“If you kill him, we’ll kill you”. That is the answer chief Qwatsinas of the Nuxalk Nation in British Columbia, Canada gave me when I asked him what would happen is the loggers cut down the millenarian giant cedar tree that we had hiked here to see. With a tree trunk measuring 18 feet in [...]
There are fewer than 700 Gitga’at people in the world. Most of them live in the coastal town of Hartley Bay and nearby cities. If you call yourself a Gitga’at, then you most likely have a last name like Clifton, or Robinson, or Eaton, or Reece, or Moody. Everybody in the village knows you and [...]
Yesterday I attended a feast, and although the menu included things I had never eaten before, like cockles, ooligans, sea cucumbers, and seal meat, that was, by far, not the most interesting part of the gathering. The feast, organized by what Canadians call “First Nations” or what we know as “Indians”, was the first time [...]
It is a bitter loss. The wild river that along its lengthy journey gives life to so much and so many will be tamed forever. Where I stand on the shores of the Xingu River, just a few miles from the city of Altamira I can see the markers where the main wall of the [...]
