Editor’s note: this piece began circulating in the wake of the raids on Wet’suwet’en territory. We have covered these topics and discussed strategic approaches to escalation in recent weeks. This piece contributes to this ongoing discussion. Featured image via Unist’ot’en Camp. #ShutDownCanada #ReconciliationIsDead #RevolutionIsAlive. As with all cross-posts, sharing this does not imply that Aphonika Distro endorses Deep Green Resistance.
By tawinikay (aka Southern Wind Woman)
If only one thing has brought me joy in the last few weeks, it began when the matriarchs at Unist’ot’en burned the Canadian flag and declared reconciliation dead. Like wildfire, it swept through the hearts of youth across the territories. Out of their mouths, with teeth bared, they echoed back: reconciliation is dead! reconciliation is dead! Their eyes are more keen to the truth so many of our older generation have been too timid to name. The Trudeau era of reconciliation has been a farce from the beginning. It has been more for settler Canadians than natives all along.
“Reconciliation is dead” is a battle cry.
It means the pressure to live up to our side of the bargain is over. The younger generation have dropped the shackles to the ground. Perhaps we are moving into a new time, one where militancy takes the place of negotiation and legal challenge. A time where we start caring less about what the colonizer’s legal and moral judgement and more about our responsibilities.
Criticizing reconciliation is not about shaming those elders and people who participated in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it’s about attacking a government that used that moment of vulnerability to bolster it’s global image. I have said it before and I’ll say it again, I do not blame our older generation for being hopeful about a more peaceful future. Those who lived through the horror of residential schools and the 60s scoop and the road allowance days and the sled dog slaughters could only have wanted a better life for the coming generations. It is the responsibility of those younger generations to stand up and say that what is being offered is not good enough. It is up to us to say that we would rather another hundred years of struggle than to accept the gentle assimilation being offered. It is up to us to give thanks to our elders for their service and then to turn to the frontlines with our feathers and drums and fists.
Because ideas on their own don’t make change. That is a liberal lie. It takes action behind words to make a difference. That action needs to be undertaken together. Neither ideas or practice are created by individuals. Everything written here is the result of discussion and interaction with other land defenders, lovers, anarchists, mothers, children, and resistors. We need to be accountable to the things we say while also recognizing that knowledge is created by communities. It has to always be seen that way in order to subvert hierarchy, to never allow one person to be elevated over any other.
So what is written here is all of yours. Take it and do with it as you please.
Argue it. Defend it. Decry it. Make it your own.
Forget the rules.
Canada is a colonial state. It exists to govern territory and manage the resources of that territory. It is nothing less and nothing more. It has done an excellent job convincing its citizens that it stands for something, something good. This is the way it maintains its legitimacy. The national myth of politeness and civility wins the support of its constituents. This has been carefully constructed over time and it can be deconstructed. In fact, the rules of Canada change all the time. I would write more about this but the truth is I could not do a better job than something I recently came across online. @Pow_pow_pow_power recently wrote the following:
Settler governments have been making up the rules as they go from the beginning of their invasions. While each generation of us struggles to educate ourselves to the rulebook, they disregard it and do what they want when they want. This should not be a surprise. It has always been this way because they prioritize themselves about all – above other people, above animal relatives, above the balance of Nature, and certainly above “what is right”. Laws have always been passed to legitimize their whims and interests as the intentions of seemingly rational rulers, and to keep us in compliance with their needs.
We currently live in a time where our Imperialist structures have been deeply concerned with appearing ordered and civilized to fellow regimes of power to cultivate a sense of superiority. This is why the violence we have become accustomed to is no longer mass slaughters and public torture and exiles but night raids and disappearances, criminalizations and being locked into systems of neglect. It has become more reliant on structural violence & erasure than direct violence, and therefore more insidious. Insidiousness is more tidily effective and harder to pinpoint as a source of injustice.
This is why when we approach them, lawful and peaceful and rational and fair minded and smooth toned, as gracious and calm as can be, we are easily dismissed with polite white smiles of “best intentions” “deepest regrets” and “we’re doing our best”, in fact “we’re doing better than most”. And when we insist, more firmly, more impassioned, more justified, the response from Settler Governments is as clear as we see now: “Why can’t you people just obey?”
Canadians want to believe that colonial violence is a thing of the past, so the government hides it for them. That is why the RCMP doesn’t allow journalists to film them as they sick dogs on women defending their land. That is why they will get away with it.
The time has come to stop looking for justice in settler law.
For Indigenous people in Canada, it is impossible to avoid the violence inflicted on us by the state. When we raise our fist and strike back, it is always an act of self-defense. Always. Committing to non-violence or pacifism in the face of a violent enemy is a dangerous thing to do. Yet, attempting to avoid using violence until absolutely necessary is a noble principle. One which carries the most hope for a new future. But what does violence mean to the settler state?
They don’t consider it violent to storm into a territory with guns drawn and remove its rightful occupants. They don’t consider it violent to level mountaintops, or clearcut forests, or to suck oil out of the ground only to burn it into the air. They don’t consider it violent to keep chickens and pigs and cows in tiny crates, never allowing them to see sunlight, using them like food machines.
But smash a window of a government office..
Well, that goes too far.
It is time we see their laws for what they are: imaginary and hypocritical. Settler laws exist to protect settlers. We are not settlers. We are Michif. We are Anishinaabek. We are Onkwehón:we. We are Nêhiyawak. We are Omàmiwininì. We are Inuit. We are Wet’suwet’en. So why are we still appealing to their laws for our legitimacy?
Time after time, communities spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal challenges to land rights. Chippewa of the Thames First Nation used money won in a land claim to launch a legal challenge against Canada to say they were never properly consulted, nor did they consent to, the Line 9 pipeline through their territory. The Supreme Court ruled against them, saying that Indigenous peoples do not have the right to say no to industrial projects in their territories. Line 9 is still operational. The Wet’suwet’en won probably the most significant legal challenge in Canadian history. The Delgamuukw verdict saw the courts acknowledge that the We’suwet’en territory is unceded, that they hold title and legal jurisdiction, and yet look at how Canada honours that. Legal victories are not the way we win our land and dignity. Canada cares as little about Canadian law as they do Indigenous law.
The same goes for the United Nations and their precious UNDRIP. We have seen that the state will adopt United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) principles and interpret them to suit their needs. That document says that governments and companies need free, prior, and informed consent to engage in projects in their territories. BC adopted it and, yet, says that it does not mean they have to gain consent from the Wet’suwet’en. Consent will never actually mean the right to say no. And the UN has no way to enforce it.
The time has passed for legal challenge in their courts that does nothing but drain our resources and slow us down. I honour those relatives and ancestors who attempted the peaceful resolution, who trusted in the good intentions of other humans. But the settlers have proven that the peaceful options they offered us are lies. Fool us once, shame on you.
This is not only about Unist’ot’en anymore.
This is about all of us. Any day now the RCMP could attempt to move in and evict the rail blockade at Tyendinaga. I stand in solidarity with them as much as I do with the Wet’suwet’en. This moment is not just about getting the government and their militarized goons to back down at Unist’ot’en and Gitdum’ten, it’s about getting them to loosen their grip around all of our necks. This moment is about proclaiming reconciliation dead and taking back our power.
This is not to say that we should forget about Unist’ot’en and abandon them when they need us most. It is a proposal to widen our scope so that we don’t lose our forward momentum if what happens out west doesn’t meet our wildest dreams. This is about crafting a stronger narrative.
This means that we should think before claiming that the Wet’suwet’en have the right to their land because it is unceded. Do we not all have a right to the land stolen from our ancestors? For land to be unceded it means that it has never been sold, surrendered, or lost through conquest. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 urged Canada and the dominion to only take land through the making of treaty. And so agents of Canada set out to do so. They continued to make treaties across the continent, sometimes lying about the content of the treaties to ancestors who didn’t speak english, sometimes finding whoever the hell would sign the treaty without much concern for if that person was acting with the support of the community. After the signing of the last treaty, Canada made it illegal for Indians to hire lawyers to challenge land claims. And then they stole the rest of what they wanted. They continued to flood the land with settlers until native peoples had only 0.2% of the land they once protected and lived on.
I don’t care about appealing to the legitimacy of unceded territory. All land is stolen land. Canada has no jurisdiction on any of it because they have broken any agreements they ever made in the process of taking it.
The same critique rings true for holding up hereditary governance as the only true leadership of Indigenous peoples. I am not advocating for band council. But it is important to understand that many of our relations have lost the hereditary systems that once helped them live good lives. We are going to have to rekindle our governance. Some we can pull from the past, some we will have to make anew. All freely chosen forms of Indigenous governance are legitimate. Our legitimacy does not flow from the mouths of our leaders, but from our connection to the land and water and our commitment to our responsibilities to all life today and generations to come.
This is a good thing if we let it be. It is foolish to think we would not have changed and grown in 300 years. Our systems would look different today no matter what. This is an opportunity to combine new and beautiful ideas with the time-honoured traditions and ceremonies of our ancestors, spiritual communities where hierarchy is subverted and gender is liberated!
It is time to shut everything the fuck down.
Canada has always been afraid of us standing in our power. Reconciliation was a distraction, a way for them to dangle a carrot infront of us and trick us into behaving. Now is the time to show them how clear our vision is. Being determined and sure is not the same as being unafraid. There are many dangerous days ahead of us. It is dangerous to say, “I will not obey.”
The first thing we need to do is stop stabbing each other in the back. Take a seat on band council if you want, but stop letting it go to your head. Don’t ever see yourself as more than a servant, a cash distributor, a rule enforcer. Being elected is not the same as earning a place of respect in your community. It does not make you an elder. Let me take this time to say a giant “fuck you” to the Métis nations who sign pipeline agreements because they are so excited the government considered them Indigenous. The Métis have no land rights in Ontario and yet they continue to sign agreements as if they do, throwing the Indigenous nations with actual territory under the train. Let me extend that “fuck you” to the Indigenous nations who signed pipeline agreements and stand by in silence as their relations are attacked for protecting the water. Or even worse when they do interviews with pro-oil lobby groups and conservative media decrying the land defenders in their midst. Can’t they see the way Canadians eat up their words, drooling over the division amongst us, using it to devalue our way of life? I do not condone attacking our relatives who have lost the red path, but we need to find a way to bring them back home. Not everybody has to take up a frontline in their community, but at the bare minimum they should refuse to cooperate with the colonial government and their corporate minions.
The second thing we need to do is act. But we do not have to limit ourselves to actions that demand the withdrawal of forces from Wet’suwet’en territory. The federal government is the one calling the shots, not just at Unist’ot’en but at every point of native oppression across all the territories. Any attack on the state of Canada is in solidarity. Any assertion of native sovereignty is in solidarity.
It’s time to start that occupation you’ve been dreaming up.
Is there a piece of land that has been annexed from your territory? Take it back. Is there a new pipeline being slated through your backyard? Blockade the path. Are their cottagers desecrating the lake near your community? Serve them an eviction notice and set up camp. Sabotage the fish farms killing the salmon. Tear down the dam interrupting the river. Play with fire.
When we put all of our hopes and dreams into one struggle in one spot, we set ourselves up for heartbreak and burnout. Let’s fight for the Wet’suwet’en people, yes! But let’s honour their courage and their actions by letting them inspire us to do the same. Let’s fight for them by fighting for the manoomin and the wetlands and the grizzlies.
Choose your accomplices wisely. Liberals who read land acknowledgments often have too much invested in this system to actually see it change. Communists envision a system without a capitalist Canada, but they still want a communist state. One that will inevitably need to control land and exploit it. Find common heart with those who want to see the state destroyed, to have autonomous communities take its place, and to restore balance between humans and all our relations. Choose those who listen more than they talk, but not those who will do whatever you say and not think for themselves. They are motivated by guilt. Find those who have a fire burning in them for a more wild and just world. Most of them will be anarchists, but not all, and not all anarchists will come with a good mind.
Creating a battlefield with multiple fronts will divide their energies. The rail blockades are working! If the night time rail sabotage and the copper wire and the blockades keep coming, it will shut down all rail traffic across this awful economy. More is better. But do it not just for the Wet’suwet’en, do it for the rivers and streams that weave themselves under the rails. Do it for the ancestors who saw the encroaching railroad as their coming demise.
And as a critique out of Montreal wrote: don’t settle for symbolic and intentional arrest.
When they come to enforce an injunction, move to another part of the rail.
When they come with a second injunction, block the biggest highway nearby.
When they come with a third injunction, move to the nearest port.
Stay free and fierce. The folks at Unist’ot’en and Gitdum’ten didn’t have the option to, but you do. Anticipate their next move and stay ahead of them.
This is a moment among many moments. Our ancestors have been clever, sometimes biding their time quietly, sometimes striking, always secretly passing on our ceremonies and stories. I honour them as I honour you now. We are still here because of them and our children and our children’s children will still be here because of us. Never forget who we are. Fight in ceremony.
I suppose this is a proposal for adopting a strategy of indigenous anarchism here on Turtle Island. A rejection of tactics that demand things from powerful people and a return to building for ourselves a multitude of local, diverse solutions. This is a rejection of Idle No More style organizing, let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past (for a detailed critique of INM, see https://warriorpublications.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/idle-no-more-speak-for-yourself/ and while you’re there read everything else). It is a plea for us to choose our own leaders and create governance that refuses hierarchy. An ask for us to reject reconciliation and move towards a militant reclamation. The idea of indigenous anarchism is still in its infancy. Write me about it.
This is one of our moments. Let’s make it not about demanding for them to leave Unist’ot’en alone, but about demanding that they leave the land alone. Don’t make it about stopping CGL from making money, make it about denouncing the idea of money. This is about colonization everywhere. This is about all of us.
To the settlers inevitably reading this zine.
What is written here is meant for you too. Not in the “rise up and take back your land” kind of way. Been there, done that.
But I have been reading the messaging on the reportbacks and in the media and I see you falling into all sorts of tired traps. You are not just cogs in the solidarity machine, you too can take up struggles in the cities you live. Remember the Two Row: you can fight parallel battles towards the same goals.
I have heard many an elder say that we will not win this fight on our own, and that is most certainly true. Thank you for the ways you have attacked the economy and the state. Thank you for answering the call. Now take this and run with it.
You too should look for ways to defend the land and water in the places you live. You too should look for ways to undermine and weaken the power of the government over these lands. Don’t let yourself be disheartened if the RCMP don’t leave Unist’ot’en. That is only one fight of many. That is only the beginning. Don’t fall into the traps of appealing to Canadian or international law.
See yourself for what you are, for who your community is. Act in ways that bring about a world where reconciliation is possible, a world in which your people give back land and dismantle the centralized state of Canada. Don’t romanticize the native peoples you work with. Don’t feel that you can’t ever question their judgment or choose to work with some over others. Find those that have kept the fire alive in their hearts, those who would rather keep fighting than accept the reconciliation carrot. Don’t ever act from guilt and shame.
And don’t let yourself believe that you can transcend your settlerism by doing solidarity work. Understand that you can, and should, find your own ways to connect to this land. From your own tradition, inherited or created.
In this episode of The Green Flame podcast, we speak with Sakej Ward. Sakej (James Ward) belongs to the wolf clan. He is Mi’kmaw (Mi’kmaq Nation) from the community of Esgenoopetitj (Burnt Church First Nation, New Brunswick). He is the father of nine children, four grandchildren and a caregiver for one.
Sakej is a veteran of both the Canadian and American militaries. During his military career, he volunteered and excelled at some of the most demanding leadership courses in the military, including the Special Forces Infantry Leader’s Course. He finished his military career at the rank of Sergeant.
Wanting to pursue academics, he immediately went to university and immersed himself in politics where he graduated from the University of New Brunswick from the Honour’s program with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science with a specialization in International Relations.
Recognizing the value of an academic background, he continued to advance his studies and attended the University of Victoria where he successfully completed the Master’s of Arts Degree in Indigenous Governance.
Sakej has a long history of advocating and protecting First Nations inherent responsibilities and freedoms, having spent the last 21 years fighting the government and industry. This deep desire to bring justice to all Indigenous people has given Sakej experience in international relations where he spoke on behalf of the Mi’kmaq Nation at the United Nations Working Group for Indigenous Populations (WGIP). For his efforts in protecting Indigenous people, freedoms and territory he has received the National Aboriginal Achievement Award.
Having taught, organized, advised and led various warrior societies from all over Turtle Island down into Guatemala and Borike (Puerto Rico) Sakej has made warrior-hood his way of life. He has been on over a dozen warrior operations and countless protest actions. He dedicates all his time to developing warrior teachings and instructing warrior societies from all over.
This show features poetry by the Chickasaw poet, playwright, and novelist Linda Hogan, and the song “Zabalaza” by South African political music collective Soundz of the South (SOS).
The Green Flame is a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.
Featured image: solidarity actions initiated by Deep Green Resistance in Eugene, Oregon shut down multiple Chase Bank locations in the area on February 13th. Photo: Max Wilbert.
Solidarity actions in the wake of a Canadian government raid on an indigenous community resisting pipeline construction are paralyzing the Canadian economy, shutting down factories, leaving hundreds of trains idling, and leading to shortages of propane, construction materials, and grain.
Over the past week, dozens of solidarity actions have been held across Canada, as well as in the U.S. and Europe. Significant train blockades in New Hazelton and in Tyendinaga Mohawk territory have stranded tens of thousands of travelers and led CN Rail corporation to “discontinue service in key corridors.” Occupations and demonstrations have disrupted key ports, political offices, banks, and transit corridors in more than 25 Canadian cities and towns.
Coastal Gaslink Pipeline
These solidarity actions are happening around the issue of the Coastal Gaslink pipeline, or CGL. CGL is in pre-construction and is a key component of “LNG Canada,” a $40-billion project which would export “fracking” gas from Canada to international markets, running through British Columbia. The project is expected to generate 13% annual profits. It has been given billions of dollars in tax breaks and subsidies by the Canadian government.
Five clans of the Wet’suwet’en Nation have opposed the CGL pipeline for over a decade. The Unist’ot’en Clan (Chief Freda Huson) and other Wet’suwet’en clans including the Gidimt’en and Likhtsamisyu have re-occupied their traditional land, built a healing center for indigenous youth, and now practice traditional medicine, hunting, gathering, & ceremonies. They have also evicted pipeline construction crews and surveyors regularly over the past five years. The pipeline is a major threat to their clean water, salmon runs, and the land which is the foundation of their culture.
Raid and Police Occupation
Last Thursday, after CGL corporation secured an illegal court injunction, Canadian federal police (RCMP) began a militarized raid on the indigenous land of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. Over the course of four days, RCMP arrested dozens of land defenders at gunpoint, including Freda Huson and Dr. Karla Tait, clinical psychologist at the Unist’ot’en Healing Center, and forcefully removed them from their land.
This is despite the 1997 “Delgamuukw” Canadian Supreme Court case which recognized title of the traditional leaders. The Canadian government, Coastal Gaslink, and funders like JP Morgan Chase (Chase Bank) are ignoring Canadian Law, indigenous law, and the danger to future generations, and are using violence to maximize their profits.
Deep Green Resistance Solidarity Action in Oregon
Deep Green Resistance stands with the Unist’ot’en. Our community has participated in solidarity actions in Canada, and this evening (February 13th) we organized disruption of three Chase Bank locations in Oregon to demand Chase cease funding the project, create additional political pressure, encourage customers of Chase to divest their funds, and to build awareness of the situation.
Led by Illahee Spirit Runners drumming to break up the humming monotony of these corporate offices, we took this action to disrupt business as usual, build strength in our community and in ourselves, and show our solidarity with the land and water defenders in Wet’suwet’en Territory. Our actions led to initiation of “lockdown procedures” at multiple Chase bank locations across the Eugene/Springfield area.
Night sky and forest overlooking the Wedzin Kwah (Morice River) at Unist’ot’en Camp. Photo by Max Wilbert.
Strategic Analysis
(Note: we do not represent the Wet’suwet’en or speak on their behalf in any way, shape, or form. This is an independent, outside analysis. While we support their struggle, this does not imply that they agree with our analysis or support our strategy.)
The resistance of the five Wet’suwet’en clans to Coastal Gaslink, and to previous pipeline plans that were modified or canceled at least partially as a result of their work, has been successful thus far. This has been achieved by leveraging tactical and strategic advantages, by gathering a broad alliance of supporters, and through tenacity and hard work. Solidarity actions remain a powerful arsenal capable of causing millions or billions of dollars in economic damage to the Canadian state, and disrupting political operations. These actions can create a more favorable climate by increasing pressure on fence-sitting politicians, media, and populace, but could also backfire by empowering right-wing politicians and pro-state forces calling for increased repression.
It remains to be seen what will come next. Strategic options are relatively limited. It is clear that the pipeline company and Canadian government can and will bring force and money to bear, and with $40 billion on the line they are determined. However, they are also constrained by the court of public opinion, at least to some degree. Talk of reconciliation in Canada has created a political climate that limits the level of brutality which the government can bring to bear. However, as we have seen, they have attempted to bypass this by limiting the access of journalists, blocking people from filming, detaining and threating media with arrest, and otherwise limiting press freedoms. Grassroots people’s media has been important in partially bypassing these restrictions.
The Canadian government is unlikely to give up, and this fight may continue to be a long one. The Wet’suwet’en will not give up either. They are defending their ancestral land and the land of their children. It is unclear what the outcome will be. Broader political shifts in the Canadian government may present a large danger. Like neoliberal politicians in the U.S., the Trudeau administration’s two-faced language of reconciliation paired with violent escalation of repression and pro-industry wrangling will enable more openly conservative politicians to justify much more repressive measures. This parallels Obama’s responsibility for a massive increase in deportation and militarized repression of the uprising at Standing Rock, which in a sense paved the way for Trump’s increased escalation of racist rhetoric and policies.
More broadly, this fight is only one of countless fights globally. To reverse the existential threats of species extinction, global warming, desertification, ocean acidification, and the increasing corporate takeover, commodification, and destruction of the entire planet will require not just stopping new projects like Coastal Gaslink, but dismantling and shutting down the existing industrial infrastructure of the colonial extraction economy.
At Deep Green Resistance we believe the struggle of our time must be fundamentally revolutionary in character—that it will require the “forcible overthrow of the current social order, in favor of a new system.” Like slavery in the Antebellum south, colonialism is so deeply embedded in the Canadian and American systems that some form of warfare is likely to be necessary to uproot it. We do not believe in random acts of violence. A true revolutionary movement is built aboveground and underground, and consists of legitimate organizations coordinating struggle and seizing moments of opportunity without compromise. There are many possible ways this could play out, and we have our own ideas of what proper strategy may look like. We urge our readers to study and consider our strategy and other revolutionary strategies and historical case studies in detail, since victory will require a variety of perspectives working in parallel.
As the following stories illustrate, land defense is dangerous. When we speak about the war being waged on the planet, we do not speak of a metaphor. With guns and machetes, with chainsaws and poisons, with nuclear waste and bulldozers, the living world is being dismembered, and those who fight to defend it often find themselves risking life and limb. We must become aware of this war in order to better participate on the side of the forests and of life. Be careful, be prepared.
Featured image: Monarch butterflies in the El Rosario reserve, home to fir forests whom monarchs visit each winter after their multi-generational migration from the north. Photo by Charlie Marchant, cc-by-2.0.
Six Murdered, Ten Kidnapped in Armed Attack on Nicaragua’s Bosawás Biosphere Reserve
About 80 armed men killed six indigenous people on an isolated Nicaraguan nature reserve in an attack linked to raging land disputes, the indigenous Mayagna community said on Thursday, with 10 other Mayagnas kidnapped in the raid.
The men stormed a Mayagna commune about 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of capital Managua, deep in the north-central Bosawas Biosphere Reserve, the second-largest rainforest the Americas after the Amazon.
The raiders were part of a group of “settlers” in the area who do not belong to the indigenous communities that make up about 14% of Nicaragua’s 6.2 million people, according to a Mayagna lawyer from the region.
Missing Mexican Monarch Butterfly Defender Homero Gómez González Found Dead
Mexican conservationist Homero Gómez González was found dead Wednesday, about two weeks after he was reported missing, provoking a wave sorrow from allies and advocates worldwide as they honored his work running a butterfly sanctuary in the state of Michoacán.
As Common Dreamsreported last week, human rights advocates have expressed fears that Gómez González may have been targeted because of his activism by those involved in the local illegal logging industry, and the 50-year-old butterfly defender’s family told the media that he had received threats from a criminal organization.
A Global Witness report from last year named Mexico the world’s sixth-deadliest country for eco-defenders, part of “a worrying global trend” of environmentalists risking their safety by facing off against “governments, companies, and criminal gangs [that] are routinely stealing land and trashing habitats in pursuit of profit.”
Human Rights Advocates Call for Investigation Into Death of Second Monarch Butterfly Defender in Mexico
The body of Raúl Hernández Romero was found at the top of a hill in the El Rosario butterfly sanctuary on Saturday, one day after the manager of the preserve, Homero Gómez González, was buried. Gómez’s body was found last Wednesday after a two-week disappearance.
El Rosario sanctuary provides a home for millions of migrating monarch butterflies each year and draws thousands of tourists annually. But the reserve has also drawn the ire of illegal loggers in Mexico, who are banned from cutting down trees in the protected area.
Hernández’s family told the BBC that before he disappeared on Jan. 27, he had been receiving threats warning him to stop campaigning against illegal logging. Forensic experts said the activist appeared to have been beaten with a sharp object and had a deep wound in his head.
Anthropologist Stanley Diamond once wrote that “Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home.” Empires and the elites that control them have, as Diamond notes, been repressing their opposition for thousands of years. At this point, they have turned suppression and violence into an art form. From blacklisting to blackmail, from false lawsuits to frame-ups, from jail to torture and murder, their methods are sometimes subtle, sometimes direct, but almost always effective.
In his book on U.S. government repression of communist, black power, feminist, and indigenous movements during the 1960’s and 70’s, Nelson Blackstock writes that “The total picture [revealed by declassified COINTELPRO documents] is of cool, calculating technicians, not crazed paranoids, going about the business of secretly combating people who are challenging the rule of the rich.” He concludes: “That’s the FBI’s job.”
History is littered with the corpses of those who spoke truth to power, organized, and fought back, and who proved themselves too dangerous to be allowed to live. But as Steinbeck reminded us, there is a “little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.” The struggle for justice is bigger than can be covered up by one corpse, or a thousand, or a million.
When Che Guevara was on the firing line in Bolivia, his last words were: “Shoot, coward. You’re only going to kill a man.” Fred Hampton, murdered by the police as he lay drugged in his bed at age 21, once said “You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill a revolution.” And the Burkinabé revolutionary Thomas Sankara, on the eve of his betrayal and murder, said “While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you can’t kill an idea.”
Those in power—the overlords of our neo-colonial world order—use violence because it is dreadfully effective. Their drone strikes are effective. Their special operations raids are effective. Their hundreds of billions of dollars spent on weapons of war are well spent. That is why they do it.
Thomas Friedman, that prototypical liberal justifier of imperialism once wrote in a rare moment of clarity, “The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist. McDonalds cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglass [an arms manufacturer that has now merged with Boeing]. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.” He is right. Violence maintains modern industrial society.
Revolutionaries generally do not live long lives. Perhaps this is melodramatic to say. But then again, I have received death threats, and expect to receive more. The threats do not scare me. At least not yet. They will not silence me—but a bullet would. And that is well known to those behind the “hidden fist” of the market.
The real danger to revolutionaries is not simply repressive violence itself, but maybe even more so the fear that it creates.
In 1990, members of the Mohawk Nation began a protest camp among a pine forest at Kanesatake, west of Montreal, to oppose a “development” project that would have destroyed the forest. They began carrying weapons after racist vigilantes targeted them, and a standoff began when police were sent to evict them. After a firefight in which one policeman was killed, the Canadian military was called in, beginning a 78-day armed confrontation between 3700 professional soldiers and a small contingent of Mohawk warriors and families.
One Mohawk warrior explained the effect that their total commitment to land, nation, and mission had on the Canadian soldiers they faced. “They aren’t scared of us because we’re willing to take up arms,” he said, speaking to a journalist. “They’re scared of us because we’re willing to die.”
Courage is not the lack of fear, but the ability to continue despite fear. When we master our fears in this way, we have taken a vital first step towards defeating the repression. For every act of repression, our acts of defiance must be more fierce, more lasting, more total.
Violence is all around us. It is written on the tags of our clothing reading “Bangladesh” and “Vietnam.” It is engraved by child slaves and captured by “suicide nets” on the circuit boards of our cell phones and televisions. It is bone-deep in the stolen indigenous land we walk upon. It gushes forth into our gas tanks alongside ghosts of Ogoni and Falluja stillbirths.
Someday, that violence will catch up with all of us. The end may come fast or slow. A 9mm police bullet. The machete of an illegal logger. The slow death in a hospital bed. We are immersed in the violence every day, our lungs the shellfish of the atmospheric ocean, filtering out every carcinogen and toxin they can grasp and sequestering them deep in our soft bodies.
The question that faces each of us is “what will you do with your one wild and precious life?” Like Mary Oliver, I’ve spent my fair share of hours reclining in meadows, watching grasshoppers crawl up long stems of grass—and I plan to continue this pastime until I die. Living life, experiencing ecstasy and grief and the full range of human feelings, is our birthright as living beings. But an ethical life today requires more.
When I die, I do not intend to have lived for nothing. As Lierre Keith has written, life is a combat discipline. Every day on this planet could be my last, and in the event of my demise, there will be more work to be done. I hope those who survive will bury my body in a beautiful place, mourn, laugh and tell stories of me, and remember that I lived for a belief and died for a principle. Then, I hope they will straighten up, take a deep breath, and get back to work.
Max Wilbert is an organizer, writer, and wilderness guide who grew up in Seattle’s post-WTO anti-globalization and undoing racism movement. His essays have been published in Earth Island Journal, Counterpunch, and elsewhere. His first book, an essay collection called We Choose to Speak, was released in 2018.
From Zoos to Concentration Camps, A Culture of Cages
From chattel slavery to modern immigrant concentration camps to zoos and aquariums to private prisons, we live in a culture of cages. Understanding this system, and the ideology behind it, is essential to fighting it.
This statement on zoos and aquariums comes from the Deep Green Bush School. The Deep Green Bush School is a participatory, technology-free, evolutionary and revolutionary school in Aotearoa (New Zealand) designed to raise intelligent, healthy, mature, responsible young adults who can think for themselves, meet their needs, live a meaningful life and challenge the current system in order to bring about a healthy world.
Statement on Zoos and Aquariums
The Deep Green Bush-School curriculum is opposed to zoos and aquariums* and therefore the school will not take students to zoos or aquariums as a field trip. The DGBS recommends that parents also not to take children to the zoo. This document highlights how zoos and aquariums contradict and undermine efforts towards a healthy culture and a healthy world.
First of all, we can ask ourselves, would WE want to be kidnapped from our family, taken far away and locked up for our entire lives, to be stared at, photographed, harrassed and teased daily by thousands of people? Of course not. Yet that is what we subject animals to in a zoo or aquarium.
The fact is, a zoo is a miserable place for animals. They are not in their natural habitat, they are stressed by humans visitors and stressed by crowding. They never have enough of their own species to interact with – and more important, they do not have their families or herds or packs that they would normally be living with. All animals are social, even animals we normally don’t think of as social (Bradshaw 2017) – even trees and plants are social. (Fleming 2014, Simard 2016, Wohlleben 2015) Yet in zoos they are all locked up, often alone.
One of the most painful, abusive and torturous aspects of zoos is that the animals are ripped apart from their families and friends, or prevented from forming healthy social relations as they naturally would do. In Auckland, there are two completely unrelated Asian elephants, whereas elephants normally live in matriarchal herds based on family relations. Orcas and dolphins live in pods. Wolves live in packs. And so on. Denied these natural social arrangements, the animals are stressed, painfully alone and depressed. Many zoo animals are given anti-depressant medication. (Smith 2014) It’s like living in prison, or worse, in solitary confinement, or a concentration camp. It’s no wonder why captive animals regularly try to escape or fight back or kill their oppressors. (Hribal 2011)
On top of that, no zoo can possibly provide the natural amount of space an animal would have in thewild. Tigers and lions have around 18,000 times less space in zoos than they would in the wild. Polar bears have one million times less space. (CAPS 2006) Orcas and dolphins travel the ocean. Being in a zoo is torture for them.
The result of the torturous environment of a zoo is mental illness and trauma. Most animals in zoos suffer from anxiety and mental illness and show associated behavioural problems, such as pacing, rocking, circling, shuffling, self-mutilation, obsessive grooming, and hyper-aggression (Just like kids stuck in a classroom.)
One of the results of the torturous zoo environment is that animals don’t live as long in zoos. Just as human diseases increased once humans started living crowded together in cities, animals forced to live crowded with other animals in zoos are exposed to a wider range of diseases than in the wild. According to a report by the Captive Animal Protection Society (now called Freedom for Animals), African elephants in the wild live more than three times as long as those kept in zoos. 40% of lion cubs in zoos die before one month of age. (CAPS 2006)
Other highlights of the CAPS report include:
Zoos regularly kill “surplus” animals. Between 7,500 and 200,000 animals in European zoos are considered ‘surplus’ at any one time. The European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) said in 2007 that zoos were encouraged to kill the animals they don’t want, including tigers.
Most zoo animals – 70-80% of them – are still taken from the wild. Often the mothers are killed first and then the young are taken.
The fact is, what you see in a zoo is not actually the animal. An animal can only be understood in the wild. An elephant in the zoo is not an elephant, unless it is surrounded by its matriarchal herd, and it is not an elephant unless it is living in the place it evolved to live, the place it is rooted to, with all the trees, other animals and climate that shape how they live and who they are. An orca is only an orca with its pod in the ocean, swimming with all the other creatures of the oceans. A wolf is only a wolf in the wild where it has always been, with all the other animals it would interact with,such as caribou and deer.
Furthermore, all the different aspects of an animal’s intellligence, including social and emotional intelligence, as well as their entire culture, only develops in the wild, surrounded by the other members of its familial group from which young animals learn how to live, to all the other animals, plants, trees, rocks, weather, and countless other stimuli, to which the animal is constantly responding to. Thus, defense of zoos reflects a total ignorance of and disregard for ecology – that everything is connected, and an animal in a zoo is not the animal.
Zoos objectify animals. Zoos make animals a thing to be used for our entertainment or for scientific research, not as equals, not recognising they have their own desires for how to live their lives. The only way to treat animals in such a way is to think of them as objects – unthinking, unfeeling, undeserving of respect.
Zoos reflect humanism and human superiority, which is a belief inherent in civilisations, when humans live disconnected from the wild. It is a source of all destruction of the wild. Humanism/human superiority refers to the common belief that humans are superior to all other life forms, and thus we are able to do whatever we wish, with any other creature. (Jensen 2016) In fact, zoos only arose with civilisation, the first zoos being created 5000 years ago. (Jensen 2007) It is this kind of thinking which is why most wildlife is now gone, and 96% of all mammals, by weight, are humans and their livestock. (Carrington 2018) Half of all wildlife has been wiped out in just the last 40 years. (WWF 2018) Zoos are a reflection of human idiocy and cruelty.
Zoos claim to aid the cause of conservation. This is part of their PR and greenwashing. Most zoos do not engage in conservation, many animals will not breed in captivity, genetic diversity is unnaturally low, and most animals that are bred in zoos are kept in zoos or other forms of captivity. (CAPS 2006, Jamieson 1985) Furthermore, the whole notion of “conservation” comes from the humanist/human superiority ideology, in which humans determine that some areas will be for humans only – i.e., cities, which are effectively death zones, from which all of nature has been eradicated – and some areas will be for wildlife and “wilderness”. Conservation is the belief that little pockets of wildlife can thrive while surrounded by ever-growing death zones of human cities, spewing toxic waste, radioactive waste and endless rubbish. The belief in conservation is well-meaning but ultimately a reflection of total ecological ignorance. (Livingston 1991)
Many zoos portray themselves as helping to “educate” youth and the public. It’s true, they do. Zoos do an excellent job teaching:
Zoos teach that humans are superior to the rest of nature.
Zoos teach that only humans do not like to be locked up (and even then, some humans still lock up millions of other humans – in prisons and classrooms, for example).
Zoos teach that animals have no thoughts or feelings.
Zoos teach that humans can do whatever they want to nature.
Zoos teach that nature exists for our entertainment.
Zoos teach that our current way of life is acceptable.
Zoos teach our children to be cruel.
Let us remember that for more than two million years, humans did not create zoos and did not view themselves as superior to other creatures. Humans evolved living among wild animals, treating them with respect and viewing them as kin. Humans regarded all of the natural world as sacred. As Luther Standing Bear of the Lakota explained,
Kinship with all the creatures of the earth, sky and water was a real and active principle. For the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them and so close did some of the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends that in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue.
The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. So he kept his youth close to its softening influence. (McLuhan1971)
This reflects a fundamental element of the Deep Green Bush-School curriculum. In the end, the best way to help animals is to leave them alone and to make every effort to stop this civilisation from destroying all of life on the planet.
What to do instead of going to the zoo:
Allow your child freedom in any natural setting, to explore the trees, plants, bugs, birds and other animals
Take your child camping and hiking
Role model respect for the natural world. For example:
only taking dead wood
thanking trees, plants, and animals when you use or eat them
talking to the trees and animals
Give kids books about nature and that contain photos of animals
Read to them from books about wildlife and nature
Explain to them why you’re not going to the zoo
* The focus here is on zoos and aquariums. But the points made also apply to other forms of abusive animal captivity such as circuses, rodeos, factory farms and any form of animal experimentation and vivisection.
References
Bradshaw, G.A. (2017). Carnivore Minds: Who These Fearsome Animals Really Are. Yale University Press.
CAPS (Captive Animals’ Protection Society). (2006). “Sad Eyes and Empty Lives: The Reality of Zoos”. Retrieved from https://mafiadoc.com/sad-eyes-amp-empty-lives_59ae88d41723ddbec5e2c4a2.html
Carrington, Damian. (2018, May 21). “Humans just 0.01% of all life but have destroyed 83% of wild mammals – study”. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study
Dasgupta, Shreya. (2015, September 9). “Many Animals Can Become Mentally Ill.” BBC Earth. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150909-many-animals-can-become-mentally-ill
Fleming, Nic. (2014, November 11). “Plants Talk to Each Other Using an Internet of Fungus”. BBC Earth. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden-internet
Hribal, Jason. (2011). Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance. AK Press.
Jamieson, Dale. (1985). “Against Zoos”. Retrieved from http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/jamieson01.htm
Jensen, Derrick. (2016). The Myth of Human Supremacy. Seven Stories Press.
Jensen, Derrick. (2007). Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos. Novoice Unheard.
Livingston, John. (1991). The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation. McClelland and Stewart.
McLuhan, T.C., editor. (1971). Touch the Earth: A Self Portrait of Indian Existence. Simon and Schuster.
Sample, Ian. (2008, Dec 12). “Stress and Lack of Exercise are Killing Elephants, Zoos Warned”. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/dec/12/elephants-animal-welfare
Simard, Suzanne. (2016, June). “How Trees Talk to Each Other”. Ted Talks. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_simard_how_trees_talk_to_each_other
Smith, Laura. (2014, June 20). “Zoos Drive Animals Crazy”. Slate. Retrieved from https://slate.com/technology/2014/06/animal-madness-zoochosis-stereotypic-behavior-and-problems-with-zoos.html
Wohlleben, Peter. (2015). The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate. Greystone Books.
WWF. (2018). Living Planet Report – 2018: Aiming Higher. Grooten, M. and Almond, R.E.A.(Eds). Retrieved at http://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/all_publications/living_planet_report_2018/
“Zoos Neither Educate Nor Empower Children”. Freedom for Animals. Retrieved from https://www.freedomforanimals.org.uk/news/zoos-neither-educate-nor-empower-children
In this episode of The Green Flame podcast, we speak with Sakej Ward. 
