. The reality isn’t some tug-of-war between our ability to be optimistic or pessimistic. The reality is that things can change pretty quickly here on planet earth. We have the capacity to turn it all around. We have before, and we will again.

"The reality is that things can change pretty quickly here on planet earth. We have the capacity to turn it all around. We have before, and we will again."

WE’RE NOT AS BAD AS WE THINK WE ARE

Dealing with human inadequacies is much like having personal pangs of low self esteem, just on a planetary scale. Sometimes, the way to deal with those moments of self-doubt is to take a look in the mirror, give our face a little splash and say an affirmation. We aren’t all bad. We are capable of greatness; especially when we come together in new ways and collaborate. When we work together to find solutions - we can replace the dysfunctional systems that exist today with ones that are more just and more sustainable.

A couple of things come to mind right off the bat.

We applied the magic of mathematics and astronomy to an understanding of gravity and telecommunications. Think of the far-reaching implications of Edison’s light bulb, or the printing press, the steam engine or human flight. Of course, all systems that are designed by humans are vulnerable to human oversight but it’s vital that we give a nod to our collective ingenuity so we can place our bets on a hopeful future. And, oh, how far we’ve come. In just a century we’ve gone from having to rely on global conglomerates for much of our daily news information to being able to call the people we love and ask them what the temperature is in their backyard - no matter where they are in the world.

On July 20th 1969, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins boarded Apollo 11 in Florida, they orbited earth twice, then hit 40000 km/hr speeds on a burn to the Moon. Before actually landing, they pulled off moves with names like: the lunar orbit insertion maneuver, retrograde firing while transposition and jettisoning their lunar module adapters into a heliocentric orbit, all while managing lunar-gravity perturbations and docking procedures in the middle of outer-flipping-space. That brief moment of collective effort showed all humanity that if we work hard enough and apply our inventiveness to any problem, we can leap from our own home to a rocky, lunar surface somewhere way out there.

DESIGNING BETTER SYSTEMS WITH A SENSE OF RESPECT, A SENSE OF HUMOUR, AND SENSE OF REALITY.

Better choices do exist. They exist at every level. From the grassroots communities springing into action to address inequality, to entrepreneurs that develop economic and pricing models that make room for new value systems. From renewable global energy grids down to small-scale turbine and solar projects, we see that not only is it possible to address complex societal challenges, we can use design thinking and apply to any scale. Building products that last longer out of materials that already exist is one way that companies are doing business, and thriving in this new realm. No more water-heavy textile manufacturing or toxic chemical build-up in our waterways as a result of new tech products - the largest industries on the planet are changing how they deliver their products, with record-breaking annual investment in renewable technologies (led by Indigenous communities in Canada) and even a rise in self-imposed regulation by organizations on their own luxury markets.

On the consumer end, surveys are finding that quick-turnaround commodities are becoming a harder sell to the middle class and affluent buyers.

"The truth is; there is no better motivation to make change than there is today. At all levels, necessity breeds invention."

Fortunately for us, we have all the tools we could ever dream of, and some that we haven’t even begun to imagine - at our fingertips; inventive solutions to plastics waste invented by young people like Boyan Slat, or 16 year old climate striker with Aspergers, Greta Thunberg - who spoke to UN parliament with this to say;

“You are not mature enough to tell it like is. Even that burden you leave to us children. But I don’t care about being popular. I care about climate justice and the living planet.”

All approaches with the intent of making the planet more livable are welcomed now. Whether that means making better products out of low-impact materials, curating and matchmaking our economic relationships so that small businesses can also find their place in a world that has been consistently dominated by monopolies.

"And, much like getting men to the moon, moments of collective effort across different fields are shaping the future in ways we haven’t yet understood are possible." These are signifiers of true turning points in human behavior. The emerging business model has compassion at its core. The emerging consumer is discerning enough to ask the questions that matter. And, much like getting men to the moon, moments of collective effort across different fields are shaping the future in ways we haven’t yet understood are possible.

SO WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE US?

The rate at which we change our behaviour to adapt to the world around us is an amazing hallmark of the human species. Self-flagellation and furrowing brows isn’t going to get us anywhere, and though it’s all so serious, and feels so dire - if we don’t lighten up and appreciate what we’ve got then we won’t have a fighting chance. And yes, we’ve made some serious mistakes. But we’ve built these shoddy systems quickly and now it’s just time to build new and better ones, even faster.

"Human ingenuity can solve challenges caused by human ignorance and our capacity to turn things around quickly is a heavy opponent to the right hook of nihilism." Human ingenuity can solve challenges caused by human ignorance and our capacity to turn things around quickly is a heavy opponent to the right hook of nihilism. Now, we stand at a precipice with the opportunity to face our species greatest fork in the road. Stay the course, or turn it all around.

Jane Goodall - Everybody Loves Jane

(Photos By: Bruce Weber)

“To love Jane Goodall means demonstrating that we have learned the lessons she has spent her lifetime trying to teach us – by showing a great deal more devotion to the only planet we've got.”

At 84 years old, Jane Goodall does not stop.

This October, before one of hundreds of film-festival screenings of Brett Morgan's critically acclaimed biopic- documentary; “Jane” - I sat down with Andria Tather (CEO of Jane Goodall Institute Canada) to discuss how the film has reconnected the public to the many tiered love story that is Jane’s legacy. Their post-screening Q & A left me - and the entire audience - with a feeling of being taken alongside her breakthrough journey – like friends or co-conspirators, let-in on the true intentions behind what is now considered one of the greatest stories of advocacy and conservation of all time.

“Jane” is comprised of archival footage - filmed by Jane’s first husband, Hugo Van Lewick – and interviews between Brett Morgan and Jane. Where Hugo’s gaze is loving and intimate, Brett Morgan’s technical mastery of archival-interview braiding is what truly makes it a seamless ode. 

More than any nature-documentary or biopic, “Jane” provides a certain cerebral tickling that may otherwise be reserved for moments of personal discovery. Jane Goodall shows us just how much potential exists when our inner-selves relinquish to the stimuli of wilderness. We step into her world as a young scientist and see how her time in Gombe launched her into stardom, and how it shaped the work her institutes carry out today. 

Because, for many of us, these types of moments are so rare in our own lives, seeing Jane experience them brings a particularly hard-to-describe sense of melancholy. It leaves us longing for an imaginative wild forest place that we knew about, never visited, and that doesn't seem to exist anymore. If that weren’t enough,

Phillip Glass' audio canvas soars delicately over forest murmuring, water droplets and chimpanzee cacophony – leaving us all slightly heartbroken by the beauty - wanting so much more from what feels like a tainted, unnatural world outside.

We watch as a barefoot Jane skips over vine-tendrilled streams in search of her initially standoffish chimps. As we know, the quality of her research - and Lewick’s documentation of it - urged a tidal shift in public perception around evolutionary links between chimps and humans while lifting the limitations placed on all female field-scientists that came after her. When renowned paleontologist, Dr. Louis Leakey, encouraged a 26-year old Jane to leave Britain and study the links between our Stone-Age ancestors and modern man, Jane’s determination to collect adequate data about a community of chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park meant imploring research techniques that were considered completely radical at the time. 

This scientific love story shines as Jane’s methodologies evolve, and her disciplined and unobtrusive approaches wax poetic on screen.

***

As her research made breakthroughs, Jane Goodall became a star. She became a household name at a time when a combination of proprietary philanthropy and celebrity-obsession was eroding well-intentioned public figures. Despite this, Jane remained the same person we see here; nature-obsessed and investigative - ethical backbone intact. She mastered the art of disarming attraction; as hoards of admirers flap in a frenzy of well-intentioned, but wide-eyed infatuation – Jane continues to gently nudge us to re-focus our gaze towards the work being carried out by her namesake institutes. By deflecting all of that attention, she forces us to see that they are far greater than symbolic totems for her own undeniable achievements.

Since founding the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) in 1977, Jane travels nearly 300 days a year to work closely with each JGI office in more than twenty-five countries around the world. She takes no speaking fees. This tireless commitment to protecting primates and their habitats has inspired millions of people around the world to become conservationists in their own right; equipping them with tools to examine nature's intricate details, so that they may be better at defending them. International teams of “Jane's” work tirelessly to increase protected habitats for primates, encouraging groups of young people to take conservation into their own hands through their Roots & Shoots programs. As Tather explains; “Motivating young people to engage with the natural world relies on supplying them with – in equal parts – a sense of urgency and patience.” 

 Jane Goodall and her 34 Institutes around the world have perfected a model for tangible change in the fight against species loss. Her sense of ethics is her greatest technique, seducing us into her network, creating an army of ecological enthusiasts, wielding a fierce arsenal of hope. Jane Goodall empowers us by giving us the equipment to make changes that are so urgently needed to protect the planet we love. 

When the lights came on, I looked around at an audience who appeared to have each just been personally delivered a ribbon-bound gift by Jane herself. When we meet Jane in person, she walks on stage to the type of clapping roar usually reserved for rock stars. It’s like we can’t help ourselves. We go nuts for her. As she talks about her pursuits as a young person - musing conversations animalia with Dr. Dolittle and fantasy dates with Tarzan – it’s apparent that her intuitive goodness is intact. Jane Goodall’s imaginary future-self was so intrinsically linked with the person she would become that hers is that rare story of being triumphantly un-corruptable. 

As our planet copes with the looming threat of climate change, mass extinction and biodiversity loss – Jane Goodall is still here to provide an antidote. She affords us a generous share of wealth, in a currency of ideas. She confirms our humanity as part of nature’s whole and the more she shares the story behind her commitment to protecting primates and their habitats, the more we fall totally in love with her. Proving that to her means that doe-eyed love letters won't be enough. 

To love Jane Goodall means demonstrating that we have learned the lessons she has spent her lifetime trying to teach us – by showing a great deal more devotion to the only planet we've got.

 

 

A special thanks goes to Andria Tather, Victoria Foote, Thalia Kornhauser and the Vancouver

International Film Festival for their support.

Hobo Magazine - Everyman’s Land

"For the world to truly feel grief and loss for an arctic home that was never theirs makes the project of addressing the climate crisis something of an existential trip."

[Interview by Julia Kidder / Photography by Shawn Dogimont]

 

Arriving above the Arctic Circle feels like knocking on the door of a distant relative, as an estranged guest to an unfamiliar home. The settlement of Svalbard is still and small against the backdrop of white rounded waves of mountains—coaxed into existence by glacial forces. Just the word ‘polar’ lifts the imagination into dreamscape, that idea of blushing emerald electricity pulsating paint strokes in the air, the beauty of Aurora in a tug-of-war with time until the midnight sun takes over the sky, the light playing mind-games in an alien winter landscape. Life in the small town of Longyearbyen exists separated with whatever wild possibilities lie just beyond the mountains, just beneath the ice—out to sea in all directions.

To know that the high Arctic is real at all, and not just a figment of our collective imagination, means facing a sensational assumption we make about our planet. We take for granted that the natural world, or rather ‘the wild’ will indefinitely include magical places that we cannot reach.  We would still like to imagine our planet in a state of unshakeable harmony where certain regions are reserved and off-limits, where the only legitimate residents are those who have always held a bond to remoteness, locals passing down intergenerational skills to help them adapt to these magnificent environments. That even the most distant ecosystems are out of balance is abstract and disturbing.

Svalbard, like most of the Arctic, does not fit easily into our broader consideration of ‘home’, and for that reason it can be hard to attract a protectiveness to this dwindling territory. This archipelago is closest of all land to the North Pole, 62,000 square kilometres of the high Arctic, where shifting glaciers and ice-fields have always defined transitory borders. This part of the Arctic is maybe one of the only places on the planet that could be considered under some colonially violent ‘terra nullius’ term; its harsh remoteness making it incompatible with a specific Indigenous population or permanent colonies and settlements.

Until recently, physically distant places and islands like Svalbard have been lawless places by default. Until the Svalbard treaty of 1920 granted sovereignty to Norway, European explorers never attempted to create permanent encampments or overwinter for the most part and groups of Dutch, Danish and British expedition teams came and went, mainly walrus hunters and whalers casually decimating marine mammals for oil and hides or seasonally exploiting the fisheries that may have existed alongside them. Here, that old ‘Man vs. Nature’ paradigm translates into a microcosm of resource exploitation, European guests looking so obviously like an invasive species.

When you’re in a Polar region, the outside world looks oddly foreign—modern resource management and the principles of extractionist economies seem so frightful, so harsh. The tenets of this type of exploitation and development are in ideological opposition to the enduring credo of the First Nations people living just South of the high arctic, in the circumpolar regions of Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Russia and Scandinavia. Habitat loss and the decline in iconic polar species is matched with the human experience of threatened Inuit people in Canada, Alaska and Greenland, the Saami of Scandinavia, and the Nenets, Khanty, Evenk and Chukchi of Northeastern Russia. These populations are constantly dealing with the threat that industrial powers and their projects pose to century-old cultures embedded with a sense of conservation and intergenerational responsibility for the environments that support them. Now, the geopolitical land-grab in the Arctic pushes the sovereignty of Indigenous cultures further to the sidelines, disregarding demands for safe environments while bidding on new shipping routes opening up as the ice around the Northwest Passage and Bering Straight melts. Bullies and businessmen seem to enjoy this hamster wheel of destruction, but most of us would agree, it’s all very nasty and unpleasant stuff.

This is where the high Arctic weaves a storyteller’s quilt about the human condition and the consequences of un-curtailed exploitation of natural resources. To step foot in Svalbard feels vulnerable because it’s a place where we are stripped of our comforts and made human. The layers our identities are made up of—nationalism, cultural codes and race hold no bearing here.

The Arctic reduces us to being just another species humbled by our dexterous insignificance in the face of greatness. As much as it is no-mans-land, it is every mans land. Nature reigns supreme here and whatever culturally engrained illusions of choice we have seem trivial. Where we have bought into it, we support the erroneous assumption that got us here in the first place; that we are separate from the natural world at all.

Being in this Arctic place, knowing how it’s changing and retreating makes it very obvious that the ‘rational’ desire to control nature in any place eventually effects all places as a result. As we master extractive processes to fuel even more efficient systems, we have treated the planet’s most iconic eco-systems and its species as our personal bank accounts. As climate change worsens it becomes clear that continuing full-speed, head-first into a brick wall of limits is ecological suicide, and that the biosphere doesn’t know or accept the human constructs of things like geopolitics or economic globalization. Right now Mother Nature’s credit line is up, we’re so in debt that as a species we are—quite literally speaking—on the verge of being disowned by our own mother.

It is said that we must control nature because it is a necessity for growth and development, but climate change and species loss exposes the need to constantly develop as an addiction more than a set of needs. It’s most obvious with our addiction to fossil fuels, but also in more local, case-by-case examples where we accept practices that are cruel and corrosive. The culling of wild animals that are already on the brink of extinction, mass denial of the eroding coastlines of the Pacific Islands, the boundless and foul bleaching of the coral reef, the oblivious determination to build more pipelines to bring oil and gas out of the ground at any cost. With the current onslaught of scientific data about climate change, arctic ice melt and feedback loops, we are bombarded with dire information and called to act, but haven’t had the chance to pause in silent self-reflection to really know how.

What makes Svalbard different, is that unlike other places we are grounded in and connected to, the polar region’s inhospitality to mankind leaves little room for sentimentality. As Gary Snyder puts it “Our relation to the natural world takes place in a place, and it must be grounded in information and experience.” For the world to truly feel grief and loss for an arctic home that was never theirs makes the project of addressing the climate crisis something of an existential trip. We don’t have time to properly grieve for degraded wilderness’ or for individual species when the rate of extinction and habitat loss accelerates the way it does. But now, way up here in this arctic desert unfit for most humans, scarce summer-ice turns out to mean a great deal more to every region of the planet, to all the places we do call home.

Environmental justice is, in many regards, self explanatory. Indigenous-led movements seeking sovereignty and self-determination are central to how this movement is organized. A justice-based approach is more important now than ever and it replaces disenchantment with a sense of clarity on what to do next. These individuals, organizations, children, scientists, entrepreneurs and grandmothers are working in direct opposition to the masochistic tendencies of industries that put lands and waters at risk. We must look and now we can look to them for guidance. At the core of these networks are frontline Indigenous communities, protecting the planet’s biodiversity, and the health of connected ecosystems that we all rely on.

Currently, eyes are on the Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota, as they refuse to accept policies that do not honor their treaties, that bulldoze their ancestral land and threaten to pollute their drinking water. After hundreds of years of ongoing oppression, Indigenous people and their allies from all over the world have been joining at the camp in Standing Rock, and demanding in prayer and peace that in this case; fossil fuels be left in the ground and that their water be protected.

What is remarkable about this, is that by way of protecting their own territories, they inherently protect distant, vulnerable places like the Arctic. Their movement is at the forefront of a new wave of conservancy efforts, gounded in justice and lifting the changed face of an aging civil rights movement.

Catch phrases like: ‘Keep it in the ground’ mean that there can be no more pipeline projects, no more fracking, no more attempts to safely or cheaply exploit fossil fuels. The stability of regions like the Arctic are at the centre of these mobilizing chants because the feedback loops of a warming arctic will inevitably exacerbate social ills, conflict and mass migration. To accept this is to commit the poorest people on our planet to the status of ‘climate casualties’. Martin Luther King wisely said in his Letter From Birmingham City Jail, “whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea.” To join in acts of resistance against systems that are deplorable is vital to the establishment of rights, and it works.

Though the enemy of the environmental movement has always been our attention spans, we are finally thirsty enough to ask for help re-framing the climate crisis as something that cannot be solved using tired political processes. What we hear coming loud and clear from the front lines of the climate justice movement is that we are at a major fork in the road where: We can accept Trojan horse solutions heralded by those who profit from said crisis, or; we can choose bottom-up activism to fight against a manufactured illness and heal. This is the beauty of a social immune system at play, making it very clear that if government and industry will stop at nothing to keep destructively slow-moving policies entrenched and unquestioned, then the climate justice movement will stop at nothing to stand in their way.

In the light of April’s midnight sun, an animal is beckoned within us, and though we are not born or raised here, it’s our planetary home. When staring at skyscraper glaciers, or just imagining them—we cannot consider a future where the town closest to the North Pole is a warm and temperate place. But no use wasting melancholy on places that are fading away, being sad because the Arctic is changing, instead let us recognize that our twisting internal compass is there to remind us of our own impermanence in interconnected homes on an incredibly delicate planet. The eerie, unquestioned stillness of the Arctic is growing louder and louder, its force becoming blinding in the midnight sun. If we choose to attend, the stage has now been set for mankind’s greatest and most climatic act; one performed together like champions of destiny, as ambassadors of the thick and wild places that paint our fantasies and make us feel alive.

Number 45 - Lest we regress.

I.

I write this on Friday, November 11th 2016, three days after Donald J. Trump has won the presidential election in the United States on what feels like the third day of mourning in a four-year advent calendar of garbage. (Leonard Cohen died on the 7th but we only found out today, and it’s almost a relief knowing that he’d left us before the results of this particularly dark election were known.) What poetry it is, this strike against justice, on the romantic ideals of informed participatory democracy within only months of losing visionaries like Percy Sledge, Oliver Sacks and Leonard Cohen, those we may have relied on to offer perspectives that could make the ways we’re feeling more poignant or understood.

In the last 72 hours we have seen a public blame-game by disheartened citizens and accompanied pleas for sensibility – or for a time machine that doesn’t exist. Around the world frustration has boiled over, condemning third-party voters, shrieking over the nearly 100 million voters who didn’t/couldn’t show up, but mostly, for the progressive-left, a condemnation of those who not only enjoyed watching what could have been politically repugnant performance art, but who chose to elect an unqualified crook to office. 

If not a philistine personality, Donald Trump is at best nauseating, and we’ve all tuned in to watch as he joins the long list of international figureheads who have gained traction through racist, sexist and generally gross and demeaning rhetoric. A really puffed-up club re-discovering their relevance in this era of unpalatable neo-conservativism. These leaders are exploiting the tension we all feel in the face of uncertainty and their circular arguments are pretty much all the same. They've started working their way into the cobwebbed corners of our collective psyche and I think a lot of us are itching to show an enlightened reaction to their new and ugly political landscape.

The only reason we can even identify this rise in global fascism is because we read our 5th grade history books, yet - just as those history books chose to exclude truths that may have been unflattering (you know, the colonial delusions that leave out troubling details like, genocide, the installation of dictatorships, the theft of land from Native Americans etc…) So we can identify fascism, but somewhere along the line we chose to subscribe to an assumption that has crippled us, that assumption being that progress towards justice moves linearly away from some other time, or some other place. It was some other then and there that was riddled with authoritarianism, coups and state-violence, surely not here and now?

With capitalism holding a veil thinly between our perceptions and reality - we feel strained and confused to make an analysis of the world we live in. We would rather deny that fascism exists in ‘our’ political systems, and instead see the prospect of democracy as redeeming us in someway from the suppression brought on by the advent of dictatorships. That’s why this moment feels so scary. We're now forced to look at a future that might contain the same violent qualities found during history's most traumatic eras as the decorated novelties of liberalism are unveiled, revealing the hyper-collision of dangerous realities that are more polarized than they have ever been in the past.

II. 1.

Trumpism isn’t an isolated or “shocking” incident in itself, but it is forcing us to stand at the precipice on the cliff of our imagined future. Standing there alone feels forsaken, now we've got to look around for company. As we know, November 9th indicated a far greater and more dangerous backlash happening around the world in places that promote the idea of democracy, while practicing politics of exclusion. But it also showed us that we are by no means alone in our concern. These political rifts did not emerge yesterday, nor did they emerge because of Donald Trump. It would be ill-advised to give someone as boorish and crass as Trump even the tiniest bit of credit for having orchestrated one detail in the gnarled political system as it exists today (I don't even think he can spell properly.) The credit goes instead to well-disguised thugs who have consistently held racist, sexist and generally exploitative practices as a manufactured necessity for the development project, and economic growth. This applies to Republicans and Democrats alike, with the stage set through a slave-era electoral college, and where parties cling to policy innovations that were initially ushered in with liberalization that are now being used to legitimize the violation of citizenry-as-members. And then, for the rest of us who at one point or another began to accept these extractionist philosophies as somehow protecting our privileges, the onus of responsibility shifts.  All of this has been widely held as an acceptable model for decades, if not over centuries of white, European colonialism. 

The shock felt in the United States that Donald Trump could be put into office is being treated as a national tragedy, but electoral reform for better representation begins by accepting the fact that America's “model democracy” was eroded even before its constitution was signed. It started when violent, colonial, European swindlers granted themselves the rights to Native land that was never theirs, raping Indigenous culture and parceling up the land through tactical violence. Those same exact powers established what is now the skeleton of our modern economic system, one based on the free-labour provided by kidnapped and enslaved African men and women, and through great use of force now extends to a marauding model of global development. Powerful nations led by manipulative individuals have managed to embed legitimate fear in the people who oppose them. So, where are we now? In the US, the same schemes are used to justify mass incarceration, a privatized social welfare model, health burdens on environmental justice communities and intentional obstacles standing in the way of voters rights. By twisting different amendments from an outdated constitution the most powerful nation on earth has paved the way for the increased concentration of wealth and power as we know it today. So now, once we ("we" because these are intrinsically-linked global phenomena) get past the initial reactions to this un-welcomed new president, our disbelief and horror won’t be about the fact that Donald-“You’re Fired”-Trump could run for, and actually become the president elect in a pseudo-democratic political system, but the shock of having underestimated the appeal his schismatic, hateful campaign has had for cognizant adult people living in 2016.

It’s a shame that it takes someone like Donald Trump to enter the room before we see the value and necessity of responding more radically. And maybe that's where we ought to be looking to for answers; times of social change brought on through direct action and resistance. 

Like Lewis Feuer said:

“We should distinguish between disobedience and resistance. The first is limited to dramatizing a particular issue; it retains a faith in representative democracy, and takes for granted that once the facts are known, and the people’s sense of responsibility awakened, the necessary reforms will be made. Civil disobedience is justified when an oppressed group finds itself deprived of lawful channels for remedying its conditions because of an arbitrary obstruction in the democratic workings.”

I like that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

The majority of voters are in this case the oppressed group "deprived of lawful channels", many of whom felt they didn't have a place in this election. That, and a shitload of disinformation and unfair precedence to secure a nomination for Clinton in the first place. The DNC knows it shot itself in the foot. Clinton was so overqualified as an establishment politician that she gave voters, and the rest of the world deja-vu – when what they wanted was transformation.

(Now don't get me wrong, there's a chance Hillary may have even been pushed further to the left at some point in her presidency as a result of Sanders’ campaign, potentially swaying her on policies of political transparency, on the environment and on her legacy of hawkish diplomacy. But Hillary Clinton isn’t what the misunderstood majority needed, even if she would have given us relative stability compared to Trump,

And, enough has been said on this, but the DNC will have to rebuild before 2020, or else they could see a near-total lose of their base. It can only do this if Democrats choose to address the literal criminality of favouritism within their own party and more broadly in the way it promoted disinformation and distracted it's voter base throughout the entire primary session. This elitist posturing has become inherent to a two-party system that moves its sliding scale closer and closer to the far-right with each election. Making it more and more difficult for the majority to seek proper representation is as arbitrary an obstruction to the democratic workings as any. I'm not saying Bernie or Bust, I'm not saying Trump deserved his win, I'm just saying that the world looks on in such disappointment because we watched the lead-up together and had hoped that the American people who need their voices heard would have an honest political vehicle there to help them. They called it a ‘working-democracy’ after all…

Deborah Wasserman-Schultz has since resigned, and the story of a truly anti-establishment candidate like Bernie Sanders, someone with both the political experience and legislative know-how to get real change enacted (a skill set that seemed to be attributed solely to Hillary Clinton at the end of the nomination process, which is so far from reality), split the centrist-right Clinton platform down the middle and lead to a breakdown of the democratic ideals that encourage people to vote at all. Now, what we’re left with is a feeling that the United States doesn’t get to benefit from any of the positive implications from that sliding scale of values. We will neither witness Sanders’ political revolution nor the broken glass ceiling of America’s first female president, and definitely no trace from a desperately needed Green party to address climate change and ecological collapse (I kind of think Jil Stein is a bit of a kook, but that's not the point).

Instead, what we’ve got is a depraved man heading into office with supremacists and fools to be appointed as his cronies. The KKK endorsement of Donald Trump and the “whitelash” against empowered movements like Black Lives Matter are hallmarks of chauvinistic jingoism, and mark my words, they will only get worse. 

III.

If the natural response to great injustice has historically been the birth of social justice movements, there might be some hope in this dark hour. The continued injustices of displacement, racism, callous mistreatment of the poor, inequitable access to basic social goods and services, homophobia, pollutants in our environments etc. etc. etc. have, in the past been met with civil backlash and lead to great moments of social change. That is the human immune system at play. But it can only work when there is a mass rejection of a political conscription that favours the most fortunate members of society while forcing the least fortunate to bear the burden of responsibility for a litany of social plights that they didn’t cause.

In 2016 we find ourselves taking deep breaths through what feels like a mass existential trip. We are trying to wrap our heads around the very real consequences of poverty, of job-loss, violent conflicts, migration and systemic racism while coming to terms with an all-encompassing climate crisis that will exacerbate all of the above issues in unprecedented ways. The militarization and use of force against disobedient movements seeking to protect basic systems of survival consistently knocks the wind out of the progressive political spirit and then relays to the public that: activism is dead. It tells us instead to vote with our dollar, or to wait until an election to hope for change.

IV.

We've gotten used to watching as the militarization of resource conflicts increases, and it becomes much easier to watch if we think these conflicts emerge out of religious or cultural friction and not from our grabby, interventionist systems. The racist, othering nonsense that spews from this logic is truly nuts. We know the story well from ongoing conflicts throughout the Americas and the Middle-East. Step 1. Install market-democracies in unstable regions because we practice these systems so well at home. Step. 2. Keep mumbling that “Trading nations do not fight”, steps 3 onward define how we see ourselves as exceptional when compared with the rest of the world.

Unfortunately for hierarchal elites is that through new means of communication (puppeteered as they may be), the whole world can tell that the US and much of the developed world isn't practicing democracy all that well at home. How do our police forces respond to free protest? How do industrial powers lobby their interests and continue deregulating? We see the militarization of peaceful uprisings in America and Canada, and this is hugely de-legitimizing, de-stabilizing and very tough on our North Americans-will-save-the-day reputation. If the politics are rotten then maybe the neo-liberal market-fundamentalism and white supremacy that has made securing “other world” resources and stealing land from Indigenous people rotten too? Nah... We couldn’t possibly trust all those Muslims, or Black people or Native people, to control their own resources could we?

One of the true crimes of Trump's campaign has been the fear mongering "skittle-argument" around refugees seeking asylum from armed conflicts started in part by the aforementioned structures of exploitation. Labelling families jihadist, terrorist migrants here to steal our jobs and rape our women is another attributable hallmark of the rise in neo-conservative fascism. Remember when Donald Trump wanted to bring back the death penalty for the Central Park Five? Or more recently that he thinks climate change is a hoax? He is openly stupid, AND a racist, AND a criminal, AND a rapist. The fight to address his malevolence starts with an appreciation for the resilience and resourcefulness it would take to cross borders in search of safety, to live as oppressed people under structural racism, or climate communities written off as collateral damage*. To fight him will be an act in uprooting our faith in a system that could elect him, and in honouring the legacy of trauma left on society and the planet because of the structures that are embodied in people like him.


V.

Not to trail off, but climate change has everything to do with a Trump future. When we talk about the changes felt today as a result of ecosystem collapse, we don’t have any idea how to imagine what circumstances most of the world already live in. The continued battle by Indigenous people in Dakota to protect their water and stop a pipeline through their ancestral lands has escalated into a militarized free-for-all at town, county and state level and stories about Wounded Knee pulsate in our minds. Pundits and news media will do anything to convince us that these social movements don’t show enough cohesion to be taken seriously, or are not worthy of attention. But our access to the live feeds coming out of Standing Rock tell us an entirely different movement is at play.

Herein lies the silver lining in a time of political grief. The claim that the civil rights movement died with Martin Luther King Jr. is one that is fundamentally untrue and can be propagated only by establishments who are fearful of direct civic action. In reality, civil rights activists today are about to push campaigns that are more modern, organized and energized because the concerns we have for our future are now globalized and interconnected. There is more to lose now than there was before, and ensuring the right to live free from fear, and in dignity are things that we are going to have to start fighting for if we haven't already. 

What must be made very clear to anyone who’s tired of being disenfranchised or tired of not being heard - is that there are arenas in which anger over these issues can be transferred into direct action. 

Choose a local non-profit, fight for reproductive rights, fight for the rights of Black and Indigenous people, fight for gender equality and LGBTQ communities. Fight to protect the environments you love, fight to ensure there is support for artistic expression, fight against climate change denialists, fight corrupt police forces, join BLM, work to enhance the living conditions of refugees. Whatever you choose, it's time to do something. And not on Facebook, IRL.

The only way to address the pathological populism that was made so obvious with the election of Donald-Voldemort-Trump is to join movements that promote love and seek justice. If you are a creative, make this fight explicit in your work so that people can see you, and join you. Civil invigoration is the only way social change has ever occurred and it’s time to pick our battles. This should get us stirred up and excited for the future we want to shape – it shouldn’t make us depressed or turn us into phlegmatic, sleepy dust bunnies.  

We can heal the collective spirit and enhance the human condition through the assertion of our inalienable rights; the right to freedom by any man, woman and child to live, move and love in anyway they so choose as long as it does not harm others. The right to a healthy environment; to land, air, and water, regardless of the colour of your skin, or what religion you practice. The non-negotiable right to organize in peaceful acts of civil disobedience when injustice is grave and deplorable.

No celebrity con-man running on a platform of hate speech, misogyny, scientific denial and white supremacy can take those rights from any American. The danger in all that hate is that it has been able to convince out-of-touch Americans that they will benefit from stepping backwards in time – to a fictional era where (white) America was “Great” at all, because to make it great again is a hoax. The admirable qualities that have put America on an idolized stage have been the quality of expression by the people for the people - through art, through music and in most often during social movements that aim to overcome great oppression and injustice through resistance.

So, what now? What will hopefully be a short-lived Donald Trump presidency (let’s bet he gets impeached within his first term) is only the cherry on a top of this unsightly fondue of melting neo-colonial entities fighting to maintain relevance. If we don’t admit these structural inequalities first, then we can only expect to continue to see our civil liberties continue to vanish. I'll start...:

I - the privileged offspring of my oppressive forefathers - have benefited greatly from a system that systemically oppresses people. With this (white) privilege, it is my duty to serve alongside those who I am indebted to. With great regret for things I couldn't control I will not hand out empty apologies, but seek alliance through action in the fight for justice, for all people.

Fuck Trump and anyone who prescribes to his twisted version of reality. Fuck that guy and the political system that got him there. He’s no one’s president, not even the desperate, hateful tools who voted him in. All the signs have been clear leading up to what feels like an ideological hijacking of an already porous democracy, and now it’s time to show love, to get organized and get loud. 

http://www.ifrc.org/syria-crisis

http://blacklivesmatter.com/

http://www.ienearth.org/

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/colonial-pipeline-explosion-dapl-protesters/

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/

https://www.aclu.org/issues/lgbt-rights

https://350.org/

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

 

The Panama Papers & High-Tech Colonialism

x.

The latest revelations coming from the release of the Panama documents are not going unnoticed, and the hope is that the information revealed will inform the public to pressure global elites into coughing up at least SOME of what has been secured in offshore funds through major tax evasion. Unfortunately, the narrative has been more than slightly tipped in the direction of tabloid stories and name dropping, a sort of public shaming that feels like vindication, but in fact is entirely missing the point of what the Panama documents represent. Over 11 million documents reveal at least 15 previous and sitting royals and heads of state having enormous hauls of money in tax havens and names the companies and trusts that dilute the true nature of that money, of where it comes from, and where it goes. But this isn't about personalities, this about systemic abuse of power and the existence of a modern oligarchy.

The scale of the investigations now taking place into the murky, yet widespread world of financial misconduct is unprecedented, but journalists and the established storytellers are central to the story itself. The ICIJ (The International Consortium of Investigative Journalism), and over 375 journalists from over 76 countries were involved in reporting the findings, and Edward Snowden is calling it the “biggest leak in the history of data journalism”. We know all of this already, presumably, considering it has been plastered over all news sources, and made headlines around the world since the April 3rd leak. So the media understands the gravity of this story, and knows that to ignore this new information would make it obvious they may somehow be complicit in allowing information to be overlooked, or that (ding! ding! ding!) corporate media plays a role in keeping stories about tax evasion and corporate finance secret. It would also add to the discourse about how elected officials sit comfortably snug in the back pockets of arrogant corporate interests precisely because the public remains misinformed as to what financial deviance is actually at play. So, how exactly does the non-unified, fist-shaking public make some dents in the financial system that despots rely on, if established media is somehow in on the whole thing?

 

I.

In the digital age we know that there is far more data out there to analyse, and far fewer independent news agencies operating who can do it. This makes the Panama Papers essential to the public’s understanding about how to penetrate institutions that are growing in scale and secrecy around the world. So, when the established press, and corporate newsrooms choose to focus on naming individuals who are linked to tax havens, they are shying away from examining the trade and taxation systems that allow for corporate and state-level malfeasance to occur in the first place. It is easy to see the tabloid value in personal examples of tax evasion, and public pressure has already forced the Prime Minister of Iceland to resign, for Putin to make public statements about where he keeps his rubles, and for PM David Cameron to back away from family ties to Mossack Fonseca; the Panamanian law firm that hid billions worth of assessments in poor countries around the world. While the list goes on and on around personal stories and their rebuttals, can the public really trust corporate news rooms to hammer down on the very institutions that represent them? How can those who benefit from tax-avoidance schemes be the ones who tell the whole story?

For example, looking at Robert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and its 136 subsidiaries, notable Western media organisations such as Twentieth Century Fox are actually operating (legally) OUT of Panama, this newfound modern hotbed of bad business. This highlights an enormous conflict of interest about how reporting on these leaked documents will occur, about what will be included and what will be left out. The Panama leak also happens at a time when institutionalised secrecy around financial practices is rife and has somehow become accepted worldwide as “something the rich will always do”. In the United States, Hillary Clinton has had the Democratic congress on her side since day one, as well as having Time Warner and 20th Century Fox as some of her primary donors painting a most flattering portraiture. This combination of the largest media outlets on the planet together with scuzzy Wall Street backed financial institutions like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, The Lehman Brothers and Citigroup mean that obviously Clinton's path to a nomination has been pre-determined by the media WHILE bolstering the tale of an “unelectable” Bernie Sanders.

This ownership of media also permeates public understanding and policy decisions made about resource development strategies, militarisation and the fossil fuel industry. Divestment and anti-fracking organisations, along with advocacy networks for the renewables economy is STILL often overlooked as fringe environmentalism and seen as somehow separate from the story of a handful of corporate elites who will do anything to quash a growing movement. Information is key to these mobilisations, and it is tragic that it is made so difficult to connect the dots between corporate elitism, lobbying, industrial masochism and the media. Also, it's like the only thing people even remember about Wikileaks is what happened to Julian Assange personally, and no actual examples of political court cases or indictments on warcrime charges (had the leaked documents been used as evidence in the International Criminal Court). This is relevant to the Panama Papers because it's the same story about to be told in nearly the exact the same way. Persecute the messengers, highlight sensationalist individual leaks and avoid commenting on why these structures are allowed to operate in the first place. 

We are now watching big media outlets show a complete disregard for abusive tax structures and the relationship between corporate donors and a 21st century political hegemony, and that is the real story here. It is a cryptic story of collective acceptance that the rich and powerful can do what they want, indefinitely. It's also forgetting the history of how this type of economic structure was created in the first place. The global markets that were installed by expansionist market forefathers have ok’d global exploitation of the poor as a sort of permanent, unquestionable part of modern life. Tax-avoidance schemes are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to an entrenched loss of ethics at the state level.

Obviously the current political climate is one of hostility, fear and alienation. It feels thick in the air, and like quicksand on the ground. A key rationale in hyper-conservative fear-mongering strategy is boiling over, and that strategy starts with villainisng the poor, or those in need of urgent financial and political aid. Discussions around the poor have been narrowed down to a childish shouting match between people worried about welfare leeches and this manufactured idea that immigrants take jobs and provide nothing. Global migration have become such a polarised issue that it is now accepted that political leaders create anti-immigration platforms by spouting racial slurs as a form of public debate. This same set of non-factual, pro-individual, "the American-Dream-is-still-intact" type of information has leaked onto the discussions around climate change and the global environmental consequences of greed and bad business. Trade and corporate barriers to better environmental regulation barely made headway within the Paris Agreement.

The Panama Papers represents what happens to the hovering upper crust of financial players when they are told it's fine for them to keep their money, un-taxed, growing indefinitely in havens around the world. The established trading rituals of the 21st century have allowed for this new pinnacle of corporate impunity, with established financial institutions like the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending as usual, as well the terrifying, morphing qualities of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), not to mention the birth of what may be the scariest new set of trade agreements; the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). As if that many acronyms in a row doesn't tell you something. The rise in private dispute settlement mechanisms, where corporations can effectively SUE governments in privately held courts, is also rarely, if ever front page news. If the inalienable cornerstone of modern democracies are to remain intact (one pillar being that the public make informed decisions about who they elect based on access to sound information) the nature of slanted media bombast cannot continue to be overlooked. Callous behaviour is instead applauded and made concessions for - and sure, the immediate tangible effect of these documents on public opinion will be felt by deputy leaders and the global elite in dramatic PR pushes- but to what degree will it have an effect on established practices, and will that be covered at all?

The dynamics at play are still dominated by ruling elites who get off scot-free for financial crimes while blaming the poor to sway public opinion. The debate is now being set up as two camps that will always be at odds with each other, one that is for monopolies and economic growth at any cost, and one that promotes taxation, social welfare and transparency. This is by no means the extent to which the different camps include proprietary ideologies around freedom of speech, family values, gay rights, debt re-financing, race equality, environmental protection, women's rights issues, anti-terrorism measures or military spending, but the idea that there is one "conservative" side versus one "liberal" side is now treated as an acceptable form of political rivalry world-over, when it is a complete and total construct meant to divide the public and halt participation in the democratic process.

The documents revealed by the Panama leak show how little each side knows as to what is considered public money, or how it is actually spent... And because it is not a private matter if tax has not been paid, public records of overseas investments can actually remove the guise of accumulative-righteousness and unveil corporate criminals, but what more of the loss of structural financial integrity? At the mercy of a modern code conduct, or more specifically at the mercy of global economic globalisation, we are confronting the weighty reality that our democracies cannot ride on the trusty steed of suspended market ideologies, as they are no longer compatible. 

The Panama documents highlight a very important global trend, which is that money can buy you impunity, but that will never be front-page news as long as media is doing the bidding for global elites.

 

II.

The public requires more information about whether true democracies are compatible with an unregulated and secretive global market economy. And personal stories of tax evasion will not cut it for this fight. The dominant neo-liberal trade model has only ever existed to create and grow wealth for extinguished colonies and their corporate counterparts. Growing disparity of wealth and access to resources forcefully excludes most of the people on the planet, and economic chains of command seem to appear more and more like pyramids built off the backs of exploited people, rather than the "level market playing fields" touted by those who still champion free trade as the only global market option. In a very short time, the words around exploitative practices have been altered and replaced by an ideological veneer that disguises them for what they really are. Tax-evasion in 2016 is nothing more than high-tech colonialism.  Words like “slavery” and “racism” have been replaced by “global development”, “economic expansionism” or accepted “waged work forces”, and the myriad of alienating words to describe those who are in someway different than very rich (and often white) people has hijacked the conversation leading to a rhetoric of fear and intolerance.

 

III.

To believe that the Panama Papers can be reduced to reports of individual tax-evasion is keeping the public in the dark, and making it impossible to define informed critiques that birth better democratic decisions. It is as hallucinatory as it could ever be. So while the leak may highlight personal stories of credibility dying from overindulgence, the standard practices of un-regulated markets and the commodification of ignorance is predatory and at large. This is the real story and it will be hidden in mainstream media until they take their dying breath. Modern democracies and the right of all men and women to elect those who may best represent their interests has been continuously shaken and is now entirely warped. So, when looking at tax-evasion and sneaky hoarding it is incredibly important to challenge the commonly accepted assumptions about how countries were included in trade agreements in the first place, and to re-define the narrative around neo-liberalism. 

The point is, tax-havens, secrecy and greed are distinguishable features of a global free trade system. Not paying taxes was practically written into the conditionalities member states agreed to when becoming part of the big boy free-trade club under the Bretton Woods agreements. The reconfiguration of occupied lands as the base for tradable commodities and the wealth that has left developing countries along with their exports should be FRONT PAGE NEWS, every single day. When infrastructural development projects were marketed to ex-colonies, and commodity trade structures were set up by a minority of elites with administrative or commercial positions, the intention was to reduce the role of government and hereby protect corporate and economic interests. The market economy we know and love comes as a result of violent occupation and brutal divisions of labor. And when the story of de-colonisation is told as a peaceful and co-operative pact of nations, we dismiss the fact that de-colonisation was truly just the shift of old power into new structures of privilege in today's modern market economy.

Tax-havens exist to this day because the dynamics of exploitation and the desire to maintain control over ex-colonies was writ into law. Understanding this pattern is crucial for those who consider themselves informed citizens and it should move us - the public - to criticise, re-define and mobilise towards a modern battle that might dismantle financial supremacy and elitism that we have accepted to now.