Mythical Misfits Create New Story for Bees

Psychologist Sharon Blackie, in her TEDX talk that was featured in last week’s blogpost, talked about telling a new kind of story.  She uses the word myth to mean the underlying story of a culture (not as something that is false).  Blackie said that when the current cultural myth stops working, then the mythic misfits who recognize this dysfunction, need to imagine new myths.  She compared this to the big fire going out, while small fires still burning can lean into each other and become a new fire.

After hearing her talk a few times, I spent some time thinking about what this new myth might sound like.  Blackie spoke about the myth which is not about the individual hero, but rather about the community.  This new myth is not about bigger and better but about appreciating what we already have.

 There was one story that I had heard recently that might fit this description.  I heard the story in an email from a group called SumofUs. SumOfUs is self-described as “a community of people from around the world committed to curbing the growing power of corporations.”  They “want to buy from, work for and invest in companies that respect the environment, treat their workers well and respect democracy.”  And they’re not afraid to stand up to them when they don’t.  (SumOfUs website).

The story was about neonicotinoid insecticides that has been shown to hurt bees who are of course critically important for pollination that allows humans to grow plants that provide us with food.  Ontario was the first province in Canada to ban neonics.  Recently at a European Union meeting, a ban on these insecticides was to be discussed.  Bayer, a powerful company that produces neonics has been fighting this ban since it was partially enacted in 2013. 

We are used to hearing the story of powerful corporations being able to control governments, individual people and nature, all in the name of making more profit.  They are playing their part in the current cultural myth of a constantly growing economy.  One wonders how economies can grow forever in a world which is finite, but the myth still controls the world.  CEO’s are by definition responsible only to the shareholders of the company.  They are not responsible to the employees, the customers, the people who live in the countries that they operate and certainly not the other species that share the planet with people.

But here is where people who don’t believe that myth created a new story.  SumofUs reported that through their on-line activities, 600,000 people signed their on-line petition putting pressure on the EU members before the vote. Some SumOfUs members donated money that was used to buy advertising space on big billboards and in newspapers that EU commissioners would read to state the case for the bees.  And although it was close, the neonic ban passed despite Bayer’s best efforts.

Ad in key Brussels media outlet

 

Ads in national newspapers in the Netherlands and Sweden

SumofUs anticipates that Bayer will mount a court challenge, but they are ready to meet this challenge.  Instead of one hero going out to slay the monster, hundreds of thousands of people have joined to convince their politicians or representatives to limit the monster’s ability to put food production at risk.  They want Bayer to produce healthy products, not products at any cost.  SumOfUs is going to Bayers’ shareholders meeting to try to convince the board to stop this destructive business model. 

When you apply Blackie’s ideas to this story, you can see that this is a story about how community forms to protect not just bees, but its own food security.  The protection is not with weapons, but with convincing elected officials to represent the needs of the many over the needs of the shareholders of one company.  Of course the shareholders also need food, but if they are only believing the myth of a constantly growing economy, the myth that money is the primary source of security, then they may not realize that this myth is putting them at risk.  They may not understand the true “cost” of this money.  

So as we work together to save the bees, the bees will work together to save us.  There is no individual hero or superhero, just all of us, taking our part and working together to sustain what we have.  And as we do so, we will feel more appreciative for what we do have and we won't need to pursue more and more, better and better.

As more and more of these new stories play out, they will begin to seem normal to us.  But for now, we have to look carefully for them, like little fires that are burning.  We can add our fires to them and watch them blaze.

Mythical Misfits Kickstart Cultural Transformation

“We are story telling animals,” says psychologist Sharon Blackie.  Stories are how we make sense of the world and how we construct our world.  Her recent TEDx talk on “The Mythic Imagination” taped in Belfast can be watched here.  She talks about the importance of stories and the kind of stories that our society tells as well as the new story that needs to be told.  You can watch it here:

Enchanted by Squirrel-Corn

It has become my habit over the last few years, to take the third week of May as a holiday.  It is the week of my birthday and May is my favourite month.  I love to watch the leaves emerge on the trees, to plant vegetables and to get onto my hands and knees and see which perennials have survived the winter.  And so the week is my birthday gift to myself.

This year, my friend gave me the perfect book-present to go along with my self-present.  The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of Everyday by Sharon Blackie has been a delight to read, as well as a kind of a map back to a place of wonder.

I haven’t finished the book yet, as it is one to savour and live and there is no whodunnit revealed at the end to speed me along.  It is all about the journey. And I wanted to share a part of that journey with you.

Blackie believes “that the state of enchantment has four major components:

1.   It is founded upon a sense of fully participating in a living world – a feeling of belonging rather than separation.

2.   It incorporates feelings of wonder, and curiosity.  To be enchanted is to be comfortable with the fact that not everything can be explained; to tolerate, even welcome, the presence of mystery.

3.   Enchantment is not all in the head.  It is very much a function of our lived, embodied experience in the world.

4.   Echantment is the emanation of the mythic imagination, and is founded on an acknowledgement of myth and story as living principles in the world.” (p. 38)

After reading this section, I went for a walk in the woods.  A hardwood bush in the spring in Ontario is the perfect remedy for a long winter.  It is like a spring tonic for the spirit and if you can’t find enchantment there, then you are in serious trouble.

Thinking of Blackie’s words, I tried to get out of my head and feel a part of the forest.  I bent over newly emerging plants to see more clearly and tried to feel with my whole body, the feeling of different plants.  

The forest floor was blanketed with white trilliums and the occasional purple and pink ones as well.  Little points of white light, they were like forest floor stars that mostly pointed south towards the arc of the sun. They seemed to twinkle and I could feel an excitement growing inside of me at this abundance that had emerged from beneath the fallen leaves of last autumn.  Where everything seemed dead, suddenly there was an explosion of light and life.

Then in the midst of the sea of white flowers I spied some tiny pink flowers with purple stripes.  After searching my wildflower book later, I discovered they were called Carolina Spring Beauties which seemed an apt name that made me smile.

Looking for patterns in the areas of green, I detected the umbrella shapes of the may apples, the single leaves of wild leeks, the fuzzy heart-shaped leaves of wild ginger and the spotted greens of trout lilies.  It was like meeting old friends after a period of separation.  I welcomed them back and they welcomed me.  Just like Sharon Blackie said, I experienced a feeling of belonging.  I picked one violet leaf, brushed it off and ate it.  Violet leaves are edible as are the flowers and full of vitamin C. It is one of my spring rituals, welcoming new growth and health into my body.

A few days later, my partner and I, on the way to delivering a finished 

instrument, stopped at a provincial park near Mono Mills, Ontario.  We found a forest trail and followed it into another hardwood bush.  Looking for our friends, we found them; violets with purple, mauve, yellow and white flowers, may apples, a few trilliums, trout lilies and wild ginger.  As well got closer to the stream flowing at the bottom of a ravine, we walked through a beautiful grove of blue cohosh. 

They were everywhere with their blue green scalloped leaves.  I tried to feel their presence with my body and a wave of calm, like water, flowed over me.  

Traditionally, the root of this plant was used to begin labour or as an antispasmodic to ease menstrual pains as well as for anti-inflammatory uses.  The plants felt calming to me as I stood surrounded by them.  Later in the week when I felt anxious, I returned in my mind to that blue cohosh glade and the experience of a calm body, and the anxiety and it’s chemical cascade was interrupted.

We followed the path through the forest and came to some stairs up the side of the ravine.  I was carefully watching the stairs and my feet when I suddenly noticed a leaf I had never seen before.  It was elegantly sculpted like an art deco design, like a rounded fern edge but not a fern.  I stopped to look at it and my partner noticed the same plant flowering a little higher on the hill.  

Scrabbling up the muddy slope I came face to face with delicate heart-shaped white flowers suspended over the delicate leaves.  Of course I had forgotten to bring my camera, so I had to try to memorize the shape of the flowers and the leaves.  I felt a curiosity about the name of this plant, a sense of wonder about the exquisite leaves and in short, I a was enchanted.

Once we returned to the car where I had my book on wildflowers, I combed through the book until I found the plant.  It is called Wild Bleeding Heart which makes sense but it’s other name is Squirrel-Corn.  That made my partner and I burst into laughter as we have fed corn to squirrels in the yard in the fall.  The name comes from the tuber of the plant which looks like a kernel of corn.  The plant conjured up a story and we were delighted that the forest had shared this wondrous gift with us. Later in the week as we were faced with things that were frustrating or sad, we would just say Squirrel-Corn and we felt like children again.  And now, this plant has become part of our story.

Returning to the forest today, only a few days after the stunning trillium display, the beech leaves had emerged fully.  It was raining lightly and the day was dull, so the colour of the leaves was saturated and wonderful.  I felt bathed in this bright green spring light and felt totally alive.  My week is nearly over now and I feel rejuvenated and connected.  I had some other adventures which I will write about in a future blog.  For now I feel I have reconnected with "the enchanted life" and that is something I want to keep for the year to come.

Sharon Blackie (2018) The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday. Toronto: House of Anansi Press.

Bob Bossin Sings “We Don’t Want Your Pipeline”

An email from Coast Protectors gives an update on resistance to the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.  It reads in part:

“Kinder Morgan's Annual General Meeting is in Houston, Texas next week and local Indigenous leaders are making an emergency trip there to remind them that without Indigenous consent, the Trans Mountain pipeline will never be built. Tomorrow on Burnaby Mountain, we're making a joyful noise to send them on their way.

After weeks of resistance an impromptu choir has sprung up on the mountain. Song powers the movement and the May 5th event featured choirs and beautiful songs of praise and resistance.”

photo: Coast Protectors coastprotectors.ca

Songs are an ancient way of telling a story.  Here is one of the new songs that has been created.  You can check out “Pipeline” performed by Bob Bossin and Stringband written by Robin and Linda Williams with new lyrics by Bob Bossin here:

Reconciling Promises and Reality: Clean Drinking Water for First Nations

When the federal Liberals formed the government in Nov. 2015 they pledged to provide safe drinking water for the First Nations in Canada.  More than 100 communities have gone without safe drinking water for years or even decades.

The David Suzuki Foundation in partnership with the Council for Canadians have been studying the government’s progress in this area.  They first reported their findings in February 2017 in Glass Half Empty? Year 1 Progress towards Resolving Drinking Water Advisories in Nine First Nations in Ontario.  

This first report concluded that although the work to end Drinking Water Advisories (DWA) had begun, the federal government was “not on track to fulfill its commitment made to end long-term drinking water advisories in First Nations across Canada within five years.”

A year later, The David Suzuki Foundation has now published their second annual report, Reconciling Promises and Reality: Clean Water for First Nations which assesses “the government’s progress along a set of 14 indicators, developed from the recommendations in the previous report.” (Davic Suzuki Foundation website).  Since Nov. 2015, 40 Drinking Water Advisories (DWA) have been lifted while 26 have been added.

This report which you can read here, also features stories of First Nations that are showing leadership in the resolution of the drinking water crisis.

In the Atlantic, Canada’s first water authority that is constructed, owned and operated by First Nations is being developed, led by the Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nations Chiefs Secretariat.  This is one of the activities of the First Nations Clean Water Initiative.  This Water Authority will be a legal not-for-profit corporation that will seek to ensure among other things that each community has an equal say in how the water authority is governed.

The new Mobile Water Treatment Pilot Plant on Lytton First Nation

In BC, Lytton First Nation has partnered with universities to design water treatment solutions that fit the communities instead of the government one size fits all approach.  This innovative Community Circle of Trust places the community water treatment operators at the centre so that their experience informs the design.

“ I want to restore the faith in tap water in my
own community first,  and then travel out and
restore the tap water quality in other communities.”
Eric Vautour Water First Internship Program  

In Ontario, “the Water First internship was started last year in partnership with the United Chiefs and Councils of Mnidoo Mnising, the Union of Ontario Indians and Wikwemikoong Unceded Indian Reserve” on Manitoulin Island.  The Water First internship is to empower Indigenous youth so that they can play a role in securing clean drinking water for their communities.  Working with water has also connected the youth with their roots and traditional teachings.

In Whitefish River First Nation in Ontario, youth involved in the Water First internship have been working on a First Nations-led source water protection plan that aims at protecting the rivers, lakes and streams around their community.  This is complicated because these water sources can be outside of the First Nation territory and are therefore under the jurisdiction of the province.

In BC, the First Nations Health Authority which is the largest Indigenous-led health authority in Canada is also taking steps to ensure safe drinking water.  The Drinking Water Safety program works with communities to regularly test water and make sure it meet federal and provincial standards.  They are also educating communities so that they can take control over the quality of their water more effectively.

In summary, this second report finds that while some steps are being taken by the federal government, they are still falling short of what is needed if they are to reach their own goals.  In addition, source water protection needs to be addressed.  Preventing the contamination of water before it is treated is the first line of defense as well as being critical to protecting water into the future.  In addition, legislation to set enforceable regulations for safe drinking water in First Nation communities still needs to be passed.

You can read the whole report here.