Author's Note: This piece first appeared at Daily Kos on August 19, 2011, as an entry in the site's "Stop Tar Sands" Blogathon. It is reposted here with minor edits as part of my Scars Upon Sacred Land series. Data and dates refer, of course, to the situation as it stood in 2011, but not much has changed, and indeed, the final public comment period is about to close this Friday night.
I opened the first in my series, Scars Upon Sacred Land, this way:
There is a reason why we refer to the earth as our mother.Many — perhaps most — of our traditional stories and lessons are tied inextricably to the land. Historical, humorous, educational, cautionary; stories of earth and air, fire and water, plants and animals and every living thing; our history, our languages, our cultural and political and spiritual traditions all are bound up with Akii, our Mother Earth, and her children.
The land lives; it is animated by Spirit. It sustains us: physically, spiritually. We are the land, and it is us - and any injury to it injures us all.
And so is our future.
If, that is, we actually have a future.
If the North American tar sands projects are allowed to go forward, the possibility of any future - for the entire planet - is gravely in doubt.
But for the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, it is genocide.
