La goutte d’eau qui fait déborder le vase

Dan Ennis se souvient des dimanches après-midi passés en famille le long de la rivière Tobique.  Il n’avait pas plus de 5 ou 6 ans à l’époque. C’était une belle époque. On ne craignait pas que l’eau contienne des polluants dangereux. Depuis, le scénario a radicalement changé.

La véritable cause de la dégradation de l’environnement se trouve au cœur de l’économie. Dan Ennis incrimine avant tout les règles du jeu économique. Ces règles qui ne tiennent compte que du profit sont à l’origine de la contamination du sol, des eaux et des nappes d’eau souterraine. Il rappelle de même que les propriétaires ont recours à des produits qui polluent et contaminent à seule fin esthétique (par exemple, l’entretien chimique des gazons).

Death of our
Marine Environment
One Drop at a time

Dan Ennis,
Tobique First Nation
November 1998

remember, as a boy of five or six years of age, going with my family to the Tobique River to spend Sunday afternoons swimming and picnicking. Our whole family; my mom, my dad, my brothers and sisters, and me. It was a happy time.

At that time, we could pick any body of water - brook, river, lake or ocean - to swim in without fear of contracting some bacteria, toxin, chemical or pollutant. We didn’t worry about waste by-products, carcinogenic materials or herbicides. These things were furthest from our minds as we enjoyed the beautiful things the Creator provided for us.

(photo: Mary Majka)

========== Reflections Shepody River above the dam at Harvey N.B. ==========

This is no longer true. Today, even the water we drink can kill us. Farmers pour millions and millions of gallons of pesticides, herbicides and insecticides into our Earth Mother. These toxins then make their way to our rivers, lakes, oceans and into our ground water. Chemical annihilation. And all of this takes place for the "bottom line" profit. It is not as it was in the days of our grandparents when crops were grown naturally, organically. Then, it was a process aimed at feeding people good, healthy, nutritious food. It was much less about "bottom line profit", shelf life, looks or supporting big business.

Homeowners contribute to the death of our marine environment too, and their reasons are so much more insidious. While farmers often use chemicals on crops just to compete in the market place and make a meager living, homeowners do it for ego. They pour millions of gallons of pesticides and other harmful chemicals on their lawns every year so they can create some kind of personal artificial kingdom that reflects their status. All of these chemicals seep into the Earth Mother and find their way to our water systems.

The biggest culprits are the big businesses and big corporations. These "fat cats" have no more regard for the safety of our Earth Mother and the water supply than did their ancestors in 1492 Europe. It is their arrogant, uncaring attitude that has brought our Earth Mother to the point where she can hardly sustain us, to the point where our marine environment is dying, systematically and painfully. Human beings are killing our Earth Mother off one drop, one tree, one blade of grass, one animal species at a time - in the name of big business, in the name of improvement, and in the name of fixing things.

Scientists and big business rush headlong toward the destruction of our Earth Mother. It will mean suicide, self-destruction, if things do not change. The pumping of pollutants and chemicals into our Earth Mother and into our air will eventually poison the cradle of all life: our waters.

This arrogant attitude presumes to dominate and conquer our Earth Mother. It presumes that we, as small, fear-filled human beings, are to control this world and everything in it with the most-powerful (richest) ones making the decisions.

That is not what the Creator put human beings here to do. He made our Earth Mother perfect and asked us to care for her and nurture her so, in turn, she would always be able to sustain and nurture us. It was a reciprocal relationship. How do human beings improve perfection? The improvements are destroying our Earth Mother and will eventually destroy us.

We look at the ocean. It is so large we fail to notice how it is being killed off. We have been fooled into thinking scientists will discover some way to revise the oceans and all marine life, so we close our eyes to the poison that still comes from big business, the farmers, and thoughtless homeowners. There is no magic cure to nullify the effects of this kind of genocide. The polluting has to stop.

We have to begin by recognizing the facts and acknowledging what has been, and what still is, taking place to destroy our marine life and our water supplies. Once we accept this and reconcile it on a personal level, we must take positive steps to stop this systematic genocide. But, it begins with us individually, with the recognition that our marine environment is being poisoned one drop at a time, and if we do not act soon, those drops will add up to suicide for our Earth Mother and all of us.