Thursday, April 8, 2010

In the name of progress



A friend of mine who has been working to save aboriginal and pioneer graves from destruction in Alberta sent me this poster, it seems this problem is widespread. Its amazing how "progress" does not respect those laid to rest. Nor do cities respect the descendants when burials are unearthed. The city of Edmonton is guilty of desecration of burials within the Papachase Reserve. Land which was never ceded, never bought, nor ever given to the city; yet in the last 100 years Papachase was illegally procured. The original peoples were chased off in the name of progress under the guise of The King, and then later The Queen of England as an ideal to bring this province into a civilized way of life. So I now ask, how civilized is a province or city that desecrates her dead? How civilized is a province that desecrates the land by ripping pipelines across it every which way. Pipelines which leak toxins into our earth and alter the lay of the land so that caribou herds are being decimated to the point of extinction in Alberta. The tar sands keeps expanding, even though there is no safe storage for its dirty sludge. Sludge  which is so toxic that birds that inevitably land on the tailings ponds DIE. The only thing that lies between this same toxic sludge and the Athabasca River, a major river system, is a mud walled damn. Ahh, the name of progress, a dirty idea really, a ploy for industrialization that fills the pockets of a few and leaves a wake of desecration and devastation for our children's children.
So now you may ask, how do I jump from desecrating burials to desecration of the land, well as I see it it, it all goes hand in hand. Desecration of burials and raping the land of unsustainable resource is all a product of Corporate GREED.

visit "Save Our Sacred Sites" on facebook

2 comments:

john said...

Interesting and provocative thoughts. Where I lived in Arizona, you could not excavate a shovel full of dirt without disturbing native american remains. The population of the ancients was much greater than current populations.
We blame the corporations, but when we use electricity, or drive, we are the exploiters of resources. There are no easy solutions to these dilemmas. Life is messy, but we can all do better than we do.

tess stieben said...

Thank you John for your comments. Yes most of us still use the resources presently made available to us, though I pray that alternatives will fast become the in thing so that we will have some green space and breathable air to pass on to our grandchildren. I remember my father telling me that alternatives such as solar power to cook with and to generate drinking water as well as to use as a source of heat and electrical power have been around for at least 50 years. But he also stated that when people came up with these great ideas they were bought out by the corporations. So if I go by what he told me I figure as a society we could have had earth friendly alternatives long ago. That said it has always been that the fellas with the big $ have the say until enough of us little people speak out to change things.