I Am the Water: Grassy Narrows’ Land Back Story

Into the Mix

Ben & Jerry's and Vox Creative

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.3 • 537 Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2023

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On a cold night in 2002, Chrissy Isaacs watched yet another logging truck loaded with old growth trees hurtle past her home in the Grassy Narrows First Nation, down the only road into the reserve: built by and for the logging industry. Enough was enough. That night, she dropped a tree in the road to block the loggers, and changed her community forever. This is the story of land back, and the fight to correct the long, long history of colonizers claiming indigenous territories as their own for economic benefit. But for millions of Indigenous people around the world, land back is about a lot more than ownership. It’s about relating to the land as more than just a resource, a commodity extracted, traded, owned, and controlled. Land back is about relationships, and what happens when we reconnect to the lands and waters that shape us. Please take care when listening: this episode discusses suicide and self harm. Learn more about how mercury poisoning has affected Grassy Narrows, support the community as they fight logging and mining claims in their traditional territories, and get to know Indigenous Climate Action here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and justice, produced with Vox Creative.
0:12.4	I'm Ashley C. Ford.
0:18.2	Grassy Narrows
0:19.3	When you look it up on a map of Canada,
0:23.6	tucked into the western reaches of Ontario,
0:27.6	it's easy to mistake for an island.
0:30.6	You zoom out and out and out,
0:33.6	watching green disintegrate into blue,
0:36.6	just as much water as land, where a hundred-year-old
0:41.3	spruce and balsam fir roll along shorelines, endless trees made double in the placid reflection
0:48.8	of all that water. That's what you find as you pull off the Trans-Canada Highway, a few hours east of the
0:58.1	longitudinal center of the country.
1:05.6	Chrissy Isaacs was born here in the 1500 square mile territory of grassy narrows, also known as
1:14.6	a sub-pish-kosilwagung, and it actually just means grassy narrows.
1:21.6	Like, you know, the long grass.
1:24.6	Because our people traveled by the river all the time. So when you're coming into
1:29.3	the community, like to the main community, you have to go through these grassy narrows.
1:41.3	So you know where we are right now?
1:46.9	This used to be an old logging camp.
1:50.4	So like it's just like we reclaimed it.
1:53.5	It's like, no, this is where it ends.
1:59.4	In a wooded clearing, not far from the community's entrance,
	...

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