Reflections
from the Ahnishinahbæótjibway (We, the People)
|
What
follows is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of my book, WE
HAVE THE RIGHT TO EXIST, A Translation of Aboriginal Thought, The first
book
ever published from an Ahnishinahbæótjibway
Perspective,
which according to the publisher, Black Thistle Press, went
to the printer on October 4, and should be out in just a few more
weeks.:
In
my great-grandfather’s time, old-growth forests
covered more than half of this Continent, from the Atlantic Ocean to
the
tallgrass prairies west of the Mississippi.
The trees rose to meet the skies, and the sentience of these
ancient
living beings was a part of our Ahnishinahbæótjibway community, part of the
seamless continuity of time. They
were more magnificent than the finest
of the Europeans’ cathedrals, but they were not oppressively cold,
psychologically manipulative man-made canyons of stone; nor
flying-buttressed
edifices like hordes of giant locusts crouched in waiting to devour the
land
and suck the life out of Grandmother Earth.
Our forests were comfortable and nurturing, like the haven of
baby
chicks under their mother hen’s wings.
The forests were home, serene and secure, gentle and wise. Theirs was a concert of voices: the sharp
snapping of trees in the cold winter nights, the wind in the pines, the
low
calls of mother foxes to their young, the soft conversation of our Dodemian
and the crackling of the fires in the sugarbushes, the spring symphony
of
birds, the drumsongs drifting across the water in summer, and the
whooshing
beat of the air as millions of birds flew south in the fall. When I was young, I walked through these
forests. The earth was soft underfoot,
like walking on a plush carpet. The
undisturbed primeval forests had very little underbrush, and a person
could see
a great distance.
When
we were young boys playing in the old-growth pine
forests, we used to watch the flying squirrels in the pines in wonder
and
amazement. We watched them glide from
one tree to the next, walking behind them on a thick carpet of pine
needles. They were beautiful, graceful
animals. It’s been more than forty
years since I have seen a flying squirrel.
They have joined the vanishing species that disappear with the
plunder
of the ecology. They are gone, because
their home in the ancient pines has been clear-cut, replaced by aspen,
and the
whole ecosystem has changed. There is
no habitat for flying squirrels in aspen brush. Where
are the smallest of the woodpeckers, that used to be all
over the woods when I was a boy? In the
last ten years, I have only seen three of these tiny birds. Where are the cedar swamps, so thick that it
was dark at noon? I used to go down
into these swamps and pick our swamp tea, and a few of the
moccasin-flowers. All of this is gone,
and not one White man raised his voice in protest when this entire
forest was
destroyed. It is only very recently that
a few of the Euro-Americans are waking up, and realizing that all life
on Earth
is connected. They are standing up in
public and speaking out in defense of the spotted owls, and the
kangaroo rat,
and all of the other beings that are an integral part of Grandmother
Earth,
that gives us all life. I applaud these
courageous people.
Most
White men can not see into the forests; they can only
see the edge of them. Along the
highways and lakeshores in Northern Minnesota is a Potemkin forest: a
strip of
trees about six trees deep. What the
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources calls “aesthetic buffers”
mask
ravaged clear-cut land.
The
old trees have been cut, replaced with what are called
tree farms, in which the ground is hard, furrowed with plow ridges, and
choked
with underbrush. These pitiful tree
plantations are diseased monocultural plantings grown in an overload of
insecticides and herbicides; barren unbalanced ecologies where the
wildlife
starves or is poisoned. They bear no
resemblance to the forests which belong here.
The
ecosystem in this area is in serious trouble. The
forest products companies will not—and
cannot—restore what they are looting and ransacking.
A few trees cut down, will grow back in an intact forest, but
forest ecosystems, once destroyed, are not renewable.
“Fish flies” are one example of our fine-tuned ecology. Ask any old-timer about the clouds of fish
flies, so thick they looked like smoke, that swirled and hummed every
May. I haven’t seen a single fish fly in
four or
five years. They may be “pesky,” but
they are a necessary part of the ecosystem, and provide food for the
hatchling
fish at the exact time that they need it. When
the Euro-Americans destroy the forests, they destroy
everything, and ultimately themselves.
The
beauty which our people kept for thousands of
generations has been completely
destroyed in my lifetime by the Euro-Americans and their Indians. My children will never see much of what was
our peoples’ beautiful, magnificent heritage, because of the greed of
the
Whites and their Indians. Our water is
polluted, our fish are cancerous and infested with parasites, and the
game has
almost disappeared—because the inter-connected circles of life have
been
destroyed. The children growing up now
see aspen brush, and do not have any understanding of what a real
forest
means. They are a lost generation, and
nobody is telling them that a stand of aspen, which the D.N.R. defines
as
“forest,” is something entirely different from the beautiful primeval
forest
which was once here. Once clear-cut,
the old forests are gone, and will require undisturbed centuries to
regenerate.
You
can plant tree farms to the horizon, and you still do not
replace even one of the trees that was here.
A healthy forest is much more than trees, and planting trees
will not
restore an ecosystem which has been demolished. It
is said that the Europeans “can’t see the forest for the
trees.” Don’t get me wrong—I’m
certainly not against planting trees—but no matter how many trees you
plant or tree
farms you make, no matter how much public pomp and circumstance, and no
matter
how many scientific foresters with Ph.D.s, a tree farm has very little
resemblance to the harmonious, intricate, and balanced ecosystem of the
Ahnishinahbæótjibway A tree farm will not stop
your lakes from drying up;
it will not provide what forests must provide in order for the lakes
and rivers
to be full of fish.
The
scientists talk about forest management, but for them the
bottom line is G.N.P. They do not seem
to understand that even a free-market, democratic economy cannot exist
outside
the reality of the ecosystem. Allow the
clear-cutting to continue, and you will see—you will feel the effects
much
closer to home than you expect.
Such
heedless destruction is sacrilegious to the Ahnishinahbæótjibway. The
Midé
is beyond European time, encompassing our lives, everything
that we do
and think and dream. It is not a
one-hour-a-week religion, like Christianity, where a person goes to
Church on
Sunday morning, and then goes back to destroying the environment again. The Western Europeans have declared a war of
total annihilation on our religion, on Grandmother Earth, and on
Grandfather Midé,
and then they have the gall to say that we, the Ahnishinahbæótjibway who have always been a
non-violent people, are
warlike.
My
telephone number is (218) 679-2382 and my mailing address
is P.O. Box 484, Bemidji, MN 56601.
Wub-e-ke-niew
|
|
|