"Salmon is the Hub of Salish Memory," in Memory Serves: Oratories by Lee Maracle
It is imperative that we become governors in a sustainable world and benefit from holistic historical inquiry. If humans truly had a sensibility of what constitutes history in 1750 they would have studied the history of disease and its relation to sanitation rather than slaughter nearly the entire world of whales for the production of perfume over the course of 200 years because humans smelled. If humans truly had a sensibility of what constitutes history, they may not have slaughtered the buffalo in favour of wheat farms, they may not have substituted white bread for black bread, and they may not have slaughtered some millions of Indigenous people in the Americas. If humans understood which humans were important in a sane way they would not have transported and killed millions of Africans as slaves to produce sugar. If they understood the connection between themselves and the plant world they would not have produced sugar at all, implicated as it is in numerous diseases, not the least of which is violence among adults and among children, and hyperactivity. If humans had an accurate sensibility of our connection to the living world they may have studied the relation between fish consumption and health, and overfishing might not have occurred. But the humans in charge do not have an accurate perception of their place in history.
"Salmon is the Hub of Salish Memory," in Memory Serves: Oratories by Lee Maracle Comments are closed.
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