Yes, the comforting images of pop culture nostalgia and the cool arm’s-length remove of abstract pieces can appeal, but there are real and important struggles going on in the world today, perhaps none of them more important than climate change. Here in Canada, the main narrative is Alberta trying to kibosh our responsibilities under the Paris Agreement and get its oil and tar sands bitumen to emerging markets before they complete the switch to a post-petroleum economy – as we all will need to do in order to slow down the pace at which the ecosystem is flying apart.
Today’s Mistigram image is a painting from the MIST1116 artpack released last week, “Scorched sign, Unist'ot'en pipeline blockade” by Nick Lakowski (who, despite fond memories of BBSes, has had no involvement with the computer art scene up to this point.) Unist'ot'en is a settlement on unceded First Nations territory in the wilds of northern British Columbia, strategically situated where Enbridge has been hoping to run the Northern Gateway pipeline through to Kitimat. Time and again, Enbridge surveyors have attempted, sometimes backed up by the RCMP, to obtain access to the area, and the denizens of the settlement have thwarted them every time: we do not consent to this action, and you have no jurisdiction here – a position backed up by the Supreme Court of Canada, resulting from the hasty, treaty-less colonization of British Columbia.
Yesterday Canada’s Prime Minister put the nail in the coffin of Northern Gateway – but he gave government approval to two further pipeline projects, Line 3 and Kinder Morgan’s twinned Trans Mountain, the latter of which will be running quite a bit closer to Mistigris HQ. This is not what we voted for, and we, also, do not consent to this action.
Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 30, 2016 at 4:23pm UTC
