09/21/2024
I’ve landed in NYC for all of the events planned for “New York Climate Week”. I remember being in these streets 10 years ago, with Chief Allan Adam and councillorAnthony Ladouceur alongside hundreds of thousands of peoples in the streets demanding real action on climate. We were hear because of the decades of destruction caused by the tar sands in our home territories in Treaty 8 (Alberta). The land so sick, the animal so sick, the water so sick, the people so sick. When I think of what they’ve done my heart breaks. I can’t help but feel like too little has been done since then and I sometimes feel defeated.
Then I remember.
I remember when we called for a moment of silence during the largest climate march in history and the streets fell silent. I could hear the wind for minute, I felt overcome with sadness and joy in that moment - how long had it been since we held collective silence to hear the wind in such a city? I remember standing in Central Park surrounded by hundreds of Indigenous peoples from across the world in ceremony, the smell of medicines burned and the melodies of song sung. I remember crying a lot that day. I remember feeling a part of something bigger than me. It felt like being somewhere sacred. In New York of all places. We are doing something. We are changing the way we see and experience the world - from silence to songs.
I returned year after year, to space after space, and the most incredible things have happened. There are so many new faces, new voices, new ideas and new ways drawn from old ways (re)emerging. Yet, we have so far to go in so little time. The tar sands continue to expands despite the endless efforts of my community & people, in fact we are seeing record breaking approvals of projects with life cycles of 50-100 years. Pipelines are still being built to carry tar sands oil, Bakken oil, fracked gas, so called cleaner Liquified natural gas, and on and on we go.
Under a mask of progress we are now seeing carbon accounting, taxes, scrubbing and trading creating a sheild to these projects to continue business as usual. It allows them to hide behind reduction of intensity rather than an end to these destructive industries. So while they continue to make record breaking profits and throw pennies at our communities our medicines, songs, language and culture fades into stories. I don’t want another new building, I want to feel safe on the land. I want them to stop asking us to be sacrifices for their profits and power.
We need real climate action, not politicians swayed by false solutions that promise continued capital gains, political power and unfettered capitalism. I want to hear the wind and the stories of my ancestors.
This year has been so hard. So many Elders, knowledge keepers, leaders have passed and the land mourns their love.
I want that stillness of that singular moment of silence in the city again, I want to feel the collective sadness and joy so that we can remember to hear what we’re too busy ignoring.
