FAIRY CREEK or AVATAR?

Acquaintances of mine share video after video, post after post, and slogan after slogan that, as far as I’m able to discern, rewrite all of economics, public policy, local history, and even current affairs. And they do so in real-time. These are people whose whole persona and raison d’etre is protecting old-growth forests – and yet with these revisions they obscure or make entirely invisible many of the real threats to these very forests. That’s weird, right? Forests are the thing they insist they care about. So, what does that mean? It suggests to me that they don’t actually care about…well, anything… at all. What else could it mean?

For instance, one post this morning compared the current happenings at Fairy Creek (roughly two hours west of Victoria) to Clayoquot Sound (back in the ‘80s and ‘90s and just a few more hours up the road) and called on people to boycott industry and uphold Indigenous rights and to adopt these locals’ benevolent forest-forward worldview. Well, from what I can see, blind as I may be, every bit of that is weaponized unknowing and an unrestrained rewriting of history.

What happened in Clayoquot Sound, in the “war in the woods” on Nuu-chah-nulth territory? (Don’t trust me, go and look for yourself.) Well, at the very least we can probably agree that it ended when government, industry, and locals came under enough sustained pressure to arrive at a memorandum of understanding and a moratorium on any serious large-scale logging in the region. Then when public attention and pressure died down, Nuu-chah-nulth bands formed their own logging companies, purchased the logging rights, and set out a plan to log some 90,000 hectares (just 900 square kilometres – an area only eight times the size of Vancouver and effectively all the old-growth on the south of the province.) In response, Greenpeace and others raised the alarm, causing these communities to come together in mutual defence. Together they affirmed that no memorandum of understanding, regardless of what is said or written, could possibly infringe upon their sovereignty or rights to do with their own forests what they will; and, further, that, in their minds, they always intended to continue logging (even the kind of logging any rational person would consider ‘clear-cutting’ but in this context is labelled ‘eco-forestry’: the mere removal of 80-90% of a region’s trees.) Of course they made a fair claim. Why and how would anyone object to the claims of these people-of-the-forest who know the land and its inhabitants better than anyone, who live remotely, who disproportionately work in forestry, and (most of us can surely agree) must have their full autonomy? Should they be pressured by Hollywood or climate activists in New York, London, or Berlin to abstain (as was so effective with #StopTheSealHunt)? And how does the situation change when combinations of climate change, forest fires, drought, plagues of defoliating insects, and more are scheduled to wipe out many of these fragile coastal forests within the century? And what does the cost/benefit analysis look like when you recognize lumber prices are beyond epic historic highs? Perhaps you feel communities should be forced into subsistence or dependence on government? Perhaps they should #LearnToCode or just move to Victoria or Vancouver and take up jobs in tourism or minimum wage jobs in the service industry? No. Of course not. That’s insane.

But that was Clayoquot. What of Fairy Creek? Well, rather than say anything that could be true, dominant slogans arriving from all sides (and published in every newspaper and emblazoned across posters on street posts and business windows and on stickers for sale in cafés here in Victoria) slide between racism (as if folks are either sub- or super-human) and erasing all of our well-known policy, history, and along with any culture. It’s an impressive feat, really. The present situation at Fairy Creek has been transmuted in just the same manner as Clayoquot and for popular and politically correct export and consumption.

From everything I can find, a reasonable summary is as follows. (But, again, please go look for yourself. Take whatever angles emerge and put in the kind of effort you might when trying to refute a COVID denier or Trump supporter…) It seems that more than a year ago, a small handful of Victoria activists arrived at Fairy Creek to prevent the logging of one of the last intact old-growth forest watersheds on the Island. In doing so activists effectively illegally occupied Pacheedaht territory. After eight months of requests for activists to leave their sovereign territory, their hereditary chief was forced to formally protest in the press, arguing that these neocolonialist eco-terrorists (many of whom are tree-planters, who themselves subsist on logging) were violating his nation’s lands, rights and basic self-determination. He eventually petitioned the provincial government to ask the courts to compel the RCMP to step in to uphold at least some of our Truth and Reconciliation obligations, for once. By the time other activists and outside media began taking notice, the narrative was flipped on its head. The band’s ten-year-long negotiation for partnership and profit-sharing with local logging companies was gone. The fact that we were talking about a community choosing to log a small fraction of their land and with full awareness and consideration for ecology, tourism, cultural factors, and more was also gone. And now we had activists demanding that both the hereditary chief and elected chief (recognized by the community, the AFN, BCAFN, province, and feds) were illegitimate. Another local elder, who just so happened to be taking their side of the conflict, was said to be the rightful authority and voice of the community.

It all became “Indigenous forest-keepers” “defending sacred ancestral land” and upholding national climate change obligations on behalf of all Canadians, the wider world, and all future generations. (#AncientForests #LungsOfTheEarth #EcocideIsSuicide.) It was suddenly a David and Goliath battle of cosmic proportions. It was now James Cameron’s Avatar: a just war between benevolent forest-dwelling creatures against the monstrous capitalists and a genocidal government who conspire with them and who overzealously employ the brutal paramilitary force of the RCMP. (#Gestapo #ResidentialSchools #NeverForget). And when he came to Vancouver during his election rounds, Trudeau was called a colonialist, racist, and climate denier – but not for any of those actions that might make him such – for his failing to impose a federal ban on old-growth logging on Pacheedaht territory and all Indigenous lands and for his “allowing the police to get involved.” (#LandBack #CapitalistGreed #EndTheGenocide.)

I wish someone would tell me what's actually going on. At this point what appears to be wild fiction is all most folks seem to know. But is the actual story so hidden or difficult to find? Is it deeply multifaceted and challenging to wrap one’s head around? Or is this rewritten history presented because it’s much more palatable and in keeping with our racist stereotypes and other favoured historical fictions? What do you believe to be true about all of this?