Her father Marc was cleaning out the basement and he showed some family heirlooms including their tree that takes his family back to the first families arriving from France. I am of Scottish, Irish and French descent, but I have always felt the genetic tingles mainly from the French and Irish sides, especially French. I love France and its earth and air does feel familiar to me.
When Lily was falling asleep in my arms moments ago, I was thinking how cool it was that on both sides of her parents, there are Canadian lines as far back as French Colonialism. Lily also has an Eastern European Jewish aspect that will only strengthen her spirit and character. I looked into her eyes that speak infinite stories to me and I said, ‘wow, Lily, if maybe you had some Native blood in you too, we could say you are Canadian royalty.’ I already have a morning song to her that claims her to be Malkah Lily, the Hebrew Queen of St. Hyppolyte.
There are things I try to understand about humans, things that I don’t want to, but I know it is necessary for healing one self in this life experience because one realizes that in doing so, one in turn heals the world. But, I never understood how people could not fall in love with babies.
There have been many times in my life when I have heard people say that they have Native blood in them, but it wasn’t something discussed in the family ever. There even could have been shame, a by product of Colonialism. We may be living in times of chaos, but these are restorative justice times too and we have to support restoring a culture that was unjustly destroyed, because acknowledging our sins is the only step forward. But, in order to keep going forward to save our selves, we have to make a restorative leap to nature based belief systems. It’s why we should be standing side by side our Native brothers and sisters with these land claims.
Have we not finally learned that oppression of one group means oppression of other groups? We’re getting there because the cannabis truth serum is smoothing its way into the collective consciousness. It’s why I am hopeful for my grand baby’s future.
Cannabis knows the experience of Colonization well. It’s journey of demonization and Colonialism is pot-holed with preventing the masses to becoming truly free thinkers. The super rich can only stay super rich if they have a lot of control. I am optimistic though and even though I eschew patriarchal religions, maybe the bible is right and the first will be last because they don’t know how to co-exist, a norm that is finally becoming unacceptable. We are only at the beginning of seeing that valuing diversity and co-existence, including with animals and plant life, is the only future we have, and ending poverty comes out of it.
Because the lumber industry already had an infrastructure for plundering forests, poisoning rivers and polluting the air, they saw to it that cannabis/hemp would be criminalized because they stood to lose billions. If we could have stood up to them, we could have saved our rivers, streams and atmosphere, but here’s the beauty, in order to bring back that which was damaged by pulping, cannabis/hemp is the answer. Growing it massively could clean air, water and soil and provide us with a superior paper.
The Colonial big nasty brother of lumber is oil and oil sure didn’t mind that cannabis/hemp was prohibited because people could run their cars on hemp oil and make competing green products with the petrochemical industry, plastics and cellophane and flexible cement, alternative fibre and wood products. The Colonial sister of these two is pharmaceuticals and pharmaceuticals knew that the medicinal benefits of cannabis have long been known, as well as its least toxic side effects. This competitor for so much can grow everywhere and will bring down profit margins.
Last year I was up in Thunder Bay making short film on the day in the life of a needle exchange program. Needles are as prolific in this part of the province as the crystal shaped stars dappling on beautiful Lake Superior. The area has a HEP C problem brewing and stewing from needle use. The area has been depressed for some time suffering the harsh blows when a mostly one or two industry town loses it’s one or two big industries, such as railroad and shipping. There are many Native people in this area. There is poverty not fully appreciated in Canada because we are a rich country.
What did the government do to try and boost the economy? Put in a casino. Where is the first daily needle pick up spot? Behind the casino. The government refuses to decriminalize cannabis but still its perpetuates a cycle of poverty and addiction with gambling, a casino economy that creates problems in an area already suffering from lack of hope. Instead, a community based cannabis industry could provide the much needed medicine for HEP C, HIV and addiction, as well as stimulate the economies for Native People and locally by giving licenses to grow on Reserves and regulating compassion clubs.
It is just an idea, but we should be having these kinds of conversations with each other and insisting our government do better and be more creative in finding solutions other than a casino economy in an environment rife with addiction from poverty and Colonialization.
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