dispatches from water’s journey

一

i live at the west entrance of a haunted house called canada

whose hungry ghosts, windborn spirits, call us to conscience

when the truth & reconciliation commission arrived

thanks to the concurrent exhibition, net-eth: going out of the darkness

i heard the story of a local artist, a survivor of the residential schools,

who earlier in his life used bullets as lead to draw his art

another artist pointed out that her family’s healing time is different from the trc’s schedule

when i walk the path of the rainway in my neighbourhood, as i did today

i feel the quick press of clock time, monkey mind

the slow depth of stream time, gut strong

the push pull of moon earth, street sky

an imperfect dance can still bring together

the broken, the dead, the scared & the scabbed, the makers & remakers

the children, the elders, the families, the storytellers, the witnesses

we walk this path, aching to heal, somehow

dirtied hands, stumbling feet, agile hearts, determined faces

knowing that reconciliation needs land restoration to ground itself & grow

sometimes faltering yet steadily recovering, we lean into this necessity

rising from the watersheds we become together when we drink from them

underneath all the words, we are one troubled water, learning to heal ourself

二

Close to its headwaters, Staləw, otherwise known as the Fraser River, is clear translucent jade, liquid magic.

Fraser Crossing is the farthest point along the Fraser River that one can reach easily by car, without taking a day’s hike into the Rocky Mountains. I went there on a trip to pay my respects to staləw, which, in its ceaseless flow for roughly twelve million years, has created the landscape on which I live, otherwise known as Vancouver.

At Fraser Crossing, what I found, in addition to the beautiful, burgeoning river, shocked me: a high-pressure petroleum pipeline had been built underneath the river.

There in the so-called “protected wilderness” of Mount Robson Provincial Park, the Trans Mountain Pipeline has already been very busy. In fact, the old 24"-diameter pipeline has been joined by a new 30"- to 36"-diameter pipeline alongside it, accelerating the extraction of oil from the tar sands. The expanded pipeline runs from Hinton, AB to Tete Jaune Cache, BC.

What the river taught me on this trip is that it is in danger from petroleum.

三

travelling with the stalwart Keepers of the Athabasca

we go to learn, to fulfill our responsibilities together

where wild cranberries, blueberries, labrador tea

grow together in the bush alongside five lakes

and a pond of healing waters

at the 2011 Keepers of the Water gathering

hosted by the Northlands Dene First Nation

a small community of less than a thousand Dene people

with huge hospitality, kindness, care

generously welcomed us with bannock and stew

we feasted on campfire caribou and juicy trout

elders spoke of surviving hydro dam destruction,

tar sands, uranium mines, global warming

the need for unity and action

love for sacred water

curious children came, asked questions

an elder said, when i speak of water, i don’t mean

the rivers and lakes, i mean the women

women are water, yes

四

Former World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin famously said that future wars will be fought over water, in the way they’re being fought over oil today. Wars are already being fought over water, in that water scarcity intensifies existing tensions that we might perceive as political or religious from an androcentric lens. But water also presents both an opportunity and a requirement for communities to work together to protect it, and in so doing to simultaneously honour ourselves, our relations to one another. As such, it forms a critical nexus through which to reimagine ourselves and our cultures.

By contemplating the relations and interdependencies that are enacted through water, we can participate in water ethics, walk an inviting path to peace, a way to rethink and address the conflicts and injustices that logically arise when water is conceptualized as an object and commodity to be transported and sold to whichever customer can afford to pay. Grasp it, and it slips through your fingers. Share it wisely, and your communities prosper. Water is our living connector, a gentle yet powerful way to be in relation to one another.