The controversy now erupting throughout Canada over the issue of the construction of the TransMountain Oil Pipeline is revealing a fundamental unresolved impasse that has existed since first contact in the New World between the opposing philosophies and rules of law of the New World’s traditional indigenous peoples and all the colonizers of the Old World, Europeans or otherwise, who since have arrived on the shores of what traditional peoples otherwise variously still refer to as Turtle Island, Gondwana, Azatlan and still many other ancient names.

This seminal controversy over the meaning and purpose of existence, life and the future survival of all living beings, and Mother Earth herself, once again is revealing itself in the bush, in hamlets,, towns, cities and urban areas all over Canada which, itself, is an Iroquoian name (“Kanata”) that simply means ‘Home’. This controversy also continues to ripple around the world among Climate Crisis advocates of a diametrically different way of life to the modern corporate world and meaning of what HOME ON MOTHER EARTH means for them in the future.

Endless extraction of the Earth’s natural resources or conservation

More and more native and non-natives continue to be drawn to the ancient wisdoms of traditional indigenous peoples that all over the New World, commonly use the traditional expression “KEEP IT IN THE GROUND” that represents a world view based upon a deep respect and reverence for the sanctity of the earth and its preservation.

Of course this ancient philosophy and way of seeing life in a more constant, stable state of being forever flies in the face of those forces in the corporate world of commerce and business who represent a diametrically opposite mind-set and world view that long before the Old World’s discovery of the New World, and ever since, has advocated an opposite philosophy that believes that in order for the human race to perpetually grow and expand human society must constantly “MINE IT, PUMP IT & EXTRACT IT’ to keep up with an endless, unstoppable population expansion and growth model of ever greater dimensions in all its forms and shapes.

The one view believes in leaving as its legacy to their descendants a world that has been bequeated to them by their ancestors while the other view believes in the legacy of, forget those ancestors, we believe in our ancestors who said, “Bigger is Better and More of Everything is Even Better Still”.

For over two hundred years the dialectic art of thoroughly investigating and discussing the truth that lies beind the opposite opinions of both world views has never yet been fully aired in the general society. Nor have the courts snd legal systems of the colonizers anywhere in North and South America, or in Australia and the South Pacific, ever held a full inquiry into the metaphysical contradictions between the two world views and their potential solutions, or how the actions of the opposing social, political, cultural and legal forces and concepts of each can co-exist.

But now, front and centre before Canada and the world to try to grapple with this basic issue is the impasse of the TransMountain Canada Oil Pipeline between the Wet’suwet’en Nation and tdhe Government of Canada. The earlier Dakota Access Pipeline Crisis between the Lakota Sioux Nation and the U.S. Government was a precursor that instead of opening up this much needed dialectic instead led to the same kind of brutality and savagery that the Americans perpetrated against traditional indigenous peoples of previous centuries.

Th ideological war that is unfolding between the Wet’suewwt’en Nation and Government of Canada, the rest of British Columbia’s governing bodies and the rest of the world’s corporate, political and cultural concept of what the world should look like, is once again creating still more opening salvos that nations like the Lakota and others also continue to press for the sake of their own survival and that of their people. If the world will truly listen carefully to these salvos they will understand that the battle is for them as well.

It should be a wake-up call to the world that these salvos are part and parcel of the same contentious Climate Crisis rebellions that already engulf the world, It’s a universal struggle begging the question of how much more will the leaders of the world and their followers continue to “MINE IT, PUMP IT & EXTRACT IT’ before it’s all gone and life on earth is but a figment of what it once was? They constantly point to such absurd hypocrises in the mainstream world as those that pay lip service to wanting to do something progressive to address climate change, yet on every television set around the world, every day and every nightime, during every sports cast, sports match or event, and in every movie theatre around the world during every pre-show, numerous ever more glitzy, sophisticated commercials continue to brainwash the people to buy every larger, more expensive, more resource development driven automobiles.

The Wet’suewwt’en Nation, Lakota Nation and many others like them, along with their allies in the Climate Rebellion Movement are acting as the point men and women showing us the way forward, if, indeed, that is Survival of All of Life is to be the operative directive of the future.  This represents the simplest and clearest example of the inflexibility of ‘the white man’, as many traditional indigenous peoples would call today’s colonizers of whatever color, race or creed they may be.

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Jerome Irwin is a Canadian-American activist-writer who, for decades, has sought to call world attention to problems of environmental degradation and unsustainability caused by excessive mega-development and the host of related environmental-ecological-spiritual issues that exist between the conflicting philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. Irwin is the author of the book, “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey”, a spiritual sojurn among the native peoples of North America, and has produced numereous articles pertaining to: Ireland’s Fenian Movement; native peoples Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Movement; AIPAC, Israel & U.S. Congress anti-BDS Movement; the historic Battle for Palestine & Siege of Gaza, as well as; innumerable accounts of the violations constantly waged by industrial-corporate-military-propaganda interests against the World’s Collective Soul.