Cali-fornication of Coyote Piss

Zij zullen voor altijd worden herinnerd

Zij zullen voor altijd in leven

Zij zullen voor altijd spreken

Het volk zal hen voor altijd te horen

WB Yeats

De diepe duisternis en altijd aanwezige horror van de Amerikaanse genocide van de First Nations van Californië tijdens de goudkoorts van de 19 century colours everything. De volgende reflecties op de Sierra Fondsen ‘Reclaiming the Sierras’ conferentie in april 2015 zal geen poging om te informeren over de duistere geschiedenis van Californië zijn. Ik ben niet gekwalificeerd om dit te doen. The original people of California where not the only First Nations people to suffer in the name of ‘Coyote Piss’, de descriptor als het over goud. Maar in het belang van dit artikel zal ik mijn focus naar Californië te houden. As an outsider observing the historical trauma that was carried out against the First Nations I simply cannot rehearse it here. What it does re-enforce for me as a jeweller, an activist and anti-poverty campaigner, is the simple fact that gold is not a neutral product and the way it is removed from the ground is never benign.

 

The Yuba gold fields remain an emasculated tundra of toxicity and mine waste. Zelfs nu, 150 years after the gold rush, life is struggling to return. The scale of the devastation cannot be put into words – only breathed in like a noxious fume, to be cleansed in the crucible of The Sierra Fund’s good intentions and exhaled as hope for a cleaner future. The Sierra Fund educated guess is that there is 19 aan 21 miljoen pond kwik ingehaald achter de dammen hele stroomgebieden van de Sierra's. Naturally the consequences of this are considerable, especially on fish stocks and the subsequent health of local populations who eat fish. Standing in the Yuba fields is not however, some form of existential historical identification with a less enlightened history.

 

It is the awakening of the very real present day toxic legacy being delivered in the name of gold. Generations to come in the Amazon, the Congo, Mongolië, Uganda, where grinding poverty and the politics of daily bread drive small-scale miners to work marginal gold deposits using mercury to amalgam their small amounts of gold with their bare hands, will reap the toxic whirlwind being sown in to our world’s eco-systems. Mercury usage in gold mining continues to be the most disturbing practice I witness in my work with impoverished gold mining communities. It was poignant as I gazed out over the sparse grass lands of Yuba, that the Californian Poppy danced in the light breeze. A reminder that on American fields, like their European counterparts from World War 1’s Somme and Flanders fields, the poppy remains a sign of pathos and hope in the midst of such great tragedy.

 

The challenge the Sierra Fund has set itself is not easy, in fact it is deeply complex, a truly unprecedented challenge in my experience. What started as an idea to restore the ancient salmon runs of the Sierra’s that had been blocked off by the building of dams across the rivers. Why build dams? To hold back the vast amounts of mining waste that was being dumped into the rivers and polluting and flooding pasture and agricultural lands further downstream.

 

This restoration of salmon runs led to the environmental remediation of the mercury from the watersheds given the high quantities of mercury that had built up behind the dams. I am no scientist, hydrologist or dam engineer, but I hazard a guess that removing the mercury from the silted dams will prove an impressive and complex process in and of itself. An environmental challenge that the Californian authorities now recognise as an example of true citizenship. It is scandalous that given the evidence of mercury toxicity still leaching into the river system from old gold mines like Malakoff Diggins, de autoriteiten hebben niets gedaan. Maar ik denk dat dit is meer reflectie op onze eigen maatschappelijke tekortkomingen, gezien we weten politici impotent te veranderen voor het algemeen welzijn. In applaudisseren de Sierra Fonds voor het oppakken van de eco uitdaging kwik sanering, ze bestand zelf weg in de archieven van politieke impotentie.

 

Maar de andere viscerale dynamische hier aan het werk is het genocidale geschiedenis van de First Nations en de grondstoffen, traumatische en elke huidige relatie met Coyote Piss. Het was het goud, dat leidde tot hun bijzonder gruwelijke verwijdering uit het landschap. Hoe de Sierra Fund plein dit historisch onrecht met het opruimen van de toxiciteit en het herstel van de zalm runs is iedereen een raadsel. The principle by-product of mercury remediation will be gold. Fantastic I hear the greedy gold miners shout, but a note of caution. If remediation leads to another rush to mine gold using the green halo effect to claim being an environmentally responsible gold mining company, without recourse to the bloody history and recompense being paid to those Nations that survived, they will be adding deeper humiliation and injustice upon the nations already living under the constant dis-inheritance of land because of gold. Whatever happens to this gold, it must be used to bless and beneficiate the First Nations, before it enriches private companies and stock holders. This is natural justice. Whether the First Nations will accept this remains to be seen and is part of the hard work the Sierra Fund are undertaking as they seek to create the worlds most powerful and desirable Origin of Denomination gold brand.

 

This is a gold I would be proud to use. A gold product that pays reparations to First Nations, cleans up the toxic stain of large-scale environmentally devastating gold mining and is used to create a redemptive story about gold that we can actually be proud of. To this end I have offered to design a jewellery collection that will not only use the gold from this source, but will also be used to support the work of the Sierra Fund in mercury remediation. If I can do anything with my Valerio Jewellery brand, this is it. Subvert the luxury jewellery narrative and introduce a more honest and truthful story. I think this is what jewellery should be about. Talisman’s telling the truth.

 

Greg Valerio

Written after the Sierra Fund Conference – April 2015

 

Footnote

 

To define gold in pure economic terms is facile and profoundly deceptive. It makes me realise that organisations like the politically constructed World Gold Council – the trade body that represents the world’s biggest gold mining corporations – is a morally and ethically shallow boat plagued with gold fever. WGC consider the mature stage of modern gold mining started with the 19 century gold rush in California (click here for more info). Little has changed in their ideology, I have personally witnessed large-scale mining’s devastation of entire mountains, crushing and leaching these mountains through cyanide, the rape of those eco-systems from which the financial wealth is used to enrich elite minorities. Their only reason for existence is to greedily accumulate money at the expense of everything else – this is apparently called civilization and economic development. LSM gold mining is the dark soul of capitalism. It’s rapacious greed is a manifestation of its corporate spirituality. The hydraulic mining that so devastated the Sierra’s in the 19 century, was the beginning of this modern type of mining and was guilty of the genocide of the First Nations people of California. A part of the modern-day gold mining story WGC and others wish to avoid at all costs. A very interesting foundation to modern gold mining techniques.

 

Ik waardeer dat de identificatie met marginale stemmen en verdoezeld onrechtvaardigheden, of coming out en zeggen dat grootschalige goudwinning is maatschappelijk relevant en niet langer een vereiste industriële activiteit, zal schadelijk zijn voor mijn reputatie als een juwelier. Het kan een nadelig effect op mijn inkomen en kan me verder te duwen in de beugel van de radicale activist die consequent steunt de verliezende paard. Maar ik kan niet de stemmen hoorde ik in Californië negeren, toen ze zei: ‘Coyote Piss gedood ons’. Ik sta als een getuige van deze waarheid.

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