CPTnet
December 23, 2003
ASUBPEESCHOSEEWAGONG REFLECTION: Declared human

by Lisa Martens

At this CPT project, I get to listen to a nation be sovereign.

I visit a friend. "We will declare ourselves human in few days," he says,
referring to one of his plans for an up-coming celebration. He shows me
the cover of a book he's been reading. "It makes me so angry. When they
came, they declared us savages without any laws or government. We'll
declare ourselves human in a few days. I don't know if anyone's ever done
that before."

Here, at this CPT project, my teammates and I reduce the risk of violence
at a logging blockade built by Anishnaabe community members to stop
clear-cutting on Anishnaabe traditional land. Here, we help educate the
near-by immigrant community (those who arrived on the landmass after
Colombus), and we get to listen to the Anishnaabe nation be sovereign.

"I used to drink," a woman explains to me, "But now I do whatever I can to
be here for my kids. My dad stopped drinking and a lot of other older
people." She pauses to draw something on a pad of paper at the request of
her daughter. "We are like people that have been asleep for a long time,
and we are slowly waking up. I can see it happening. What the youth need
to know is their rights and how to stand up for what is good."

For me, working here is partly about beginning to do a little diplomacy
with the Anishnaabe on behalf of my possible kids.

"He said that white people are like our little brothers," one friend
relates another's words to me. "He said they are our little brothers and
we need to take care of them because they came to this land much later than
us and they don't know as much. We need to help them. That's how I think
about it - little brothers and sisters."

Working here is about doing a little diplomacy, because my neighbours,
here, belong to a strong, wounded nation that is waking up.

I watch another woman. She raises five children gently. She listens to
her older sister and travels around Canada talking about her nation. She
practices her beliefs. She apologizes for the mess in her house. She
helps organize community meetings, attends them, and brings the banana
bread. Working here is about doing a little diplomacy with the last who are
gonna be first in the upside down kingdom; with the meek who already
inherited this part of the earth a very long time ago.

"We will have our land back. I have no doubt," another man says quietly.