alternative culture jam

by Nowick Gray

‘They stole the children from the land. Now they want to steal the land from the children.’ —Tahltan protest sign, Kabloona Keepers

On the small island where I live we are blessed not only with abundant and intimate connection with nature in its beautiful, unspoiled state; we also have cultural resources rare in rural communities. This week’s annual film festival returned after a covid hiatus, showcasing documentaries that celebrate both natural and cultural treasures and the imperative to preserve them.

The festival was particularly strong in covering Indigenous issues, from the plight of the Sinixt of interior BC declared extinct by government decree, to the ongoing battle to save old growth forests from logging in unceded territory known as Fairy Creek. Protest also figured in other films portraying iconic struggles in Chile, Tasmania, and Vietnam-era USA, along with contemporary topics such as gender politics, nuclear power, and opioid addiction.

Such hot topics notwithstanding, it seems some subjects nevertheless remain off limits, at least for now. Conspicuous in absence were the supremely contentious issues of a pseudopandemic and all-too-real government overreach, experimental vaccines and sudden deaths, the corruption of media and capture of science. But perhaps I ask too much, too soon. How about a feature on the Freedom Convoy, or Died Suddenly, next year?

Festival organizers only grudgingly advised that facemasks, by now discredited by every reputable scientific study, are still “appreciated but not required.” Tellingly, the festival did include a film about Iranian women throwing off the head covering known as the hijab—apparently required but not appreciated. Facing our own masks means looking in the mirror; too scary!

With this broad brush I have not yet conveyed the emotional power of the films I saw today: Beyond Extinction: Sinixt Resurgence; Before They Fall (about Fairy Creek); and Franklin (about the 1980s battle to save Tasmania’s wild river). Each film spoke of heart-rending loss and destruction at the hands of colonial blindness and greed.

Maybe it was my personal connection to each of these campaigns that made them hit home so hard. Participating in logging blockades that were unsuccessful in Sinixt watersheds, and that are ongoing at Fairy Creek; and enjoying Tasmania’s primeval wilds on a visit two decades after their narrow victory (achieved finally with a national election and high court ruling).

Partly it was recognizing in these struggles that humanity itself is threatened now just as these film subjects were threatened with brutal erasure. A whole people, language, and ancestral home, in the case of the Sinixt; a priceless and irreplaceable ecosystem at Fairy Creek; a determined movement of mass action for wilderness protection, in Tasmania.

The forces arrayed remain constant: police, industry, the courts, the government, the rule of colonial law, pitted against independent media, grassroots activism, principled nonviolence, spiritual connection with land and ancestral values. In between are factions, pawns of the government, vying for economic crumbs and conditioned by centuries of exploitation, domination of the earth.

Today defenders of land and traditional humanity face off against multinational interests, global resetters, media and tech collusion, soulless financial entities. The battle goes on, with brushfires everywhere, stakes escalating, time running out.

Awakened and reawakened to our vital and sacred connections with each other and the earth, our hearts beat stronger. Our will to survive and prevail, undeterred. Filled with new love and respect—in solidarity with those on the front lines, and those who have shown the way. Ever more committed, resolved.

Mother Earth, Homo sapiens, not yet extinct, the fight goes on.

‘Technocrats, the bio-security pandemicists and transhuman global eugenicists want you to hate your humanity, hate your biology as a thing abhorrent, lose your useless eater life in drugs and entertainment media – trust The Science and get on your proverbial knees. The post-modern wokesters would emotionally stunt you and have you subsumed in the trans, non-binary collective, shame you as an oppressor/exalt you as a victim, reverse your order. Don’t breed for the sake of the earth. If you can’t get along, kill yourself. If you must live, you will do as we say. Take your shots. Don’t ask questions. Obey.

‘I prefer to embrace nature, celebrate biology… I prefer to trust myself, to know what is best for myself, I have no need for transhumanists, wokesters, technocrats, media or Intelligence Agents to tell me how to be. Our human biology is the culmination of four billion years of life on earth. I don’t need any high tech to see that, to find myself.’ —William Hunter Duncan