Readings Responses 2 Actor/ Creator Resources
Theatre 201 D. Kenney November 21, 2013
Magnetism and other thoughts on how this course and the book “And then you Act” by Anne Bogart has affected my education and my connectedness to this land that is my home. The exercises in tuning the body through core work, mask and outdoor experience were exactly the exercises I’ve needed to revive my creativity outside myself.
I’m on a healing journey recovering from trauma and separation. I have been creating, reading, thinking and searching for clues to what I am to focus on. I am trying to tune into what it is I’m supposed to know. I feel I am on multiple journeys of discovery within my Indigenous self, my White self and my Blended self. There is an “Otherness” to being half of two politely warring Nations. I cannot escape like my white relations. I cannot step out of it when it gets to be too much. I don’t have that fair hair, fair eyes luxury.
I have accepted that my journey was difficult for a reason. That reason, lead me back here into the arms of western education. I’m hoping there is a safer place to explore this creation of Canada that is my bloodlines. To explore my cultural connections through founding fathers and mother tongue. To speak about the restoration of dignity to the wounded halfbreed: this half indian, half settler through story. To connect the legends of our people to this global story of our ways not as witnesses but as knowledge keepers. Our stories were told through the expression of words connected to the land and body. Our stories are dying, the youth are losing interest because they have no way to connect to the core meanings anymore. I need space to help create this bridge of knowledge. Our stories, like every other individual nation of the world are integral to the global understanding of creation. The story of our human ways. All human ways – not just capitalistic ways.
This selection of readings sent me down a very slippery slope in terms of finding a direction to follow. My brain started tuning into an array of what the possible connections could be. All the questions Anne Bogart was asking ran through my mind, only in my mind I was asking “What is it about magnetic energy?” I started thinking about the Twins legend and the different times in history that Harry Robinson’s legends speak about. He details a very accurate account of the day of creation. I compare it to the break up of Pangaea. He mentions that the earth was smaller back then and that all the continents were together.
Pangaea breaks in half and Creator tells the twins that he will be back. He was gone a really long time. So in Harry’s Twins story the Sama and the Sqilxw (indian) were left on the Land for a while. He figured 4 days. As it would seem to me it was 4 cycles of 20 million years that they waited. Then in the Early Crenozic era North America broke away.
That gave us some time together. Because after all we’re Twins as the legend says. So here we are. Coyote goes for a long walk and the other twin picks up this paper that Creator left. That was the Natural laws written down. Only supposed to be 4 but there were 5. So Creator told Coyote to Transform the People Eaters when it was time for the humans to survive. We could have been like little people who lived underground. Well we didn’t stay little but we did live under ground and we do have little people legends. We had the Natural Laws example. A ‘gold’ economy tried starting in South America but it didn’t last. That style of civilization doesn’t live in the Animal World.
This magnetic energy is extremely significant to this thought. There is a ‘gold/silver’ belt that runs the length of the western mountain ranges from Alaska to Chile.
Gold connects us to the stars. The magnetic poles are significant. Like a golden lightning strike through the bones of the Americas.
The magnetic energy is high in this area of the Interior. Nestled between the Cascade and Rocky Mountains – the Okanagan Valley has enjoyed a bountiful rest from it’s volcanic beginnings.
Bradley Creek is located in middle of Okanagan Indian Band Reserve No.1 in the North Okanagan. It is also in the vicinity of the Skookum Mine group. Every now and again exploration occurs in the mountains behind my home. They are watching her grow. As her veins grow with age, the rocks are transforming.
Imagine if, in the 1900’s the sqilxw, the people of the land knew where the gold lodes were by the magnetic energy. They didn’t care about the paper value because there was no such paper here. It was powerful for another reason.
Imagine their bodies were attuned to notice the change in the earth’s vibration. Everything they ingested was of this land. The minerals were as strong in their bodies as the coyote or bear. They had the ability to connect on an entirely different level. They were enlightened for the most part. They lived according to the Natural Laws. Communal family oriented society. Working for the good of the community.
There is a legend about Ant and Grasshopper. Ant is the good studious worker and helped the community gather enough food together to feed everyone. Grasshopper just jumps around having a good time, eating as he pleases and dies of starvation in the winter. They needed to know how to survive. They learned the legends in these places. They are sacred places.
These magnetic anomalies are what Industry watches for. She’s growing old and as she grows older, her rare earth mineral deposits develop and grow more valuable to the Corporate People Eaters. These anomalies are what our bodies are attuned to. Take out the reason for the anomalies and you kill the spirit of our people.
Today we are surrounded in electromagnetic energy. We absorb artificially created magnetic energy through radios, microwaves, wireless internet, electronic devices. All are magnetic interference. Our bodies have to fight to connect with her as it is and the BC Government just wants to pit mine it away.
They came driving through my yard in 1988 and every time before. My driveway is called “Skookum Mine Rd.”
It was the pipeline that made me curious. They made us give a right of way for a water pipeline. This is the beginning of the OKIB’s move to Capitalism as it develops in the form of a much “needed” water pipeline. There is increasing pressure from the federal government but budget cutting initiatives by the same government (special interest group) makes it impossible for bands to fund the assimilation process. It starts with a waterline, or a natural gas line or a hydro line. We have them all snaking their way through our territory unknown to the new generations as they are born without the knowledge of their existence. They dig holes in the ground and wonder why things never last. They have built metal infrastructure into the ground. In this ecosystem, any time you create a hole with metal in the earth it is guaranteed that water will get into that hole and start corrosion. Corrosion of pipelines are dependent upon the soil type. How a contractor handles the corrosivity of a location helps in determining the length of time a pipe will last. There is no lifetime guarantee on these materials.
What will become of Pocupine Lake? Musgrave, Bradley, Newport, and Irish creek headwaters?
What I’m thinking is “they” are diverting the people’s use and attention from Bradley Creek, re-directing our water supply within the boundary of Pinaus Lake and Six Mile Creek. Does OKIB realize they are creating an ‘in’ for the mining company who are waiting like slobbering dogs with their tails wagging just outside the door? That frees up Whitemans Creek for mining development as does it open up Bradley Creek, Newport Creek, and Irish Creek for future exploration and exploitation of the veins of mineral that has been growing and developing in peace for all these millennia. This one water pipeline being forced through my community will strain our sovereignty. The more development, the less our grandchildren have for their survival.
Our mother’s body, her veins are where they find value. Once the trails of extraction connect underground, once they rip her up, what foundation will there be left for which to grow upon? Where will the energy go?
There a legend for this. Coyote Challenges Creator.
This explains why it is important for us to remember although we may have the power to move mountains; we do not have the power to put them back.
The very act of mining goes against the Oral teachings of our Legends because the People Eaters are down there deep in the ground. They are preserved in rare earth minerals. If they rise again, we will die. (Poison air from gas emissions released from petroleum products, mineral decomposition i.e. Uranium into Radon Gas, poison water, etc)
I have hiked far up into the Bradley Creek fault and have felt the electromagnetic anomalies that surround her veins. I felt it at Woods lake, Mabel Lake and Little Pinaus. It only makes sense that her magnetic energy would be felt. It was in the mountains that I remembered to think about the animals that present themselves to me in one form or another. Red Tail Hawk, Turtle, Raccoon, Monarch Butterfly, Coyote and his brother Fox. Their magnetism is affected as well.
They’ve affected our bodies natural ability to attune itself to the land through the use of energy storage. They criss cross all over our territories, disrupting our attunement to the magnetic anomalies. Distracting us from our purpose.
We know within all of our bodies we have an electromagnetic impulse. Are we are all connected by the minerals present in our bodies, those that we get by eating food grown and raised on our own lands? Is this the connection we seek that is the delicate balance of what it means to be ‘of this land’? Does it matter? Who defines Aboriginal Title? Why is it that land held in trust by the Crown can be taken and destroyed for a group of people that do not even come from this land and do not accept the connection we have through the magnetic energy with the land? And what of those who aren’t Native who feel it too? Do you?
We were entrusted to maintain the delicate balance. Our people have always considered the future implications. We have always maintained peaceful relations with our settler neighbors. It is the only reason we did not fight when the settlers arrived. We had this knowledge all along.
Our stories are up in those mountains. The songs of our grandmothers are captured in the berries. It just makes me think how amazing our mountains are. How youthful we become in spirit when we are in the mountains. How those feelings are transferred when mountain stories are told. How wonderful we feel after we hear of someone in the mountains and the adventures they have. That is why we are beautiful. The land, water and mountains make us that way.
There is magic in these mountains. It vibrates in her veins. It vibrates in mine. We have precious metals in our mountains. It just makes me think about how it all connects. There are magnetic anomalies everywhere in these mountains. Her veins are waking us up like a tuning fork. In the North Okanagan, we are healthier than we’ve been since colonization. Since the last mining activity was stopped. We’re regaining balance. I worry more for my land dying in the south. It is the hardest hit in all our territory. We have some of the most endangered species in Canada in the southern part of our Territory. Tek Resources in Trail is dumping toxic tailings into the Columbia River. Large mines still operate down there. Our health depends on a delicate ecosystem. It’s written in our legends the moral of why Coyote could not move the mountains back.
How amazing is she now that in her aging, she is bringing us magnetic energy that boosts us by ingesting minerals of this land, from the mountains, in the fish, berries, roots and deer. Combine that with being in the forest, that is how you feel the connection. How youthful we become in spirit when we are in the mountains. How those feelings are transferred when stories are told. How wonderful we feel after we hear of someone in the mountains and the adventures they have. That is why we are beautiful. The mountains make us that way. That is the teaching of our nations anthem.