Rally for water draws people to the river
- Andréa Ledding | September 26, 2016
Hundreds were in attendance at the Kisisaskatchewan Water Alliance Network rally for those concerned about the environmental catastrophe on the North Saskatchewan River. The event was hosted by knowledge keeper Tyrone Tootoosis and featured high-profile speakers including David Suzuki, Christi Belcourt and Emil Bell.
Elder Emil Bell, who had held a hunger fast for the river when the disaster happened spoke about how the young people lose hope and trust in the adult world when they don’t see a future for themselves.
Bell asked why it took so long to react to the oil spill at Maidstone and why it takes so long for people to protect Mother Earth and sacred water.
“My friend Tyrone, we are not the healthiest people...Tyrone had a 10% chance to survive from cancer, and I had seven blockages. It takes two ‘walking death’ people to get people to wake up to our present situation,” said Bell. “We are fighting greed...psychopaths, sociopaths, people who do not care about life of any form.”
Christi Belcourt called on a revolution for the water, saying that those present were already converted to that idea.
“We already know that water is sacred, that water is life. But others...they have no idea yet, how sacred water is. We need more people to be of one mind...we need as many people as possible,” said Belcourt. “What those oil companies don’t have, and what we have, is that we are willing to give our lives for the water. They are not willing to give their lives for their money.”
To applause, she noted that they were eventually going to know.
“The antidote for greed is giving. We need to be willing to give all that we have, the way Mother Earth has given all that she has, to water, and to life.”
Water treatment plants are not going to solve problems for all the babies of the plant and animal world, let alone for humans, noted Belcourt. “Water exists in every single life form in this world; there is nothing that water is not within.”
David Suzuki said he was honoured and privileged to be there, and thanked the Indigenous peoples who took great care of the land for thousands of years, before thanking the river for being part of the circulatory system of the lands, providing life-giving water; and asking the river for forgiveness for returning that generosity with toxins and pollution.
“I’ve just done a program on the Nature of Things about those countries sending rockets to Mars...why? Because they’ve found water on Mars. And water means the possibility of life. And on Earth, water is life,” said Suzuki. “This is not an Indigenous issue; this is a human being issue and all of the other life forms that require water for survival and well-being.”
“We are at an unprecedented moment in the entire history of life on this planet,” noted Suzuki, adding even scientists have designated it the age of man. “This is the age when human beings have become the dominant force affecting the physical, chemical, and biological properties of the planet on a geological scale.”
He noted that our legacy will be recorded in the geological layers of the earth, should there be life to see it: radioactive nuclear isotopes; plastic everywhere including the ocean and water sediments; chicken bones layered in the ground; and a toxic brew everywhere.
“I was born in 1936 when there were just two billion people, in my lifetime the population of the planet has tripled,” said Suzuki, adding everyone needed air, food, clothing, water, and multitudes also rely on technology and industrial activity, with a global economy built on consumption. “All of that when you add it together means that we are having this enormous impact and huge ecological footprint shaping the properties of the planet.”
80% of the forests have been invaded, and 10% of the last wild areas have disappeared in the past 25 years: human invasion of the wild is accelerating.
“We have altered the chemistry of the atmosphere and spread toxic pollutants across the planet...everyone of us is filled with toxic chemicals, if we’re doing it to the earth what is going to happen to us? We are kept alive by Mother Earth. The Husky spill is another opportunity to say this is crazy, we’re undermining our ability to stay alive, we can’t go on this way, and we have to change the way we are living.”
Indigenous peoples across the world have been on the forefront of movements to protect the planet.
“What kind of an animal would treat its’ mother the way we are treating Mother Earth? This is our fight of your lifetime. Thank you, as a non-Indigenous person, for fighting to hold on to that connection. Canada must become an Indige-Nation. Teach us and help us learn that different relationship with the earth,” said Suzuki.
There is no place for the sacred in our economy or our politics, noted Suzuki, which is why the water is treated in such a cavalier fashion. The Kisaskatchewan water alliance is coming together because it is a human crisis. Indigenous peoples across the world have been on the forefront of movements to protect the planet.
“What kind of an animal would treat its’ mother the way we are treating Mother Earth? This is our fight of your lifetime. Thank you, as a non-Indigenous person, for fighting to hold on to that connection. Canada must become an Indige-Nation. Teach us and help us learn that different relationship with the earth,” said Suzuki.
The rally was attended by a couple of hundred people. “There’s not thousands here, there’s hundreds, but every single one of the hundreds of thousands in this city rely on water,” said Tyrone Tootoosis, before ending with a quote from Big Bear, mistahi muskwa. “It has come to me that we are too scattered. We are small here, we are smaller there. Who stirs in his sleep when one buffalo runs? But when a herd moves, ah, we must shake the ground. We must speak with one thundering voice.
“The awakening has begun.” Tootoosis encouraged everyone to work in good relationship with one another, the land, and the waters, for present and future generations, saying soon it would be too late to fight. “Nipiy, water. That’s who we are, water.”