Who Speaks for the River?: The Oldman River Dam and the Search for Justice
Autor Robert Girvanen Limba Engleză Paperback – 4 iun 2013
Who Speaks for the River? tells the true story of the collision between power and justice in the desperate final battle between government officials, environmentalists and members of the Piikani First Nation surrounding the building of a dam project. Environmentalist Martha Kostuch uses the law and organizes a huge environmental rally to stop construction of the dam. Piikani First Nation Activist Milton Born With A Tooth and his group The Lonefighters, use protests and bulldozers and one shotgun. The use of that shotgun results in Milton standing trial against a system stacked against him ߝ a system which one observer characterized as “what Native people have faced for a century.”
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781927083017
ISBN-10: 192708301X
Pagini: 392
Dimensiuni: 157 x 226 x 28 mm
Greutate: 0.62 kg
Editura: Fifth House Publishers
ISBN-10: 192708301X
Pagini: 392
Dimensiuni: 157 x 226 x 28 mm
Greutate: 0.62 kg
Editura: Fifth House Publishers
Notă biografică
Robert Girvan lived in Alberta and became a lover of the land. He studied politics and philosophy at the University of Alberta, and law at the University of Victoria. Between 1992 and 2004 Robert practiced law in Toronto ߝ eight years as a Criminal Defence lawyer, and four years as a Crown Prosecutor. Since 2008, Robert has combined writing, working as a Criminal Defence lawyer, and raising his two sons. He lives in Toronto, with his wife and their children.
Extras
The Oldman Dam story began for me in September 2004, when I saw a painting on a Toronto office-tower wall . . .
Let me back up a bit. In May of 2004, midway through the prosecution of a murder case in Toronto, I sent my boss an e-mail giving notice that I was resigning as a Crown prosecutor, once my case was finished. After twelve years of fighting cases in the trenches, I was wearied by the constant battling. I needed unstructured time to do crazy things, such as going for a walk in the sun. Resigning left me with the not inconsequential question of what I would do with the rest of my life, or at least the next year. I settled in to the idea of cleaning up a memoir I had begun years before; it was from a previous time I’d quit the law, sold almost all my possessions, and moved to Asia to teach English. To my surprise, however, I had no interest in re-living my own past, alone in my basement, staring at my computer screen. Perhaps my withdrawal from the social world made me long for something new, something that transcended my own life.
One day in September 2004, I got a phone call from Jim Vella, a headhunter for financial companies in Toronto. Would I like to go for lunch? He did business with my wife (who works in the financial industry), knew I had quit, and was curious to meet me and (I later realized) to help me, if possible. In a field in which slick headhunters wear fine suits, Jim approached his work as a counsellor, trying to get the right fit between company and person. He also volunteered as a counsellor for Native people at a Toronto-based hotline.
I met Jim at his office in a downtown tower. He had the deeply furrowed brow of a bulldog, but his eyes shone with a genuine desire to help others. He wanted to show me his paintings before lunch, he said. He had a strong interest in the plight of Native people in Canada and most of his paintings were by Aboriginal artists. Each painting constituted not only an individual aesthetic but also a story, told on many levels.
My eyes fell on the biggest painting. I could not take my eyes off it. It was almost two metres long, just over a metre high, and filled most of one wall. The upper part of the painting depicted a pure, deep, blue sky. The colours were clean and bright, the shapes clear and distinct. Stars twinkled in the upper sky. A moon loomed large, half of it lit, half in darkness. An orange, red, and blue bird with a sharp beak flew high in the sky. The bottom of the painting showed a river from the side. A bronzed man sat on a shimmering white horse that danced on the river’s surface. A blue and brown bear, with orange flames climbing his body, was coming out of the river. Beneath the bear a coyote howled at a second moon.
A fish, a beaver, and some other creatures I did not recognize swam in the river. In the centre of the painting, a woman rested on her back in the river. Her stomach was swollen, as if she were pregnant. Instead of a baby, there were four people inside her, two men and two women, sitting in a circle. One person smoked a pipe. A yellow turtle floated above the woman’s stomach. Inside the turtle was a world. Beneath a milky sky and pale sun, broken ridges of brown land rose out of blue water. The water surrounded a piece of land shaped like Alberta.
As I studied the painting, Jim told me how he came to buy it. Milton Born With A Tooth, from the Piikani Reserve in Alberta, had come to Toronto in the early 1990s to publicize his fight against the construction of a dam. Jim told me about Milton and the group he had formed—the Lonefighters—to protest the dam. He explained that the Lonefighters used a bulldozer and a backhoe to try to change the course of the Oldman River so it would bypass the place where farmers got their water for irrigation. Milton and the Lonefighters wanted to cut the farmers’ water off to draw attention to their opposition both to the dam and to the historic injustices they had suffered. They set up a camp on their reserve, beside the Oldman River, near a parcel of land that had once been part of the reserve but had been expropriated and sold to the local farmers’ irrigation district in 1922.
Jim said that eventually the police invaded the land and stopped the protest. Nearly a hundred police came one morning, along with a helicopter and heavy weapons. Milton ran toward the police carrying a gun. Later, the police put him in jail. “He was only trying to protect himself and his people,” Jim explained. He added that Milton had an unfair trial and was sentenced to almost two years in jail. Even the Appeal Court concluded that the first trial was unfair. “It just shows the kind of things that happen every day to Native people in Canada,” Jim said.
Let me back up a bit. In May of 2004, midway through the prosecution of a murder case in Toronto, I sent my boss an e-mail giving notice that I was resigning as a Crown prosecutor, once my case was finished. After twelve years of fighting cases in the trenches, I was wearied by the constant battling. I needed unstructured time to do crazy things, such as going for a walk in the sun. Resigning left me with the not inconsequential question of what I would do with the rest of my life, or at least the next year. I settled in to the idea of cleaning up a memoir I had begun years before; it was from a previous time I’d quit the law, sold almost all my possessions, and moved to Asia to teach English. To my surprise, however, I had no interest in re-living my own past, alone in my basement, staring at my computer screen. Perhaps my withdrawal from the social world made me long for something new, something that transcended my own life.
One day in September 2004, I got a phone call from Jim Vella, a headhunter for financial companies in Toronto. Would I like to go for lunch? He did business with my wife (who works in the financial industry), knew I had quit, and was curious to meet me and (I later realized) to help me, if possible. In a field in which slick headhunters wear fine suits, Jim approached his work as a counsellor, trying to get the right fit between company and person. He also volunteered as a counsellor for Native people at a Toronto-based hotline.
I met Jim at his office in a downtown tower. He had the deeply furrowed brow of a bulldog, but his eyes shone with a genuine desire to help others. He wanted to show me his paintings before lunch, he said. He had a strong interest in the plight of Native people in Canada and most of his paintings were by Aboriginal artists. Each painting constituted not only an individual aesthetic but also a story, told on many levels.
My eyes fell on the biggest painting. I could not take my eyes off it. It was almost two metres long, just over a metre high, and filled most of one wall. The upper part of the painting depicted a pure, deep, blue sky. The colours were clean and bright, the shapes clear and distinct. Stars twinkled in the upper sky. A moon loomed large, half of it lit, half in darkness. An orange, red, and blue bird with a sharp beak flew high in the sky. The bottom of the painting showed a river from the side. A bronzed man sat on a shimmering white horse that danced on the river’s surface. A blue and brown bear, with orange flames climbing his body, was coming out of the river. Beneath the bear a coyote howled at a second moon.
A fish, a beaver, and some other creatures I did not recognize swam in the river. In the centre of the painting, a woman rested on her back in the river. Her stomach was swollen, as if she were pregnant. Instead of a baby, there were four people inside her, two men and two women, sitting in a circle. One person smoked a pipe. A yellow turtle floated above the woman’s stomach. Inside the turtle was a world. Beneath a milky sky and pale sun, broken ridges of brown land rose out of blue water. The water surrounded a piece of land shaped like Alberta.
As I studied the painting, Jim told me how he came to buy it. Milton Born With A Tooth, from the Piikani Reserve in Alberta, had come to Toronto in the early 1990s to publicize his fight against the construction of a dam. Jim told me about Milton and the group he had formed—the Lonefighters—to protest the dam. He explained that the Lonefighters used a bulldozer and a backhoe to try to change the course of the Oldman River so it would bypass the place where farmers got their water for irrigation. Milton and the Lonefighters wanted to cut the farmers’ water off to draw attention to their opposition both to the dam and to the historic injustices they had suffered. They set up a camp on their reserve, beside the Oldman River, near a parcel of land that had once been part of the reserve but had been expropriated and sold to the local farmers’ irrigation district in 1922.
Jim said that eventually the police invaded the land and stopped the protest. Nearly a hundred police came one morning, along with a helicopter and heavy weapons. Milton ran toward the police carrying a gun. Later, the police put him in jail. “He was only trying to protect himself and his people,” Jim explained. He added that Milton had an unfair trial and was sentenced to almost two years in jail. Even the Appeal Court concluded that the first trial was unfair. “It just shows the kind of things that happen every day to Native people in Canada,” Jim said.