My dear Babz (daddy) informed me today that it's been about ten days since I posted last. I couldn't actually see him shaking an admonishing finger at me but I could imagine it. So, here I am!
We just started our final course, Rain Forest Ecology. Though the class is interesting I'm definitely starting to check out of the school part of this experience as I start to think more and more about what my life here is going to be like. I have paying-the-bills-and-having-a-good-time-type work lined up for the summer and two solid leads on career-furthering-and-actually-using-my-skills-type work, one lead in Charlotte and one in Skidegate and Old Massett.
I played hookey today and yesterday to attend the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project Joint Review Panel (JRP) in Skidegate. The experience was absolutely incredible. The point of the JRP, at this point in the process, is to hear oral evidence from the Haida and non-Haida residents of the communities that will be affected by the proposed pipeline and, in our case, super tankers in the Hecate Strait. It was two solid days of oral history, personal stories, origin stores, Haida language, songs and prayers. The anxiety and distress about the proposed project is tenable here. The fear and anger in the room was incredible. The idea of a spill in the Hecate and the affect that would have on every single person living on these islands is something the people here cannot allow. Everyone here depends on the ocean for the majority of their food. Fishing, and shellfish and seaweed gathering are major events here. The communities empty when the fish are in season. Actually empty. Businesses close. For days on end. The west beaches of the islands are already occasionally filled with the strange flotsam and jetsam of the shipping lines out in the Pacific. Today I heard a friend tell of a kayaking trip up the west coast during which he found over 150 Thermarest mattresses. Another friend told me there were a couple of months when the beaches, even on the east side, kept washing up left-handed hockey gloves.
It's also very strange to be learning about Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site, the protected area that is the bottom third to a half of Haida Gwaii, an area that let (forced?) the federal government and Haida Nation have agreed to set aside their differences in order to co-manage, and simultaneously know that the government is considering running supertankers on a route that would be profoundly changed by the introduction of any toxic substances. What are we even protecting this for?
I was talking to the professor of our case studies class last night and she made a great point. We've been learning all through this program about the Haida value of Yah'guudang (in English, respect) and she got this funny look on her face and said, "You know, I think if we could just
get this whole respect thing, that would be the end of research. The answers would be so obvious. It wouldn't be 'hey, how much of this toxin can we put in this river without poisoning everything? It would just be 'hey, that's a terrible thing to put in that river cause it might poison stuff.' You know?" This is not some island hippy saying this, this is a woman who describes herself as a scientist (and rightfully so) and told us on first meeting us that there's nothing magical about Haida Gwaii, it's just a place like anywhere else (much to all our horror in our shiny-faced enthusiasm).
What my prof said rang very true for me. Its frustrating, having worked now in several different health fields and learning what I have about natural resources over the past three months. If people would just
think and stop throwing money and economics around like it's going out of style. Just stop and
think about how to do things in an adaptive, place-based,
respect-driven way. Wouldn't we all be better off?
