Thursday, August 14, 2014

Getting Along with Living

Look, to the people who define their relationship with the Earth that sustains them as 'property', you people with your acres with which you have little or  no real relationship, you people with your bank accounts with zeros that you worship, I have no quarrel with you. You are welcome to play your game of little pieces of paper of 'ownership'.

But when you start to push me and my family and my community around then I don't know what to do other than make a stand.

You know?

I know that the conception and birth of my children means nothing in your courts when it comes to tenure in a place.

My blood, flesh and tears mingled with the soil are not admissible as evidence in a trial of legitimacy of place.

But I can tell you that not only do I not own land, neither do you. It's not possible, even if you doug up bucketsfull and guarded them day and night with your life until the day you died and buried them with you, you never owned it, because it endures and you don't and you will become one with it again. The best you could hope for is an acknowledgement of belonging, that you belong to the Earth.
Your pieces of paper with your signatures, your abstract constructs of human laws, are unjust and immoral. Justice strives to interpret morality otherwise it is meaningless.

So, with the example of the Tipi People living on the otherwise uninhabited summer spot of remote wilds of Soda Mountain, who's neo-indigenous presence tends and stewards land otherwise neglected. Land that was, until five generations ago, husbanded by bands of families, wiped away, displaced and straight up brutally killed by a new and pernicious consciousness of ownership, settler ownership. In our case, dear reader, I can tell you that even though this is the twenty-first century, that story continues and I find myself, not through choice but through following a life of inspired love, I find myself resisting displacement.

I find myself in court, again, answering to a judge presenting two options; vacate the land where I have a bond of stewardship and deprive my children of the chance of living a connected life, unencumbered by the fragmentation of mainstream industrialisation, or go to trial, with no legal representation.

Under duress (even though the Judge was, on this occasion, open and kind), we opted for the former. So we have until September 1st before men with guns, kevlar vests, mace and cuffs might come out.

No-one here wants to obstruct any sale of land, because we love the currently documented owners with full acknowledgement. However, the prospective buyers, whom we love as adversaries (yet long for this to develop), have a contingency written into their contract that we must be gone. They have told us that they intend to sell or give the land we call home (and hope for the keystone species Homo Sapiens) to the government in exclusion of human habitation.

I think that there are laws to help people to maintain basic human rights, like a place to be with the Earth, but I don't know what they are yet. I think, or hope, that there are laws to give our children the right to grow up in a healthy and wholesome way.

If you are a lawyer or know of one, please get in touch; this is a high profile case that can set a precedent for the future of human place in relationship with Mother Earth. If you are thinking of coming for a visit, now is a good time, though dynamic. Come and witness the front line of the transformation of the paradigm!

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