With the onset of thousands of global visitors, the main debate has been what does "Canada" really represent. On one side we have the lurking agendas of the Hudson's Bay Company, Coca Cola, Bell and McDonalds (to name a few). They have never been taught their responsibility to the next seven generations, they only have a conscience for one thing: making money. And on the other side we have people who are celebrating their roots with dignity, resisting colonial oppression and fighting for their right to speak their mind.
This corporate fun-fair is a part of a much larger scheme to enslave large populations of people through brilliantly executed advertising campaigns designed to play with our minds and our heart strings. Advertising knows the key to our pockets is by promising us the fantasy of love. If you look pre-pubescent, people will love you. If you provide these toys, then your children will listen to you. You deserve it! It'll be fun!
The myth that equates purchasing items with loving ourselves and others is so deeply ingrained in our settler society that it is part of our national identity. Canadians celebrate christmas. Canadians celebrate thanksgiving, easter, and Valentines Day. These are holidays which all revolve around buying outside our needs. If you think parents aren't pressured into going into debt so that their kids fit in after christmas break, you're wrong. If you think all the men going out like zombies buying drugged up GMO flowers and cheap, practically poisonous, chocolates aren't just hoping for a juicy orgasm, you're wrong. And if you choose not to buy into these group-think consumerist orgies then you're a no-fun scrooge, a radical anarchist, a religious fanatic or heaven forbid... poor.
I am not saying that everything about these holidays is evil. I know that regardless of all this mainstream media brainwashing and all this greed that we are mostly good people. We all have the desire to be loved, we search for connection and truth, and we are all faced with meeting our basic biological needs. Each of us coming with a different set of skills and puzzles to fret about, deconstruct, rebuild, wrestle and accept. It is our own responsibility to find our very own special place of power.
I just think that some of us more than others have lost their spiritual grounding and mistake real power for having a yacht, a lover with perfect hair and all the correct costumes for all the right occasions. And I ain't free yet either. I have many materialistic comfort blankets, some of which I am more ready to admit to and let go of than others.
But I am SO ready to call Valentines Day on its shit. I call bullshit on the card industry, I call bullshit on fluffy, flowery love, and I call bullshit on a nation that continually shoves christian rhetoric down our throats despite not only the immense cultural diversity of our communities but also the fact that we are on Native Land! When my people talk of love they say yaw-uk-miss which also encompasses pain. In a world view where everything is connected you cannot enjoy good feelings without the hardship that allows your love to grow.
Today, we live right up against so many different histories without ever being properly introduced. The inter-mingling of all of our traditional beliefs has opened our relationships up to a case by case discussion. Dating, monogamy, open marriages, gender's that come in every colour of the rainbow, BDSM, toys...... if you can think it up, someone is doing it. It is up to us to define how we want to love ourselves and show others we love them.
To me the truest form of love that has emerged through the disneyland chaos is the Annual Women's Memorial March. It is held each year on Valentines Day, downtown in the epicenter of our modern day social justice issues. This march is held in memory of all the missing and murdered women across Canada who's lives have been systemically shoved aside by our racist, sexist and colonial government. People walk the streets in solidarity, vigilantly demanding justice with the friends and families of our most vulnerable life-givers. They come with the purest form of love in their hearts. A love that has compassion and sees how the issues we are facing are connected. We are reminded of the universal picture, we see clearly how these issues of addiction, sexual abuse, poverty, and disconnection are prevalent for a reason.
As I walked this year, I was full of the experiences I had building this body of work. I believe we were sending a profound message to the world about what our community is really about. I reflected on my relationships with the people I see as my community. I was reunited with many people that I have loved in many different ways. Through the thousands of softened faces, I saw people who have offered me that same kind of compassionate love. And I looked up past all the corporate logos to five eagles circling overhead
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