Unsettled and Striving: Extraction is not resilience

There is an enormous empty chasm in communication within this country right now.

All across so-called “Canada” there is a rift developing that is setting Indigenous nations and their allies against the Canadian government and big corporations (specifically in the oil and gas industry).

I am watching Indigenous communities stand in solidarity against fully militarized RCMP officers acting out orders from the Canadian government. In all footage I have seen it is us versus them.

I believe that if any of us look back far enough along our bloodline, we will find relatives who worked intimately with the earth and understood that to be able to take from it first required respect and love. As with any relationship.

We all know that you cannot just take relentlessly from someone and expect them to always be okay. Eventually that person will either demand reciprocation, or completely crumble and break from depletion.

This planet we live on is no different.

Europeans and First Nations peoples are coming at this mutual scenario from completely different backgrounds and perspectives, but, ultimately, we do all want the same thing: to provide for this country and its children.

The industries see their current actions as moves that will help future generations have enough fossil fuels to function, and the Indigenous nations see the continual extraction of those fossil fuels as the act that will deplete this planet so it is not stable enough to even exist for future generations.

We have arrived at the point where we’ve taken so greedily from this planet and given it no break to regenerate itself. Unfortunately, as with every living thing, its resources are finite.

This country’s leaders need to swallow their pride and acknowledge these truths.

We need to seriously begin phasing out these tired systems and shifting toward sustainable (and totally possible) alternatives.

This planet only has so much oil and gas we can squeeze out of it… But what is something that is always, always, 100-percent guaranteed to show up for us every single day?

The sun.

What if, rather than digging into the ground to extract oil and gas, giant solar panels and wind combines were being built—above ground—to create power for neighbouring communities?

What if Canada began making the shift from oil and gas dependency to solar-powered resiliency? From resource extraction to resource creation?

There is no question: if we want to leave anything for future generations we cannot expect to continue taking from within our finite planet.

Why it’s taken us this long to look outward for resource creation is beyond me, but it is not too late.

Come on, Canada: step up. Stop extracting, and start creating.