Do you see?

Kabisha Velauthapillai, 2T4 Fitz

Artist’s Statement: A piece moving us to reflect on the dissonance between the beauty of trees and the cataclysm of oppressive structures that shape our (lack of) relationships with each other and with the more-than-human. I dream of practicing medicine and more broadly, living life in ways that cultivate strong relationships with oceans, forests, and the occasional lichen on the side of a rock on a Toronto sidewalk. Intrinsic to this dream is the recognition that there is no proper environmentalism without strong anti-oppressive practice, including a commitment to decolonization of all types of relationships. There is also no proper medicine if we do not understand how fundamentally tied we are to our wider ecological communities. Our concrete jungles are an illusion that allows us to sit comfortably until we, or the generations after us, come to a reckoning that there is no human health without the health of our air, our waters, and our lands.

Have you ever stopped to observe a tree? No, I mean, really observe.
Take a look at the texture of the bark. 
Are there lines? 
Do they travel straight?
Do they twist? Do they turn? 
How does it feel? 
Is it smooth? Is it rugged?
And what about the colour? 
Does it emanate a rich, dark brown? A brilliant red-brown?
Have you stopped to see its lichen? 
What does the lichen look like?
Is it bright green? Grey? Black? Is the lichen string-like? Or plastered?

Does the tree have pine cones? What do they look like, and how are they shaped?
Are they stubby or lengthy? What shape do the scales take?
And are they closely bunched, toward the center of the cone, 
or
are they flaring out, distinguished from one another?
Do the cones share a smell? Or is the smell silent to our crinkling noses,
seemingly odourless to our receptors that search for a smell to settle upon?
Have you thought about the pine cone you once held in your hand,
and how much potential it had for life?
Not just for tree life, but for life in the form of communities, ecological communities.
Each tree has, within it, many communities, 
has beside it, many communities,
has under it, many communities.
And the collective of trees bear many more communities, 
Different beings. From insects to microbes, from birds to deer. 
And each being lives, survives, and sometimes thrives. 
Don't these beings merit our respect? Our appreciation?
A designation
within our headspace and our commitments 
to do better for the world around us?

But here we are,
building pipelines, logging, clearing, 
expanding, consuming, privatizing, 
Oppressing.

We are content with remaining in economic and political systems
that deny Indigenous peoples their rights, their lands, their sovereignties,
that deny the very laws, the very worldviews that can bring us out of this impending reality
of a climate and a planet that can no longer sustain us or itself. 
We are content with maintaining domination over oppressed peoples.
We are content with polluting the lands on which Indigenous, Black, and other racialized communities
live, work, and play on.
We are content with the reality that these very communities will bear the brunt of a climate
that is experiencing sheer turmoil. 
We are content with our abuse of power,
of each other,
of the more-than-human.
We are content with maintaining these systems
of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. 
But we do have choices. We do have the capacity to collectively refuse
these structures. 
We do have the responsibility to learn from and work with 
Indigenous communities who have been the rightful stewards of these lands and waters,
to reconfigure our relationships with marginalized communities,
to reconfigure our relationships with the more-than-human.