This land
The late, great Woody Guthrie wrote his most famous song 85 years ago today: This Land Was Made For You and Me. At the bottom of the lyric, Guthrie’s FB page tells, he noted:
“All you can write is what you see.”
Guthrie, an American who lived through the Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War, and the rise of the KKK, saw the beauty and the promise of his homeland. He also saw—and wrote songs about—racism, fascism, poverty and social inequality. His songs endure because he wrote universal truths about conditions that not only persisted but have now reached a crisis point.
I’m Canadian, and I learned a different version of “This Land” when I was a kid. Someone—most likely Jerry or Helen Gray of The Travellers—substituted Bonavista and Vancouver Island for Guthrie’s U.S. place names. Living as I did on Vancouver Island, my little heart swelled with pride when we sang the song in music class or the weekly assembly in the gym.
An adult now, I recognize that being an interloper on stolen land and singing “this land is my land” is problematic to say the least. Still, I love the song. I love Canada in all its imperfection. I’ll stand up to protect it in whatever ways are necessary.
But I recognize who the enemy is, and who the enemy is not.
It is not my American friends and neighbours.
In 2003 I was part of an online community, now defunct, called Two Peas in a Bucket—a scrapbooking website with discussion boards for various topics related to the intricacies of cutting, gluing and designing scrapbook pages.
By far the most interesting board was NSBR—not scrap booking related. On NSBR, several hundreds of us, mostly American, almost exclusively women, talked about our lives: raising our kids, finding the elusive work/life balance, what was for dinner, how to handle conflicts with partners and coworkers. We argued about same-sex marriage and other controversies of the day. NSBR was dramatic, hilarious, enlightening, entertaining, addictive, fun.
Scrapbookers, I learned, tended to be conservative. The Peas (as we called ourselves) were dominated by Republicans, church-goers, and adherents to the gospel of Fox News. Those of us who were more left leaning than the majority couldn’t help but notice each other in the sea of right-wing voices. Alliances were formed, battles fought. Yet for the most part, everyone respected each other despite our different opinions. We remained civil.
Until the United States invaded Iraq. Then, all hell broke lose on NSBR.
Things got ugly quickly. Heavily outnumbered, we left-leaning Peas took a beating any time we spoke up against the war. After some weeks, a group of us gathered on an off-site discussion board where we could debrief and vent. Things got ugly again on NSBR when word of our “secret” board got out. Accusations were hurled; feelings got bruised; friendships ended; time marched on. Two Peas in a Bucket folded. Scrapbooking went digital. Online discussion groups were replaced by Facebook and other social media platforms. Eventually the Left Leaning Peas abandoned our forum.
But we never abandoned each other.
We are friends—a dozen no-longer middle-aged women who live in different areas of the continent, from Florida to BC and in between. We stay in touch. We treasure each other. We’ve gathered in person a few times and visited each other individually. We send each other handmade cards, because hey, we’re scrapbookers. We’re Peas.
I like to joke I’m the token Canadian and the token lesbian: I’m the only one of each in the group. I see differences between myself and my American friends, absolutely, but we’re far more alike than different. And for 25+ years we have been there for each other through heartbreaks and joys.
And atrocities.
Today we got together for a video chat. I instigated it. I’ve been worried about them. I needed to see my friends, to know if they’re okay.
They’re not. Of course. How could they be?
Each of them talked about the ways the coup is affecting them and the people in their lives. They’re afraid this damage is irreparable. None of us knows what’s coming next.
I described how angry Canadians are at the U.S. felon-in-chief. Canadians have been quiet until now about what our country means to us. Maybe we’ve been asleep. But we’re waking up.
My friends and I talked about getting together in person, here on the farm. I said they’d better come soon, before we close our border to Americans. I was only half joking.
This land—Turtle Island—it’s not ours and it’s not the Americans’. It has never belonged to either country. The Cowichan people explain it this way:
The land does not belong to people. People belong to the land.
And we, the people, belong to each other.
May we always respect and care for each other, as my friends and I do.
2 Responses to “This land”
This is a stirring psychological call to arms.
May We Stand on Guard together—not from fear but from love.
Yes, there is much we must guard and protect: our decency, our humanity, our empathy. Like Jane Fonda said in her speech to the Screen Actors’ Guild, we’re going to need a big tent.