Transcripts For RT On Contact 20240712

Contact. Welcomed on cantor today we discuss the book pain the land with its author. I look at my old interviews like the transcript and you see that often of interrupted people and when youre talking with the a dinny elder you really just let them talk you might ask a question and they might Start Talking about something and you think this doesnt really relate to my question. But they will get around to answering your question so in a way it was like a real lesson in patience in learning that there are other ways to listen in other ways to sort of. Deal with with someone than just sort of consciously interjecting and sort of corralling them into the speech you need to go. In the fall of 9095 i joined a convoy of french u. N. Peacekeepers traveling from the besieged city of sarajevo in bosnia to the besieged city of garage in the convoy i met another journalist. Who drew book one comics i knew a little about the world of comics but i knew something about the world of journalism. I watched him interviewing gorazde and instantly realized he was immensely skilled as a reporter we would later Work Together in a story from gaza for harpers magazine and from camden new jersey in a piece for the nation magazine as well as publish a book together called days of destruction days of revolt joe invented the genre of comics journalism the marriage of rigorous reporting with meticulous drawing that delivers a visceral visual and emotional punch his books including palestine safe area gorazde footnotes in gaza the fixer and the great war have become classics repeatedly elevating journalism into art his latest book is paying the land a poignant and moving portrayal of the plight of the denny people of the Remote Canadian Northwest Territories their struggles against cultural genocide in the social economic and environmental destruction caused by the Extraction Industries in the book he chronicles the battle by the denny people to protect their identity and their communities the competing ethic of communal existence is pitted against the ruthlessness and violence of capitalism and the commodification of a land that to the dentist is not only a living being but sacred joe is unsparing in his reporting documenting the evils imported into the den a culture from the outside that include alcoholism drug use domestic and Sexual Violence and suicide but by the end of the book the reader discovers that this is not only a book about the long efforts to extinguish indigenous communities and Indigenous Culture but it is a book about us about our demonic lust for profit at the cost of human life and ultimately the earth itself. Joining me from his home in Portland Oregon to discuss paying the land is joe sako so joe what is it that drew you to this story what you spent 4 years of your life documenting and telling. Well i wanted to do a book about Climate Change but i wanted to do something that was a little more sort of oblique. And i thought a do it about resource extraction and where resources extraction extract extracted so is at the periphery and that usually involves Indigenous People and i thought i would go up and just talk to people about that particular subject. I did a magazine piece of for a french french magazine called ventana and it didnt seem enough i felt like when i was up there i was learning a lot more that it wasnt just about resource extraction but that had to be seen in the context of colonialism and i thought it was worth going up again and working on a book length project i think what to do externally well in the book is. Show the trauma that just generational trauma that began with colonisation but continues up to the present and how that trauma is passed down and you its a nonlinear book so you will go all the way back to the 1st european and of course eventually canadian colonizers you have long sections on the Residential Schools who are the boarding schools where these. Indigenous children are literally kidnapped by the government by the r. C. M. P. But talk about that because that seems to be a constant theme throughout the book from the moment of contact between the added tennis communities and the european colonizers thats right. Basically the Northwest Territories was of really little interest to the settlers because it was an Agricultural Land it wasnt viable Agricultural Land it only became of interest to. The dominion when oil and gold was discovered on the land so you have to control the people you have to control the land you have to control the people so what they ended up doing is taking children off the land and putting them into Residential Schools and i think that the very specific purpose and this was outlined by the 1st Prime Minister of canada was to. Break the culture of the native peoples to separate the the. Indigenous person from the land and break their culture and turn them into some version of white people and of course this plays out. In very very dramatic and traumatic ways i mean of course youve taken children away from their parents away from their communities away from the way they think about the world and you are imposing Something Else upon them youre taking away their language in fact youre beating them if they if they speak their own languages youre teaching them english youre christianizing them and youre basically as as one guy told told me youre turning them into numbers they werent really even referring to them by their names so youre cutting them off from everything they are as a den a person when they think these people eventually go back to their communities they might not even be able to speak to their grandparents in some time in some cases not even to their parents or their birth they no longer know their ways of living and being they no longer know how to live on the land and so theyve lost that connection and that definitely worked into favor of canada because then you what you have you dont have a strong people that understands itself and understand this connection to the land you have a you have a broken people i mean the attempt was to break the people and to basically to end their indigeneity to assimilate them. And that of course gets and this went on from. 850 in the 1990 s. Rattly yes and i think it talked about 154 children indigenous children in canada and the Northwest Territories has the greatest amount of survivors and of course how does that play out in the end it plays out with people. Broken people medicating themselves we saw this together in south dakota pine ridge india or indian reservation. People self medicating high rates of alcoholism. As you mentioned Domestic Abuse and all these things that were basically imposed upon them in the Residential Schools. They were internalizing all those things and not only were they victims but then they visit that sort of trauma on their children and on their childrens children i mean this sort of colonialism sort of spools out over time it doesnt end when the Residential Schools end its an ongoing process and who knows how long its going to take to resolve itself event over does. It we should be clear that within the Residential Schools there was a tremendous amounts of violence and sexual and physical abuse. And of course these people. As you mention when they get back to the communities and theres a moment in the book where people are talking about coming back from the Residential Schools and because theyre so disconnected from their own culture their elders dont even want to take them out to hunt or to trap or to do the traditional activities that these previously pretty you know largely nomadic indigenous communities carried out because they dont have any knowledge theyre just a burden thats right they become a liability they become sort of you know if youre trying to turn people into Indigenous People into white people and then basically you have some version of a white person back in the community which obviously led to a lot of conflict and even even tension and trauma there too because people came back to their communities and often felt some some form of rejection by their communities so it took a long time to get back into their ways of thinking and some people struggled and got back into their ways real learn their languages that many others were kind of lost well the rates of suicide are very high i think if i remember what is it 4 times the National Average or something and alcoholism is yes Something Like that maybe even more is an epidemic i want to talk about the trauma of technology because thats also a theme that runs through your book so the Extraction Industry has come in and i think you did an amazing job of how conflicted indigenous communities are because you know they live of course in deep poverty and the Extraction Industries offer at the very least a job and if they can control or get a certain amount of the royalties even a certain amount of income and that is a major theme in the book and maybe you can explain it but also enter if youd agree is in it in and of its. Self another form of trauma i think thats true i mean i think a lot of the indigenous communities are very conflicted about how to approach resource extraction because now whats happened its they used to survive off the land they used to trap for years and bring them in and sell them and they had their own economies and their own ways of living once they were driven off the land and pulled into communities mainly through the schooling system they no longer do that now that theyve been turned into wage laborers and one of the only jobs up there i mean theyre resource extraction jobs unless you can get sort of a government job or else you live on the dole so they a lot of people in the northern communities they sort of see that these are the jobs that are available its resource extraction so theres a very conflicted relationship with it a very ambivalent relationship with it and you saw a lot of tension even within communities about that particular thing so theres that trauma in within communities because they have different ways of thinking about these things. But also its what the resource Extraction Industry brings in they bring in roads which you know have its they have their benefits but but through roads you can also bring in a little haul drugs all kinds of things like that prices go up certain goods come in that people arent used to. Cellphones come in and you also you also for the man camps or meat than prey on women girls man camps camps of male workers. Yeah i mean i prey on the women and girls well theres all kinds of things that are brought in imported in that obviously really problematic for the communities so its sort of like this negotiation with you know how we how much you can to negotiate with the devil of the resource Extraction Industry great when we come back when we come back well continue our conversation with joe sacco about his book pain the way. The saying is that when you have been at my printers in charge the act of printing all that paper money to hang round eyes themselves really fills their heads with dreams of its fiats of primacy thats the ultimate form of supremacy is i print therefore i am and if you can call the lovers of political power with their fair money if you can acquire assets with their feet that money it gives you that god complex that we have so much of around the world and countries and big corporations and now its all going to come crashing down. Donny and by north its so many people because they copy him hes so bored that even such a bad puppy sending. Im not killed anybody and. Hell do fine the next. Done deal and felt guilty that she even done plenty of. The deflection for the c. E. O. She has a deflection board how could you say. That is a god that when i got out from india to. 11. Years ago youre going to hear a lot about that on the board a lot about that that you can bank on. The back of a. Long long long way. On the bottom theres a bonus feature alone control collateral. And oh a new person and theyve done a 100 gandhi a new mold going to run the place trust me to ignore you then they mock you then they will join you. Welcome back we continue our conversation with joe sacco about his book paying the land one of the things you talk about in the book are that you know as you bring in these outside Extraction Industries and and of course the imposition of the canadian government itself is it creates disputes within indigenous communities and of. Course that classic ability to divide those community is very much a part of westward expansion in the United States you and i visited big or the big horn battle and of course that was the crows who were aiding custer and the cavalry foe but talk about those divisions because thats an important part of your book well. As i mentioned if people are wage laborers and those are the only wages there are some people who look at resource extraction as the way out of poverty and they see the resource Extraction Community as theyre suspicious of it on many levels but also the resource Extraction Community will bring in. Gifts. Theyll help subsidize schools give hockey equipment they will keep the winter roads clear so they bring in certain goods and other people are not are a little more. Testy with the resource Extraction Industry there or they oppose it because theyre worried about things like fracking because the chemicals are being shut down into the land and then they come back up when the oil and natural gas comes up and people are obviously worried about what those chemicals are what they mean to the land and what theyre doing i mean the Extraction Industry is putting down all kinds of cut lines through the land its putting down roads its putting down these pads where the with the well pads are and. Hed having a great effect on the land too so you know within a community youre going to find these different. Different forces often in conflict with each other you do note that the fracking industry because of the drop in the Global Oil Prices is in hiatus how is that kind of reversal affected these communities well its a boom or bust sort of situation and right now its a bust with oil and Natural Gas Prices really low it means the jobs have dried up so people are tied to those jobs that can go income based on Market Forces that they have absolutely no control over so you can imagine its like suddenly all these people are out of work now they have to go on the dole so to tie yourself to resource extraction is tying yourself to to something that you have absolutely no control over and i think a lot of people recognize that also you interview i think his name is dolph in the book. Yeah ill talk a little bit about him i mean he often i found it is very wise. But just as well you know what its the book is filled with amazing characters but lets just have you talk about him if this is someone i really like quite a bit hes a chief that trout lake and he went through the same Residential School chaos as he calls it as everyone else did and he he. Had problems with alcoholism and eventually he was able to sort of break him self away from that but he very much recognizes how alcoholism has damaged his people himself. And he recognizes that as a leader he has to sort of heal himself in order to serve his people he sees all the connections between Residential Schools and how people act and i mean i think. In the d. N. A. Community people are very. They think in terms of consensus they make decisions together and people have a lot of autonomy they can speak up but in Residential Schools it was very hierarchical of course and people were told you know you only speak when youre called upon he recognizes he recognizes all this sort of thing and sees the effect its had on his people that they dont take the initiatives that they used to take that they they dont involve themselves in Decision Making as they used to take in the traditional in their traditional way so theres a lot of conflicts in his own mind and he sort of i think almost like a philosopher in this one Little Community but theres no theres no. Asphalt road to travel lake you can only fly in or you can drive in for about a 2 month period when the winter road is open and they the Community Goes back and forth about certain things now theyve agreed to build a road but he personally sort of thankful that its going to probably take about 20 years to build a road to the highway because that will give his community a lot of time to prepare for whats going to come in you know he war is about a lot of tourists coming in. I mean on the one hand you think that thats a way of Going Forward economically on the other hand you know you want the right kind of people to come and you dont want to bunch of people just coming in to their sacred lake putting down a bunch of boats and zooming around all over the place. He worries about what Technology Means that people arent used to the technology but they are. Theyre not used to the bills that say that because theyre getting quite used to the technology itself and theyre getting theyre losing their connection to the land itself 8 he says in some cases they dont even know how to chop firewood anymore and hes one of those people like many i met there that award about the younger people who have a little less interest in going on the land and its where its the land where the the d. N. A. Have connection to themselves not just lead but they get connection to themselves in the land so he sees a lot of this and hes it was a very great character to sort of show. This sort of wide spectrum of whats happened to the d. N. A. And how how theyve been dealing with over over this period if i think that was interesting in the book is that you really said you had to recalibrate the way you carried out interviews explain. Thats absolutely true yeah i mean it really taught me a lot because i look at my old interviews like the transcripts and i see that how often ive interrupted people and when youre talking with a a d. N. A. Elder you really just let them talk you might ask a question and they might Start Talking about something and you think this doesnt really relate to my question but they will get around to answering your question so in a way it was like a real a lesson in patience and in learning that there are other ways to listen and other ways to sort of. Deal with with someone just sort of constantly interjecting and sort of corralling them into the space you need to go so yeah i found your chapter titles fascinating which you know oftentimes look like a treatise from sark or something you find yourself in the circle we wont let in we wont let it control us. Divide and conquer dance with a double but you begin with you find yourself in the circle and you end with the circle is closed and you end with this traditional game talk about that circle obviously for you especially the way you open the book which was you know recreate ssion of the traditional life that doesnt exist anymore and then the closure. Right well that the beginning starts with paul andrew who is talking about living life in the bush when he was a young boy and he talks about how everyone sort of just knew their place everyone understood they had a role and they were a valuable part of their family the seminomadic family group and he said he realized how much he felt himself in a circle in a community of people his family and how he had a role and he knew what to do sort of instinctively you saw what needed to be done and you did it there was a great selfworth in that. In the very end of the book i have a younger person now who grew up sort of as an urban denny person. And he talks about trying to get back onto the land and the 1st time in learning sort of to be on the land again look at some experience he never really had but he knew as ancestors had and how we hunted he hunted a caribou and as he was working on the on the on the caribou skinning it. He felt this connection with his ancestors and with the with future generations and its a different kind of circle and he used to use the exact same language of feet finding himself in a circle that the circle of his circle was closed he felt himself within 8 a community that extended into the past and into the future. As far as the hand games go that was very interesting that was also something. As a westerner you go in you see the hand games and its a its a its a game its looks like a guessing game to a western or to me wheres a tokens in a hand a number of people have one token in in one of their hands and theres someone on a the other team who is deciding which hand these these tokens might be in and to a westerner you realize this is just a matter of chance its a matter of probability how long this person is going to take to guess the tokens but then if you see it from the denny point of view and there was one case where one guy just eat he his token could not be guessed it seemed he had it in one hand or the other but the the guy on the other team just couldnt guess it and just went on and on and on and suddenly you realize you know youve got to think about this differently as a westerner i come in thinking about probabilities and certainties as a denny person they think of it as a psychological game something that really does Something Else going on and thats something you know as a westerner i just want to i felt really humbled by that you know we were so into progress science reason all those things that we sort of whole so dearly but there are other ways of thinking of things spiritual ways of thinking of things and thats something you know that as a westerner i think its important to consider also theres a moment toward the end of the book where your you go down into a mine. And you are right i will leave here with many Unanswered Questions about my indigenous host but right now standing hundreds of feet underground after listening to an earful about the technological wonders of the remediation my biggest query is about my race about us. And i think at one point you write about how you know what is that you know what is the aftermath of this technology but arsenic of our member of the word right to talk about that moment yeah sure i mean this was the gold this was a gold mine its called the giant mining yellowknife its closed down now its like one of those sites with incredible its incredible talk sic wasteland this this toxic dust thats used in the process of separating gold from its or has been put down these mine shafts i mean more than a quarter of a 1000000 tons of that stuff is poisonous in its in its in the smallest amount its really poisonous now the dinny say theyre paying the land when they go to the land before they do anything they acknowledge that the land is actual presence that they are a presence on on the land and now they are going to give the land a gift before they do anything thats why they say paying the land you paid for you do anything and when i was down this yellow this is not this mine shaft in in yellowknife full of poison which is being supposedly contained by western technology i realize this is a great metaphor in a way because how do we in the west pay the land we we just take what we want as i say we dont mutter any prayers we dont we dont give thanks to the land we just pay it with arsenic well and also if i remember correctly you know in a 100 years that arsenic will be contained is that correct. Well in lets just say the way it was put to me was it in 100 years they might have to come up with Something Else that this solution was good for 100 years right and this is this is how we think of things right this is very short term and i think as a westerner youre really struck by the contrast to an indigenous way of thought which is we go back far into the past and we also go back we go far into the future and how we think of ourselves i mean i think they have that is a way of approaching the earth and themselves with real humility well and that and that thats the on the mental point of the relationship to the ecosystem that sustains life and our commodification alternately killing it and and the dennys response of the earth the sacred banks i was joe sako about his book paying the last