Naming:
One of the fundamental rights that people have is the ability to name where they live. Last fall, Canada Post, with no consultation, changed my post office address from what it had been for thirty years, Boswell, to a new address, Kuskanook.
And even though this is a small change, and with no big impact on my life, I found it irritating. So lately, I have been examining why this arbitrary address change disturbs me so much.
I am a Canadian writer, a university professor and an academic researcher. And, I am also a lifelong organic farmer on the East Shore of Kootenay Lake in south-eastern BC. I have written a number of books set around Kootenay Lake. I have also written a memoir about my life growing up here on our beautiful farm on the East Shore. In all of these books, I have referred to the area where I live and where our farm is, as Boswell. When I go on book tours or travel to teach, I tell people I live in Boswell. No one knows where it is, of course, so then I happily explain that Boswell is more a concept than a place, a thirty mile long community where everyone is your next-door neighbour. Interestingly Boswell got its name from Earl Grey making a literary reference to Samuel Johnson, who wrote a book called, the Life of Boswell.
So being a Boswellian, born and bred, is a big part of my identity as a person and also as a writer. Sense of place and sense of ecological identity, is also an important area of my research.
On the other hand, the name, Kuskanook, (or Kuskonook) has never played much of a role in our collective community identity, either historically, geographically, or currently.
Kuskanook, for me, was the place where my beloved friend for my whole life, Alan Wilson, was born, grew up and then died tragically from brain cancer. His house and his parent's house are gone now -- buried under a mud slide. So Kuskanook is now identified by most people in the broader region as a place with a boat ramp and a beach. It’s not seen by anyone as a name for a region, nor is it a name that is used by people, local and otherwise for our area. And in fact, historically, it never has been use, as a generic regional name or a 'civic' (As Canada Post terms it) name, for our area. Why Canada Post has suddenly decided I live in “Kuskanook” and where they got such information is a complete mystery to me.
In the last few years, as more people have moved here, Boswell, as a regional description of a place, has begun to acquire specific place names within itself, Armstrong Bay, Kootenay Bay, Sanca Park (Sanka?), Destiny Bay, Mountain Shores. Traditionally, all of us have been served by the Boswell Post Office, we go to the Boswell Community Hall for wonderful dinners, and a few years ago, we all celebrated the 100th Anniversary of the community of Boswell.
But last November, Canada Post, and the Regional District, together or separately, it's not clear which, designated a post office name change for our community, with no community input or opportunity for reaction, which strikes me as an oddly undemocratic way to make such a change.
Since then, despite many people emailing and phoning both Canada Post and the Regional District asking for a community meeting or an opportunity to at least have their say but so far, nothing has been done.
So what bothers me is two things; the arbitrariness of this change, that it was done with no community input, but also the fact that someone from far away with no knowledge of this place and obviously little understanding of the nature of this community, has decided what it will be called.
The issue is about community identity and our sense of where we live and our right to name our place for ourselves and to each other, and to our friends and business colleagues.
Our farm is a bit of a community hub; people come here to garden, to take writing classes, to swim with our family, to visit, to buy books, to have dinners and lunches and partake of other events. And to all of these people, I say, and will continue to say, "Oh, yes, I'm in Boswell."
I would very much appreciate a community meeting to discuss all this and have asked for one, but the silence from Canada Post around the name change, and the community reaction to it, has continued.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Farmer Politics
Farmer Politics:
I still haven’t given up my faith in democracy or even in the common sense of most human beings. But I also find it increasingly difficult to feel as if I have a political home or even much in common with most of the political rhetoric being thrown around these days. I don’t fit into any of the slots that politics or the media think people like me should be slotted into. And I have no one party to vote for with which I entirely agree.
On any given day, I can wear any number of occupational hats; farmer, writer, teacher, mother, grandmother, cook, bottle washer. And, I can wear any number of political labels, none of which quite fit, but all of which fit some of the time, radical, feminist, environmentalist, redneck, conservative, anarchist, socialist, right-wing, left-wing, ranter, crank. None of them mean very much and some aspects of some varieties of political ideology apply to me only some of the time. And in fact, I am pretty much allergic to any forms of ideology.
In part, because I am a farmer, and because it is how I was raised, and because these ideas make sense to me, I value independence, honesty, strength, endurance, caring for the land, and caring for others. I want to live my own life on my own terms, be responsible for myself, and be free to take the risks I think I want or need to take. I want to raise my own food and be free to share or sell this food to my friends and neighbours. I believe in taking care of my family, my friends and my community. I believe in sharing, in cooperation and in independence. Those things go together.
When my brothers and sister and I were small, we took all kinds of chances that would be frowned on, forbidden, regulated and banned today. We were wild kids. We had matches, guns, hatchets, knives, fishing rods, and boats. We ran loose in the woods. We lit fires, we went swimming on our own right after eating, we hunted, fished, drove tractors, climbed enormous fruit trees, ran barefoot all summer, and worked our guts out. No one ever showed us how to do things; we learned by doing. Our father’s simple words to us were, “You see, you do.”
I think kids need time alone in the woods. I think they need independence, they need to learn to work, and they need to learn to survive. Survival and endurance are learned skills.
Generousity and caring for others is also learned.
As a farmer, I also think small entrepreneurial businesses are great. They are the backbone of small communities.
But big multi-national corporations are not ‘businesses’; they are something else entirely, something destructive and demonstrably uncaring of ordinary people’s lives and of non-human lives.
My parents were small business people. They survived by selling what they grew; meat, milk, eggs, butter, chickens, fruit and vegetables. Almost all of what my parents did would be illegal today. And yet, they fed themselves and their kids, and they fed their neighbours. They had simple values of hard work and friendship. But my parents weren’t conservative. My father was born in Saskatchewan, the birthplace of social caring in Canada. My parents voted NDP all their lives. When my father worked at the mine in Riondel, he was a union man, as were all the miners. Otherwise, they would have been forced to work for peanuts in unsafe conditions by mine owners that cared nothing for their lives. We were always poor but this poverty was not frightening because we ate so well and we had an arrogant sense of our own individuality. I’ve been poor my whole life and what for me, is frightening, is not poverty but lack of being able to do anything about it. What is even more frightening is being so afraid of poverty that I give up my sense of my true self.
But these days, the media and whatever powers seek to control our lives want to put us all in little slots. If you’re pro business and pro-family, then somehow you are also pro giant corporations and pro right wing religious patriarchy and anti-taxation and pro-religion.
No, thanks. I am pro-family and pro-small business and pro-independence and pro society taking care of people who need help and pro-my community. I am also pro-clean air and clean water and wild animals and above all, I am pro-honesty.
And I don’t care what religious beliefs someone has as long as I don’t have to hear about them. And I care far more about how they behave toward other humans and other non-humans than I do about what they believe. I don’t mind paying taxes for schools and health care and roads. I do mind paying taxes for huge corporations that don’t need subsidies, for stupid wars in foreign countries that achieve nothing, for more and more regulations and inspectors and bureaucrats with nothing much to do but complicate people’s lives.
Human beings and non-human beings are facing enormous challenges of many, many kinds. More than ever, people need to be able to speak their minds or write their minds without fear of reprisal. They need to do this is in a caring, mannerly way. They need to do this with honest information, not information that is slanted to make them believe one thing or another.
I’m not right wing, left wing or in the middle of anything. I am just out here in the woods, living a semi-independent farmer’s life, going for long walks and trying to make sense out of it all.
I still haven’t given up my faith in democracy or even in the common sense of most human beings. But I also find it increasingly difficult to feel as if I have a political home or even much in common with most of the political rhetoric being thrown around these days. I don’t fit into any of the slots that politics or the media think people like me should be slotted into. And I have no one party to vote for with which I entirely agree.
On any given day, I can wear any number of occupational hats; farmer, writer, teacher, mother, grandmother, cook, bottle washer. And, I can wear any number of political labels, none of which quite fit, but all of which fit some of the time, radical, feminist, environmentalist, redneck, conservative, anarchist, socialist, right-wing, left-wing, ranter, crank. None of them mean very much and some aspects of some varieties of political ideology apply to me only some of the time. And in fact, I am pretty much allergic to any forms of ideology.
In part, because I am a farmer, and because it is how I was raised, and because these ideas make sense to me, I value independence, honesty, strength, endurance, caring for the land, and caring for others. I want to live my own life on my own terms, be responsible for myself, and be free to take the risks I think I want or need to take. I want to raise my own food and be free to share or sell this food to my friends and neighbours. I believe in taking care of my family, my friends and my community. I believe in sharing, in cooperation and in independence. Those things go together.
When my brothers and sister and I were small, we took all kinds of chances that would be frowned on, forbidden, regulated and banned today. We were wild kids. We had matches, guns, hatchets, knives, fishing rods, and boats. We ran loose in the woods. We lit fires, we went swimming on our own right after eating, we hunted, fished, drove tractors, climbed enormous fruit trees, ran barefoot all summer, and worked our guts out. No one ever showed us how to do things; we learned by doing. Our father’s simple words to us were, “You see, you do.”
I think kids need time alone in the woods. I think they need independence, they need to learn to work, and they need to learn to survive. Survival and endurance are learned skills.
Generousity and caring for others is also learned.
As a farmer, I also think small entrepreneurial businesses are great. They are the backbone of small communities.
But big multi-national corporations are not ‘businesses’; they are something else entirely, something destructive and demonstrably uncaring of ordinary people’s lives and of non-human lives.
My parents were small business people. They survived by selling what they grew; meat, milk, eggs, butter, chickens, fruit and vegetables. Almost all of what my parents did would be illegal today. And yet, they fed themselves and their kids, and they fed their neighbours. They had simple values of hard work and friendship. But my parents weren’t conservative. My father was born in Saskatchewan, the birthplace of social caring in Canada. My parents voted NDP all their lives. When my father worked at the mine in Riondel, he was a union man, as were all the miners. Otherwise, they would have been forced to work for peanuts in unsafe conditions by mine owners that cared nothing for their lives. We were always poor but this poverty was not frightening because we ate so well and we had an arrogant sense of our own individuality. I’ve been poor my whole life and what for me, is frightening, is not poverty but lack of being able to do anything about it. What is even more frightening is being so afraid of poverty that I give up my sense of my true self.
But these days, the media and whatever powers seek to control our lives want to put us all in little slots. If you’re pro business and pro-family, then somehow you are also pro giant corporations and pro right wing religious patriarchy and anti-taxation and pro-religion.
No, thanks. I am pro-family and pro-small business and pro-independence and pro society taking care of people who need help and pro-my community. I am also pro-clean air and clean water and wild animals and above all, I am pro-honesty.
And I don’t care what religious beliefs someone has as long as I don’t have to hear about them. And I care far more about how they behave toward other humans and other non-humans than I do about what they believe. I don’t mind paying taxes for schools and health care and roads. I do mind paying taxes for huge corporations that don’t need subsidies, for stupid wars in foreign countries that achieve nothing, for more and more regulations and inspectors and bureaucrats with nothing much to do but complicate people’s lives.
Human beings and non-human beings are facing enormous challenges of many, many kinds. More than ever, people need to be able to speak their minds or write their minds without fear of reprisal. They need to do this is in a caring, mannerly way. They need to do this with honest information, not information that is slanted to make them believe one thing or another.
I’m not right wing, left wing or in the middle of anything. I am just out here in the woods, living a semi-independent farmer’s life, going for long walks and trying to make sense out of it all.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Is January the meanest month??
January:
There is some dispute around our farm and in the family as to whether January is the grimmest month to get through or February. January tends to be a grey month, warmth locked far away in the ground, frozen snow crusted on the fields, the clouds lid locked over the lake. Not much to do but stay in and work, and for relief, look at gardening catalogues and go for walks, but even walks are a challenge when the snow is crusted and frozen.
I teach online, and I always have stacks of writing and reading to do, so in many ways I welcome winter and semi-solitude it brings. I think writers are fortunate. We are never without something that needs doing. When I talked to my cousin Kerrie, a rancher in Alberta, this fall, she said winters were difficult for her and her husband. Not much to do but feed the stock and plow the driveway. Her husband watched a lot of football and she had various hobbies but winters can be hard for farmers who want to be out and doing. I can’t imagine spending my winter watching television.
February around here is a bit easier since we tend to get some days when it is warm enough to go out and rake the sawdust, prune fruit trees, light a fire. But February is also a tease, warm one day and frozen the next and it drives people crazy. It’s the curse of anticipation and thinking that any day now it will be spring. It’s warmer, but not warm enough. March is when planting in the greenhouses begins but we can’t really garden, can’t actually get digging, raking and planting until the middle of April.
But that doesn’t stop us dedicated gardeners from getting together to go over seed catalogues together. Last year several of us had a seed catalogue afternoon, where we all brought our collected seed catalogues and made lists (not orders yet) of things we might want to grow. An imaginary garden is much easier than a real one.
Gardening is always one of those activities (the opposite of writing) that begins in order and hope and descends quickly into chaos. On the other hand, it is pretty much simplicity itself. Given warmth, light and nutrition, things will grow.
But they have their quirks. I love the fact that there are several happy volunteer wild cherry trees on the farm growing under cedar trees, where no gardener in his or her right mind would ever plant them. Every year, flowers fail where they should flourish and flowers I’ve neglected thrive or bloom on their own in the ‘wrong’ place. Vegetables that should be productive fail, like the giant broccoli plants I grew one year, healthy plants, no broccoli. The pigs loved them.
Last year, the peas and beans, which are normally productive, were eaten off to the root by deer and never recovered. I love the idea of a farm at peace but there are too many deer and not enough predators. I’m cheering for the cougars this winter.
Right now, when the dogs and I go for walks, I can see what they smell, a mosaic of tracks overlaid, deer and coyotes, mice and squirrels, and at the beach, duck tracks that end in spots of blood and wing brushes in the snow. Eagles harass the coots. Coyotes have scraped away the snow to get at mice in the long grass. I love my warm safe house. At night I close the curtains, open the computer and sail away. But in the afternoons, after a morning of teaching and writing, when it is time to go outside, I miss the garden.
But it will soon return.
There is some dispute around our farm and in the family as to whether January is the grimmest month to get through or February. January tends to be a grey month, warmth locked far away in the ground, frozen snow crusted on the fields, the clouds lid locked over the lake. Not much to do but stay in and work, and for relief, look at gardening catalogues and go for walks, but even walks are a challenge when the snow is crusted and frozen.
I teach online, and I always have stacks of writing and reading to do, so in many ways I welcome winter and semi-solitude it brings. I think writers are fortunate. We are never without something that needs doing. When I talked to my cousin Kerrie, a rancher in Alberta, this fall, she said winters were difficult for her and her husband. Not much to do but feed the stock and plow the driveway. Her husband watched a lot of football and she had various hobbies but winters can be hard for farmers who want to be out and doing. I can’t imagine spending my winter watching television.
February around here is a bit easier since we tend to get some days when it is warm enough to go out and rake the sawdust, prune fruit trees, light a fire. But February is also a tease, warm one day and frozen the next and it drives people crazy. It’s the curse of anticipation and thinking that any day now it will be spring. It’s warmer, but not warm enough. March is when planting in the greenhouses begins but we can’t really garden, can’t actually get digging, raking and planting until the middle of April.
But that doesn’t stop us dedicated gardeners from getting together to go over seed catalogues together. Last year several of us had a seed catalogue afternoon, where we all brought our collected seed catalogues and made lists (not orders yet) of things we might want to grow. An imaginary garden is much easier than a real one.
Gardening is always one of those activities (the opposite of writing) that begins in order and hope and descends quickly into chaos. On the other hand, it is pretty much simplicity itself. Given warmth, light and nutrition, things will grow.
But they have their quirks. I love the fact that there are several happy volunteer wild cherry trees on the farm growing under cedar trees, where no gardener in his or her right mind would ever plant them. Every year, flowers fail where they should flourish and flowers I’ve neglected thrive or bloom on their own in the ‘wrong’ place. Vegetables that should be productive fail, like the giant broccoli plants I grew one year, healthy plants, no broccoli. The pigs loved them.
Last year, the peas and beans, which are normally productive, were eaten off to the root by deer and never recovered. I love the idea of a farm at peace but there are too many deer and not enough predators. I’m cheering for the cougars this winter.
Right now, when the dogs and I go for walks, I can see what they smell, a mosaic of tracks overlaid, deer and coyotes, mice and squirrels, and at the beach, duck tracks that end in spots of blood and wing brushes in the snow. Eagles harass the coots. Coyotes have scraped away the snow to get at mice in the long grass. I love my warm safe house. At night I close the curtains, open the computer and sail away. But in the afternoons, after a morning of teaching and writing, when it is time to go outside, I miss the garden.
But it will soon return.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Fear and Survival
Fear and Time:
On A Friday night, I made it to through slush and a dimming light, to the Kootenay Lake ferry. It was late -- dark and snowing hard. I knew I would have a precarious fifty kilometre drive home. As I rode the ferry, I was reminded about something my sister had said on her last visit, how, every time she rode the ferry, she though about the terrfiying depths of black freezing water beneath her. My sister is the most fearless, intrepid, and amazing woman I know. She trains horses. She rides across country jumping over fences, up and down steep banks and in and out of water. She can walk up to the toughest and scariest horse in the world and make it behave. I was surprised to hear her say this but I understood. Kootenay Lake is big and deep; it has a reputation for eating boats of all sizes. I looked at the black snowy mountains and thought about the creatures there, and the combination of fear, adrenaline, and alertness that kept them alive. I thought about how all of us, human and non-human, ride an edge of awareness and fear, especially in the winter.
I had been teaching all day, my eyes were tired and sore, and I had already been held up on the highway because of an accident. As I drove off the ferry and up the steep hill, I realized he road was even worse than I thought it would be. Because of the thick blowing snow, I couldn’t actually see the highway. Instead, all I could was watch the dim fuzzy line of snowbank beside the right hand of the car. As long as I could see that snowbank, I could assume there was a road. I should have been terrified but as I set off up the hill and into the blackness, I felt an odd sort of exhilaration set in. Perhaps, I thought, it was a small particle of what adventure junkies and risk takers feel.
I had a long drive with a lot of time to think. I wondered if this combination of awareness, exhilaration and hyperalertness is what some people experience in battle. I thought, again, about the mountains above me and the many many inhabitants of those mountains; I wondered about their lives, their careful alertness, their constant awareness of risk, and survival. Did they feel like this all the time or was mine just a human moment?
I have always known that will and determination play a big part in survival. I have always known, since I was a small child, playing by myself in the mountains, riding crazy wild horses, climbing cliffs, that, in risky situations, I could make decisions to survive. I kept this awareness as an adult, I remember once, coming home from a long hike and having to traverse a section of steep hill in the dark. The darkness had come more swiftly than I was prepared for and I couldn’t see where I was going. I decided, very calmly and carefully, that I would feel every step, check every hold, that I would not slip and fall there in the dark and that I would make it home safely. And so I did.
I decided something similar on the way home in the snow. I knew the road. I would drive slowly. I would be alert and cautious and take no chances. It was almost exhilarating. I caught myself driving too fast as I got closer to home and had to make myself slow down. And I made it, came in the warm house, made myself tea, took a while to calm down and get to sleep.
Now, in the mornings, often at first light, the pair of coyotes that live next door are out hunting mice in the tall grass in the field below my house. The black flocks of coots huddle on the lake as the eagles hunt them. Winter, for some creatures, is a time of rest and recuperation, and for others, a time when the odds of surviving are sharpened. Every morning, I silently say hello and send respect to these coyotes, savvy, alert, and secure in their coyote world.
At night, I draw the drapes against the dark, the snow, and the cold. I go to bed under a huddle of quilts. I send my thoughts out to the coyotes in their den, the ravens in their tall trees, the eagles, the coots on the black water, the queen wasps sleeping in the cracks of the logs of my house, the frogs buried in mud, the sleeping bears, all of us, surviving, alert, aware, on edge, but not fearful. This isn’t fear but its opposite, this is calm, alert awareness. The world is not a fearful place but neither is it an easy place. Joy and tragedy, exhilaration and terror, we all ride them, together, on a thin and icy edge.
On A Friday night, I made it to through slush and a dimming light, to the Kootenay Lake ferry. It was late -- dark and snowing hard. I knew I would have a precarious fifty kilometre drive home. As I rode the ferry, I was reminded about something my sister had said on her last visit, how, every time she rode the ferry, she though about the terrfiying depths of black freezing water beneath her. My sister is the most fearless, intrepid, and amazing woman I know. She trains horses. She rides across country jumping over fences, up and down steep banks and in and out of water. She can walk up to the toughest and scariest horse in the world and make it behave. I was surprised to hear her say this but I understood. Kootenay Lake is big and deep; it has a reputation for eating boats of all sizes. I looked at the black snowy mountains and thought about the creatures there, and the combination of fear, adrenaline, and alertness that kept them alive. I thought about how all of us, human and non-human, ride an edge of awareness and fear, especially in the winter.
I had been teaching all day, my eyes were tired and sore, and I had already been held up on the highway because of an accident. As I drove off the ferry and up the steep hill, I realized he road was even worse than I thought it would be. Because of the thick blowing snow, I couldn’t actually see the highway. Instead, all I could was watch the dim fuzzy line of snowbank beside the right hand of the car. As long as I could see that snowbank, I could assume there was a road. I should have been terrified but as I set off up the hill and into the blackness, I felt an odd sort of exhilaration set in. Perhaps, I thought, it was a small particle of what adventure junkies and risk takers feel.
I had a long drive with a lot of time to think. I wondered if this combination of awareness, exhilaration and hyperalertness is what some people experience in battle. I thought, again, about the mountains above me and the many many inhabitants of those mountains; I wondered about their lives, their careful alertness, their constant awareness of risk, and survival. Did they feel like this all the time or was mine just a human moment?
I have always known that will and determination play a big part in survival. I have always known, since I was a small child, playing by myself in the mountains, riding crazy wild horses, climbing cliffs, that, in risky situations, I could make decisions to survive. I kept this awareness as an adult, I remember once, coming home from a long hike and having to traverse a section of steep hill in the dark. The darkness had come more swiftly than I was prepared for and I couldn’t see where I was going. I decided, very calmly and carefully, that I would feel every step, check every hold, that I would not slip and fall there in the dark and that I would make it home safely. And so I did.
I decided something similar on the way home in the snow. I knew the road. I would drive slowly. I would be alert and cautious and take no chances. It was almost exhilarating. I caught myself driving too fast as I got closer to home and had to make myself slow down. And I made it, came in the warm house, made myself tea, took a while to calm down and get to sleep.
Now, in the mornings, often at first light, the pair of coyotes that live next door are out hunting mice in the tall grass in the field below my house. The black flocks of coots huddle on the lake as the eagles hunt them. Winter, for some creatures, is a time of rest and recuperation, and for others, a time when the odds of surviving are sharpened. Every morning, I silently say hello and send respect to these coyotes, savvy, alert, and secure in their coyote world.
At night, I draw the drapes against the dark, the snow, and the cold. I go to bed under a huddle of quilts. I send my thoughts out to the coyotes in their den, the ravens in their tall trees, the eagles, the coots on the black water, the queen wasps sleeping in the cracks of the logs of my house, the frogs buried in mud, the sleeping bears, all of us, surviving, alert, aware, on edge, but not fearful. This isn’t fear but its opposite, this is calm, alert awareness. The world is not a fearful place but neither is it an easy place. Joy and tragedy, exhilaration and terror, we all ride them, together, on a thin and icy edge.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Natives of the Outside by K.L. Kivi
“The street is a world where people in flight from the traumas that happen inside houses become natives of the outside.”
Rebecca Solnit
This line from Solnit’s book “Wanderlust: A History of Walking” reached out and grabbed me the other day. Solnit has a knack for a trenchant turn of phrase as was evidenced in the brilliant first essay in her book “A Field Guide to Getting Lost” as well as in “Wanderlust.” She seems to be preoccupied by similar topics as I am: the way our modern culture has caused us to diverge from a more basic, physical and conscious state of being, the dichotomy of inside/outside being a key concern.
I think myself as a “native of the outside” but not because of traumas suffered within houses. I suppose each of us has our own route to the places we end up. I’d say I’ve had an inexorable draw to the outdoors that is probably encoded in my peasant DNA. That said, I also have felt like an outsider to mainstream culture most of my life. Did that propel me to connect more profoundly with non-human life or was it the other way around. Solnit’s traumatized natives of the outside are people for whom the world is turned upside down; once the notion of safety of home is undermined, then perhaps it’s not difficult to cast off its companion notion that outside is dangerous. Or maybe, the unveiling of the lie of home sweet home puts other mainstream notions in question, creating an easier avenue of exit from said mainstream.
Solnit’s book is certainly good at unveiling aspects of our culture that often remain unexamined. She delves succinctly into the twists and turns of our culture and their impact on us as individuals and communities. I love the way she speaks of the human body as a “sensing, breathing, living moving body (that) can be a primary experience of nature too: new technologies and spaces can bring about alienation from both body and space.” I too have pondered the impact on our psyches of having bodies whose primary functions are recreational rather than utilitarian. Instead of our feet carrying us to gather food and shelter, we now drive to work and take our bodies to specific places for specific activities, be they hiking, soccer, etc, for them/us to get their/our necessary movement. Bitingly, she writes, “the body that used to have the status of a work animal now has the status of a pet;…(it) is exercised as one might walk a dog.”
She goes even further, noting that in our modern car culture, walking could be seen as an “indicator species” for our physical, psychological and psychic health. Walking can be seen as “an ancient and profound relationship between body, world, and imagination.” She draws on the relationship between writing and creativity, talking about the walking habits of writers from Dickens to modern day adventurers. When we are no longer able to walk because of a scarcity of time, a scarcity of walking spaces, a scarcity of cultural values that honour walking, the gym becomes “a kind of wildlife preserve for bodily exertion” which accommodates something essential after we abandon the original modes of human physical activity. But what kind of wildlife preserve can a gym be in you think of bodily motion being as much about a beckoning to the imagination and an experience of place as physical exercise? In teasing apart too many strands of this rope, one might end up with a pile of tattered, useless sisal instead of a functioning whole.
I could go on, as this subject has strands that connect to so many other topics. In the meanwhile, I highly recommend Solnit’s work, especially if you’re interested in erudite, thought provoking and well researched non-fiction. But, a better conclusion yet might be to spare your eyes and sitting weary body and get out for a walk.
Rebecca Solnit
This line from Solnit’s book “Wanderlust: A History of Walking” reached out and grabbed me the other day. Solnit has a knack for a trenchant turn of phrase as was evidenced in the brilliant first essay in her book “A Field Guide to Getting Lost” as well as in “Wanderlust.” She seems to be preoccupied by similar topics as I am: the way our modern culture has caused us to diverge from a more basic, physical and conscious state of being, the dichotomy of inside/outside being a key concern.
I think myself as a “native of the outside” but not because of traumas suffered within houses. I suppose each of us has our own route to the places we end up. I’d say I’ve had an inexorable draw to the outdoors that is probably encoded in my peasant DNA. That said, I also have felt like an outsider to mainstream culture most of my life. Did that propel me to connect more profoundly with non-human life or was it the other way around. Solnit’s traumatized natives of the outside are people for whom the world is turned upside down; once the notion of safety of home is undermined, then perhaps it’s not difficult to cast off its companion notion that outside is dangerous. Or maybe, the unveiling of the lie of home sweet home puts other mainstream notions in question, creating an easier avenue of exit from said mainstream.
Solnit’s book is certainly good at unveiling aspects of our culture that often remain unexamined. She delves succinctly into the twists and turns of our culture and their impact on us as individuals and communities. I love the way she speaks of the human body as a “sensing, breathing, living moving body (that) can be a primary experience of nature too: new technologies and spaces can bring about alienation from both body and space.” I too have pondered the impact on our psyches of having bodies whose primary functions are recreational rather than utilitarian. Instead of our feet carrying us to gather food and shelter, we now drive to work and take our bodies to specific places for specific activities, be they hiking, soccer, etc, for them/us to get their/our necessary movement. Bitingly, she writes, “the body that used to have the status of a work animal now has the status of a pet;…(it) is exercised as one might walk a dog.”
She goes even further, noting that in our modern car culture, walking could be seen as an “indicator species” for our physical, psychological and psychic health. Walking can be seen as “an ancient and profound relationship between body, world, and imagination.” She draws on the relationship between writing and creativity, talking about the walking habits of writers from Dickens to modern day adventurers. When we are no longer able to walk because of a scarcity of time, a scarcity of walking spaces, a scarcity of cultural values that honour walking, the gym becomes “a kind of wildlife preserve for bodily exertion” which accommodates something essential after we abandon the original modes of human physical activity. But what kind of wildlife preserve can a gym be in you think of bodily motion being as much about a beckoning to the imagination and an experience of place as physical exercise? In teasing apart too many strands of this rope, one might end up with a pile of tattered, useless sisal instead of a functioning whole.
I could go on, as this subject has strands that connect to so many other topics. In the meanwhile, I highly recommend Solnit’s work, especially if you’re interested in erudite, thought provoking and well researched non-fiction. But, a better conclusion yet might be to spare your eyes and sitting weary body and get out for a walk.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Qat’muk, Qat’muk, Qat’muk Wild! by KL Kivi
I’m repeating it to myself, this new/old Ktunaxa name for the Jumbo Valley and Jumbo Pass area, wondering just exactly how to pronounce it. Qat’muk, Qat’muk, Qat’muk. In the mere naming of it, something has been returned to us all and as I mutter Qat’muk, Qat’muk, a bubble of glee rises in my chest.
This naming was released today, as the Ktunaxa Nation of Southeast British Columbia was received by the BC Legislature to make a declaration. Their 50-member delegation was in Victoria to assert the importance of the stewardship of the land in its traditional territory. "I think it's the importance of Qat'muk, the Jumbo area, how important it is to our people, and the animals that live there, the grizzly bear, he holds everything for us," delegation member Herman Alpine told CTV Calgary. Interestingly, this comes on the heels of Friday’s announcement that Canada has finally signed on to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And though I cheer on the delegation and applaud the signing of the Declaration, the cynical part of me wonders what these developments add up to.
In the case of the Ktunaxa, they have been left holding some of the few cards that might have any clout in the work to converse the ecological integrity of the Central Purcells. For the past few years, while enviros for Jumbo Wild! have been blocked from any formal process with the government around the proposed Jumbo Glacier Resort, the Ktunaxa have been at the table. And although the Ktunaxa Nation Council have been publicly against the Jumbo Glacier Resort development for some time, their alliance with the environmental movement hasn’t always been strong.
I understand this. Or at least I think do. These same environmentalists haven’t often been in the forefront, or even allied, in First Nations struggles for recognition, self-determination and validation of the ongoing cultural genocide of their people. Suddenly, we need them. Suddenly they are useful to us. What’s to say that this relationship, which has never been reciprocal, will suddenly become reciprocal? Colonizers and settler cultures are notorious for using then abusing indigenous peoples world wide. Though it can be agonizing to not be able to reach across this historical gulf, at the same time, I cheer on any First Nation that claims their power. Part of that power is to define the terms of their engagement.
Even so, they still have to deal with the dominant political culture that wishes First Nations would simply shut up or go away. For example, the article in the Toronto Star entitled “Canada endorses indigenous rights” was small and buried deep in the News section. No photo, just three columns of print halfway down the page, with a few quotes from First Nations leaders. This article placement in the main newspaper of Canada’s largest city certainly reflects political attitudes toward the indigenous people of Canada as well.
Canada was one of four countries to vote against the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples when it passed in the UN General Assembly three years ago. Not that these non-binding “statements of principles” add up to much other than the symbolic, but the lack of even lip service to the symbolic has been a blot on Canada’s once shiny human rights image. Perhaps we should even thank the Harper government for three years of showing their true colours – brown for “we don’t give a shit about Indians.” There is still something to be said for honesty.
I await the unfolding of this story. It feels like, just maybe, First Nations have gained enough strength to rise up out of the wallow colonization has ground them down into. May those of us who honour the importance of land, belonging to land and the role of indigenous people in this connection, have the courage to put our hands paddles and participate in getting this big canoe moving.
This naming was released today, as the Ktunaxa Nation of Southeast British Columbia was received by the BC Legislature to make a declaration. Their 50-member delegation was in Victoria to assert the importance of the stewardship of the land in its traditional territory. "I think it's the importance of Qat'muk, the Jumbo area, how important it is to our people, and the animals that live there, the grizzly bear, he holds everything for us," delegation member Herman Alpine told CTV Calgary. Interestingly, this comes on the heels of Friday’s announcement that Canada has finally signed on to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And though I cheer on the delegation and applaud the signing of the Declaration, the cynical part of me wonders what these developments add up to.
In the case of the Ktunaxa, they have been left holding some of the few cards that might have any clout in the work to converse the ecological integrity of the Central Purcells. For the past few years, while enviros for Jumbo Wild! have been blocked from any formal process with the government around the proposed Jumbo Glacier Resort, the Ktunaxa have been at the table. And although the Ktunaxa Nation Council have been publicly against the Jumbo Glacier Resort development for some time, their alliance with the environmental movement hasn’t always been strong.
I understand this. Or at least I think do. These same environmentalists haven’t often been in the forefront, or even allied, in First Nations struggles for recognition, self-determination and validation of the ongoing cultural genocide of their people. Suddenly, we need them. Suddenly they are useful to us. What’s to say that this relationship, which has never been reciprocal, will suddenly become reciprocal? Colonizers and settler cultures are notorious for using then abusing indigenous peoples world wide. Though it can be agonizing to not be able to reach across this historical gulf, at the same time, I cheer on any First Nation that claims their power. Part of that power is to define the terms of their engagement.
Even so, they still have to deal with the dominant political culture that wishes First Nations would simply shut up or go away. For example, the article in the Toronto Star entitled “Canada endorses indigenous rights” was small and buried deep in the News section. No photo, just three columns of print halfway down the page, with a few quotes from First Nations leaders. This article placement in the main newspaper of Canada’s largest city certainly reflects political attitudes toward the indigenous people of Canada as well.
Canada was one of four countries to vote against the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples when it passed in the UN General Assembly three years ago. Not that these non-binding “statements of principles” add up to much other than the symbolic, but the lack of even lip service to the symbolic has been a blot on Canada’s once shiny human rights image. Perhaps we should even thank the Harper government for three years of showing their true colours – brown for “we don’t give a shit about Indians.” There is still something to be said for honesty.
I await the unfolding of this story. It feels like, just maybe, First Nations have gained enough strength to rise up out of the wallow colonization has ground them down into. May those of us who honour the importance of land, belonging to land and the role of indigenous people in this connection, have the courage to put our hands paddles and participate in getting this big canoe moving.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
What, me worry, by Luanne Armstrong
“Everything worthy is under fire.” Wendell Berry
Like many people these days, I watch the world with some puzzlement and dismay. This is not the world my generation thought we were making. When we were marching against the Vietnam war, or fighting against nuclear war, or marching for women’s rights, we thought we were working for, and we talked about its coming into being, a bright peaceful future where everyone would be fed, housed, cared for, fulfilled.
And the odd thing is, we won most of these battles – sort of—(and they were battles, however peaceful they looked.) The Vietnam war finally ceased; women moved out of their kitchens and into work and jobs; the environmental movement was created; all kinds of social services were also created; nuclear weapons stopped being tested in the South Pacific and in the American desert; the Berlin Wall was torn down; the Soviet Union disintegrated and the Cold War was over. We thought.
But that peaceful global future we envisioned has yet to appear.
I get up every morning and while I am drinking my coffee, I cruise through various websites; what is the price of oil doing, what are people saying about global warming, what is up with those one hundred dolphins being held for slaughter in Taiji, Japan? And so on. Clicking through. Good news and bad. Facebook, where more and more people seem to have taken to putting up links to news stories they deem important. Click. Click.
And then I get on with my day. I’m not marching anymore. But worrying, oh yes, indeedy.
But what is there to march against? And with whom? The problems coming down the pike in some unknowable and largely unvisionable future are so big, so vague that most people don’t talk about them, and don’t even seem able to talk about them. Global warming – what will that do? When will it happen? Is it happening now? Well, sure the Arctic ice is melting, but hey, last winter was really cold. Wasn’t it? Things seem normal? Don’t they?
Peak oil? The oil industry says one thing, the peak oil doomers another. Everyone agrees that oil will get much more expensive in the future but how much, and when? And everyone agrees that the higher price of oil will have a drastic effect on our economy and the North American suburban-drive-everywhere-all-the-time way-of-life, but when and how much and what to do about it is never discussed in the political arena. The only people I really talk to about all this are a few women my own age, in our sixties now, and watching the future for our grandchildren grow darker.
Our children are busy with careers, jobs, bank accounts, school, raising their children, buying houses, mortgages. Busy doesn’t even begin to describe it. They worry sometimes when they have a moment and then they rush off to the next appointment.
And me? I stay put. I grow food. It’s not much and it has no impact on anyone but myself, and the friends and family members I can supply with food. If there were more to do that I thought would be effective, I would do it. If there was a march I thought was heading in the right direction, I might join it. Or not. Maybe I’ve been on too many marches and spent too many hours in meetings to really believe there is a right direction anymore.
I grow food, I read, I write and I worry.
Click…click…click.
Like many people these days, I watch the world with some puzzlement and dismay. This is not the world my generation thought we were making. When we were marching against the Vietnam war, or fighting against nuclear war, or marching for women’s rights, we thought we were working for, and we talked about its coming into being, a bright peaceful future where everyone would be fed, housed, cared for, fulfilled.
And the odd thing is, we won most of these battles – sort of—(and they were battles, however peaceful they looked.) The Vietnam war finally ceased; women moved out of their kitchens and into work and jobs; the environmental movement was created; all kinds of social services were also created; nuclear weapons stopped being tested in the South Pacific and in the American desert; the Berlin Wall was torn down; the Soviet Union disintegrated and the Cold War was over. We thought.
But that peaceful global future we envisioned has yet to appear.
I get up every morning and while I am drinking my coffee, I cruise through various websites; what is the price of oil doing, what are people saying about global warming, what is up with those one hundred dolphins being held for slaughter in Taiji, Japan? And so on. Clicking through. Good news and bad. Facebook, where more and more people seem to have taken to putting up links to news stories they deem important. Click. Click.
And then I get on with my day. I’m not marching anymore. But worrying, oh yes, indeedy.
But what is there to march against? And with whom? The problems coming down the pike in some unknowable and largely unvisionable future are so big, so vague that most people don’t talk about them, and don’t even seem able to talk about them. Global warming – what will that do? When will it happen? Is it happening now? Well, sure the Arctic ice is melting, but hey, last winter was really cold. Wasn’t it? Things seem normal? Don’t they?
Peak oil? The oil industry says one thing, the peak oil doomers another. Everyone agrees that oil will get much more expensive in the future but how much, and when? And everyone agrees that the higher price of oil will have a drastic effect on our economy and the North American suburban-drive-everywhere-all-the-time way-of-life, but when and how much and what to do about it is never discussed in the political arena. The only people I really talk to about all this are a few women my own age, in our sixties now, and watching the future for our grandchildren grow darker.
Our children are busy with careers, jobs, bank accounts, school, raising their children, buying houses, mortgages. Busy doesn’t even begin to describe it. They worry sometimes when they have a moment and then they rush off to the next appointment.
And me? I stay put. I grow food. It’s not much and it has no impact on anyone but myself, and the friends and family members I can supply with food. If there were more to do that I thought would be effective, I would do it. If there was a march I thought was heading in the right direction, I might join it. Or not. Maybe I’ve been on too many marches and spent too many hours in meetings to really believe there is a right direction anymore.
I grow food, I read, I write and I worry.
Click…click…click.
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