Girl Rising: Where They Are Now

In March 2013 the film Girl Rising was released. It is about the power of educating girls around the world to not only make their lives better but also to change the societies that they live in and indeed the world.  I wrote about this in May 2016 which you can see here. 

To celebrate the film’s fifth anniversary, a new film called Girl Rising: The Fifth Anniversary Edition follows the girls progress and tells the stories of where they are now.

Here are two of the girls stories.  First, Sokha from Cambodia and then Senna from Peru:

These young women will inspire you and give you hope.  If you want to watch the entire film you can purchase it to view on-line here.  You may find yourself agreeing with the slogan "One Girl with Courage IS a Revolution"!

One Way to Celebrate David Suzuki's Birthday

David Suzuki is celebrating his 82^nd birthday!  He is almost a household name as the man who has “inspired millions of people to protect the planet.”   The David Suzuki Foundation works to combat climate change, protect biodiversity and secure the right for all people to a healthy environment.

As I was looking through the David Suzuki Foundation website, I came across an article written by Melina Laboucan-Massimo.  She is the David Suzuki Foundation’s Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Change Fellow.  Her article is about the connection between resource extraction and violence towards women.  I thought that this was an interesting connection especially on the heels of International Women’s Day amid the MeToo and TimesUp movement.

Meilina Laboucan-Massimo

Laboucan-Massimo cites studies that demonstrate that where resource extraction (such as the Tar Sands in northern Alberta) happens, there are a lot of men who have left their families behind and who have a lot of money.  This leads to a demand for a sex trade as well as substance abuse.  Women on First Nations near such resource extraction sites are at a high risk for sexual abuse based on racism and the behaviours of men who will not stay in the area and are therefore not accountable for their actions.

She goes on to say that if the Trans Mountain Pipeline extension goes through, then women all along it’s corridor will be at a higher risk for sexual assault while it is being built and maintained.

Laboucan-Massimo urges people to sign a petition to the politicians who are agreeing to this project and points out the other good reasons for not going ahead with this project:

“The federal government approved the Kinder Morgan and Line 3 pipeline expansions. Here are four reasons we want them to rethink their position that strong climate action can happen alongside fossil fuel infrastructure expansion:

1.   Climate Canada can’t meet its Paris commitments and expand fossil fuel infrastructure — such as building the Kinder Morgan pipeline — at the same time.

2.   No social licence Twenty-one municipalities, 59 First Nations, 91 per cent of people surveyed at town halls, and 210,000 petition signers say no. Approval runs roughshod over Indigenous rights.

3.   Environmental damage Tanker and barge traffic would increase sevenfold (up to 408 tankers a year), making bitumen spills more risky near heavily populated areas.

4.   Orca extinction Approval could push the already fragile population of 76 resident orcas on B.C.’s south coast to extinction.

Say no to the Kinder Morgan pipeline. Say yes to saving killer whales, managing our oceans to protect species and communities, and transitioning to renewable energy. This is the future hundreds of thousands speaking against the Kinder Morgan pipeline want.

It’s not too late for federal government to rethink its approval of this pipeline and to walk its climate action talk.”

If you have never signed an on-line petition, they are very easy to use.  When I signed, there were 12,594 signatures and they hoped to get to 15,000.  Just click on this link and follow the prompts.

This is an easy action to take.  It will let you stand up for the environment.  And it will let you add your voice to people who are standing up for the protection of Indigenous women in British Columbia.  The Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women Inquiry is listening to the stories of the families and trying to get to the root causes for such a high number of women being harmed.  When you think of the Earth as our mother, then what we do to her, we will do to women as well.  If we take from the Earth without giving back, it will seem okay to do this to women as well.  This is the old paradigm that is changing.  You can add your voice to that change.

  

 You can read “Climate Justice Must Include Gender Justice” by Melina Laboucan-Massimo here.

Project Greenhands Restores Trees and Dignity

In 2004, a tsunami devastated the coastal communities of Tamil Nadu in Southern India.  The Isha Foundation which is a non-profit yoga organization in India came to help the villagers who were equally devastated.  The foundation decided to give the villagers tree saplings to plant.  One sapling was planted for every life that was lost in the tsunami.  This helped the villagers with their grieving.  As they took care of the trees, their hearts as well as the land was healed.

Planting saplings in tsunami area as a tidal barrier

This act of generosity grew into a larger mission.  Much of Tamil Nadu had been deforested which led to extreme desertification.  Wells dried up and the land was unable to support life. 

The people were so demoralized that the volunteers started with helping the people with yoga, meditation and playing volleyball so that they could have some fun.  And that started a “planting revolution” that has resulted in 28 million trees being planted so far with what is now called Project Greenhands.  You can learn more about this project in this 3 minute video and see the amazing things that are being created by children and adults.

There are many facets to Project Greenhands but the one that costs the most and is desperately needed is to make sure that the agricultural culture of this state is not lost.  And so TreeSisters is supporting the education of farmers so that they can learn about agro-forestry.  This is a poly-culture approach that combines animals, crops and trees. 

The trees provide shade, increased soil fertility and moisture to bring life back to the earth.  They can also be used for crops of seeds, nuts, fruit, medicine, and oil.  To grow the trees initially takes a drip irrigation system which is costly.  But then the trees bring back the rain and streams and the land can be farmed again. As the land is rehabilitated, people don’t have to leave the villages for the city where they end up living in poverty.  Planting the trees allows the people to stay on the land and retain their dignity.

Lines of women planting (all images Project Greenhands)

This is just one of the projects that TreeSisters supports through monthly donations of Tree Sisters and Brothers all over the world.  More and more people are joining this planting revolution and as I am writing this blog, the estimated number of trees that TreeSisters has funding for is 2,044,996 per year.  When I joined this group in October of last year they had just reached one million trees.  And now 5 months later that has doubled. More and more people are waking up and realizing that as we take care of the Earth, she takes care of us.  That is the relationship that sustains us.

Press for Progress: International Women's Day 2018

 International Women’s Day is officially March 8th.  You may have seen or heard about women’s marches in cities around the world this past weekend.  The events in the United States have spurred women’s marches around the world in the past year or so.  If you listen to mainstream media, you might think that this was the first time that women had marched. But not so..

I was curious about the history of International Women’s Day, so I looked it up.  This day was started by the Suffragettes who marched for years to get the vote for women.  In Britain they achieved this goal in 1911 and created the IWD to mark this event.  On the International Women’s Day website it says:  “International Women’s Day (March 8) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.  The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.  International Women’s Day has occurred for well over a century, with the first March 8 IWD gathering supported by over a million people n Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.  Prior to this the Socialist Party of America, United Kingdom’s Suffragists and Suffragettes, and further groups campaigned for women’s equality.  Today, IWD belongs to all groups collectively everywhere.  IWD is not country, group or organization specific."  You can hear girls from around the world talk about their reality in this video:

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I wondered when Canadian women got the vote and discovered that it varied over the provinces.  Women in the western provinces were given the vote in 1916.  In Ontario it was 1917.  For Nova Scotian women it was 1918.  New Brunswick followed in 1919, with Prince Edward Island in 1922.  Quebec did not allow women to vote provincially until 1940 and Indigenous women and men did not get this right until 1960.

Federally, the vote for women began in a limited way in 1917.  However, women only became people under the law in Canada in 1929.  So we have not even been people under the law for a hundred years.  No wonder, the law has been slow to catch up with protecting our rights.  No wonder women are not still represented in legislatures in proportion to their presence in the population.

It bears remembering that the right to vote was not granted out of kindness, fairness or justice.  It was fought for, marched for, petitioned for by courageous women.  That is why I always vote even if I am not happy with the choices.  I know that this right was hard won.  There is no doubt that other rights have been fought for and achieved by courageous women who were often mocked and reviled by the powers that be.  People in power hardly ever willing share that power it seems.

The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is “Press for Progress”.  That is the twitter name as well and women are posting pictures of themselves with arms stretched forward, palms up as though pressing on something ahead.  This year’s theme is about pressing for progress in gender parity.  It is important to remember that even if some women in the richer countries can make the same amount of money as a man for the same job, that this is not true around the world.  It is important to remember that until there is gender parity around the world, peace will be elusive.  More and more it is obvious that we are a global community that creates and suffers from climate change, threats of war and the flow of goods.

How will you celebrate International Women’s Day?  Will you march, sign a petiton, donate so that girls can get an education, support the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women’s families, support a woman in Africa on WorldPulse.com, support Grandmothers to Grandmothers, donate to TreeSisters so that women in the tropics can plant trees, help a neighbour, be a positive role model or empower your daughter?  There are millions of us and millions of actions to be taken.

Press for Progress and know that there are millions of women behind you and millions of girls yet to come before you as you take your part in this vibrant circle.  The world needs the voices, wisdom and courage of women.  So speak your truth, share your wisdom and take heart.  We are all in this together.

Or you could get some of your friends and dance like these young women.  Check it out:

Bead by Bead: Exploring Time

Bead by bead, linked together with thread, the picture emerges.  It is my exploration of cyclical time.   It feels like a kind of map to me.

After reading, Jagged Worldviews Colliding by Leroy Little Bear, I learned that the Eurocentric idea of linear time which goes from point A to point B, “manifests itself in terms of a social organization that is hierarchical in terms of both structure and power. Socially it manifests itself in terms of bigger, higher, newer or faster being preferred over smaller, older, lower or slower.” 

Little Bear contrasts this with the Indigenous worldview in which everything is in constant motion and one has to look at the whole to see patterns.  For example, the cyclical nature of the seasons is an example of a cyclical sense of time.  “Constant motion, as manifested in cyclical or repetitive patterns, emphasizes process as opposed to product. It results in a concept of time that is dynamic but without motion.”

In an experiment with myself in decolonization, I tried to imagine being in cyclical time.  I got the idea of a tree divided into four quadrants to match the four seasons.  I sketched it on a piece of note paper and then started to bead the tree onto a piece of felt.  In the quadrant representing the east I beaded bright green spring foliage onto the tree.  In the south, I beaded rich green foliage of summer, in the west, the oranges, yellows and reds of an autumn maple tree.  And in the north, the bare branches covered in ice.  A red heart emerged in my mind in the trunk and a raven sitting in its branches. 

While I was beading the winter quadrant and it was wintery outside, I felt comforted by the fact that the spring quadrant was so close by.  Often in wintertime where I live, it feels as though winter will last forever.  Within the idea of linear time, it seems to stretch endlessly back into the past and well into the future.  But in my cyclical time map, winter was in proportion, so to speak.  All the seasons were available to me when I viewed them from within the circle.

I beaded the roots with various shades of purple like the roots of a cedar tree.  And within the roots appeared the white bones of the ancestors cradled within the earth.  New life and death were both present.  Then the sun and moon emerged in the sky showing the cycle of day and night.  These regular, cyclical events felt comforting as opposed to the fear of a linear view in which usually, only human events are time-lined.

As I picked up one bead at a time with my needle, I imagined working with individuals, atoms, pixels, one at a time.  Together, they created the whole picture.  Each one was important, playing its part in the whole.  All were important but none more so than the others.

With almost no training in beading, I place them as though I am painting.  With little planning, I move around the piece, beading various areas as they attract my attention.  My designs get me into beading dilemmas but I stretch the constraints of the medium.  I love the vibrant colours and how they work beside one another.  Some colours bring out the best in other colours but are totally uncomplimentary to others, just like people.  The thread represents the relationships between all the beads.  Each bead is beside other beads. The contrast is what makes things pop and diversity is what creates the beauty of the piece. 

In cyclical time, everything is about relationship.  We create relationships, we strengthen them by repetition, by remembering or we weaken them through neglect.  Spending time, contacting, honouring our relationships with other people, with the seasons, the land, the water, the air, fire, trees, animals or birds strengthens these relationships. 

Our time is marked by our relationships, like thread connecting one bead to another.  When it is broken down like that, it just seems so do-able, so possible.  I hug my partner, I kiss my children, I thank the water, I feed the birds, I listen to the trees, I write to my elected official, I sing to my friends, I receive my food as a gift, love as a gift, the rain as a gift.  There is nowhere to get to, there is no progress to strive for, there is no endless growth to stretch and suffer for.  The past and future are all available to inform the present where I understand my connection to everything else.  I think about how we got to this moment and what needs to be created for future generations. 

I know that I am only scratching the surface of this worldview as I experiment with it. Perhaps this is decolonizing my thinking.  Perhaps this is indigenizing my worldview. I don’t know for sure, but already it feels more sustainable for my well being and for the world. 

Leroy Little Bear (2000) Jagged Worldviews Colliding from Indigenous Voice and Vision by Marie Battiste. University of British  Columbia.

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.”

Shaking off the Snow

Snow, snow, snow. We just passed Groundhog Day, the half way point in our winter.  It has been a reasonable winter but I am also caring for my ninety-year-old father.  Two infections have led to a decline in his cognitive abilities and I am picking up more of his tasks.  He lives in a very nice retirement residence close to my home and my brother lives only minutes away.  He has enjoyed good health most of his life and is financially fine. It could be so much worse.  And yet some days I find myself weighed down by the added responsibilities, errands, advocating and problem solving.  Sometimes it only takes one more phone call from a staff member at the residence for me to bottom out.

On the weekends, my partner wisely insists that we ski in the forest.  He knows that is where life comes back to me.  Although my body feels worn out, I know he is right and off we go.  I know in my mind that the exercise will give me endorphins, the feel good chemicals we make that are in the same family as morphine.  I know in my mind that exercise will get more oxygen into my brain so I can think more clearly.  I know in my mind that exercise is good for my health.  And so my mind agrees.  Yes, let’s go skiing.

What I always forget (but my partner does not) is that when I get into the forest, I am surrounded by friends and wise teachers.  I greet the trees and I start to pay attention with another part of myself.  The snow has weighed the branches down and many now rest at my shoulder level.  I feel my burdened physical self resonate with the laden branches.  Still not able to let my own burden go, I raise my ski pole and pull a branch lower.  Then I release it and it springs up shaking off the powdery snow.  I repeat this over and over until I can feel the spring in my own body.  The trees are showing me how to shake off the burden so that I don’t snap like a dead branch under the weight.

And then I take a deep breath and with the exhale, I feel the heaviness slide off of me into the Earth.  And my body feels the spring of release.

Now I start to pay attention to the roots under my feet.  I think about the roots of dying trees and how new roots will take their place.  I reflect on the neural pathways that I am shutting down as my father ages.  The pathways in which he is bright and in charge of what he wants and how he will get it, have to be let go of.  Those neural pathways will wither away in my brain.  New pathways are being created in which I have to look out for his needs and help him get what he wants.  I picture these as tiny roots spreading through the forest floor. 

My father has gone from a man who doesn’t like to be touched, to a man who needs to have his nails cut, his hair cut, help with dressing and getting out of a car.  These are new pathways between us.  When you think about the brain, grieving is the letting go of familiar pathways and replacing them with new ones.  We let the old pathways go, one at a time which is why grieving takes so long.  We build new pathways one at a time which is why it takes some time for new things to feel familiar or normal.  The forest shows me this as I imagine the forest floor in its ever changing patterns.

And then the ski trail brings us back to the main building.  I have oxygen and endorphins in my brain, I have shed my emotional baggage and I have a new way of seeing this journey that I am taking with my father.  No drugs, no substances, no shopping, just the endless snow and the forest and my partner who cares for me.  They say the simplest solutions are the best.  Yup.  I agree.