Editors note: The Columbia River has been turned into a slave of civilization, forced to provide hydroelectricity, barge transport, and irrigation water to cities and big agribusiness. It is shackled in concrete and dying from dams, from overfishing, from toxins, from nuclear waste, from acoustic barrages and armored shorelines and logging and endless atrocities.
We at Deep Green Resistance do not believe that the federal government will accede to demands such as these. Furthermore, there are thousands of dams currently under construction or proposed worldwide. There are millions of dams in the “United States.” The salmon, the Orca whales—they have no time to waste. Everything is heading in the wrong direction. Therefore, we call for a militant resistance movement around the world to complement aboveground resistance movements and to dismantle industrial infrastructure.
Featured image: The Columbia River is constrained by Bonneville Dam, and bracketed by clearcuts, highways, and utility corridors. Public domain.
Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation
On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, October 14, 2019, the Yakama Nation and Lummi Nation hosted a press conference urging the removal of the lower Columbia River dams as part of a broader call for federal repudiation of the offensive doctrine of Christian discovery, which the United States uses to justify federal actions that impair the rights of Native Nations. The press conference took place this morning at Celilo Park near Celilo Village, Oregon.
“The false religious doctrine of Christian discovery was used by the United States to perpetuate crimes of genocide and forced displacement against Native Peoples. The Columbia River dams were built on this false legal foundation, and decimated the Yakama Nation’s fisheries, traditional foods, and cultural sites,” said Yakama Nation Tribal Council Chairman JoDe Goudy. “On behalf of the Yakama Nation and those things that cannot speak for themselves, I call on the United States to reject the doctrine of Christian discovery and immediately remove the Bonneville Dam, Dalles Dam, and John Day Dam.”
The doctrine of Christian discovery is the fiction that when Christian European monarchs obtained what was for them new knowledge of the Western Hemisphere, those monarchs had a religious right of domination over all non-Christian lands. This doctrine was propagated by the Roman Catholic Church through a series of papal bulls in the 15th century, including a papal bull authorizing Portugal to “invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans” and to place them into perpetual slavery and take their property. The Roman Catholic Church then implemented a framework where the right to subjugate the Americas was split between Spain and Portugal, although they were later joined by other European states. The doctrine was therefore one of domination and dehumanization of Native Peoples, and was used to perpetuate the most widespread genocide in human history.
In 1823, the United States Supreme Court used the doctrine of Christian discovery as the legal basis for the United States’ exercise of authority over Native lands and Peoples. See Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543 (1823). The Court found that the United States holds clear title to all Native lands subject only to the Native Nation’s right of occupancy, which the United States can terminate through purchase or conquest. In relying on the doctrine of Christian discovery, the Court described it as “the principle that discovery gave title to the government . . . against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession.” Id. at 573. The Court used this religious doctrine of domination and dehumanization to unilaterally deprive Native Nations of their sovereign rights, racially juxtaposing the rights of “Christian peoples” against those “heathens” and “fierce savages.” Id. at 577, 590.
In the years that followed, this false religious doctrine became the bedrock for what are now considered to be foundational principles of federal Indian law. In United States v. Kagama, 188 U.S. 375 (1886), and Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. 553 (1903), the Court announced Congress’ extra-constitutional plenary power over all Indian affairs—the plenary power doctrine — which it justified by pointing to Native Nations’ loss of sovereign, diplomatic, economic, and property rights upon first ‘discovery’ by Europeans. In The Cherokee Tobacco, 78 U.S. 616 (1870), the Court applied the doctrine and held that Congress can unilaterally abrogate Treaty rights with subsequent legislation unless there is an express exemption provided in the Treaty—the last-in- time doctrine. In Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191 (1978), the Court deprived Native Nations of criminal jurisdiction over non-members based on the statement in M’Intosh that Native Nations’ rights “to complete sovereignty, as independent nations, were necessarily diminished” by European ‘discovery’ — the diminished tribal sovereignty doctrine. These legal doctrines have been weaponized against Native Nations ever since, including by Congress in authorizing construction of the Bonneville Dam, Dalles Dam, and John Day Dam without the Yakama Nation’s free, prior, and informed consent.
The history of the lower Columbia River dams can be traced back to 1792, when United States Merchant Robert Gray sailed up our N’chi’Wana (Columbia River) and claimed the territory for the United States. Mr. Gray entered our lands and performed a religious doctrine of discovery ceremony by raising an American flag and burying coins beneath the soil, thereby proclaiming dominion over our lands and our families without our knowledge or consent. Following the War of 1812, the United States and England falsely claimed joint authority over what became known as the Oregon Territory until 1846, when England relinquished its claim south of the 49th parallel. Having eliminated British opposition, Congress passed the Oregon Territorial Act of 1848 and the Washington Territorial Act of 1853. Both Territorial Acts reserve the United States’ claim to the sole right to treat with Native Nations, thereby maintaining the federal government’s doctrine of Christian discovery-based claims.
At the Walla Walla Treaty Council in May and June of 1855, the Yakama Nation’s ancestors met with United States representatives to negotiate the Treaty with the Yakamas of June 9, 1855. Article III, paragraph 2 of the Treaty reserves the Yakama Nation’s “right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places . . .” including many places throughout the Columbia River basin. At no point during these negotiations did the United States express a claimed right of dominion over the Yakama Nation’s traditional lands that would allow the United States to unilaterally ignore the Treaty. Territorial Governor Isaac I. Stevens did not explain that the United States would dam the rivers and violate the Yakama Nation’s Treaty-reserved fishing rights without the Yakama Nation’s free, prior, and informed consent.
What followed was a 100-year conquest of the Columbia River by the United States. First, the United States Supreme Court paved the way by affirming federal regulatory authority over navigable waterways like the Columbia River in Gilman v. Philadelphia, 70 U.S. 713 (1866), and Congress’ extra-constitutional plenary authority over Indian affairs in United States v. Kagama, 188 U.S. 375 (1886). Congress then exercised this supposed authority by passing a series of legislative acts without the Yakama Nation’s consent, including Rivers and Harbors Acts, Right of Way Acts, the General Dams Act, the Federal Water Power Act, and the Bonneville Project Act, all of which facilitated construction of the lower Columbia River dams without regard for the Yakama Nation’s Treaty-reserved rights.
During the Depression, Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act authorizing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to approve public works projects like the Bonneville Dam. Construction started in 1933, but President Roosevelt’s approval of the project was quickly deemed unconstitutional in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935). The authorization was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority from Congress to the President. It should have been deemed unconstitutional under the United States Constitution’s Supremacy Clause — which says the Treaty of 1855 is the “supreme law of the land” — because it was inconsistent with the rights reserved to the Yakama Nation by Treaty. Any argument to the contrary is an argument that Congress has plenary power over Indian affairs rooted in the false religious doctrine of Christian discovery.
Congress quickly re-approved the Bonneville Dam’s construction, which was completed in 1938. The Dalles Dam was built from 1952 to 1957, and the John Day Dam was built from 1968 to 1972. The Yakama Nation, as co-equal sovereign and signatory to the Treaty of 1855, never approved the construction of these dams. They inundated the villages, burial grounds, fishing places, and ceremonial sites that we used since time immemorial. Celilo Falls was the trading hub for Native Peoples throughout the northwest. The United States detonated it with explosives and drowned it with the Dalles Dam. After the Dalles Dam’s construction had already started, the United States negotiated an insignificant settlement with the Yakama Nation for the damage caused by the Dam. This was domination and coercion, not consent.
Today, the lower Columbia River dams stand as physical monuments to the domination and dehumanization that the United States continues to impose on Native Nations under the false religious doctrine of Christian discovery. “Columbus Day is a federal holiday celebrating the Christian-European invasion of our lands under the colonial doctrine of Christian discovery. Today, the Yakama Nation rejects that narrative by celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day and calling on the United States to remove the lower Columbia River dams that were built without our consent using the same false religious doctrine,” said Chairman Goudy.
Image by Tim Gouw (example of a purely symbolic action)
by Liam Campbell
Most Deep Green Resistance Cadre are more experienced than me, but I’ve had my fair share of action; having spent around 17 years attending and organising activist actions, ranging from anti-war protests to anti-fracking blockades, I’ve seen a wide range of tactics and outcomes.
I’ve followed Extinction Rebellion closely over the last few months, especially in Ireland, and I think it plays an important role in the broader ecosystem of environmental activism. Mass mobilisation is important because it builds public awareness, reduces public backlash against radical activism, and provides a recruiting ground for more assertive tactics (e.g. monkeywrenching). Although I understand why some radical ecologists refuse to engage with these sorts of groups, I personally think they’re worth actively supporting so long as the investments are made with nuance, patience, strategy.
Today I joined the Extinction Rebellion events in Dublin, out of a combination of genuine support for mass mobilisation efforts, and also to analyse the actions, police response, and public reactions.
Although I have clear critiques about their specific organising tactics, I’d like to step back and provide analysis at a strategic level because I think there’s one major issue that needs to be pointed out: the differences between symbolic and pragmatic actions.
Eric Oliver, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, has made staggeringly relevant observations about the difference between “intuitionists” and “rationalists.” Although his research focuses on their interactions with conspiracy theories, I think his findings broadly apply to many forms of political activism. In summary: humans fall into a spectrum between rationalists, who make decisions based primarily on facts and logic, and intuitionists, who make decisions based on feelings and symbolism. Neither group is inherently good or bad, but they view the world through profoundly different lenses. Professor Oliver estimates that strong intuitionists outnumber strong rationalists by about 2-to-1 in the United States.
What is a symbolicaction? In Ireland the government is currently making important budgetary decisions, so Extinction Rebellion’s Dublin activists decided to occupy the front gate of the parliament (Dáil). In terms of measurable outcomes, this achieved essentially nothing because the members of government were still able to leave through the back door, and it was a poor choice of location due to low visibility and low foot traffic. However, it was the most obvious symbolic target because the building represents the government’s key decisionmakers. Choosing this target came at a significant pragmatic cost (i.e. lost momentum) but it created the clearest narrative (i.e. we’re blockading the uncooperative government).
What is a pragmatic action? When an action has a specific, measurable outcome, it is pragmatic. It doesn’t matter if the objective is to increase the number of participants in a march, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or deprive an opponent of a specific resource — the action remains pragmatic so long as it produces measureable and clearly defineable outcomes within a time limit.
Ideal actions are both symbolic and pragmatic but, if forced to choose between a strictly pragmatic or an entirely symbolic action, I would choose the pragmatic option because at least it’s measureable and if it’s successful its momentum can generally be redirected toward more symbolically effective actions.
“So what else could we do?” someone asked me today, while we were discussing the purely symbolic action at hand. The most obvious answer was to move protesters to a more visible location, rather than being quarantined on a street with so little foot traffic and external visibility. This would have been more pragmatic because we would have entered the consciousness of measurably more people. My second response was to suggest that it would be more effective to focus on blocking traffic at key intersections, which would likely cause citywide traffic jams, further increasing public awareness of climate change and feeding social media debates; these are also measurable through traffic reports and social activity (which I was measuring and noticed were mostly unaffected by today’s symbolic actions).
Having thought about it more, I’ve identified additional options:
March through the large university, which was 2 blocks away, while students were leaving their classes. Encouraging people to join would probably have yielded a meaningful increase in the number of active participants.
March through the large and densely crowded shopping street, essentially guaranteeing social media acitivity from both casual shoppers and also people who video record the many buskering musicians.
Occupy one of the large, indoor shopping malls. There was concern about harming local businesses, but these shopping malls are almost exclusively run by fast fashion and ecologically exploitative multinationals, and even a brief occupation would have yielded immense public attention.
Rig a sound system to something with wheels and turn it into a mobile dance party through the busiest streets in town.
March onto, or near, the field of the nationally televised rugby game at the massive stadium, which was happening around the same time.
Split into groups of 10-20 with flags and walk around town handing out information and inviting people to join the week ahead.
Most of the above approaches are less symbolic than sitting on a quiet intersection outside the parliamentary building, but I suspect they would have yielded more measureable outcomes and resulted in more momentum leading into the next 5 days of action. From my perspective, it’s better to focus on building momentum, awareness, and numbers during the beginning of an escalating week of activism — save primarily symbolic actions for when momentum has reached its peak.
We are thrilled & honored to announce that Prairie Protection Colorado and Deep Green Resistance are bringing Derrick Jensen & Lierre Keith to Denver, Colorado on Sunday, Oct 6, 12:30 pm Mountain Time, 18:30 UTC.
Video will be available after the event on our YouTube page as well.
Derrick Jensen
Derrick Jensen is a leading voice of cultural dissent. He explores the nature of injustice, how civilizations devastate the natural world, and how human beings retreat into denial at the destruction of the planet.
Derrick has authored 27 books and counting including The Myth of Human Supremacy, Endgame Volume 1 & 2, The Culture of Make Believe and A Language Older than Words. He co-authored the book, Deep Green Resistance, inspiring people from all over the world to resist the systemic insanity of those who are killing the planet.
Lierre Keith is an acclaimed writer, radical feminist, food activist, and environmentalist. Her work centers on civilization’s violence to the earth, male violence against women and the need for serious resistance to both. Her book The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability has been called “the most important ecological book of this generation.” She co-authored the book, Deep Green Resistance, inspiring people from all over the world to resist the systemic insanity of those who are killing the planet.
Dr. Gail Dines is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Wheelock College in Boston. She’s the author of multiple books and articles, and has been described as the world’s leading expert on the effects of pornography.
She’s the author of the highly acclaimed Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality (Beacon Press); and co-editor of Gender, Race, and Class in Media. Translated into four languages, Pornland is the basis of a documentary released this fall by Media Education Foundation.
Dr Dines is president and CEO of Culture Reframed, a non-profit organization composed of academics, professionals and activists from a wide range of perspectives, that is dedicated to raising public awareness about the impact of pornography on children, youth and adults. If you want to know much more about her work, you can go to her website, www.gaildines.com.
“Stand with me. Stand and fight. I am one, and we would be two. Two more might join and we would be four. When four more join we will be eight. We will be eight people fighting whom others will join. And then more people. And more. Stand and fight.” —Derrick Jensen
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Deep Green Resistance is a radical environmental movement, dedicated to shifting activists towards strategies that have a real chance to stop the murder of the planet. Our allegiance is first and foremost to the land around us; we fight for the salmon, the pine trees, and the songbirds, not the solar panels and space shuttles so many ‘environmentalists’ have fallen in love with. We in DGR don’t want a more sustainable nightmare. We want a living world.
Deep Green Resistance recognizes that industrial civilization is incompatible with life on this planet – and when our way of living conflicts with the needs of the land, our way of living must go. This transition to a healthy and just relationship with the natural world is a massive undertaking, one that won’t be achieved with individual lifestyle changes and a green coat of paint on the latest mountain-killing mining rig. Real change will take a revolutionary heart. Anything less is a recipe for failure.
Deep Green Resistance has a roadmap for that revolution. We call it Decisive Ecological Warfare. We’ve studied the most successful movements in history, from the Irish Republicans to Mandela’s Umkhonto we Sizwe, and applied the lessons they can teach us to the fight for Earth liberation. Our goal as aboveground activists is to promote this strategic resistance, with the goal of triggering cascading systems failure within industrial infrastructure. In this mission, we are guided by a strict code of conduct, a steering committee of seasoned revolutionaries, and, most of all, an unwavering dedication to the land on which we live.
HOW CAN I HELP?
In the midst of all this destruction, it’s easy to feel hopeless. But there’s one nice thing about living in such dark times – anywhere you look, there’s great work to be done. Deep Green Resistance isn’t afraid to make the connections between open-pit mining and police brutality, between rape and deforestation, between acidified oceans and settler colonialism. We are proud anti-capitalists, anti-racists, and radical feminists, with members working on everything from pornography and prostitution to indigenous land rights and prison reform.
Whether on the front lines or behind the scenes, there is room for you in this war. So get in touch! We have members across the globe and resources in multiple languages. Head to our website, check our Facebook, or send us an email and introduce yourself. We’ll help you learn more about DGR, find opportunities for volunteering, and apply for greater involvement. You’ll also be able to download a free ebook copy of the Deep Green Resistance book.
DGR is working to create a life-centered resistance movement that will dismantle industrial civilization by any means necessary. In order to succeed, we’ll need teachers, healers, warriors, and workers. If you’re tired of the false solutions and the feel-good failures, Deep Green Resistance is for you, whatever your skills. In a fight like this, we need it all.
Remember: Deep Green Resistance is an aboveground organization, meaning we don’t engage in violence or property destruction. If you feel your talents would best be put to use in more militant actions, please do not contact us. This will keep you safer, and help us be more effective. We will not answer any questions related to any underground that may or may not exist.
“Our best hope will never lie in individual survivalism. Nor does it lie in small groups doing their best to prepare for the worst. Our best and only hope is a resistance movement that is willing to face the scale of the horrors, gather our forces, and fight like hell for all we hold dear.”
“Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation.” — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation
Reality prevailed on Earth for untold millions of years. Base elements, microbes, algae, fungi, animals, and plants, they existed in complex and changing configurations; these variations of life were deeply rooted in an objective, singular reality. For our ancestors, an apple was an apple, it existed independently and without symbolic constraints or meaning. Then we invented language, possibly the first true simulation, which allowed us to invoke the idea of an apple without the presence of one. This abstract concept of an apple became an amalgamation of all of our individual and cultural experiences of a thing, and the idea of an apple could only exist in relationship to other concepts of “not apple.” Baudrillard called this phenomenon a “simulacrum,” which is a representation or an imitation of a thing.
For a long time, our simulacra were rudimentary and poor imitations of reality. No matter how many words we invented to describe an apple, our simulation remained unconvincing and easily distinguishable from the real thing. As our skill at painting progressed we managed to produce visually convincing simulacra of apples, but they still smelled like paint and were inedible. As our understanding of chemistry advanced we discovered chemicals which smell like our shared conception of an apple, allowing us to convince both our eyes and noses, but the simulacrum of the apple remained unconvincing to our other senses. Now, through genetic engineering, we have reached the point where we can create a simulation of an apple which is not a “real” apple, it is an imitation based on our idealistic conception of the idea of an apple. This is hyperreality, an inability to distinguish between reality and a simulation, and it permeates almost every aspect of our postmodern experience.
In his seminal work, Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard proposes that hyperreality unfolds in four stages:
Reasonably accurate images or copies of reality. For example: photography used to faithfully document real scenes from a war.
Perversion of reality where images or copies of reality appear to be the real thing, but actually create a false impression of reality. For example: a photograph which accidentally appears to make an innocent person look guilty.
Obstruction of reality where images or copies intentionally mask or obscure reality. For example: a photograph where a government intentionally fabricates an event in order to manufacture consent.
Complete simulacrum where it becomes impossible to differentiate between reality and simulation because the simulacra are absolutely convincing and permeate every aspect of life. At this stage, it is unnecessary to intentionally obscure reality because people give up the pursuit of objective reality as an overly sentimental notion and an exercise in futility.
Baudrillard argues that most of us have entered into the last stage, that of complete simulacrum, because we are indoctrinated from birth to perceive things as more than they are. Upon seeing an apple, we immediately think of the asbtract concept of “apples,” we think of our cultural relationships with that concept, and then we relate that concept to all similar or dissimilar concepts. Moreover, many of us have only experienced genetically modified apples, so even our sensory comprehension of “apples” is based on simulacra.
From this perspective, we have become profoundly and potentially irrevocably detached from objective reality. Although we can make decisions which will lead us closer to, or farther away from, objective reality, we can never return to a state of complete alignment. Our current trajectory is leading us into an extreme form of simulacrum where our experiences detach entirely from any connection to reality — even our most intimate personal relationships are increasingly shaped through lenses of reality television, consumerism, counseling, and commodification. How will we know when we have fully detached from the real? Baudrillard, even in the 1980s, made a strong case for the argument that we long ago crossed that threshold.
Today, objective reality is forcing itself back into our consciousness in the form of climate and ecological collapse. Our collective decisions to manufacture and inhabit hyperreality have detached us from the systems which are cannibalised to sustain our fantasies. Today’s children are as likely to believe that eggs come from grocery stores as chickens, and even the average adult has no conception whatsoever that their favourite chocolate spread is produced from the charred bones of orangutans. Baudrillard points out that, in previous cultures, animals were often ritualistically killed before being eaten; although this act may seem cruel, on the surface, it reminds people that the animal was a living thing and that some degree of cruelty was involved in converting that life into meat. By contrast, most industrialised humans are so far removed from the realities of their consumerism that they view meat as an asbtraction, little more than a commodity which has no history before having been selected among other pieces of plastic-wrapped meat from a refrigerator. Indeed, hyperreality has advanced so far that there are now convincing simulacra of meat, made up of the same material, but having never lived at all. Does this avert the suffering and absolve us of cruelty, or does it merely obscure the cruelty under increasingly abstract layers of exploitative farming, native species annihilation, and habitat destruction?
At some point these increasingly sophisticated delusions will crash down around us; possibly as a result of ecosystem collapse, or maybe we will become so dehumanised that we will simply choose to cease to exist for lack of any sense of meaning. It does seem like the further we depart from our basis in objective reality, the more dissatisfied we become with our own existence. For the time being we fill that growing void with additional consumption, but it’s inclear whether we’re motivated more by an amibition to achieve some fantastical outcome, or if we’re simply afraid to die and willing to abandon any sense of meaning in exchange for delaying death or physical by a few more years. What’s evident, at least to me, is that our lives are technologically advanced but culturally backward.
Featured image: “Smog, Salt Lake Valley, and Wasatch Mountains” by Max Wilbert, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
I want to give up. Each morning the headlines are heavier and my heart buckles under the load. A United Nations report, prepared by 145 experts from 50 countries, warns that one million of the planet’s eight million species are threatened with extinction by humans. This comes after a recent report by the Living Planet Index and the World Wildlife Fund which reveals that, since 1970, 60 percent of all vertebrate wildlife has been destroyed. The outlook is grim for invertebrate wildlife, too. Groundbreaking research describes how flying insect populations fell by 75 percent in just 27 years in Germany, prompting scientists to declare: “The insect apocalypse is here.”
The bad news globally reflects my bad news personally. I am an environmental lawyer. I became a lawyer because I saw law as a tool to wield in the service of life. I’ve devoted my career to protecting what’s left of the natural world.
It isn’t working.
Not long ago, I helped to file the first-ever federal lawsuit seeking rights of nature for a major ecosystem, the Colorado River. Despite the fact that nearly 40 million humans and countless non-humans depend on the Colorado River for fresh water, the Colorado River is one of the most abused rivers in the world. We filed the lawsuit hoping to gain meaningful protections for the river as a major source of life in the region. In response, the Colorado Attorney General threatened us with financial and ethical sanctions if we didn’t withdraw the lawsuit because our argument that the Colorado River should have similar rights to those possessed by the corporations destroying her was, according to the AG, “frivolous.”
I’m currently involved in helping citizens of Toledo, Ohio, defend a rights of nature law for Lake Erie from attack by agricultural interests. The law, titled the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, was drafted by citizens of Toledo after their tap water was shut off in 2014 due to a poisonous harmful algae bloom. These blooms are fed by phosphorus in manure run-off primarily produced by corporate agricultural operations. The Lake Erie Bill of Rights, which was enacted through one of the most directly democratic processes available to American citizens – a citizen initiative process – was passed with 61 percent of the vote. Without regard to the clear expression of political will expressed by 61 percent of the Toledoans who voted for the law, the City of Toledo agreed to a court order preventing the City from enforcing the law. And, the grassroots organization who ushered the law through the initiative process has been denied the ability to intervene to argue on behalf of Lake Erie in both the federal district court and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Lake Erie Bill of Rights, despite all the effort put into its passage, will, almost certainly, be invalidated without ever going into effect.
More and more, I realize the change we so badly need is unlikely to ever come through the legal system. Sure, we sometimes succeed in delaying destructive projects when corporations make a mistake in filing their permit applications. But they always correct the mistake and the destruction continues. Yes, we sometimes succeed in protecting an endangered species from the most direct threats to their survival. But we have not alleviated the global processes, like climate change and human overpopulation, that will likely spell endangered species’ long-term doom. True, we have brought a growing awareness of ecological collapse to the general public. But awareness is a primarily mental affair happening within human heads while environmental issues are physical problems happening in the real world and they require physical, not mental, solutions.
Despair pushes me into my backyard where a small voice within me, growing increasingly louder, tells me to give up. When the problems are so big and the vast majority of people simply don’t care, the voice demands, why are you struggling so hard to fight back?
The Wasatch Mountains, looming in the west above the Heber Valley where I live, help me keep that nagging voice at bay. Across most of the world, the horizon is boundless. When burdens are too much to bear, you may spill your consciousness across the landscape. You can let your mind run to that place, always pleasantly just out of reach, where land meets sky. You can let your thoughts slip down the perpetual curve of Mother Earth’s body where you can lose your anxieties in her vastness.
But, not in my backyard. The Wasatch Mountains hold my soul in place. They won’t let me hide. They stand high and proud, displaying their injuries. I never doubted, but the mountains pull my spirit like Thomas’ fingers into Christ’s wounds. Roads slice across the mountains’ shoulders. Swathes of forest, clear-cut by ski resorts for ski runs, are lacerations that stripe the backs of the flogged. Bare stone, where snow was snatched away by climate change, is flayed skin. In my backyard, to witness the Wasatch Mountains is to ache.
Mountains speak. To listen, you must be as the mountains are: patient, persistent, still. If you try, you might hear, as John Muir did, the mountains calling. They call on us to be strong, to stand proud and resolute, to resist environmental destruction like the mountains resist the roadbuilders, the clear-cutters, and the miners. They’re calling on us to resist ecocide like mountains resist the geologic forces trying to drag them down. We have suffered, the mountains explain. We will continue to suffer until this madness stops. Yet, still we rise.
As massive as they are, the mountains’ wounds are only a fraction of the planet’s. Yes, the bad news piles up. The horrors intensify. The voice urging me to quit amplifies. But, with the Wasatch Mountains’ help, until all of Earth’s festering wounds have healed and only scars remain, I will not quit. I will do as the mountains do. I will rise and fight.
