By Will Falk
The snowstorm arrived at Unist’ot’en Camp a day before we did dropping over a foot of snow and stillness on the territory. The clouds cleared the second night we were there opening the skies to the silent music played by the twinkling of countless stars. While most of the crew sat around the woodstove in the cabin a hundred yards away, I stood listening to my breath crystalize to the rhythm of my heartbeat in my ears.
Listening like this, I realized I forgot what stillness was.
Photo credit: Zoe Blunt
The stillness the snow created was welcome after the anxious three day drive in the Vancouver Island Community Forest Action Network mini-van. We dodged trees buckling under the weight of sudden snowfall and wind. We kept our windshield relatively clean when the lines carrying the wiper fluid froze and salt and sand blocked our vision. The van’s engine has a habit of mysteriously cutting out at the worst times forcing the driver to shift into neutral, turn the ignition off, turn the ignition on, and then continue driving – all while the steering wheel is stuck.
I personally needed to be still after a whirlwind month and a half that took me from Victoria, BC to San Francisco to Dayton, OH to Chicago to Carbondale, IL to Milwaukee, WI back to San Francisco back to Victoria and finally to the Unist’ot’en Camp. The month and a half included visiting my parents in San Francisco and a speaking tour through the Midwest to promote and fundraise for the Camp.
The speaking tour became a journey through places representing phases of my life. My parents live in San Francisco, I went to college in Dayton, I dated the woman who probably knows me better than anyone for five years in Chicago, and I lived in Milwaukee while I was a public defender when I tried to kill myself the first time.
The tour was made possible by my dear friend Dr. Myrna Gabbe at my alma mater, the University of Dayton, when she invited me back to speak to her students about my experiences in activism and obtained funding to fly me from San Francisco to Dayton. As we were planning my visit to Dayton, a nun at the university asked me to give a poetry reading and speak to the spiritual side of activism. College was a great experience for me. I was an English major and was exposed to writing that helped me see the world more clearly. I also had professors like Myrna who encouraged me to keep questioning everything. In many ways, the patterns bringing me to the Unist’ot’en Camp in 2015 began in Myrna’s classroom in 2006.
I spoke at the American Indian Center, Revolution Books, and Purdue University – Calumet in the Chicago area. While I was in Chicago, I stayed with a former partner I met at Dayton and dated for five years. I had not seen her in over three years after I left her abruptly out of fear, despair, and confusion. My initial instinct in visiting her was for reconciliation, but through her compassion the visit quickly became a celebration of lost connection re-discovered.
My friends in Milwaukee suggested I speak at the Riverwest Public House Cooperative and the space quickly filled with the same friends and family who quickly filled the St. Francis Hospital visitation room after my first suicide attempt. I knew it would be impossible to avoid the emotional residue I left in Milwaukee. I found it difficult to sit on a stage, look my friends in the eye as I spoke, and think what would have happened if I had taken a strong enough dosage that night.
I know the best antidote for despair is action. While it remains to be seen, I hope my presentation about the Unist’ot’en Camp in Milwaukee will scrape the residue of my despair from Milwaukee for future visits.
***
On the speaking tour, I tried to convince my audiences of the urgency of our environmental situation. I found that I am personally most persuasive when I can weave my own story into this need for drastic and immediate change.
One way to understand the environmental catastrophe confronting us is to view the dominant culture as suffering from a profound case of despair. Despair permeates many religious traditions that say humans are fundamentally flawed, Earth is a scary place, and suffering is inevitable so we may as well embrace it to gain peace in another world. Despair permeates science cutting us off from other beings, telling us other beings are objects incapable of existing with humans in mutual relationship, and encouraging us to use (read: kill) other beings for the benefit of humans. Despair permeates our governments who view raw power and physical force as the only way to control this wildly unpredictable process we call “life.”
Many doctors have told me to reach out to old friends to help me remember who I was and what I was like before despair settled over me. In my worst moments, all I can see is darkness behind me, darkness upon me, and darkness ahead of me. Life is bad. Life was bad. Life will always be bad.
Part of spending so much time in Canada is being far from those who remember who I was. Lately, my desire for connection to a happier personal past has taken strange and pathetic forms. I wear an obnoxious green Notre Dame football flatbrim everywhere I go. I talk about my favorite band, Phish, with anyone who will listen. I find myself in bars just looking for company.
So, one of the benefits of the speaking tour I went on for the Unist’ot’en Camp involved spending time remembering myself with those who love me. But, the temporary feelings this time spent remembering released are dangerous. It would be easy to settle back down into a life based around salving the pain of depression. It would be easy to surround myself in good memories and turn my back on the problems of the world. If I did this, though, the world would still be burning. And, if the world burns for long enough, those I love will burn, too.
***
On this visit to the Camp, I was lucky enough to walk the trapline. Spend any amount of time at the Camp, and it quickly becomes apparent that almost every activity carries levels upon levels of meaning. Walking the trapline is, perhaps, the best example of this.
The trapline is a trail running through a remote part of the Unist’ot’en territory where Toghestiy sets traps for martens, fishers, beavers, and wolverines. Walking the trapline means snowmobiling out into the bitter cold and then snowshoeing several miles checking each trap for animals. Toghestiy was raised culturally and he remembers how to space his traps so that no population of animals is overburdened. The furs of these animals bring in money to support the blockade.
Legally, the trapline sits on the proposed routes of the pipelines that threaten the territory. One way to protect the territory is to assert “aboriginal title” in Canadian courts and to argue that this title grants titleholders the ability to reject pipeline construction on their lands. Under Canadian law, maintaining traplines creates a strong presumption for a finding that “aboriginal title” exists for those claiming it. Finally, walking the trapline is an ancient tradition honored by generations of indigenous trappers and is filled with connection to the past.
Photo credit: Zoe Blunt
My friend and I rounded the last corner of the trapline about a quarter mile from the snowmobile ride back to the cabin. My feet were frozen, my hips were cramping, and I was hungry when my friend elbowed me and pointed to the trees ahead of us. The sun was setting behind a wall of pines. The pine needles in the branches facing us were cloaked in silver shadows while the sun threw a blanket of gold on everything else. The snow scattered the light like the stars I watched a few nights before. Next to me the tracks of a grouse twisted over a snow bank before disappearing with no trace but the faint outline of wings brushing the powder.
I heard my heart pumping blood through my eardrums. I heard trees dropping snow in piles. I heard my friend breathing softly. I heard everything praying.
In short, I heard life.
And then I remembered: Life is really good. I want to live. I want all of this to live.
The personal despair I suffer from and the general despair the dominant culture suffers from is, of course, a failure of memory. I forgot and my trips to Unist’ot’en Camp help me remember. Too many still forget. Too many forget that it does not have to be this way. Too many forget that we can change this brutal arrangement of power. I want more of us to remember. But, remembering is not enough. Falling in love with the way sunshine splashes through pines is not enough. Regaining our connection to the natural world is not enough. We have to protect those pines. We have to protect the possibility of a connection to the natural world by protecting the natural world. We have to protect what we love.
Will Falk
Latest posts by Will Falk (see all)
- Time to Escalate? First-Ever Rights of Nature Lawsuit Dismissed - December 7, 2017
- The Rights of Nature and the Power of Law - October 18, 2017
- Why Does the Colorado River Need to Sue For Rights? - September 25, 2017
Excellent writing, Will. Keep up your good work to keep the environment pristine. The US spends a trillion dollars a year to defend ourselves and all’s we’ve done is to create enemies bent on our destruction and finally they’ve figured out a way to do it. It’s called asymmetrical warfare. The asymmetry has to do with our spending a trillion dollars for negative results and their spending a few dollars for maximum results for their camp. If we spent a trillion dollars on renewable energy we could become fossil fuel free in a year, but, as you point out, we are committed to the paradigm of using force to get the results we want. And the military burns fossil fuels like no other entity.
Only we are not getting the results we want; we are getting the opposite results. But machismo dictates that we bend others to our will through the barrel of a gun. Terrorists are getting the results they want the same way – through the barrel of a gun. We will go on with the same insanity – doing the same things again and again while getting the same negative results and creating more and more terrorists.
thanks, John. Writing is how I make sense of it all. I hope the writing can give something to others.
thank you for your writing and honesty- beautiful imagery.
Reconnecting with nature in direct physical ways that use all the senses is essential to staying connected to what it means to be alive and part of the world around us. This is why, in spring, I travel to the lagoons in Baja California to see new life among the gray whales, and create nesting habitat in my garden. I need to be reminded of Renewal. Rebirth. Life continues
Too often this direct experience is not available for urban dwellers, (see: “Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder” by Richard Louv) so people need to be intentional in seeking out these connections to the natural world. When we don’t we wonder why our health suffers, just as the health of the planet is now, under such massive assaults.
Some people have created ceremonies to manage/confront/expose the despair you describe so well, instead of going thru life never recognizing how the disconnection from nature contributes to depression- both physical, emotional and mental. (I recommend “Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings” by John Seed, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming and Arne Naess for a concise treatise on moving past this alienation from the natural world.)
One chapter in this book is Chief Seattle’s message to Washington DC, in response to his community being told to move out of their historic land in the Pacific Northwest. “The shining water that moves in the springs and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors.”
Seattle and his people had such a clear and direct connection to the place around them, something that is difficult for most people to imagine today. Native Americans were defeated not only through warfare, but by forced removal from their historic lands, physically cutting them off from the places that had sustained them for generations.
Your essay reminded me of these books and the necessity of staying connected to place. Thank you.
It was great seeing your name pop up on my twitter account when Dayton magazine tweeted out this article. Definitely made me reflect on some good times back at Dayton. As expected, it looks like you’re partaking in some incredibly meaningful and influential work. Keep impacting others and pushing for want you believe in.
Thanks, Dan. There was a woman from Pittsburgh up at the Camp a couple weeks ago. We spent a few hours talking about Primanti Bros sandwiches and wondering how the Peters Township football team did this past fall. Hope you’re well.
Much love Will, for continuing to touch the deepest parts of my emotional being with your writing.
Thank you for sharing your struggle and your soul with us. It helps to appreciate how those of us who care so deeply about our beautiful Mother Earth and All Our Relations struggle with the despair you describe. I am happy you have found a way to remember, to hear everything praying, to know the need to protect what we love. Sharing your journey with us helps those of us who are too old or too sick to do the work you do to re-member the world. I send my love and caring, in the hope that even that small prayer will somehow bring you comfort. After all, “We Are All Connected”! All My Relations… Take care of yourself, and keep loving…