response to: our water

I should know better than what? Is there such a thing as to know better than these cedars, these shores, these vast beaches that hold stories histories of the people who first lived here. This place that not only speaks openly of them remembers them honours them, but reminds us with their daily actions that their way was the right way, their way showed respect for the very Earth we walk on, the very Earth that holds us up, the very Earth that without we would not survive. I SHOULD KNOW BETTER - THAN WHAT? Than centuries of wisdom that this culture still acknowledges, still digs out of the ground digs out of the written transcripts out of the stories and the legends the oral teachings, working hard to par through the sheen of modern and recently imposed luxuries disguised as needs like three hundred new sky rises who’s each piece arrives wrapped in plastic shipped from overseas so processed there’s not even a trace of the scent of the wood it once was. I should know better? Than to choose to live in a place more green than grey? A place whose wilderness is not contained to a city block and even then is threatened to be bulldozed into a new box store. I SHOULD KNOW BETTER? Than to listen to the wind outside my window rather than an onslaught of sirens and continually-crowded highways. I should know better than to surround myself with people who spend their mornings chopping wood gathering fresh duck eggs listening to CBC and watching the waves watching the forecast knowing that with a big tide and heavy winds there will be wash-up on the beach in the form of dinner and that once the kids are dropped off at school they can go hunting and then mushroom-picking so they can provide their family with the cleanest food gathered by the most trusted source imaginable. People who execute their own house repairs design their own water systems salvage each post that holds the roof above their daughters’ head installed the very window their son looks out of while eating the meal he helped harvest in the forest beyond their backyard. People who are all in it together who find value and fulfillment not only in a hard day’s work but in sharing a hot meal together

at the end of it. A society that collectively slows with each death, asking permission of the affected families before moving forwards too hastily. A society that pauses to gather when a potlatch has been called to show respect listen and appreciate the dancing, the singing, the artwork of the original peoples of this land that lately I call my home. “I should know better” than to surround myself with a culture that consults Mother Earth first, who looks to her about what to plant, when, and why. A culture that looks to her first and foremost with gratitude and then and only then with questions, knowing that she has the answers has always had the answers and that truth is as old as time itself. “I should know better” than to have become a member of a community actively working out reconciliation, not ignoring our past not sweeping it under the rug thinking that will keep our kids safer, but acknowledging it so as to learn where our place here is and the work we have to do and the wounds we are treading upon SIMPLY BY BEING. We as the descendants of settlers have to be able to look back to know what kind of dogma we carry in plain site, and to know

that although today we may not be aiming to hurt in the past that is all we did with no remorse. We have to know what NOT to do what our history is in order to be a part of the healing, the evolution towards true unity. “I should know better” ? How dare you. How dare you shake that flimsy statement at me before ever even trying to walk one day in my shoes or ever even asking me to speak deeply about why I have chosen to be here.