The Year of the Wild Salmon People

Happy New Year!

Last year thousands of us met and learned we can work together. We walked and paddled shoulder to shoulder for 100s of km, not just to save a generous fish, but to save ourselves. Government has tried to shape us into cogs in a big wheel that is running us over and we say “no.” Whether you look at wild salmon, our communities or the planet, it is all the same. We cannot continue serving up chunks of our planet to shareholders who cannot feel the damage they do. They will never seek balance on their own. Our governments slavishly obey their wishes and ignore 5,000 of us on the Parliament lawn saying get salmon feedlots out of our waters.

Clearly, this behaviour is not working for the political parties of British Columbia. Both dominant parties have lost their leaders, the liberals don’t even have their platform on their website – they don’t know who they are.

There are enough of us now that we could step into this void and bring government back to us by electing….. us.

Talking with government has become ludicrous. I feel like I am at the mad hatters tea party. They speak nonsense, act like they are hiding truths, attempt to pacify us with media lines. Our salmon and communities are dying of government policies that cannot work. We could bring salmon back – no problem – but government is standing in our way.

We are indeed fiddling as Rome burns. If we could just apply all we know right now we could serve our communities in a much, much better way. We have to work with the natural laws that bring life to earth and we need to put the needs of our communities ahead of the rights of shareholders.

The earth is generous, but it cannot be sucked dry, it’s sparks of life sold, its powerful workings dismantled.

The solution is simple we need to gather visibly both digitally and physically and form a government that works for us. It is that easy.

There are no losers here. We don’t need to sacrifice our wild salmon and the $500 million dollar fishery that re-energized BC communities from the north coast to the interior for a few fish farm jobs! The mere idea is lunatic, and yet that is what we hear the politicians repeat like good little soldiers in a war on us! People who know how to grow fish are a resource, we can find away for them to thrive without bringing the rest of us down.

I am a biologist who became an activist because I believe it my responsibility to inform people that their world is being dismantled. If salmon feedlots were all the government tells us, I would still be studying whales. But they are not and there are a thousand issues like this and they all stem from bad governance. I am tired of trying to work with the current system there has got to be some common sense and reason brought to this politically imposed impasse.

What I want to communicate here is that you are the only person who can change this. We have been taught we don’t count. But you do. Your voice is powerful within your circle of family and friends and your vote will set the course of the province of British Columbia.

The time for complaining is over. We all know there are very serious problems and the sooner we address them the better. It is in everyone’s best interest to do whatever you can to create a BC government that works for us.

To this end I have created a website for the Wild Salmon People to digitally gather.

If 100,000 people stood up right now and said we want wild salmon the government that will emerge in the coming months would have to respect us. You can be sure the corporate users of this province are doing all they can to make sure they are represented. Why would we do less?

2011 – the Year of the Wild Salmon People. The power of one is all we have but we all have it!

Alexandra Morton