Se'Si'Le - Seven Sisters

On the last full day of summer the Sisters stood with matriarchs from the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation in British Columbia before a near-capacity crowd at Saint Andrews Wesley United Church in Vancouver. The Sisters called on the wisdom of Indigenous women to call out the Canadian’s government's unconscionable and indefensible attack on the health of the Salish Sea and on the frontal assault on the inherent rights of First Nations on both sides of the border.

Seven Sisters on the evening of September 21st at St. Andrews Cathedral

The women spoke of their People’s sacred and ancestral duty to caretake the waters from the headwaters, through the inlets and down into the Salish Sea on both sides of the border’s ‘invisible line.’ The intergenerational matriarchs from Tseil-Waututh (“People of the Inlet”) brought history into the present. They connected near-genocidal crime of the boarding schools to ecocide and extinction in the incestuous and promiscuous relationship of the Canadian government with the fossil fuel industry. The indefensible dredging of the fragile ecosystem of the Burrard Inlet, the addition of yet more pipelines to deliver highly toxic tar sands oil to China, the near quadrupling of tanker traffic across the Salish Sea that will further imperil the survival of the Southern Resident Killer Whales, and the clear violation of the treaty-guaranteed fishing-rights of Native Nations all across the Salish Sea - there are all perfectly reasonable scenarios to the Canadian government.

The Sisters raised their voices in honor of a sacred rage in the violation of a sacred duty and the dangerous historical, cultural, and biological fictions embedded in the “invisible line.” Yet as Ta’ah the elder matriarch from Tsleil-Waututh reminded everyone in this sanctuary of the spirit:

“I am still here. We are here. We will always be here, defending and caretaking our waters and way of life. And you are here with us.”

Ta’ah - Elder Matriarch of the Tseil-Waututh Nation, Vancouver BC