Textes & Photos : Ninka North
Dedicated to the First peoples…
This site unveils the impact of assimilation and its evolution, bringing to light the perverse workings of a silent colonization perfectly orchestrated, since it involves them as actors of development in the forestry and mining sector.
A number of reserves are now shareholders or owners of sawmills and mines and have employed Aboriginal prospectors since the beginning of colonization. History has repeated itself since the dawn of time…
But with climate crisis, these questions take on a different scope because what characterizes these hunter-gatherer peoples is the belief that neither the Earth, nor the Air, nor the Water can be exploited.
For these peoples who still consider themselves the spiritual guardians of these territories, progress is a sign of prosperity, even if it taints their deepest convictions.
How do they position themselves in front of the great international powers, while global warming opens up opportunities for the exploitation of the resources of the Arctic and boreal lands ?
Are they genuinely consulted or, on the contrary, instrumentalized? How are they coping with the impact of the fires devastating the boreal forest in Canada and
Siberia, a carbon sink that scientists have been calling a climate bomb for years? What are their means of action?
This subject is all the more topical now that treaties are being put in place, evoking “territorial sovereignty” traded for the interests of progressive elected officials, while construction sites abound, without respect for environmental measures.
According to he Canadian Council of Forest Ministers,
“The forest products sector employed approximately 11,600 Aboriginal people in Canada in 2016, representing 6% of the total forestry workforce. A sector with over 1,400 Aboriginal businesses1https://www.ccfm.org/canadians-and-communities/forests-an-integral-part-of-our-communities.
For the record, 50% of the world’s terrestrial carbon stocks come from forests. Three quarters of the world’s accessible fresh water depends on their survival, a water supply that is currently at risk worldwide2https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2023/03/22/le-monde-doit-se-preparer-a-une-crise-de-l-eau-douce-selon-les-nations-unies_6166461_3244.html.
Plans to exploit natural resources are multiplying at breakneck speed despite the IPCC’s recommendations3IPCC Report Highlights Urgency of Global Forest Protection ». Clearcutting destroys more than one million hectares of boreal forest each year, including primary forests that are vital for the absorption of carbon and greenhouse gases .
The Great North, a challenge for an ecological transition ?
The Northern Plan (launched in 2011) is the new Eldorado for international leaders.
The talk is of energy transition, but the reality is one of massive extraction of rare minerals and metals, the environmental impact of which is far from insignificant.
Electric car batteries require nickel, lithium, cobalt and copper, minerals whose extraction is extremely polluting. Loaded with solvents and chemicals, the waste from the mines seeps into the water table and sterilizes the earth, contaminating all plant and animal species. And when we know that these open-pit mines, for the majority of them, are not cleaned up by the mining operators, there is reason to worry…
The Internet and new technologies have represented tools of passive colonization by infiltrating communities, because despite the extraordinary potential of knowledge and sharing that they represent, they have signed the end of an ancestral way of life.
When the internet arrived in the reserves in 2000, "the relationship with nature was altered, the contact was broken", declared some elders.
As as ourselves, are they informed of the real footprint of these technological objects that have become essential on a daily basis, video games, 5G connections, terminals, rise of IAs, and the super toxic electronic components they require ? Or the 40 metals needed to build a smart-phone ?
Were they told that when there are no more trees to cut down, when the arteries of the earth (rivers) are contaminated, the inhabitants of this planet will die ?
This is not just a question for the locals, but for all users of these attractive objects…
Is this famous development touted as sustainable because it would be electric really so? The fires multiplied by the presence of lithium ion batteries at the heart of a climate crisis seem to indicate the opposite…
So many essential questions while the sterilization of our planet, currently in progress, obeys the stakes of a virtual matrix that contributes to its destruction to offer us a realistic and artificial copy of our world.
The real answer is not in the leap of a progress that will leave the planet in a critical state, but the resolution to interrupt this alienating production that takes place for more comfort and non-essential recreational activities. This system and the drifts of a neoliberal globalization that it entails, ruin our matrix at a critical moment of global warming and sixth extinction, when it would be time to talk about solidarity between peoples and survival…
Climate and environmental warfare, against a backdrop
technological obsession…
The conquest of territories, a development based on the search for minerals essential to technological evolution, is a reminder of the world of control desired by an elite, and the ill-considered development of “machines”.
Are we going to dismantle the Earth with open-pit mines to become “augmented post-humans” led by artificial intelligences on a sterile planet ?
It’s a question that probably merits universal consultation, and not the opinion of think-tank companies meeting at expensive negotiating tables. But in “the society of the spectacle”4https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_du_spectacle_(livre), admist the flowery hubbub of cognitive bias and propaganda, denial and ignorance take the place of a collective consciousness.
Today we watch helplessly as our planet is destroyed under the impassive gaze of the giants, postmodern gods reinventing the codes of life in in their virtual vision, a paranoid copy of reality…
But let these false gods tell themselves, the Earth is not for sale, and its resources are not “products” listed on the Stock Exchange by investors. It is the matrix of all life forms, and we humans are only temporary tenants.
As I typed these words, I noticed that there was no echo. Nobody was reading me, except the statuettes of the three little monkeys5https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_wise_monkeys perched on the shelf…