Black Snake and Heron
For every sale of this print, $5 goes to the Water Protector Legal Collective. WPLC a legal support group that provides legal support and advocacy for Indigenous peoples, the Earth, and climate justice movements.
2020 was a rough year for a variety of reasons, though one good thing did come of it. I began to really, truly believe in the phrase: “Sometimes, you plant a tree that you will never sit in the shade of.”
There are times we, as humans, take action because we realize our actions play into something bigger than ourselves. It’s sometimes hard to quantify, especially when the world has been shrunk down to fit in your back pocket, though it’s true.
I like to think Indigenous people are really good at this thought process. Our ancestors knew you couldn’t over-hunt an area because the next year you might find nothing living there at all.
If you haven’t seen the show Rutherford Falls yet, I cannot recommend it enough. Terry Thomas (Michael Greyeyes) does a great job of summarizing this concept.
So let’s say climate change is a hoax. We can still definitively point to the destruction these oil fields cause–for the land its located on, to the people’s whose homes the pipes run through, to the wild and plant life it destroys. Yes, it creates jobs in the short term, powers cars and other infrastructure–but what do we and our future children lose to the destructive process?
I chose a heron for its home many of these oilfields are found at and to symbolize the protectors of the land (animals, flora, the climate justice movement). It drips liquid gold that companies covet. The hands are how we, the consumers, support the industries that strangle the life from these beings, which can be found in the backdrop of the art.