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First Edition of the Healing the Earth Radio Newsletter
December 27, 2008
Today is the first new moon past the winter solstice. We’re moving back towards the light again.
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Healing the Earth Radio explores the connections between many social and ecological issues. Motivated by a desire to foster more understanding, alliances, and effective action, the show interviews Native people defending their land and culture, environmental, local food, and peak oil activists, writers, lawyers, supporters of political prisoners, scientists, whistle-blowers, tree sitters, and many others who devote their lives to making things better.

Healing the Earth Radio is on the air on CFRU 93.3fm in Guelph, every Wednesday from 12-2 Eastern time. You can listen live at cfru.ca. The website for the show is www.resistanceisfertile.ca.

If you have any questions, ideas, or know someone you think would like to be included in future updates, or you would like to subscribe/[un]subscribe, please email me at healingtheearth(at)resist(dot)ca.

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Recent Interviews

Here’s a wrap up of interviews from the past season. You can follow the links for more information, and to listen to the interviews:

*Tyendinaga: The Struggle for Drinking Water and the Health of the Land Continues*

I spoke with Dan Doreen, a Mohawk from the community of Tyendinaga, which is located in Southeastern Ontario near Belleville. Dan has been on Healing the Earth several times before; he is one of many people from Tyendinaga who are fighting a new police station that the band council and the provincial and federal governments are trying to bring in to their community. Tyendinaga is one of 37 First Nations communities within the borders of Ontario that is on a boil water advisory.

http://resistanceisfertile.ca/dandoreen2.html

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*For a Soft Landing: Transition Towns, Peak Oil, and Climate Change*

Sally Ludwig is one of the people involved in a project called Transition Guelph - an effort to transition off of a dependence on fossil fuels and other unsustainable and exploitative aspects of the modern era, modelled on the Transition Town movement that began in the UK. She talks of the growth of this movement that values local sustainability, diverse life-supporting skills, and resiliency in the face of ecological and economic turmoil.

http://resistanceisfertile.ca/sallyludwig.html

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*Land Defenders from Six Nations and Tyendinaga Speak: Audio from Guelph's 4th Annual Anti-Colonial Thanksgiving Dinner*

This isn’t from an interview on the radio show, but is from an event I was involved with organizing, and involves people I have interviewed in the past.

On October 17, 2008, Guelph's 4th Annual Anti-Colonial Thanksgiving Dinner brought together many anti-colonial allies, families, farmers, students, community organizers, and warriors. These include speakers Boots Powless and Skyler Williams from Six Nations, Jackie of the Mississaugas of the New Credit, Dan Doreen from Tyendinaga, and Sarah Dover from Toronto. These five speakers spoke very passionately about their struggles and efforts to defend their land, their families, communities, and culture.

http://resistanceisfertile.ca/anticolonialdinner.html

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*The Long-Standing Conflict With the Algonquins of Barriere Lake*

I spoke with Marylynn Poucachice from the Algonquin community of Barriere Lake, which continues to deal with the problems of colonization of their land and people.

http://resistanceisfertile.ca/barrierelake.html

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*Speaking About Land Reclamations with Boots from Six Nations*

This past summer, Boots spent several months in a teepee on a proposed industrial development site in Brantford. Boots and other members of Six Nations and their allies have been shutting down numerous development sites over the years due to concerns of land rights and ecology. What most people think began in February 2006 on the edge of Caledonia, the site that blew up into a world-renowned conflict, actually began long before that, and has kept going ever since. The site Boots has been living on was slated to be a fiberglass insulation factory, right next to a large Hampton Inn hotel, which has also been shut down.

http://resistanceisfertile.ca/boots.html

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*Ending Industrial Culture, Building Cultures of Resistance: An Interview With Lierre Keith and Aric McBay*

Lierre Keith and Aric McBay are both authors, small farmers, activists in their own way, and over the last couple years have been organizing weekend-long conferences entitled Deep Green Resistance. In our interview, they speak of a systemic analysis of what we're facing, including the environmental and social costs of industrial culture, tying together the problems of climate change, peak oil, the power of the right-wing/fascist elements, economic collapse, and so on.

http://resistanceisfertile.ca/lierreandaric.html

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*Industrial and Military Operations vs. Marine Life: Turns Out They Can't Co-exist*

I spoke with Kim Elmslie, a campaign coordinator for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, who spoke about a recently-published report by IFAW, on the threat to marine life from noise pollution. It turns out that not only is military testing killing marine life and ruining the lives of surviving populations, but all the noise from oil rigs, shipping, and other industrial activity is also to blame.

http://resistanceisfertile.ca/whales.html

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Upcoming Interviews

In the near future I’ll be interviewing:

Folks from Six Nations about their successful opposition to a re-opening of a contaminated landfill site in Cayuga (for more information see:
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20081215104533650)

Numerous people involved in the environmental surveys of the proposed Hanlon Creek Business Park lands, and folks from the Drumlin Community Farm in Madison, Wisconsin, which is under threat from developers. See http://drumlingarden.org for more info.