Activist urges protection of land, water as part of speaking series
- Nickita Longman | April 05, 2017
Calen Behn, an Eh-Cho Dene and Dunne-Za/Cree from Treaty #8 territory of Northeastern BC, hosted a Deliberation and Debate session at the University of Regina on March 23rd. Behn’s talk, titled “Indigenous Water Law in the Anthropocene: Reconciliation Beyond the Human”, spoke entirely to his experiences of traditional living on his mother and father’s territories and the urgency to protect the land.
The Deliberation and Debate Series at the University of Regina is an attempt to accelerate dialogue in a campus environment that encourages free speech and respectful dialogue. President Vianne Timmons encourages the series to ignite conversation and discussions that matter to a university setting as well as the community.
With an extensive background in environmental law and sustainability, Behn combines his formal, post-secondary education with land-based knowledge and applies it to the call for reconciliation in our country.
In his opening, Behn spoke to the parallels of the treatment of water and the treatment of Indigenous women being innately connected. “It is my mother and my grandmother that reinvigorates my commitment to this movement,” Behn told Eagle Feather News in an interview. “Women are at the core of this movement and they are what requires me to be accountable.”
“Water connects everything. That is true in science; that is true in society; and it’s true in resource exploitation,” Behn explained. “If you can do right by water, you can do right by all of these things--including the future generations while respecting the past.” Behn also added that “you cannot honour something without honesty.”
The influence of Indigenous resistance at Standing Rock has received international recognition in its ground breaking role in protecting water. “Standing Rock inspired a generation and was a catalytic event,” Behn stated.
Standing Rock also enlightened us to the systematic role of colonial oppression when Indigenous people come together to protect natural resources. “You can live without oil but you cannot live without water,” Behn says.
Behn also explained how Standing Rock was one specific instance of many. “This is a systemic problem,” he added. “This is bigger than one nation.”
In his extensive history and background to decolonize the water, Behn acknowledges the rapid technological advances we face as a society. “I don’t believe in direct action without parallel, sophisticated strategy to these advances.” He also added that “systems of oppression are very sophisticated and thus our response has to be equally sophisticated as well as spiritually and ethically clean.”
Behn warns to the sometimes problematic relationships that can happen with the environmental movement when it doesn’t include space for Indigenous guidance. Therefore, he acknowledges the importance of Indigenous environmental graduates required for the process of decolonizing the waters.
Further, Behn called on the audience to consider the water system as a familial system. He suggests that if we apply this notion to natural resources, we wouldn’t be in this predicament.
“That’s the kind of reconciliation I want to be a part of,” he states. “What moves our hearts and motivates our hands is what will evolve us.”