💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › autonomous-forest-defense.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 07:01:29. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Yew’s Invited
Author: yew seed
Date: September 2020
Language: en
Topics: fairy creek, ada’itsx, fairy creek blockade, indigenous sovereignty, green anarchism, anti-civ, logging, interview
Notes: This zine was made by hands on the territories of the L’kwungen and WSÁNEC Peoples, also known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations and the Saanich Nation. The interviewer is a settler, as is yew seed. The interviewer thanks yew for the generosity of their time and experience. “The Walbran Valley/River System” is the English name for Kaxiks in Nuu-cha-nulth. Be:tadt is the Diitiid?atx name for what in English is called” The Fairy Creek Watershed”

yew seed

Yew’s Invited

Q: Firstly, I wonder if you could talk about what was informing your

understanding of old growth. Particularly with regard to logging in the

Walbran valley. Was it through an anarchist channel, word of mouth,

affinity group? Perhaps was it something you decided you had to do on

your own?

A: While I was somewhat aware of it already, Kax:iks (Walbran Valley,

aka ‘The Walbran’, unceded Pacheedaht Territory) was brought to the

forefront of my attention in early 2015, in conversations with anarchist

comrades, as word spread that Teal-Jones Group had applied for cutblocks

in the heart of Kax:iks. Some of these comrades have close connections

to people who’d lived in the valley for extended periods of time. Around

the same time, an old friend of mine also shared stories with me of

their personal experiences of the fierce resistance in Kax:iks some 30

years ago now. According to a particularly memorable story, one of the

treesitters smeared themself in their own feces as a means of making it

more difficult for them to be arrested. My friend also shared with me

touching experiences of helping to relieve stressed out land defenders,

by doing things like taking them for chillouts and debriefs in the

forest, away from the action.

I attended a convergence at Kaxiks in the summer of 2016, where I first

encountered Pacheedaht elder Bill Jones, who was there along with the

family of deceased Pacheedaht warrior Harriet Nahanee, to dedicate a new

trail to her. As I recall, the trail ran along the edge of one of the

proposed cutblocks, and after the dedication ceremony, I hiked past a

little karst cave, up into the cut lock with some friends, to see up

close the ancient cedars surrounded by ‘falling boundary’ tape. I’d

never met Harriet Nahanee, but was aware of her involvement in

resistance to the 2010 Olympics, specifically her arrest for blockading

expansion of the Sea to sky highway between the Olympic venues of

Vancouver and Whistler. Iknew she refused to acknowledge the legitimacy

of the colonial court that she faced-asserting her Indigenous

sovereignty-and for this, was imprisoned for contempt of court. She died

shortly after release, from pneumonia contracted while in custody. This

colony has her blood on its hands. I’ve since been given to understand

that she was on the frontlines of grassroots resistance to logging in

Pacheedaht territory 30+ years ago.

At the 2016 Kax:iks convergence, the emcee of the trail dedication

ceremony began by stating boldly and clearly, that Indigenous people and

anarchists had been instrumental in successfully defending the territory

back in the day, and that this solidarity was needed once again, to

confront continued threats to the land. I’d had the opportunity to be in

other ancient forests for extended periods of time before, but Kax:iks

had a different vibe to me. It was very obviously a site of ongoing

resistance--a place that many people felt very connected to in the

present--with a faded old mural under the bridge still visible from a

generation ago.

Collectively, these learnings and experiences inspired me greatly to get

involved. I also have to credit grassroots movements like Earth First!

in the so-called United States, and similar efforts I’ve encountered in

so-called Canada, as well as various ‘green anarchist’ publications and

tendencies for much inspiration over the years.

Q: Was there a moment for you when being out in the world, bushwhacking

maybe, or hiking trail-was there a moment when you realized your life

had to involve these environs in a serious way? Was it a slow build over

many years? influenced by a joy in solitude, or through family

tradition? A: It was a family connection that first immersed me in

ancient coastal forests in so- called BC, at a long term, off grid squat

that I later learned had received permission to remain from people

Indigenous to that place. I’ve also been involved in resistance to

highway and port expansion, mining, and other resource extraction along

the coast. Being in these places while engaging in resistance activity

have all been eye opening, life changing, deeply transformative

experiences.

They expanded perspectives formed while growing up in a suburban area,

where the forests I walked through to and from school every day were

replaced by seemingly endless sprawling subdivisions as the years went

by. It probably takes many generations to know an ecosystem well enough

to responsibly be a part of it, and I’ll be happy if I have the

privilege of feeling like I’m just starting to put down roots and

getting to know this coast within my lifetime.

Q: Once you’d found yourself entrenched in that struggle, what was your

perception of the media and/or left-wing organizations who made the

Walbran their cause? What kind of people surrounded you, and what sort

of power dynamics ran through that social space?

A: I was dismayed to see that NGOs like Sierra Club and Wilderness

Committee were allowed to table at the 2016 Kax:iks convergence. Among

many other misdeeds- and setting aside the wider problem of the

treacherous, parasitic non profit industrial complex in general- just a

few years prior, these groups went behind the backs of Indigenous land

defenders to negotiate the

Sellout of the ‘Great Bear Rainforest’ (a marketing term they devised).

The GBR deal ensured that a large percentage of old growth forest in

those territories would be logged, while the grassroots movement was

putting their lives on the line for an end to old growth logging.

As part of that ‘Big Green’ swindle, groups like Greenpeace have

completely abandoned the matter of logging on the rest of the coast,

including so-called Vancouver Island, having used it as a bargaining

chip in their negotiations with the logging companies in their GBR

‘victory’. Greenpeace was once at least some kind of player in wide

ranging direct action against logging, dropping banners off the roof of

the legislature and providing material support to blockades.

It seems as though a fierce, largely grassroots (at times with major

anarchist factions/tendencies) culture of resistance to logging was a

force to be reckoned with… from the first ever logging blockade in

so-called BC—the successful Indigenous defense of Meares Island in the

mid 80s—to Kaxi:ks, to the Elaho, to Bear Mountain, to the 2010

Olympics. As far as I can tell this resistance has dwindled in recent

years… By my reckoning, due to repression (Green Scare, West Coast

Warriors, Olympics, No Pipelines graffiti raid), gentrification (pushing

people away from the coast, and making it harder to maintain

grassroots/anarchist infrastructure) transphobia and TERFs sowing

division, and.. Understandably, many people, including some anarchists

turning away from social movements towards nihilism. In this context,

NGOs have taken up so much space and resources--that could otherwise be

used for grassroots direct action-entrenching dogmatic white liberal

reformist politics, thereby helping to neutralize and recuperate

resistance. I want to do what I can to rekindle anarchist and grassroots

resistance.

Q: Do you remember having anything like a ‘win condition’?

A: To me, direct action is all about taking responsibility for

ourselves, and in my own mind is practically synonymous with the concept

of anarchy. Resistance is life, and so on. I want to enjoy life and

therefore, I enjoy resistance, and try to be a joyful, playful rebel.

Experiencing pleasure and fulfillment from these activities always feels

like a win to me. Direct action is everything from learning about

foraging and subsistence, to supporting a suffering comrade, to actively

resisting industrial expansion. I formerly saw these activities as paths

that occasionally intertwined; I now see them as continuous and

inseparable from each other.

Q: Trees, potentially, are mysterious and powerful beings. Has your

perception of trees changed much in the last 20 years?

A: My perception has changed greatly in the sense that I now know much

more about the difference between an ancient forest and a tree farm, It

seems to me as though science (and

especially most recently mycology), has lately been affirming aspects of

what we already should’ve known from Indigenous relationships with and

teachings about the biosphere, and our personal intuitive understandings

of forests and other ecosystems. It’s sad that some feel the need to

clinically dissect these webs of life to understand them.

Q: The organizing around the Fairy Creek blockades is not an

anarchist-forward process- -although I believe it strongly borrows from

principles rooted in anarchism — and it remains to be seen how this

movement will be carried or influenced by various ideologies. What do

you see happening on this front line, or what sort of things happen on

other front lines that cause you concern or maybe bring you hope?

A: In a roundabout way, the pathetic, mind numbing routines of NGOs who

do nothing to prevent old growth logging and as I described earlier, in

some cases actually promote it) have helped created the circumstances in

which something like the Fairy Creek blockades came to be. I’ve so far

been impressed in my personal experiences by a few qualities of the

grassroots people- many of whom are disillusioned former supporters of

NGOs-that came together around Fairy Creek:

• accepting the presence of anarchists from the start, without question

or debate.. And, broadly speaking, attempting to organize at least

quasi-anarchically even if not self-identifying as anarchists

• knowingly embracing the importance of remaining nimble, informal and

unaffiliated, not predictably self-isolating as “Friends of Fairy Creek”

or something along those lines

• encouraging people to start blockades elsewhere on the Island or

so-called BC rather than converge at a single place in Pacheedaht

territory

Some concerns are a lack of decolonial analysis among some, and/or

conflicting views of what that is, and an almost total absence of

anti-capitalist analysis coupled with strong reformist tendencies. The

open hearted invitation to the blockades by Pacheedaht elder Bill Jones,

the presence of Tla-o-qui-aht elder Joe Martin (veteran of BC’s first

logging blockade on Mares Island), the offers of rides for and increased

involvement of Indigenous blockaders, the offer of free rides to the

blockades from West Coast Trail Bus-these are all interesting

developments-we’ll see what happens!

Q: Do you believe there will still be much work to do if and when we

lose all island old growth? Is defending old growth, for you, getting at

the issue itself? Or is there a deeper issue you seek to halt by

involving yourself in a process like this?

A: What happens if we ‘lose’, what happens if there’s no old growth

left? As far as I’m concerned, life and resistance will go on. Some who

lack an anti-capitalist and/or anti- colonial analysis, or perhaps

fetishize the concept of old growth forest as untouched or uninhabited

by humans, may feel that old growth forest is all that’s left worth

defending. There’s also the ‘respectability’/‘public opinion’ that

weighs on some of the more liberal minded folks, who think we’re riding

a wave of popular opinion that supports protection of old growth. They

see resisting other logging as a step too far, and seem unconcerned with

resistance to non old growth logging that’s been happening in various

places on the coast the last few years.

I think it’s been a bit of a stretch for some of these folks to move

fairly rapidly from blockading logging in one small area, to trying to

spark a movement to end old growth logging… It will be interesting to

see what happens if some people take more radical and generally

anti-industrial, anticapitalist actions against logging.

I invite anarchists who are interested in anarchist/autonomous forest

defense, at Fairy Creek or elsewhere, to get in touch at

forest_autonomy@riseup.net

For more background on Teal Jones logging in Pacheedaht Territory:

https://bcblackout.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/smashtealjones2016-web.pdf

OldGrowthBlockade

-yew seed