Elizabeth Elliot is a biologist and her work brought her into my life, into my fields, where we have walked the back edges of the property, marveling on the many cultivars that grow along side some of the invasive species she is attempting to assist me in removing. But Tuesday I took some time to join her in Tulsa for a Pollinator Walk along the Arkansas River parkway. It is after all National Pollinator Week.

It was only 14 years ago that the U.S. Senate unanimously approved and designated a week in June to bring awareness and be a critical step to address the decline in pollinators all across the world and to celebrate the benefits provided by the pollinator species. Bees and butterflies but also bats, small mammals, beetles and birds provide this vital work for our ecosystem. They sustain our ecosystems by helping plants reproduce to produce the natural resources we consume.

 “The evidence is overwhelming that wild pollinators are declining around the world. Most have already experienced a shrinking of range. Some have already suffered or face the imminent risk of total extinction. Their ranks are being thinned not just by habitat reduction and other familiar agents of impoverishment, but also by the disruption of the delicate “biofabric” of interactions that bind ecosystems together. Humanity, for its own sake, must attend to the forgotten pollinators and their countless dependent plant species.”– E.O. Wilson, The Forgotten Pollinators 

"Biofabric" was a term that took me to the ecosystems on our earth that clean the air, stabilize soils which help protect us from severe weather and even provide for the needs of wildlife we enjoy or know is out there as we listen to the birds in the morning and the insects singing through the night.

I hadn't thought to consider the value of pollinators to me personally but came to understand that these pollinators are responsible for one of every three bites of food we eat. Pollinators travel carrying pollen on their bodies from plant to plant creating the interaction that actually transfers genetic material necessary for reproduction. Think about the fruits, vegetables and nuts, but what about the fact that one half of the world's oils, fibers and raw materials depend on the little guys. Stream beds are protected from erosion because of the plants that survive along the course of their banks.
Pollination is the first step in providing the seeds for the future, which will be the next generation of the plants we need. Some plants self-pollinate, some with the help of wind and water, but the vast majority depend on the little ones. I hadn't known that means between 75% and 95% of all flowering plants on earth need pollinators!

Walking among you are pollinators. They are not flying by, just out of reach, they are knocking on the doors of their friends, they are smiling at you at the Farmer's Market, they are believing in a different kind of future. They are thinking of the future. They can see the future as they hope it to be. They want to reclaim the treasure Tar Creek was in the lives of the generations who had once enjoyed the cool refreshing touch of fresh flowing water running through town. Our Tar Creek is damaged, because of the efforts of these pollinators dropping by engaging with you and your neighbors, there will be a whole community watching out for her now. "Not on my watch" they will say to any NEW polluter.

This is important change. Rather than all of us looking the other way, like the creek wasn't there anymore, this little creek has been collecting friends from here to yonder. People do care and people have power.

The work of our pollinators moves pollen from bloom to bloom, our people are carrying a message in the gist of a proposed ordinance from person to person. Each can then plant the seeds that are produced, empowering us to think about the important work we all have in producing the kind of future that can happen for the people who follow us, the generations we will never know.

Conservation efforts are known to work to protect pollinators and can change the world and secure our future. Our Tar Creek and her pollinators have been degraded by pollution which we have watched through the last 4 decades. But the watchers have been paying attention and they are signing petitions.

Engage with the pollinators who are carrying the Clean Water Protection Ordinance, they are looking to the future, a future we had not thought to believe in reach. Plant some seeds for the little ones, plan on watching the flowers bring the butterflies.

Respectfully Submitted ~  Rebecca Jim

Taking initiative means the ability to see something that needs to be done and deciding to do it out of your own free will without someone else telling you to do it.

Many people all over Miami, Oklahoma will be taking initiative. Every single person who picks up a pen, reads through the wordy document and signs an initiative petition that is currently being circulated as an eligible and registered city voter  will be demonstrating with their own free will-- doing the one thing not attempted before in the known history of the city. Citizens will be exercising the inherent right of the people of the City of Miami to make laws which recognize and expand criminal liability and environmental rights at the municipal level under the actual authority provided in the Oklahoma Constitution. Each will be responding to the title: A CITY OF MIAMI CLEAN WATER PROTECTION ORDINANCE to give what most believe to be a God-given right, the right to Clean water.

People all over the country have protested, marched and been jailed to stop the TransCanada's XL Pipeline. And this week the company gave it up on their own, they terminated the project. Also, this week EPA and Army Corps of Engineers took on making laws protecting the Waters of the US stronger, and the Arctic Refuge got rescued by Biden and the first ever Indigenous Secretary of the Interior.

We as a community have not fought the fight, have not been in the streets, gotten arrested for our Clean Water fight. We don't have to. All we have to do is sign a petition, asking as a Citizen of Miami, OK for Clean Water as a Right, your very own right. And the right for Tar Creek to be protected from added pollution. And for polluters to face fines and restitution to correct that damage be paid to the city for the victim, Tar Creek.

This ordinance cannot undo the damage Tar Creek has had with 42 years of a million gallons of acid mine water flowing through the city, some days much more is pouring out of the mines, at flood stage more of Tar Creek is spread vastly across the fields, parks and many residential yards. This ordinance does not charge or render blame on Tar Creek when that may occur.

With enough signatures on the petition, it will allow a special election to be held in the city, if the City Council does not on their own approve the ordinance. It could be easier for the City Counselors to do that with hundreds and thousands of registered voters saying, "Hey, clean water, I am for that" and demonstrating it with their signatures on the petitions we will walk into the meeting for them to see each time it might be on the agenda.

Sometimes taking initiative takes little energy, perhaps a call to a friend, an elbow nudge to a fellow standing next to you or someone sitting beside you in a pew, like before COVID made cozy abnormal.

What are the Rights of the People of the City of Miami  as stated in the ordinance?

The people of the City of Miami possess the right to clean water, which shall include the right to a healthy Tar Creek that is free from pollution, and the right to be free from activities or projects which violate that right.
 
What are the Rights of Tar Creek as stated in the ordinance?

Tar Creek possesses the rights to exist, regenerate, and flourish, which shall include the right to naturally recharge, the right to flow, the right to water quality necessary to provide habitat for native plants and animals, the right to provide clean water, the right to be free from pollution, and the right to restoration. Tar Creek shall also have the right to be free from activities or projects which violate those rights. The rights of the Creek secured within this Ordinance shall not be interpreted to confer liabilities, duties, obligations, or responsibilities on the Creek.

When Tar Creek is polluted, Tar Creek is harmed and becomes a victim with legal rights. “Tar Creek” as used within this Ordinance, shall include the Tar Creek ecosystem, which shall include, but not be limited to, tributaries of the Creek, and the Tar Creek watershed.
 
When I first read what rights Tar Creek has, it was like reading poetry. When reading the rights of the People in this ordinance, it reads like justice. Justice that can begin to be gained by the People of Miami, OK's long overdue claim to their Right to Clean Water.
 
Take some initiative.
 
Respectfully Submitted,
Rebecca Jim
 
 
 

We think of Nashville as the South, but San Miguel, Oaxaca, Mexico is really south. Two film makers came to capture the emotions felt for a wounded water by those hoping to stand for the environment, the other came because poetry brought poets to that water and to answer how that came to happen, how bad water can inspire.

If you can reach back to a time when you laid on your back and marveled at the sky and how quickly the clouds change and cover you in shade, the vastness of the sky above, or remember your first firefly, or the gift of holding a baby chick, the times you discovered the world around you, surrounded you and simply filled you with wonder.

A poem, a simple poem did that for me one afternoon as I listened to Angela Helmig read a poem in the setting it was written to depict. The flowing water seemed to rush by, but as she described a leaf on the water, I could see it and then as suddenly I could no longer see it. As her poem about water ends, I simply became that water.

There are magical places and one afternoon I heard a woman tell about when she was a little girl how her family would all go to Tar Creek to swim. I could see them there, I could see the joy water can bring in her eyes as she remembered.

I am the creek, we all are. We all can be. Those moments on the creek with Angela Helmig happened because Glenna Wallace had a vision. That vision was to capture the part of us that makes us Native, that thing that is our culture. Our culture is not our "Indian card" it is the stuff we do, what we make, how we do it, how we gather from our environment the pieces we need to use that our people were taught by their people to do. Culture is not always valued, but it is the stuff people study when our things are discovered  'neath some random earthen mound that sometimes stops the bulldozer long enough to remove a broken pot, a woven item, the things we left behind that told of what we did and who we might have been.

Glenna Wallace, Chief of the Eastern Shawnee believed our tribal cultures are alive and being lived by tribal people in Ottawa County, lived quietly by humble people, none seeking to be discovered, each carrying forward or finding anew the slivers of what our ancestors born to us. How do you capture those movements of the clouds you saw as a child? You seek out someone who can link the stories of place to people and that is how Chief Wallace came to draw Meredith Ludwig to believe in her dream. During the thirty years she taught at Crowder College, she had heard Meredith speak story to past, engagingly, because if you are capturing culture you have to have someone who doesn't try to put fireflies in a jar, but will muster other ways to gift the future with the talents that are present now.

With the structure of an ANA Grant, Cultural Tourism in a Nine Tribe County and a 3 year timeline in the midst of the COVID shutdown, Meredith has done it, and reached out to a lifelong friend Suzanne Carter to come with her video skills. It was these 2 women who valued Tar Creek this week and brought poetry to life there. First a Slam by Michael Scruggs, then hearing the true way words can change into art as Angela spoke of water in the  last words  In her poem,

Journey:
Carving destiny
Carry onward
Open to the sea
Become one with her
 
   Aloud, the words with the water flowing as it was, I too became one with the water and more committed to speak for Tar Creek and gather the people who speak for the creek. And Filo Gomez Martinez, the Ayuuk from Quetzaltepec, he heard and filmed misty-eyed grown men who long for justice and clean water.
 
The list is long, the tribes are all represented, each telling their stories and many artists like Patty Harjo-Shinn  tapped to demonstrate beading, quill work and birch bark basketry. What about Richard Zane Smith's pottery, and of course an inquisitive puppet, how to tap maple trees and make syrup, language, songs. These are our people and they are showing us and the world of tourists way into the future what culture looks like and who is living it.

When you have the vision like this, and the staff to engage and endear the reluctant talent living among us, fireflies don't even know they are captured, they are gently kept for those moments then released unharmed, yet leaving a legacy for the future, say it is for tourists. But it is for us, our grandchildren who will never know these fireflies, but they will see the culture in motion, hear it and learn the past is present for them.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

The Film Catchers made better with the help from Dana Jim, the apprentice Boom Operator.

Through the years I have learned a lot about lead. Our government has had to come out finally reporting there is just NO SAFE LEVEL of lead. Zero is safe, nothing.

Lead has changed the potential of lots of us. What we might have grown up to be and do is gone, but we are reducing the amounts we are exposed to. Our children will be better for it and their lives improved because of it. That is why EPA is still spending millions of dollars a year in this county, reducing the amount of lead our children will be exposed to in their lives.

But they are not working fast enough. The chat and the yards they are cleaning up have more than lead in them.  Our Tar Creek has more than lead in it.

Dig deeper. There is Arsenic. Manganese.

There is cadmium. I snuck in on a zoom mini-conference covering the relationship between cadmium and cardiovascular disease. By clicking the link I was sitting with a hundred health professionals, researchers and heart specialists, many who either treated patients with these conditions or others involved with the important research discoveries discussed that day revealing how the body deals with cadmium.

Our body needs some essential elements to function. We need calcium to build strong bones. But the sly heavy metal elements in our environment mimic what our body needs. For example: If exposed to lead, our body stores it, mistaking it for calcium and stores it in bones and in organs which can be damaged right away. When we don't have enough calcium, the body pulls it out of the bone into blood to circulate to vital organs, and if pregnant, can share lead with the fetus for the baby's bone development. I knew all that. Lead as an element, once in us it can stay and do great harm. That is why it is especially important to prevent lead exposure, so our bodies are not poisoned by it.

But what I learned about cadmium really bothered me. Our exposure to cadmium is relatively new. It was only discovered as part of zinc in the 1880's, and then only began to be put into product use in the 1930's. We need zinc to boost our immune system and metabolism function and help wounds to heal and insures your sense of taste and smell. What else? This conference went deeper with descriptions of how cadmium fools our bodies and mimics another essential element: zinc.  These two elements were found together when mined here in the Tri-State District.
 
I had looked at the ATSDR TOX Profiles years ago, finding the diseases known to be associated with each of the elements we know by living here we are exposed to and had learned that cadmium was linked to heart attacks and stroke. But lead got national attention. It became EPA's only Contaminant of Concern here, so did all of our focus, but our other elements remain concerning. Finally Congress and FDA are only now bringing forward proposed legislation, the Baby Food Safety Act, to cap the presence of inorganic arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury in baby food and cereal. So other harmful elements found here may gain their needed attention.
 
Dianne Le produced an image during the Harvard  University School of Design Studio, Tar Creek Remade which depicted children walking beside our Tar Creek and as that water flowed the symbols of these metals of concern, lead, arsenic, cadmium and manganese rested on the ripples( Mn-Cd-Pb-As). These elements float, flowing past us each day, but these metals flow through us as well. They are in Tar Creek's water, end up on soils when she leaves her banks. These elements of concern are in our air, when the dust from chat piles only a few miles away become airborne.
What if the water flowing through Miami no longer harbored the metals that can harm our lives, damage our hearts and kidneys, or become stored in our bones? Why can't we say we want it better?
Who wouldn't want clean air? And clean water.

Could our grandchildren's grandchildren wake to an elemental free water, no longer carrying heavy metals?

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” Robert F. Kennedy
 
Think about the legacy we can leave. Think of those tiny ripples we can create. We can speak for our water, in one voice, we can learn to love our Tar Creek. We can claim her. We can be her Water Protectors, whole families, whole neighborhoods can wear their "My Tar Creek" pins. Banners will go up in yards "hearting" this once disrespected free flowing stream. It is a powerful thought. Each person empowered to change the future, elementally. It is our time.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim