To Walk; To Move

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Guest post by Divya Farias

This weekend marks the fifth and final Tar Sands Healing Walk in Fort McMurray, Alberta.  From across Canada, the States, and beyond, hundreds of people will band together on a spiritual passage along the Syncrude Loop, an open pit mine that is just one of several bitumen extraction facilities that are wreaking havoc on the soil, water, and air of Alberta.  Members of First Nations, environmental activists, and all kinds of concerned folks will reflect and pray together for the healing of a wounded land.  And I will be among them.

I think about the 4000 kilometer journey that has brought me, a first generation South Asian woman from New Jersey, here-and I ask myself what my role is supposed to be, in this land that isn’t mine.  To put it generously, my career as a change-maker, as a die-hard for social and environmental justice, is just getting started. I can’t really keep a cilantro plant alive, I have taken more than one long shower this week, and my only act of civil disobedience to date (an infraction pre-negotiated with park police) was absolved by thirty seconds spent in a holding cell and a $50 fine. (Need I mention that my travel and food expenses to the protest were covered by the University’s bottomless pit of alumni funds?)

I have little doubt that I want to spend my life trying to figure out how humans and the planet can once again be healthy and flourish-how to be a “steward of the land”; that’s something I’ve known since I was a kid.  But sometimes, despite my young age and fiery spirit, I feel like a washed-up activist.

I think it’s because my instinct is to demand answers.  I have this ideal of picking only battles that can be won-I want to see change overnight.  I want to subscribe only to efforts that are straight-forward and unproblematized.  This attitude deters me-and I think, many of my peers-from deep involvement in the struggle for justice in the tar sands; environmental groups seem powerful outright, but on a closer look I write them off because I decided they’re alienating people who aren’t on the left or they leave out people of color or they’re losing the “big picture” or their website is too sexy and not substantive enough.

Criticism is healthy.  But the idea that we must drive constantly forward, that every single minute must be spent in a fight for justice-that is not so healthy.

The Healing Walk is something different.  It is not a protest nor a rally; the Walk does not offer solutions or demand results.  There are no wins nor losses.  It is a reminder that things simply do not change overnight-but if we take small steps we will eventually cover ground.  We take time to be together, in the flesh, as to connect and learn from each other.  Guided by Native elders, the Healing Walk is a collective moment of reflection and prayer on the destruction that has taken place and the healing that will one day come.

For so long, I’ve wanted to do something, to be part of the movement.  I’ve read so many articles and written so many term papers, cited so many sources, and shared so many links on the tar sands and the rights of indigenous peoples.  So many words; it’s easy to let them take over reality.  But in order to be part of a movement, I need to move.

At the Healing Walk, I will take an example from those who already know that our bodies are our instruments. Hashtags do not move.  Bodies move.

Together. At the Healing Walk, hundreds of bodies will come together, and move together.  When we can feel the harm and meditate on healing in our spirits-as First Nations communities have been all along-we will know, together, what we are fighting for.  It’s not about figuring out what our individual credentials are or what we’ve contributed and achieved.  Of course, there are battles to win-in court, on the picket line, on Facebook-but we will walk because we do have the time and because it does matter.  We’ll tweet about it and Instagram it and blog about it, yes.  But most importantly, at the Healing Walk we are bodies across the land: indigenous and non, change-makers and washed-up activists.  We will feel the soil beneath our feet and the air-however noxious-in our lungs.  We will be stewards of the land together, because the struggle means nothing unless the movement is in our bones.

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Divya Farias spends most of her time asking questions and making things. She is blessed to be part of a community of thoughtful, inspiring people who contribute to her interests in art, education, and community-building. Divya is trying to figure out how to fight for social and environmental justice in the world (not that the two are separate things). As a student of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Princeton University, she focuses on indigenous environmental movements. She is a saxophonist/violinist and is happiest in funky situations.