summer don't know me

He wants to complain about the creations of someone else, adding nothing but despair to their lives, refusing to contribute anything helpful or new.

I must find...the HOES.

Folks want a quote from a Black or Indigenous person for their blog, but they don't wanna change their environments or GOD FORBID their consumer habits, even as the oceans rise to your door and the wildfires and logging bring down every old-growth forest.

(the history you cut out and paste into your cutesy little Revolutionary Scrapbook is still happening and still being made, btw. Your actions are part of it.)

anyway. I'm sitting here under a pungent yellow sky and aching for my people and the forests of Ontario. The Namaygoosisagagun First Nation (Collins First Nation, for the colonizers) fled on boats while the trees next to their houses burned. Thunder Bay is full of displaced Indigenous peoples trying to breathe with air full of ash. Gayaashki-zaagiing Anishinaabeg (Gull Bay First Nation, again, for You Folks) peoples were ordered to evacuate in the middle of the night and were just told there are no accommodations for them, now that they've escaped. Thousands of people scrambling for protection and safety, while a bunch of white colonizers complain about the smell of smoke.

None of this is new. It's all a very old song.

She gave a lot of great wisdom in that speech, but by far the thing I reflect on the most (and what keeps me up at night) was a story she told, about going back home to the rez after earning her doctorate.

And the way she tells it, she was really excited. She was so jazzed up on books and education and academic discussions and went to her father with all these ideas on how they could improve the lives of Ojibwe people--this is what she'd been studying, after all.

But her father, instead of going along with her excitement, listened very quietly to her accolades and ideas, and then said: "Well, that's great, Winona, but can you grow corn?"

and it stopped her cold.

because no, she couldn't.

she'd done so much reading and research and had so many endless discussions, but she hadn't actually rolled up her sleeves and tried to feed anybody yet. not even herself. the most important part of environmentalism, of agriculture, of the way humans shape our world and what's inside it. One of the most important staple crops, the foundation of civilizations. She'd never even tried.