It
took me a long time to find out my mistakes
But
I’m not fattenin’ no more frogs for snakes.
Sonny Boy Williamson
The
Unist’ot’en are the Big Frog clan of the Wet’suwet’en nation. They defiantly
croak at the colonizer’s yoke without reservation. They are hungry for
decolonization. We honor their spirited resistance to colonial authority and
offer our wholehearted solidarity.
That
the Canadian government would like to fatten indigenous peoples up for the kill
should come as no surprise. One aspect of colonial policy has always been to
“fatten frogs for snakes”, either by cajolery, bribery or by the deadening
domestication of the feedlot. In this case, the snakes are the extractive
tentacles of the fossil fuel industry whose serpentine form is the pipeline.
That venomous symbol is the opposite of the lifegiving phallus of Eros. It is
the phallus of death and destruction. Destruction of the land and death to the
people of the land.
The
autonomy of the Unist’ot’en frog pond is in danger as their un-ceded territory
outside the confines of the reserve is threatened by TransCanada (TC
Energy)/Coastal GasLink predators. “Why not just cut your losses and fatten up
at the corporate trough,” say the colonizers with a wink? But the hereditary
chiefs have refused to allow the living body of the land to be carved up
without a fight. They yearn for long-term sustenance rather than the empty
calories of fast-food trickery. In contrast, the reservation band councils have
signed on with the LNG industry for the chance to get a piece of the pie after
having so long been restricted to the meager crumbs from the colonial table.
But the whole frackin’ pie is rotten! It has been (half)baked by the same
people who came to these lands from Europe over 150 years ago with a bible in
one hand and a gun in the other. They were the missionaries of cultural
genocide who sought to colonize the minds of the next generation in the
residential schools.
And
the colonial drive for assimilation is not dead yet. Take your pick says the
latest, Great White Father, Justin “Sunny Ways” Trudeau: the bureaucratic carrot of
government-sponsored “reconciliation” or the military stick of RCMP invasion.
These are the current faces of the ongoing Canadian policy of assimilation
which often amounts to little more than guilt-ridden calls for “healing” on the
part of the descendants of the settlers while the “hurting” still goes on in
relation to indigenous communities. While bewildered settlers, hypocritical
politicians and smug media talking heads arrogantly presume that strawman
“consultations” are enough to smooth over historic antagonisms, the colonizers
relentlessly continue to drain the pond of its nutrients and pollute the
groundwater of life that still flows in the veins of the land.
We
stand with those traditional chiefs responsible for the health of the land in
their opposition to the toxic pipeline and its world. Proudly they proclaim the
sovereign basis for their actions in protecting their own territory: “We are
not protestors. We are Wet’suwet’en!”.
As
surrealists opposed to the institutional violence of the Canadian state and the
physical violence of the RCMP’s war on the Unist’ot’en land defenders, we dream
of a mighty “rain of frogs” to cleanse the Earth!
A Joint Declaration by Amphibians for Decolonization
Inner Island
Surrealist Group (K’ómoks/Pentlatch territory)
Ottawa Surrealist Group (Algonquin Anishnaabeg territory)