KOSSICK: Once upon a time there was a beautiful land calle

[Oscar]

Once upon a time there was a beautiful land called Saskatchewan

Our letter of the Week - Yorkton Enterprise Newspaper - April 9th, 2009

To the Editor:

Once upon a time there was a beautiful land called Saskatchewan.

It was a land of green forests, flowing rivers, pristine lakes, wild grasslands, many buffalo, beaver, moose, deer, bear, caribou and great flocks of birds big and small.

The land was lived on lightly by the people who lived there – the Dene, the Cree, the Assiniboine, the Sioux.

But from afar there came ships with white sails carrying people who coveted the furs of animals in Saskatchewan to make hats and coats for people in lands and cities far away.

For centuries animals were hunted and killed for their furs and the buffalo almost disappeared.

The first people who hunted to feed and clothe one another lost the land that they had shared so many years with all beings.

The wild grasslands became vast areas of golden fields serving as the granary for the world.

Although production was done by people and communities, the control of the market rested outside of many farms that dotted the land.

People formed cooperative ways to divide and share the great wealth, but the wealth was wrestled away by those who saw food as a commodity, not a form of sustenance for all.

The drive to change food into something that it was not, came as genetically modified organisms entered the food chain.

This was happening above the land.

Below the land there was something lurking that should never be disturbed.

It had come to the land in a comet trail and had been buried so that it would never be awakened.

It was called Uranium and had the power to destroy everything. The first people’s legends said to not disturb – leave it in the ground.

But is came to pass that the same greed that motivated the taking of the animals, the taking of the food source, the taking of land and other precious natural things wanted the uranium.

Saskatchewan became the great provider of uranium in the world.

Saskatchewan uranium powered nuclear reactors worldwide, built atomic bombs and the depleted uranium became the source of weaponry used in battlegrounds in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Those who took the uranium say the waste should be buried back in Saskatchewan - this when the half life of the destructive power of uranium products are measured in thousands of years, and there is no way to stop the radioactive leaking of nuclear waste.

And the people are told by the agents of this destructive power that that uranium is clean, that you can live side by side with it.

These salesmen of death prey on vulnerable communities who see no other future.

What has not come to pass yet is that the natural renewable resources that Saskatchewan has in abundance – the water, the sun, the wind, the fertile soil, the wild life, and the forests holds the answer to all beings surviving in harmony.

And that communities – if they exert their own leadership and sense of well being for all can make the change that will allow future generations and all beings to survive and sustain themselves.

This we would hope for.

Don Kossick,
Massinga, Mozambique.