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very visibly, very obviously,

but they just keep on doing it.

- Every civilization is defined by hubris,

it's defined by its denial

to recognize that it

lives in a natural world.

As a matter of fact, every

civilization, in its founding lies,

elevates itself above nature,

and claims that it is the

controller of the whole world.

Figure 1

- The first written myth of this culture

is Gilgamesh deforesting the plains

and hillsides of Iraq.

When people think of Iraq,

what's the first thing they normally

think of? Cedar forests so thick

that sunlight never

touches the ground?

That's how it was, prior to the

arrival of this culture.

Clearcuts

So, as a longtime, grassroots,

environmental activist,

and as a creature living in

the thrashing endgame of civilization,

I am intimately acquainted

with the landscape of loss,

and have grown accustomed to

carrying the daily weight of despair.

I've walked clearcuts that

wrap around mountains and

drop into valleys and

climb ridges to fragment

watershed after watershed,

and I've sat, silent,

near empty streams that

two generations ago

were lashed into whiteness

by uncountable salmon

coming home to spawn and die.

- Here in BC, and across North America,

when they do industrial

logging they actually take

and just remove all the trees.

They level everything,

they leave nothing but

stumps and slash piles,

and they burn the slash piles

and they take out all the timber

and what's left is a wasteland,

and it's like they take a rainforest

and turn it into a desert.

That's what a clearcut is.

They use them for pulp;

they export them whole

to the United States and to Japan.

There's not very much milling

that happens anymore in BC,

it's just getting exported for pulp and paper

and fibreboard, and plywood,

and whatever else.

Not a lot of value added.

This tree has been

selected to be cut and

usually the company will only clearcut

but this tree is in what they call

a stream-side selection zone.

That's why they've got it marked blue,

because it's a selection zone.

In a clearcut they don't paint the trees

that they're going to cut down.

They only paint the ones

that they're going to leave.

- There's still a strong push to harvest

as much of the western

red cedar as they can.

They're bringing in huge

helicopters to do that.

And they're high-grading...

...selecting only the really

good, high-quality timber

and leaving the rest laying there...

...in a junk heap.

So, that's why we keep on,

you know, fighting back.

I think the last straw was when

they wanted to log the Valley of Ista

because of its historical and

spiritual significance to our people.

But they log it in spite, you know,

just to make a point

against our resistance, against our

our overall position,

you know, with regard to treaties

or encroachment of industry development

in our territories.

- In a lot of these areas,

like this clearing behind me

up on the hill,

you can see the soil is exposed,

the ultraviolet kills

off all the mosses,

the funguses that hold

the soil together.

When the stumps rot

and the roots die,

then the slopes slide,

and often there's not much regrowth,

there's no regeneration of the forest.

They do some replanting --

it doesn't always work

because there's no soil left:

it washes down into the streams,

it kills the salmon,

it fills up the reservoirs,

it causes all kinds of

flood damage downstream.

- That's terrorism.

Stripping down all the trees,

ripping out all the

trees in the forest...

...and now they're going

to rip out the

guts of the land

looking for copper and gold.

And...

...this has to have some

kind of focus to it...

...to address the

injustice to our people,

the injustice to the land,

to the water,

to the wildlife;

the injustice to the

marine life and the salmon life.

And the injustice to the people

that want to stand up for it.

- When we blocked the road --

these trees are very valuable

and the laws are all profit-driven,

they're all driven

by the corporations,

the police are there

to enforce the

corporations' right to log,

not to enforce our

right to stop them

and protect the ecosystem.

There's so little

that's left of the

old-growth forest like

this that we see on the sides here

that people are putting

their bodies on the line,

they are willing

to make huge sacrifices

to stop the forest from being sacrificed,

and the water,

and the air quality,

and the global climate.

Premise II

Traditional communities do not often

voluntarily give up

or sell the resources

on which their

communities are based

until their communities

have been destroyed.

They also do not

willingly allow their

land-bases to be damaged

so that other resources --

gold, oil, and so on --

can be extracted.

It follows that those who want

the resources will do what they can

to destroy traditional communities.

- Our people, we say, have been

there since time immemorial.

- Prior to invasion

and conquest, colonization,

lands in North America were occupied by

populations of people

that had a profoundly

different relationship with the land.

- They live with the land,

all the ceremonies that have

come up have to do with

celebrating the renewal of seasons and

life and affirming all of that.

- One thing about indigenous peoples is that

there's always the idea

that you have to live

in balance, you know, emotionally,

physically, spiritually,

you have to have balance,

and so this same

philosophy was applied to the

natural world that they lived in.

- The Tolowa, on whose land I now live,

weren't civilized,

they didn't live in cities,

they didn't require the

importation of resources,

they lived in villages, camps...

...and lived there for 12,500 years if

you believe the myths of science.

If you believe the myths of the Tolowa,

they lived there since the beginning of time.

- I think that what we have had in

indigenous societies all along is a very,

kind of, common sense, a very practical

approach to why it's important to

treat the world around you,

the natural world, in a good way.

- Our people never exploited

more than what we needed.

We respect the land,

we respect the animals,

we respect the water,

we respect the air,

the wind, the fire,

all the sacred elements.

And we believe that they all are living,

living things, so...

...I suspect that's the way

it was before contact.

- The stories that we have

about our relationship to each other

and to the land and

to any spiritual aspect,

any deities, arise from our relationship

with the land.

The salmon were considered to be our...

...mentors, caregivers -- lifegivers.

They were equal to us, in fact,

all things that have

form were equal to us.

We weren't about dominating.

- The spiritual relationship

that our peoples had

prior to invasion

with all of creation,

and recognizing that

all beings have a spiritual essence,

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