Earth’s climate depends on the whales’ dance. The blue whales are not singing as much as they used to. The songs they sing — the vibrations — travel a thousand miles, and now they are not singing. This is devastating, and no one seems to care. Scientists say, “Oh, we just have to study that for 20 years.” It’s a hard thing — the scientists who study them are so remote from what they are studying and what it means.
When devastation like this happens, it needs to be treated like a wildlife emergency, not something to study for 10 years. They should already have the information — especially from Indigenous people — because Indigenous Peoples already know. We need to figure out how to deliver the message to scientists. Scientists need to listen and understand what they recommend, instead of following what white supremacists dictate.
This study is just a slice of life. The whale song is not the whole year of the whale. Whales sing only during certain times of the year. Scientists can’t just go into the ocean to hear them all the time and think they are monitoring everything.
There is also a connection between the scientists, the river rocks, and the salmon. There is a relationship between rocks and salmon — that is the reason salmon come back to certain rocks. Scientists study that, but it’s not part of their main questions. They use plastic trays and ignore the real relationships. They think the rocks shouldn’t matter. Yet for the longest time, salmon did come back despite everything that happened to them — just like Native people, who are still here despite what happened to them.
The cities are bigger, the needs are higher, but nothing points to how Mother Nature is being affected. You dig up all the uranium, the oil — and then what? They are not building a self-sufficient society; they are building capitalist wealth.
They are the keepers of the knowledge of keystone species. If this one doesn’t make it, all the other species will fall. If the salmon doesn’t make it, the whales will have less chance; if whales don’t make it, the whole ocean won’t make it. These are the pillars that hold nature. If the bees don’t make it, how are we going to have food? All these things will collapse.
Scientists will say, “We’ll make a robot bee.” But that won’t have the root knowledge from the Creator — the sacred knowledge of how to care for these beings. It’s not a matter of picking up these rocks and putting them somewhere else. Scientists cannot be the Creator; they can’t do it the exact same way. They can make something that looks like an animal — just like a president who only looks the part but isn’t a good president. These artificial bees won’t have the full knowledge of real bees. They also won’t travel the distances bees do — just like salmon. They tried to reinvent salmon, but it won’t survive the way the real one will.
They’re already going extinct. The white rhino is gone. Scientists don’t know — they can’t connect the dots. They have no idea how salmon are essential to whales. If there aren’t enough salmon, the whole ecosystem collapses. Those that are like snow leopards — they are in the water systems of the world. What happens to our water keepers in the mountains — something will happen to all our mountains.
People think mountains are for climbing. When we complain to the Forest Service, we say, “Let the mountains rest.” I haven’t seen a deer in a meadow in 30 years. I haven’t seen rabbits. Hummingbirds — very few. Bats — almost gone. Too many people are in the mountains, in the meadows — animals can’t span there anymore. Thirty million people go there, but they don’t have history with that land. Even with projections showing how these things keep balance, no one listens. Dams are their expression of water.
Just like wolves — they are water keepers. But no one wants to express that. All the mountains need to have the wolves back, but ranchers have all the rights. If one wolf kills a cow, they kill the entire pack. It is to be expected that wolves will kill cattle — that’s part of the balance. Cattle eat deer. The government subsidizes farmers, so why do they keep doing this? They always get compensated if a cow is hit by a car.
Maybe they aren’t doing proper studies because it interferes with their profits.
The hope is that people will continue what was started a long time ago — what people were brought to this planet to do: to communicate. There are overlapping belief systems about mountains, water, stars, and air that are now disconnected. But when we — Chagat and Umat — came together, it was easy to communicate even without speaking the same language. Once they saw our prayer house and ceremonies, communication was open.
Now it’s getting harder and harder to find pockets of people who have that knowledge and protect it. These casinos have lost touch with what matters most. “They drank the Kool-Aid, and now it’s all about profits.” These casinos don’t bring money back to the community — no schools, no culture. It’s more convenient to send their kids to public schools.
So how will these children learn in the next generation? How will they learn to think the way Elders know? That is the biggest challenge.
There are many treaties about education — but I don’t think they were really about education.
The fish are coming back — they are coming back earlier now, possibly in September.