I'm thinking about how we're the enemies of each others' enemies, and how difficult it will be for us to become allies and friends. Particularly when there is good reason for some of us to be distrusted. For instance, how trustworthy can white radicals be, just because we leave Christianity, or read Marx, or Kropotkin, or even if we read Kuwasi Balagoon and Tawinikay? Talk is cheap, even when it's deep and theoretical. As for our actions, well... as far as regards North America, at least, whites have been on some corner of this continent or another for more than 500 years, doing this action, doing that action, and often the actions have been something like "possess people", "dispossess people", "rob", and "ruin the land". Collectively, we aren't trustworthy. Although, we can't ever become trustworthy if we hide from doing anything and feel ashamed about the past, instead of doing trustworthy things... I don't know, people. I don't have answers, I just have questions.

QUARANTINE LETTER #5: UNRECONCILED Ron Sakolsky

Stop blaming me, accusing me, stalking me. Working yourselves into an anti-viral paralysis. All of that is childish. Let me propose a different perspective. See me as your savior instead of your gravedigger. You’re free not to believe me, but I have come to shut down the machine whose emergency brake you couldn’t find. I have come in order to suspend the operation that held you hostage. I have come in order to demonstrate the aberration that normality constitutes. Ask yourselves how you could find it so comfortable to let yourselves be governed. Don’t let those who’ve led you to the abyss claim to be saving you from it: they will prepare for you a more perfect hell, an even deeper grave. Thanks to me for an indefinite time you will no longer work, your kids won’t go to school, and yet it will be the opposite of a vacation. Vacations are the space that must be filled up at all costs while waiting for the obligatory return to work. I render you idle. Use the time I’m giving you to envision the world of the aftermath in light of what you’ve learned from the collapse that’s underway. The disaster ends when the economy ends. The economy is the devastation.

                          from “What the Virus Said”

Just when I was feeling most elated about prospects for the future given the strength of the Indigenous resistance sweeping Canada in early 2020, the coronavirus arrived on the scene with whiplash-inducing force to upstage everything in its deadly path unexpectedly shutting down whatever parts of the Canadian economy had not already been intentionally shut down by the Wet’suwet’en land defenders and those involved in solidarity actions that had immediately preceded the spread of the disease. Rather than framing The Virus exclusively within the kind of nightmare scenario that is typically associated with the mainstreaming of the term “surreal” (as if all there ever is to surrealism’s critique of reality is this dark side), I want to instead illuminate the surreal possibilities for social transformation that can be revealed by creating a surreal (rather than literal) analogy between the contagion of the virus and the contagion of revolt.

Starting in February of this year the appearance of a widespread Indigenous uprising on the stage of Canadian history swiftly moved the realm of the surreal from dreams of radical transformation to the direct action undertaken to bring it about. Railways, highways and ferries were blockaded, provincial legislatures, government administrative offices, banks and corporate headquarters were occupied. For many inconvenienced Canadians, such actions as these were considered to be unacceptable even though they would prove to be only a fraction as disruptive as the more authoritarian forms of state control that would later shelter under the legitimacy of saving us from The Virus.

Though the immediacy of the COVID-19 pandemic would quickly overshadow the earlier Indigenous revolt in the public eye, it is now evident to many that the smiley-faced mask of Canadian colonialism has been pulled off to reveal a state that in spite of its professed human rights and climate change awareness rhetoric continues to have no compunctions about invading Indigenous territory without consent to build pipelines for fracked natural gas and tar sands oil because of what it considers to be in the best interests of the almighty economy. As Tawinikay (aka Southern Wind Woman) has written, “If only one thing has brought me joy in the last few weeks, it began when the matriarchs at Unist’ot’en burned the Canadian flag and declared reconciliation dead. Like wildfire, it swept through the hearts of youth across the territories. Out of their mouths, with teeth bared, they echoed back: reconciliation is dead! reconciliation is dead! Reconciliation was a distraction, a way for them to dangle a carrot in front of us and trick us into behaving. Do we not have a right to the land stolen from our ancestors? It’s time to shut everything the fuck down”.

Just as Indigenous peoples have demanded their land back in rural areas while pronouncing the false hope of government-brokered reconciliation to be dead, the systemic dislocations to the economy brought on by the coronavirus have led urban anarchists to address fundamental land issues by calling for rent strikes. But why stop there? In response to the devastation associated with The Virus, we have heard calls for the cessation of not only rent, but mortgage and utility payments, even the cancellation of debt itself, the end of wage slavery, and demands for the cessation of arrests for minor offenses, the release of prisoners who have committed non-violent crimes, or flat-out prison abolition. As surrealists we might ask ourselves what other noxious aspects of reality might be called into question and transformed by beginning to imagine what might exist in their place.

Where I live in British Columbia, resource extraction has always been the name of the game, but the emergence this year of a widespread oppositional network ranging from “land back” Indigenous warriors to elder traditionalists and from Extinction Rebellion activists to anarchist insurrectionaries has been heartening. Together, this multi-pronged force disrupted business as usual in solidarity with Unist’ot’en and Wet’suwet’en land defenders, and threatened to bring the Canadian economy to a grinding halt. This time growing numbers of Indigenous peoples were not willing to be bought off by corporate bribes or mollified by a legal system that has never done anything but pacify, brutalize, or betray them in the process of stealing their land. This time people fought back in droves against the forces of colonial law and order. This time the air was alive with a spirit of refusal and rebellion with one action building upon another in a burgeoning movement that could not be stopped. When one railroad blockade would be busted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), another would spring up in its place elsewhere extending the frontlines of the battle all across the continent.

As I write, the wheel of change is still in spin. What the final outcome will be in relation to either the COVID-19 virus or the virus of revolt is unknown, especially in relation to the predatory nature of the times in which we live where the emphasis is often placed on the institution of statist forms of social control rather than grass roots mutual aid efforts in relation to the immanence of societal upheaval. Even though the pandemic has supposedly shut down the provincial economy with lightning speed, Coastal Gas Link’s pipeline construction efforts with their invasive industrial “man-camps” have still been allowed to continue to exist on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory with RCMP logistical support, thereby callously endangering the health and safety of the Indigenous inhabitants. It's abundantly clear whose lives matter to the Canadian government and whose don’t. Consequently, it will remain very hard for the authorities to put the genie of Indigenous rebellion back in the colonial bottle in the future. In the meantime, we are mourning what of value we’ve lost from the past, celebrating what we’ve created in the present, and still demanding the impossible.

A Spark in Search of a Powderkeg

Rebellion is its own justification, completely independent of the chance it has to modify the state of affairs that gives rise to it. It’s a spark in the wind, but a spark in search of a powder keg.

André Breton

If only one thing has brought me joy in the last few weeks, it began when the matriarchs at Unist’ot’en burned the Canadian flag and declared reconciliation is dead. Like wildfire, it swept through the hearts of youth across the territories. Reconciliation was a distraction, a way for them to dangle a carrot in front of us and trick us into behaving. Do we not have a right to the land stolen from our ancestors? It’s time to shut everything the fuck down!

Tawinikay (aka Southern Wind Woman)

The toxic cargo carried in Canadian pipelines, whether it be tar sands oil or fracked liquid natural gas (LNG), is, according to all serious climate scientists, a major, perhaps even decisive contribution to global warming, i.e. ecological catastrophe.   Meant to fuel industrial expansion, the pipelines have themselves become fuel for revolt. Designed to move these dirty fossil fuels from one location to another, they are a crucial element in normalizing the dubious paradise of unlimited growth in awe of which all obedient consumer/citizens are supposed to genuflect. In what the colonial mapmakers have called British Columbia (BC), resource extraction has always been the name of the game. However, the emergence in February of this year of a widespread oppositional network ranging from “land back” Indigenous warriors to elder traditionalists and from Extinction Rebellion activists to anarchist insurrectionaries was heartening. Railways, highways and ferries were blockaded, provincial legislatures, government administrative offices, banks and corporate headquarters were occupied. The catalyst for this rebellion was a widespread Indigenous uprising that refused the illusory promises of reconciliation. Together, these rebel forces disrupted business as usual in solidarity with the Unist’ot’en Big Frog clan of the Wet’suwet’en tribal house.

       ​As objective chance would have it, the primary Indigenous land defense camp is situated not far from the same Hazelton, B.C. area to which surrealist Kurt Seligmann and his wife Arlette had journeyed in 1938. During that time, they visited Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en villages, marveled at the imaginative power of the totem poles and ceremonial objects, made field notes, shot 16mm film, collected stories and recorded mythic histories. Now, in 2020, growing numbers of these same Indigenous peoples have been threatening to bring the Canadian economy to a grinding halt. Unwilling to be bought off by corporate petrodollars or mollified by a legal system that has never done anything but pacify, brutalize, or betray them in the process of stealing their land, Indigenous peoples passionately fought back against the forces of colonial law and order in a radical whirlwind of willful disobedience and social disruption. One action built upon another in creating a rolling momentum that seemed unstoppable. When one railroad blockade would be busted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), another would spring up in its place elsewhere extending the frontlines of the battle all across the continent. Then the debilitating Covid-19 virus arrived to compound the damage that had previously been done to the capitalist economy by the incendiary virus of revolt. The resistance of these Indigenous communities against the pipelines concerns all of us, worldwide, since they are on the front lines of the struggle to prevent cataclysmic climate change.

       ​In the future, a key question will be whether Canadian authorities can successfully put the genie of Indigenous rebellion back in the colonial bottle of “reconciliation”. As surrealists, we hope they will not, and we stand in solidarity with the unreconciled insurgent spirit of defiant Indigenous resistance. A new reality is to be invented and lived instead of the one that today as yesterday imposes its environmental miserabilism and its colonialist and racist hierarchies.  As surrealists, we honor our historical affinity with the Kwakwaka’wakw Peace Dance headdress that for so long had occupied a place of reverence in André Breton’s study during his lifetime before being ceremoniously returned in 2003 to Alert Bay on Cormorant Island by his daughter, Aube Elléouet, in keeping with her father’s wishes. With this former correspondence in mind, we presently assert that our ongoing desire to manifest the emancipation of the human community as distinctively undertaken in the surrealist domain of intervention is in perfect harmony with the fight of the Indigenous communities of the Americas against globalized Western Civilisation and its ecocidal folly.

                                                                                                               Surrealists in the United States: Gale Ahrens, Will Alexander, Andy Alper, Byron Baker, J.K. Bogartte, Eric Bragg, Thom Burns, Max Cafard, Casi Cline, Steven Cline, Jennifer Cohen, Laura Corsiglia, David Coulter, Jean-Jacques Dauben, Rikki Ducornet, Terri Engels, Barrett John Erickson, Alice Farley, Natalia Fernandez, Brandon Freels, Beth Garon, Paul Garon, Robert Green, Maurice Greenia, Brigitte Nicole Grice, Janice Hathaway, Dale Houstman, Karl Howeth, Joseph Jablonski, Timothy Robert Johnson, Robin D.G. Kelly, Paul McRandle, Irene Plazewska, Theresa Plese, Michael Stone-Richards, David Roediger, Penelope Rosemont, LaDonna Smith, Tamara Smith, Steve Smith, Abigail Susik, Sasha Vlad, Richard Waara, Joel Williams, Craig S. Wilson

Surrealists in the UK: Jay Blackwood, Paul Cowdell, Jill Fenton, Rachel Fijalkowski, Krzysztof Fijalkowski, Merl Fluin, Kathy Fox, Lorna Kirin, Rob Marsden, Douglas Park, Michel Remy, Wedgwood Steventon, Frank Wright, the Leeds Surrealist Group (Gareth Brown, Stephen J. Clark, Kenneth Cox, Luke Dominey, Amalia Higham, Bill Howe, Sarah Metcalf, Peter Overton, Jonathan Tarry, Martin Trippett), the London Surrealist Group (Stuart Inman, Philip Kane, Timothy B. Layden, Jane Sparkes, Darren Thomas) and the surrealists of Wales (Jean Bonnin, Neil Combs, David Greenslade, Jeremy Over, John Richardson, John Welson)

Surrealists in Paris: Ody Saban and The Surrealist Group of Paris (Elise Aru, Michèle Bachelet, Anny Bonnin, Massimo Borghese, Claude-Lucien Cauët, Taisiia Cherkasova, Sylwia Chrostowska, Hervé Delabarre, Alfredo Fernandes, Joël Gayraud, Régis Gayraud, Guy Girard, Michael Löwy, Pierre-André Sauvageot, Bertrand Schmitt, Sylvain Tanquerel, Virginia Tentindo, Michel Zimbacca)

Surrealists in Canada: Montréal (Jacques Desbiens, Peter Dube, Sabatini Lasiesta, Bernar Sancha), Toronto (Beatriz Hausner, Sherri Higgins), Québec City (David Nadeau), Victoria (Erik Volet), the Ottawa Surrealist Group (Jason Abdelhadi, Lake, Patrick Provonost) and the Inner Island Surrealist Group (as.matta, Jesse Gentes, Sheila Nopper, Ron Sakolsky)

The Surrealist Group of Madrid: Eugenio Castro, Andrés Devesa, Jesús Garcia Rodriguez, Vicente Gutiérrez Escudero, Lurdes Martinez, Noé Ortega, Antonio Ramirez, Jose Manuel Rojo, María Santana, Angel Zapata

Surrealists in Sweden: Johannes Bergmark, Erik Bohman, Kalle Eklund, Mattias Forshage, Riyota Kasamatsu, Michael Lundberg, Emma Lundenmark, Maja Lundgren, Kristoffer Noheden, Sebastian Osorio

Surrealists in Holland: Jan Bervoets, Elizé Bleys, Josse De Haan, Rik Lina, Hans Plomp, Pieter Schermer, Wijnand Steemers, Laurens Vancrevel, Her de Vries, Bastiaan Van der Velden

Surrealists in Brazil: Alex Januario, Mário Aldo Barnabé, Diego Cardoso, Elvio Fernandes, Beau Gomez, Rodrigo Qohen, Sergio Lima, Natan Schäfer, Renato Souza

Surrealists in Chile: Jaime Alfaro, Magdalena Benavente, Jorge Herrera F., Miguel Ángel Huerta, Ximena Olguín, Enrique de Santiago, Andrés Soto, Claudia Vila

 The Middle East and North Africa Surrealist Group: Algeria (Onfwan Foud), Egypt (Yasser Abdelkawy, Mohsen El-Belasy, Ghadah Kamal), Iraq (Miechel Al Raie), Syria (Tahani Jalloul), and Palestine (Fakhry Ratrout)

Surrealists in Prague: Frantisek Dryje, Joe Grim Feinberg, Katerina Pinosova, Martin Stejskal, Jan Svankmajer

The Athens Surrealist Group (Elias Melios, Sotiris Liontos, Nikos Stabakis, Theoni Tambaki, Thomas Typaldos, Marianna Xanthopoulou)

Surrealists in Costa Rica: Gaetano Andreoni, Amirah Gazel, Miguel Lohlé, Denis Magarman, Alfonso Peña

Surrealists in Buenos Aires: Silvia Guiard, Luís Conde, Alejandro Michel

Surrealists in Australia: Anthony Redmond, Michael Vandelaar, Tim White

Surrealists in Portugal: Miguel de Carvalho, Luiz Morgadinho

Surrealists in Bucharest (Dan Stanciu), Mexico (Susana Wald), and the Canary Islands (Jose Miguel Perez Corales)

 Postscript: During the process of gathering signatures for the above declaration, we were inspired to see its uncompromising stance against white supremacy and police repression reflected in the brightly sparkling flames of the Minneapolis uprising that lit a powder keg of pent-up rage and incited an earth-shaking eruption of spontaneous rebellion in the streets of America. It was only fitting that in solidarity with the uprising about police brutality kicked off by George Floyd’s execution/lynching at the hands of the police, anti-racism protestors in the United States would take direct action by beheading or bringing down statues of Christopher Columbus, genocidal symbol of the colonial expropriation of Native American lands. (Guy Girard, Michael Löwy, Penelope Rosemont, and Ron Sakolsky, June 18, 2020).

Reconciliation is Dead: A Strategic Proposal

Zig Zag | Warrior Publications | February 18th 2020 by tawinikay (aka Southern Wind Woman) Reconciliation is dead. It’s been dead for some time. If only one thing has brought me joy in the last few weeks, it began when the matriarchs at Unist’ot’en burned the Canadian flag and declared reconciliation dead. Like wildfire, it swept through the hearts of youth across the territories. […]

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RECONCILIATION IS DEAD: A STRATEGIC RESPONSE

BY: TAWINIKAY (SOUTHERN WIND WOMAN)

“If only one thing has brought me joy in the last few weeks, it began when the matriarchs at Unist’ot’en burned the Canadian flag and declared reconciliation dead. Like wildfire, it swept through the hearts of youth across the territories. Out of their mouths, with teeth bared, they echoed back: reconciliation is dead! reconciliation is dead! Their eyes are more keen to the truth so many of our older generation have been too timid to name. The Trudeau era of reconciliation has been a farce from the beginning. It has been more for settler Canadians than natives all along.”

(link below for full pdf zine)

(Esta declaración, promovida por surrealistas de América del Norte y de Paris, y firmada por la mayoría de miembros del movimiento surrealista internacional, trata de ser un llamado surrealista internacional en apoyo a la lucha de los indígenas de Canada. Su difusión ha coincidido (bello azar objetivo) con las maravillosas revueltas que se han ido propagando por todos los EUA contra la violencia policial.) La rebelión lleva su justificación en sí misma, independientemente de las posibilidades que tenga de modificar o no el estado de cosas que la determina. Es la chispa en el viento, pero la chispa que busca el polvorín.                                               André Breton Si hay algo que me ha alegrado en las últimas semanas ha sido cuando las matriarcas de Unist’ot’en quemaron la bandera canadiense y declararon muerta la reconciliación. Como un fuego abrasador, esto ha ganado los corazones de los jóvenes de todos los territorios (…). La reconciliación era una farsa, una forma de agitar una zanahoria delante de nosotros y engañarnos. ¿No tenemos derecho a la tierra robada a nuestros antepasados? ¡Es hora de echar todo por tierra, de cerrar todo!                                   Tawinikay (o Mujer del Viento del Sur) El contenido tóxico transportado por los oleoductos canadienses, ya sea el petróleo de las arenas petrolíferas o el gas natural producido por fragmentación, es, en opinión de todos los climatólogos serios, una causa principal, tal vez decisiva, del calentamiento de la Tierra, es decir, de la catástrofe ecológica. Destinados a ser un combustible para la expansión industrial, los oleoductos se han convertido en un combustible de la revuelta. Concebidos para transportar esas energías fósiles de un lugar a otro, son un aspecto crucial de la normalización del dudoso paraíso de crecimiento ilimitado, ante el que se supone que todos los ciudadanos-consumidores obedientes deben arrodillarse devotamente. En esta región que los cartógrafos coloniales han llamado Columbia Británica, la extracción de recursos siempre ha sido el nombre de su juego, pero el surgimiento en febrero de 2020 de una amplia red de oposición ha sido alentadora, desde los guerreros indígenas que luchan por reclamar sus tierras hasta los veteranos, guardianes de las tradiciones, desde los activistas de Extinction-Rebellion hasta los anarquistas partidarios de la insurgencia. Se han bloqueado ferrocarriles, autopistas y barcos; se han ocupado las autoridades provinciales, las oficinas administrativas del gobierno federal, los bancos y las sedes de las empresas industriales. Lo que catalizó esta revuelta fue el amplio levantamiento indígena nacido del rechazo de las promesas ilusorias de conciliación. Juntas, estas fuerzas rebeldes desbarataron el mundo de los negocios tal como era, en solidaridad con el clan Unist’ot’en de la Gran Rana y la casa tribal de los Wet’suwet’en. Como por efecto de un azar objetivo, el primer campo de defensa indígena se encuentra en Hazelton, BC, no lejos del enclave donde el surrealista Kurt Seligmann y su esposa se alojaron en 1938. En esa época, visitaron Gitxan y las aldeas Wet’suwet’en, maravillados por los tótems y objetos rituales, tomando notas sobre el terreno, filmando en 16mm, recogiendo historias y grabando cuentos míticos. Hoy en día, en 2020, un número cada vez mayor de estos mismos pueblos indígenas amenazan con detener la economía canadiense hasta el punto de reducirla a migajas. Negándose a ser comprados por los petrodólares de las compañías petroleras o neutralizados por un sistema jurídico que sólo los ha “pacificado”, brutalizado o traicionado, mientras les roba sus tierras, los pueblos indígenas han respondido luchando ferozmente contra las fuerzas de la ley y el orden colonial en una tormenta radical de desobediencia civil y perturbación social. Una acción siguió a otra, creando un movimiento que parecía imparable. Cuando un bloqueo de autopista era derrotado por la Real Policía Montada de Canadá, otro surgía en otro lugar, en un lugar tal que la primera línea de esta batalla se extendía por todo el continente. Luego vino el destructivo virus Covid 19 que se sumó a los daños ya causados por la economía capitalista por el virus incendiario de la revuelta. La resistencia de estas comunidades indígenas contra las tuberías nos concierne a todos internacionalmente: porque está en la primera línea de la lucha contra el calentamiento climático. En el futuro, la cuestión clave será si las autoridades canadienses podrán volver a encerrar al genio de la rebelión indígena en la botella de la “reconciliación”. Los surrealistas esperamos que no, y aquí declaramos una vez más nuestra admiración y solidaridad con el intratable espíritu insurgente de la resistencia india. Hay que inventar y vivir otra realidad que hoy, como ayer, se impone con su miserabilismo ambientalista y sus jerarquías colonialistas y racistas. La mirada sigue deslumbrada por el peinado ritual de la Danza de la Paz Kwakwaka’wakw que estuvo durante mucho tiempo en el estudio de André Breton, antes de volver según sus deseos cumplidos en 2003 por su hija Aube Ellouët, a Alert Bay, en Cormorant Island. Los surrealistas hoy en día afirman que su lucha, en su propio campo de intervención, por la emancipación de la comunidad humana está en perfecta consonancia con la lucha de los pueblos amerindios contra la civilización globalizada de Occidente y su locura ecocida. Firmantes:    Surrealists in the United States...    Surrealists in the UK...    Surrealists in Paris...    Surrealists in Canada...    The Surrealist Group of Madrid...    Surrealists in Sweden...    Surrealists in Holland...    Surrealists in Holland...    Surrealists in Chile...    The Middle East and North Africa Surrealist Group...    The Athens Surrealist Group...    Surrealists in Prague...    Surrealists in Costa Rica...    Surrealists in Australia...    Surrealists in Buenos Aires...    Surrealists in Portugal...    Surrealists in Bucharest...