Panel Discussion: "Fairy Creek and the Climate Emergency" - Zoom event
RAINBOW EYES, JEROME TURNER, AARON NEIL BOURNE, PATRICIA BARKASKAS, & ELDER BILL JONES
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 6:00PM–7:30PM, VIA ZOOM WEBINAR (REGISTRATION REQUIRED)
Organized and sponsored by SFU's Institute for the Humanities and cosponsored by Ricochet Media
Register HERE
The summer of 2021 was historic for British Columbia. The province was hit by a so-called “heat dome” that led to never-before-seen temperatures across BC. The town of Lytton reached 49.6°C, the hottest temperature ever recorded in Canada; the next day the town burned to the ground.
It was also a long, hot summer of discontent in the forests of Vancouver Island as determined efforts to stop old-growth logging at Fairy Creek was met with RCMP violence and over 1000 arrests. This made it the single largest civil-disobedience action in Canadian history, surpassing the protests of 1993 at Clayoquot Sound which were dubbed the “War in the Woods.” The urgency of the land protection efforts at Fairy Creek is made clear by the climate crisis and this unprecedented heat wave.
There are vitally important questions of Indigenous sovereignty at stake. A crucial question was whether the Indian-Act-created band councils or hereditary leadership were upholding their responsibility to protect the land for future generations. In the case of Fairy Creek, the Pacheedaht were not unanimous on the question of strategy with the council favouring existing logging contracts and requesting that the forest guardians leave, on the one hand, and elders such as Bill Jones leading the frontlines to protect the ancient forests against the Teal-Jones logging company, on the other.
This panel will include a diversity of voices: journalists, legal scholars, Indigenous land defenders, and Afro-Canadian activists, to consider the various complexities and challenges of Fairy Creek in the context of the unfolding climate emergency.
PANELISTS
Rainbow Eyes is a land defender at Fairy Creek and member of the Da'naxda'xw-Awaetlala First Nation near Knight Inlet on Vancouver Island.
Jerome Turner is a journalist at Ricochet) covers national and provincial issues with a focus on First Nations. Born and raised in Hazelton, B.C., he is of Gitxsan and Swedish descent.
Aaron Neil Bourne is an Afro-Indo-Caribbean, small-business owner, storyteller, artist, investigative journalist, wizard, filmmaker, illustrator, videographer, and kayak guide who is working on a short film series that will, in part, explore the microcosm that is Fairy Creek Blockade.
Patricia Barkaskas is the Métis from Alberta and the Academic Director of the Indigenous Community Legal Clinic and an Instructor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at UBC.
Elder Bill Jones is band member of the Pacheedaht First Nation in the area and a leading member of the Rainforest Flying Squad of protestors who are fighting for the survival of this sacred territory.
MODERATOR
Rita Wong is an Associate Professor in Critical and Cultural Studies at Emily Carr University who respects the relationships between contemporary poetics, water justice, ecology, and decolonization.
