Mâkochî Nîbi Îhonîach (The Land is Close to Death)
On the first page of this issue, Soloman Chiniquay shows a ’70s-era mattress, resting upon a Forest Service Road, lit by the high contrast of midday sun, with a haphazardly folded piece of fabric interrupting a bold red text proclaiming “STOP.” Many Indigenous folks have an embodied understanding of the longstanding history of the government denying sovereign Nations their right to self-determination. Transcending linear time while fighting on the front lines, Indigenous activists portal through resistance movements of the ’90s like the Oka Crisis (1990), the War in the Woods (1993), and the Gustafsen Lake Stand off (1995). All of those resistances were met with intense militarized response. Before the RCMP, there was the North West Mounted Police, who were established in 1870 to control Indigenous people as the “possession” of this land was transferred from the Hudson’s Bay Company to Canada. Within 15 years of being established, the police would wage a war against Louis Riel’s Rebellion in 1885, after he seized Batoche. The police’s immiseration of Indigenous people is seeded into this nation’s foundation.
The Ada’itsx/Fairy Creek Blockade, which started in the summer of 2020 and seeks to protect the many old-growth trees that meet British Columbia’s regulated threshold of being a minimum of 250 years old, has been no different. This action of civil unrest, now the most longstanding in this country, is situated in the which have been tended who have harvested in respectful, considerate, and reciprocal ways for as long as can be remembered. This knowledge is now guided by elders and cultural keepers who abide by the ancestral protocols of the . This watershed is entirely intact, but under threat by private timber harvesting and lumber manufacturing company Teal-Jones, leading to immense outcry from many who have gone on to volunteer their time to protect this sacred forest—these Douglas firs, western red cedars, and Sitka spruces—which in turn protects us from an increasingly unwieldy climate.
