https://crosscut.com/2019/08/backlash-work-seattle-doctor-led-congress-block-funding-gun-research
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Vancouver poet Rita Wong’s principled stand against pipeline
PEN Canada has alerted us that Vancouver-based Rita Wong was recently sentenced to 28 days in jail for her participation in protests against the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline across British Columbia, a sentence far in excess of others who participated in the protests. Wong is an acclaimed poet whose latest book, Beholden (co-written with former Canadian poet laureate, Fred Wah) was written as a response to the damming and development of the Columbia River and renegotiation of the Columbia River Treaty, which fails to include Indigenous input.
You can read Wong’s eloquent and moving statement about her incarceration here.
“On 24 August 2018, while BC was in a state of emergency because of wildfires caused by climate change —breaking records for the second year in a row; putting lives at risk, health at risk, and displacing thousands of people— I sang, prayed, and sat in ceremony for about half an hour in front of the Trans Mountain pipeline project’s Westridge Marine Terminal. . .
“. . . .By breaching the injunction, I had no intention of reducing respect for our courts. I do intend to ask the court to respect Coast Salish laws that uphold our responsibilities to care for the land and waters that make life, liberty and peace possible for everyone. I sincerely ask the court to take our reciprocal relationship with the land and water into consideration because we are on Coast Salish lands, where everyone is a Coast Salish citizen. . . “
Please take a few moments to read her statement in full. For another first-person account of civil disobedience against the pipeline in defense of water, climate, and Indigenous rights, read Danika Dinsmore’s essay “ House Arrest” at Cascadia Magazine.
If you want to become involved in civil disobedience against the pipeline, Vancouver Extinction Rebellion is leading a “Swarm Action Training” seminar on Aug 25.
Clearcutting BC’s inland rainforest
Northern British Columbia is home to one of the world’s only inland rainforests, a place where western red cedars grow to be a thousand years old and which is home to 2,400 unique species. But that remote old-growth forest is under threat: timber companies are clear-cut logging the region at a furious pace, and only 9 percent of these lands have any legal protection.
In an in-depth report at Cascadia Magazine, photojournalist Daniel Mesec documents the tragic devastation occurring a place few people know about.
“We need to identify where the remaining important habitat is, where the largest remaining old forest patches are, and we need a cessation of logging in those areas,” says Darwyn Coxson, professor of Ecosystem Science and Management at the University of Northern British Columbia.
Read the article and watch the original video here.
Many thanks to Geos Institute for providing funding for this project. If you’d like the support environmental journalism like this at Cascadia Magazine, please visit our donate page and make a recurring donation. We can’t do this without the support of our readers. Thanks.
Seattle doctor leads new wave of studies into gun violence
Dr. Frederick Rivara, a professor at the University of Washington, will lead a program at Harborview Medical Program studying the effectiveness of public policy around guns and gun violence, according to Crosscut’s Melissa Santos. Three decades ago, Rivera and his peers were pioneering researchers looking into the impacts of gun ownership, only to be swiftly blocked by the NRA and the Congress-approved Dickey Amendment. Washington state funding allows the program to circumvent federal restrictions.
Witnessing a dying glacier in the North Cascades
Seattle Weekly’s Zachariah Bryan follows glaciologist Mauri Pelto on his 36th trip to the Columbia Glacier in Washington’s North Cascades, which Pelto has been measuring annually since 1984. This is the sixth consecutive year in which the glacier has receded due to the lack of accumulated snow, and the glacier is projected to be completely gone in a matter of decades. For more on Pelto’s work, read Madeline Ostrander’s detailed feature at Hakai magazine.
Tillamook sued for misleading advertising
OPB’s Rebecca Ellis reports on a class action lawsuit brought by the by the Animal Legal Defense Fund against Tillamook. ALDF claims that the Oregon-based purveyor of cheese, ice cream, and other dairy products is profiting from a misleading image that obscures the massive factory farm behind it, Threemile Canyon Farms. This is somewhat substantiated by a survey where a majority of 1,000 consumers in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington believe Tillamook sources from small, local dairies.
Rough road ahead for Washington’s threatened species
Crosscut’s Hannah Weinberger covers the damage that will be wrought to WA species by the Trump administration’s recent changes to the Endangered Species Act. The new rules in the ESA switch to a case-by-case system that increases the difficulty of approving forecasts, eliminates consultation, potentially weighs in economic interests, and manipulates the “environmental baseline.”
This may effectively strip away protections for many vulnerable WA species, among them the Island Marble Butterfly, the North American wolverine, and grizzly bear. To express opposition to Trump’s rollback of rules, visit the Natural Resouces Defense Council’s website.
A tour of Nelson BC’s colorful murals
The Nelson Star’s Bill Metcalfe walks us through the vivid color and style of Nelson, British Columbia’s International Mural Festival. Attendance this year jumped to approximately 4,000 compared to last year’s crowd of 700. In describing the event, the festival’s organizer Sydney Black says, “It was a huge act of community.”
Poetry by Indigenous poet jaye simpson
Room presents “the seven sacred ways of healing,” a poem by jaye simpson, who describes themselves as a displaced indigenous person occupying the Musqueam, Tsleil-waututh, and Squamish First Nations territories (in what colonial culture calls British Columbia). Simpson’s poem works to let go of ancestral and intergenerational trauma:
“letting go breaks everything / i thought i knew /about healing.
Read the full poem here.
Thanks for reading today’s collection of news and arts from around the region, as well as links to original content at Cascadia Magazine. Today’s Cascadia Daily was curated by Eun Hye Kim. See you tomorrow.
Photo credit, nature mural in Nelson BC photographed by Kyle Pearce via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0.