We Remember, We Rise Together

"Water is life.  Our Mother is the Earth.  We remember, we rise together."

We sang these words together this weekend at a fundraiser house concert.  My partner and I with some friends created an afternoon to celebrate our connection with water.  Our songs and poems create a river of images, memories, rhythms and magic.  We wanted our guests to travel with us from snowfields, to creeks, rivers, lakes, oceans, rain, aquifers and tears.

We were reminded that we are two thirds water ourselves and that water travels through us in serpentine patterns.  We learned that water has the chemical ability to hold memory.

photo: Jan McFarland

The day before the concert, my partner and I joined people in Midland who were drumming for water.  The work of Dr. Emoto, a Japanese researcher shows that water can change when people send clear intentions for it.  One woman told us that someone had sent some of the local spring water to Capetown, South Africa which is in dire need of rain.  Just after the Alliston Aquifer water reached Capetown, it started to rain.  Another woman related that she and others drummed every other week for two years when they heard that a dump was planned over an important aquifer.  Local people fought for years to end Dump Site 41 and eventually were successful.  The local people joined with Beausoleil First Nation waterwalkers to protect the water. 

Now they are faced with another threat to the same Alliston aquifer.  A quarry has been sold to a new aggregate company that plans to remove much of the hill that filters the rainwater to provide crystal clear drinking water to so many people.  Once again, the people are organizing to protect their water.  The provincial government has already given out permits to pump billions of litres of water to wash asphalt and gravel and for the removal of much of French’s hill.  The government seems to only see the land as a resource to be exploited.  The aggregate company is registered in Ireland which seems to mean that it has no accountability.

The local people are the ones who could lose their drinking water.  The members of the Beausoleil First Nation used to be the ones who lived on this land.  They were removed by the federal government onto smaller and smaller pieces of land through treaties that were never honoured.  The First Nation is still fighting to have the government honour their side of the treaty.  And yet, the members of the First Nation who only got potable water themselves a few years ago are willing to stand with the people who now live on their traditional territory.  They are willing to stand for the water, for the earth because that is what they do.

These fights cost money.  Corporations have deep pockets and hope to wear people down.  But the people who live in this area know the value of the water.  You can’t run a dairy farm with polluted water.  You can’t raise children on polluted water.  You can’t water your garden if the water has been drained by an aggregate company.

photo: Jan McFarland

In Canada, we are blessed with so much fresh water that we tend to take it for granted.  It is seen as a free resource to be used for profit making, to be used to keep the economy growing.  However, more and more people are starting to see that an economy that is continually growing is never satiated.  It gobbles up more and more of the land.  It demands things like pipelines with their risky cargo to threaten the health of the land and the sea.  Those who can get rich from these industries like the Alberta oilfields pressure the people who could lose their waterways and tourism industries in British Columbia.

When I heard an elder from Beausoliel First Nation speak about his community losing access to their traditional land to the colonizers I felt this loss.  When I heard the voices of the people who now live on this land who are being threatened by a multi-national aggregate company who can destroy their drinking water, I felt this same loss.  The colonizers are now being colonized.  People who value the land and the water as life are being challenged by people who value the land and water as sources of money that will disappear from the community.

Who will protect our water?  Someone asked that at the meeting.  Everyone in the room stood up.  And so, my partner and I decided to have a fundraising house concert in a small town to help raise money for the fight.  But we focused on helping people remember their connections with water.  We protect what we value.

And together we sang, “Water is life.  Our Mother is the Earth.  We remember, we rise together.”