Vashon Homes & Events from Go! Real Estate

Letter from Vashon Island: Community, Activism and Glacier Mining

February 13, 2009 at 4:52 am Leave a comment

Blessings All

These thoughts are especially directed towards those who reside on Vashon.

We are in the midst of very serious times and i do ponder daily how the community will rise to deflect harm from those we know and love.  Ours is a most apathetic country where those still getting by with remnants of privilege are stymied.  Is it fear?  It can’t happen here?  Am i the only one feeling isolated in the face of what unfolds locally and globally?

For two years, my child and i have found sanctuary on Vashon.  In that time, each of us shaped a niche participating in a progressive and unique culture.  We came and remain due to family ties and magical connections, otherwise it would be impossible to continue.  Perhaps we would be experiencing homelessness which happened in the past when my oldest 2 were small. 

In the late ’80′s we traveled the peace path in our homey van parking it along the way in yards of friends or parks for a night or two.  Now i would fear much more for our well being as the desperation level escalates and the simmering undercurrent of violence strikes down the most vulnerable, invisible, marginalized.  The frontline destinations are crumbling as people resist in isolation or leave traditional lands, disappear into the grind, die, or become addicts.  Now all facets of class are impacted.  Millions join the ranks of the voiceless.  Millions.

Recently i participated in civil disobedience with a group of courageous people opposing the Glacier Sand and Gravel Mine. How inspiring to work with so many people of my children’s generation who display such fearless nonviolence and commitment!  My prayer is that thousands of Vashonites will participate fully in the call of Gandhian nonviolence with conscious intent and resolve.  Our Earth and her inhabitants so need this spirit of life, truth and love.  Essential.

Activism has been central to my existence for close to 30 years.  As i age in a privileged white male dominated culture, i have been witness to who continues to be heard or silenced.  The template laid out by over educated white males is what one is pressured to replicate in order to attain “respectability”.  One must conform to a standard that has been the hallmark of death and destruction all over the planet, tho supposedly more benign.  The men in suits display the uniform appearance of what is supposed to open doors to success.  I always wondered when i saw photos of Nelson Mandela in a suit and tie.  My heart sang when i saw him in traditional clothing.  Tho a suit may not be necessarily preferred garb, the attitude of superiority in knowledge and experience excludes.  The preferred cliques tend to be overwhelmingly white, male and those who can meet certain standards of behavior, style, and articulation. 

When will the all inclusive rhetoric be actually activated?

The more roots radical people become, the less such standards matter.  Hence the longtime young activists devoted to supporting Black Mesa are more along anarchist lines, more broadly inclusive with a studied commitment to dismantling oppressive behaviors.  Yet the struggle of the “isms” that divide us rise to the surface everywhere a frontline of struggle exists. Similar dominator models emerge regardless of political or social persuasion.  The struggle to change behaviors is one of life’s hardest.

In 1986, i drove Pauline Whitesinger and her daughter Bonnie, who translated, in the van to the northwest to speak about the impending threats of forced relocation being resisted by her traditional Dine people along with traditional Hopis.  Pulling into a remote truck stop in Utah or Idaho, we walked inside to use the restroom.  Beefy men stared at her with hostility and she muttered defiantly in Dine Bizaad under her breath. 
In Seattle, an educated Indigenous film maker asked Pauline if she wasn’t afraid that her use of the term “Mother Earth” might turn her listeners off.  Pauline turned away from that woman and would not talk to her again. To this day, Pauline speaks little english and never deviated from her traditional clothing other than boarding school in the ’30′s and in jail once for defending the Sundance grounds at Big Mountain in 2002.  She has never boarded a plane and her first step onto a boat was the Tahlequah ferry when i brought her out to Vashon in ’86.  Her ways are of the high desert Black Mesa of northeastern Arizona, where she remains one of the few resisters to corporate driven forced relocation.  

All too often, conformity is not the path of conscience, peace and justice.  I feel it is an issue deserving of our close examination due to how easily one can slip into the rut of exclusion. 

So that brings me to the words spoken to those of us preparing for the blockade by the lawyer.  The phone was put on speaker while propped on the floor while he told us the importance of being well groomed, “no piercings, no beards”, not looking like dirty hippies when appearing in court.  I found his spiel insulting and addressed it after wards, but few agreed.  Most felt his words of value.  Many feel the need to fit in order to be heard.  Again, if success is attained, such moves are seen as what worked.  What does that say for the struggles that are unceasing where people cannot possibly appear any other way than how they always are?  Privilege is at play….

I have never taken a lawyer in doing civil disobedience, even when facing felony charges for blocking a bulldozer threatening a burial site at Big Mountain in 1989. I represent myself and will continue to do so.  It is the Gandhian way.  Tho i do not necessarily adhere to all of Gandhi’s ways, i certainly do to much of his philosophy.  Look at his attire when doing civil disobedience.  Tho trained as a lawyer himself, his clothing reflected his Hindu roots.  There is no shame in claiming one’s culture.

I wish to honor those who do take on the legislators, Representatives and other bureaucrats in the tireless efforts to educate those who have power. I do not judge those who strive to be as effective as they can according to their own hearts.  I plea that those of us who are not called to groom ourselves in a certain way are also honored.  It is the elevation of one approach over another that must be examined.

All my life i have taken a stand for my own unique way of being in the face of family disregard and social bigotry.  I do claim my culture as Hippie and have been living the principles of simplicity, creativity, nonviolence, organic planet for 40 years.  It is precisely this way of life that made me useful to the traditional Dine and Hopi people i have known for so many years.  Working with those whose way of life is the ongoing struggle to demand an end to genocidal policies has been my greatest inspiration.

As i became closer to the struggle of Pauline and her relatives, i also became aware of how totally silenced such traditional people are all over the Americas.  It is a lifetime commitment to be of service to their ongoing stands for sacred lands.

Early drive around the back lanes hugging the hills above the west facing island the other morning brought many scattered realizations into a bouquet of reality; each critical experience a separate flower.  So i assess relationships and what is silenced in a setting such as this treasure of the Puget Sound.  Each human has hidden gems of wisdom and inspiration to contribute to solution in these potentially terminal times.  What unfolds as trust is nurtured defies the control of agendas.  We must find the time to deeply hear each other.  This is critical to success.  We now have everything to lose.  The old growth is dying; dead zones spread in the seas; genocide has infected humanity, unkindness eats away in small, yet deadly ways and we seem blinded by reality’s toll upon fragile portals for the future.

Several Native American friends were visiting the other night, including my best friend, LisaNa.  She was picking her dog up i cared for the preceding week while she had installed her art at the WSU gallery in Pullman and gave a lecture about her philosophy and work. 

LisaNa’s good friend is a Nisqually man, who has told me about the operation Glacier has in the Nisqually Delta and in the town of Dupont. He also told me about the connection of the Muckleshoot people, then Nisquallys, to the Chinook of Vashon and the area where Glacier is doing it’s damage. He said what Glacier has already destroyed and plans to destroy can never be replicated.

He told me how the fish hatchery on the Nisqually reservation carefully places the salmon eggs in boxes with water from a particular stream that is used all along as the hatchlings grow big enough to be released into the stream itself.  He said that hardly any of those fish return, becoming lost because what has happened to them is not natural.  It just is not working.

My friend calls himself a “renegade” Indian.  He knows all about his people, the fish, the corruption of the allowed voices, the Tribal Council. He knows few care to hear what he has to say about the destruction of land, life, water and the fish.  He gave the name to me of a man who is “qualified” to speak of these things.  I called that man, but he has yet to return my call, tho i will try again and again.

I wonder if  in calling to the Indians of these waters who care deeply about the Chinook, we could form a critical, unprecedented alliance in defending this fragile region.  The people i feel will be most supportive will not fit into any neat category.  They will fully be themselves. We need them as much as we need the Orcas, the herring, the smelt, the sand lance, and the Chinook salmon.

In peaceful struggle,
swaneagle harijan
A Common Mother and Grandmother

P.S.  Are you receiving updates every week for Vashon Island Events?  If not, click here to subscribe.

Entry filed under: • Community, Letters From Vashon, Living Green, Think Green. Tags: Letter from Vashon Island, Vashon Island Glacier Mining.