A plan for Mother Earth?

Okwire’shòn:’a. The trees.

They’re mentioned in our old ways of giving thanks because they are that important. They help us breathe cleaner air, they add beauty to our landscape, they protect us from wind and from other people, yet they are so often forgotten these days, most notably with the latest fiasco - Hydro Quebec giving out the contract to cut a ton of them and clear space for their lines.

There are many different points here, and we certainly don’t know the inner workings of the money aspect - the financial implications of this type of work - but we do have eyes, and we do see they went a little hack happy.

It’s one thing to clear space for the lines when it comes to falling or even dead trees, but it is quite another when bigger trees are cut, ones that, upon closer inspection (you can go see for yourself, many were left behind in a pseudo tree graveyard) were pretty healthy.

We did a story on one community member who was so upset because those trees were planted by her late mother. Now they are gone forever. And she wasn’t home when it happened.

Other community members said they cut too much, too wide, and questioned whether they would have gotten away with that in non-Native towns.

Still others questioned the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, including why more consultation didn’t happen, long before the trees were actually cut, and not just two minutes before the crew showed up at your house, even if they usually had a local guy to smooth things over as much as possible - but many weren’t even home during their visit, and they came home to heartbreak and the very sad reality of not being able to do anything about it.

The point is, it was poorly planned, and they cut too much. It was almost as if they figured those trees, healthy or not, would, could, one day fall on the power lines and affect their bottom line.

And, of course, create power outages in the future. We hate those. But surely there’s a middle point. Protecting the trees is a good start, cutting as little as needed.

We’re not against smart cutting to mitigate those things, but we couldn’t help but feel that sinking feeling of helplessness when they finally got through their wanton destruction of wide swaths of land.

Take a drive and go see for youself, if you haven’t already. It ain’t pretty.

We can’t just cut trees because they might one day fall. That’s planning for failure that may or may not come to fruition.

Besides, trees, even really healthy ones, fall in storms, get hit by lightning, hit by vehicles; it’s part of life. Cutting just to try to prevent potential future incidents sounds a little too much like convenience over the protection of life - the life of what we call okwire’shòn:’a.

They exist as something to give thanks for in the Ohèn:ton Karihwatéhkwen because they give everything they have to us their entire life cycles. And then they just get cut down. Gone forever.

No one to speak for them and few to weep.

Even the fallen trees, now that they are down, lying in a green graveyard along the OCR, were not given the respect of being brought somewhere to burn. Some community members harvested them, but so far, it looks like shoddy work that will not be cleaned up before winter.

And sure, we know all about the Emerald Ash Borer and the destruction that little bug has caused to our precious ash trees - traditional basket makers have had to change course and find other trees to harvest; and because of the danger of it harming other, healthy trees, ash trees in town aren’t supposed to be transported to other areas.

But surely, now that those trees have been hacked down to the amazement and disgust of most of Kahnawake, they can find a better place - and use - for the bodies littered for kilometres down the OCR.

Hydro’s planned cutting has made the side of that road look ugly and sparse - not something we should be happy about if we truly lived by Onkwehón:we decree to save Ionkhi’nisténha tsi ionhontsá:te’.

But when you look around and see contamination of land and water, people still burning plastics openly and littering, destroying the very land we live on, are you surprised there wasnt a frontline to fight for the trees?

Sure, people were pissed on Facebook, but big deal.

These cuts affect far more than the landowner, and this time, Hydro simply went too far while no one stopped them.

Steve Bonspiel

The Eastern Door