[BCFSN] Gary Runka named 2014 Land Champion

[Arzeena Hamir]

It does!

Seemingly the corporations have 'all the say' and all agreements from the
past are gone - as we are seeing in the Clearwater Valley - where logging
has begun.... in spite of promises to honour agreements to "have
conversation with all parties at the table before logging begins"... how do
the people who spent hours of their time hammering out the agreements feel?
- it's been  'a waste of time' - good volunteer community grass roots time
-

Both Government and Industry want those trees -not 'all the trees' - only
the 'salable' ones - the rest will be burnt.. big heaps of beautiful trees
burnt in the fall -  no thought of bio-diversity - mud slides - water loss
( or change of direction as roads are cut into the mountainsides) - no
thought of the other aspects of monetary goods coming into the community (
Tourism) - no thought of the future repercussions road - closures due to
slides/wash-outs-No thought of the animals or the fact that some of those
trees are just now beginning to provide much needed winter habitat for the
Caribou - No: just this years 'bottom line'.

What money stays in the community? A few wages, a bit of tax revenue, the
occasional bursary and what else? - well we can't forget the newly
introduced summer barbecue -  !:(

Each little community is facing a challenge with big corporations - some
mining, some logging -some the pipeline - some the over-fishing - all the
encroachment of our water supplies -  the list goes on....

It makes one wonder what the plan will be when we have no water - no trees
- no animals - no future.... who will feed the people then?  We are already
being asked to help 'foreign' families who - just a few short years ago
were self reliant - and now are starving.... who will be left to help us
when we are starving?  Who?????

When I read this - it re-enforced the need for the general public to
awaken!!!!! - we need and must 'stand together' with like minded folks - as
Elder Mike suggested : 'it is time for us to be friends, and walk together
into the future' and we need to being now  - all of us - united.

Perhaps a look at the 'Transition Town' movement? It is the only solution I
can see - get the people - the ordinary people - together and take back the
power.... remember - govn't officials are supposed to be OUR employees - we
pay their wages..... perhaps we are ready to consider giving them
directions as to how we want them to perform their jobs... it is, after
all, our responsibility as their employers.

Thanks for listening

Cheryl Thomas
Clearwater, BC




On Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 3:50 PM, Dawn Morrison <dmo6842 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Does what's happening with the provincial governments recent zoning of the
> ALR resemble the "cut off" lands described in this reference?
>
> Excerpt below taken from:
> http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-policy/reserves.html
>
>
> Reserve reduction in British Columbia
>
> Reserves in British Columbia had barely been established before government
> officials moved to reduce them in size. In the late 1860s, the governor of
> British Columbia, Joseph Trutch, “cut off” what he deemed excess land from
> many of the province’s reserves under the pretense that Aboriginal people
> did not need so much land and that white settlers would make better use of
> it—an ethnocentric view that defined “productive use” as resource
> extraction and agriculture. These and other lands lost through successive
> reductions are known as “cut-off lands.” Many bands subsequently argued
> that their reserves were too small and location was poor. As geographer
> Cole Harris notes,
>
> From the late 1860s, Native leaders [in British Columbia] had protested
> their small reserves in every way they could, claiming, fundamentally, that
> their people would not have enough food and that their progeny had no
> prospects. In retrospect, they were right. The spaces assigned to Native
> people did not support them, although the mixed economies they cobbled
> together, the revised diets they ate, and the accommodations and
> settlements they lived in had allowed some of them to survive.4
>
>
> Dawn Morrison,
>
> Research Associate, Indigenous Community Engagement
> Southwest BC Bioregional Food Systems Design and Plan
> Kwantlen Polytechnic University
> Office: 604.599.2569
> Email: dawn.morrison at kpu.ca
> Website: http://www.kpu.ca/isfs
>
>
> Indigenous Food Systems Network
> C/O 555 East 55th Avenue
> Vancouver, B.C, V5X 1N6
> Mobile: 778.879.5106
> Email: dmo6842 at gmail.com
> Website: www.indigenousfoodsystems.org
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> wgifs mailing list
> wgifs at bcfsn.org
> http://bcfsn.org/mailman/listinfo/wgifs_bcfsn.org
>
>


-- 
Cheryl
*Food for thought...*
"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of
others." - Mahatma Gandhi
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