Nicole's Adventures in Resisting Mining Plunder and State Terrorism

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Cordillera Day is typically held in a large outdoor venue. It is necessary, since the annual 2 day political event is usually held in a remote, indigenous, mountain community that would never accommodate the average 3000 participants. Rice terraces, inactive for the dry season, are cleared, a douzen CRs are dug and a stadium is erected out of bamboo and blue tarps. This year was no exception, and the participants hide from the blistering Abra heat inside a shelter that had been constructed in the days prior by young Filipino men walking delicately across the bamboo beams. Sitting in the shade on the bumpy ground I was surprised to see rows of tiny ants everywhere, working away around our mats and under our discarded flip flops.

In complete unison the ants marched with purpose. Noticing them in spaces where seconds before I had only seen old dry palay I felt like I was watching a national geographic special. A gentle British accent told me that "... even as this drama plays out on the surface of the tundra, out of view of the creatures stalking their next meal a much quieter march for survival is going on..." I wondered how ants, creatures whose perspective is so small, where dealing with the dozens of bamboo poles now anchored in the ground, the terrain flattened by days of human presence and the thousands of people now sitting on their habitat. I realized that these ants where probably dealing with our presence just like the community of Licuan-Baay will deal if Olympus is able to set up an operation in their valley. Like that of the ants the life cycle in Licuan-Baay is dedicated to survival: plant the rice, catch fish in the river, tend to the rice, celebrate a wedding, eat the rice, kill a cow, plant the rice,dance to the gongs, tend to the rice, feed the pigs, eat the rice, send the kids to school, plant the rice, teach the kids the gongs, tend to the rice, gather jack fruit, eat the rice... Just like all farmers all over the world, they are salt of the earth men and women who work hard tilling soil, counting seedlings and watching the rain, and they celebrate their continued ability to life from the land by eating and drinking heartily, celebrating their families and playing the gongs so their women can dance. If Olympus sets up its mining operation then the small paths these people follow along their valley's floor will become insignificant compared to the new monolithic activities going on around them. Like the ants the people of Licaun-Baay will have to try to make sense of changes an alien creature has brought to their habitat, and will have to figure out how to continue their march of survival in a terrain they no longer recognize. Olympus will ruin their habitat with drilling noise, land slides, water diversion and cyanide, a change even more dangerous and destructive then bamboo and footprints.

The difference between the ants I watched working under the palay and the residents of Licuan-Baay is their ability to organize a resistance. Ants are known for their ability to organize, but I would venture that the organizing activities that have been going on in the communities of Licuan-Baay is something even more worth celebrating. In February a group of volunteers from the activists circles in Manila and Baguio set aside their own lives to move into Licuan-Baay. The purpose of this volunteer team, setup by the CPA, was to help the community leaders educate and organize the people to prepare for Cordillera Day, and more importantly to prepare for a unified resistance to Olympus. And in the last 3 months this group has grown as youth from all over the municipality hear about what they are doing and join them in their work. The fight against Olympus now involves the entire spectrum of community members, and since Cordillera Day, also all of the activists in the Cordillera.

The theme of this years Cordillera Day was "Resist Mining Plunder and State Terrorism." The theme was directly linked to the situation in Licuan-Baay and so where the speeches and presentations. Though the volunteers had been front and center leading up to Cordillera Day, once the approximately 3000 delegates arrived the communities elders and leaders stepped up to the mike and articulated their concerns and their dedication to the fight. The audience included the activists from the CPA network, people from other provinces and from the National Capital Region (most of whom who had traveled for hours to arrive in this remote community) and concerned international delegates.The two day event rang with rally calls and solidarity cheers. "Long live International Solidarity." "Lumaban Cordillera, Lumaban." Sitting with some of the Taiwanese delegates, we got our translator to explain the calls and then joined in with the people speaking a language we don't speak but crying for a justice and respect we all understand.

I arrived in the community 4 days early for Cordillera Day with the same Taiwanese delegates, to act as one of their facilitators. We took the same bumpy jeep ride in this time that I did a month ago, although this time I was greeted by excited shouts from the friends I made last time I was in the community. I have never been in any community twice, but after making such a wonderful connection with the people of Baay-Licuan (or Licuan-Baay, depending on what side of the river you are standing on and which community you are speaking to) last time I was excited myself to be back amongst friends. The bonds I made last time where only strengthened this visit. Because we went in early I was in the area for 7 days in total. We threw ourselves immediately into trying to help.

As foreigners, as is always the case, getting the Filipinos to let us help was not easy. The community members are always so worried about offending you, about making you do work you don't do at home, and about giving orders to someone colonialism has told them is better then them. Being my fathers daughter though I could not just sit back and not work while fevered last minute preparations for Cordillera Day where going on. I also wanted to help these women and men who for a second time where taking me in and making me feel at home. Through a lot of insisting that my arms where not tired of cleaning rice and the skin on my hands was not to sensitive to do dishes I succeeded in helping. Coincidently I also succeeded in making myself one of the community in a way I have never been before. More then ever before I was treated like a normal girl as we all worked together to prepare for Cordillera Day. And it was amazing to really see these people at their honest best. The women made sure I tried all of the new fruits they had brought as snacks, told me their feelings about the mine and teased me that I was less fat then last time I visited them. The old men asked for assurance that I was going to sing at the solidarity night, whistled teasingly when they saw me shoveling and explained to me how they would make the various structures of the venue out of only bamboo and know-how. The kids my own age laughed at my attempts to speak in Illocano, worked hard to find translators or pull together some English in order to speak with me, and once they realized that I had rhythm, insisted that I dance to the gongs with them. All of this meant that when the rain poured down and tore the tarps sheltering the kitchen for the second time in a three days I was able to swear along with the other volunteers and was allowed to hold the extra tarps over the cooking rice because I was taller then the boys. It also meant that when it came time for me to write the United Church solidarity message I was no longer speaking about one in a hundred human rights abuses in the Philippines, but was speaking to my friends and my community members about an imminent danger in their lives.

Though glanced over the suggestions I was sent by the UCC for the solidarity message, and incorporated a few of them, I decided to speak almost entirely from the heart. I wanted to assure that the community members would understand me in their second, and for some third or fourth language. It also felt right to speak from my heart now that these people where so firmly settled into it. I figured that they didn't need me to detail their problems, but instead to show that I felt the fear and the pain with them struggle and to promise that I would stand with them throughout their struggle. I was rewarded by loud applause, a round of hugs and the dropping of the last color and language barriers between me and the people of Licuan-Baay. The last night of Cordillera Day I stayed up all night with my friends, and many of the other delegates, talking, laughing, singing and dancing to the gongs. It was fun in a way I normally miss here. On the bus ride home from Licuan-Baay I cried a little bit, with the realization that with an intern's schedule I might never go back to the community where I have felt the most at home. It is hard to think about my friends facing a Golith from my own country.

When did the strong human rights culture in Canada get so diluted that it doesn't cross borders? One of the lead volunteers in the community from CPA told me that it has been hardest to convince the community that people would come to Cordillera Day, and that other people will want to help them in their fight. The people of Licuan-Baay, like all people in small towns around the world, have a hard time seeing out of their small surroundings and so can't imagine that anyone would want to look in. I laughed when I heard this; I laughed because I am from a small town and so understand this attitude, but I also laughed because I am a girl from far far away and I want to help them. We are all human beings after all, aren't we? Regardless of skin color and language and traditional food staple we all have the same heart and the same ability to feel for each other.

The final resolution produced at Cordillera Day declared that the people of the Cordillera would stand behind the people of Licuan-Baay. The struggle to stop development aggression is one that needs to be fought by many peoples and a global scale, because it is negatively effecting the so many of the worlds people and because it is caused by companies whose flow as easily through borders and laws as the Abra river does through the boulders thrown down by the mountains. But at the same time, like many things in the Philippines, the larger struggle needs to connect with the ground level, where real danger and real violence is happening. Large scale destructive mining is an environmental and a social problem all around the globe, but it is also a problem that keeps the residents of Licua-Baay awake at night. They need to think about their rice terraces, and their drinking water and their children, for them this is not a global issue, but a dire issue of survival. And so the rest of the people who attended Cordillera Day have promised to think about it that way with them. I will fight large scale mining in Canada and online and within the international sphere for the rest of my life. But today and tomorrow and until I leave the country I will fight Olympus as if the dried palay and muddy river banks of Licuan-Baay are still beneath my feet, because that is how my friends in the community have to fight.

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Photos

Cows hiding from the rain
When the rain started to pour the cows grazing around the venue even came running for cover.