Alex Morton joins Long Walk to Victoria to carry voice of the salmon
by Salmon are Sacred
Hereditary Chief Beau Dick of the Kwakwaka'wakw nation is leading his family and supporters on a long walk that he says is for all Canadians. He left his home in Alert Bay, BC last Saturday and plans to arrive in Victoria by next Sunday, February 10. The 250-kilometer walk is inspired in part by the Idle No More Movement, an ongoing protest movement originating among the Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
Chief Beau Dick has invited Dr. Alexandra Morton, Anissa Reed, and other people of the Salmon Are Sacred movement to join the walk and be a voice for the wild salmon.
“We are honored to have the support from Alexandra Morton and the Get Out Migration team”, Chief Beau Dick said. “We are inspired by her own determination to protect the wild salmon from the corporate industrial feedlots. They carry the voice of the salmon that are so important to us.”
Members of Chief Beau Dick’s family and others are taking turns to carry two traditional copper pieces on the road. When they arrive at the Legislature in Victoria on Sunday, one of those copper pieces will be broken, as a way of representing the government’s broken promises to First Nations and the threats to the environment shared by all Canadians. It is a deeply significant and powerful ceremony as the copper represent life, the ancestors, and more.
“He is doing something for all of Canada”, Shawn Decaire of the Cape Mudge Band explained to a TV crew during a gathering along the walk. “To break a traditional copper means you have broken a line between us. And we feel the government has broken that line with all of Canada.”
This walk, and the social movement behind it, is about the livelihoods of coastal communities – white people and First Nations alike – and about reclaiming power from the corporate lobbyists who have taken over government. It is above all about democracy.
“The land belongs to the next generation and the government belongs to the people. These things have been forgotten. The Occupy movement and Idle No More were sparked by the abuse of power by government”, Alexandra Morton stated recently . “Salmon are central to this as they feed the coast.”
Eddie Garner, an elder from the Sto:lo nation who will be joining the walk to Victoria on Sunday, said: “Big corporations and government have used denial, lies and intimidation to suppress the true consequences of their plans. The power elites within government and corporations are ruthless and aggressive. But clamping down too hard makes people question authority. This is where Beau Dick’s vision becomes something that resonates with people from all backgrounds. It is about waking people up to their own power.”
Meanwhile, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), in yet another betrayal of Canadians in favour of corporations, has announced that it is no longer necessary to combat the deadly ISA salmon disease. In a stunning announcement, the agency declared 240,000 ISA virus-contaminated feedlot salmon to be fit for Canadian consumption, even as the United States refuses to import these diseased fish. The announcement suggests that the CFIA has lost control of the ISA virus, and that Canada’s ongoing pandemic is a repeat of what happened in Chile, when the entire salmon farming industry was destroyed by the ISA disease in 2007. Chile however, unlike British Columbia, does not have wild salmon that could be destroyed.
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