(Instrumental Introductory Music: Bakerman - by Midnight Oil)
Jimmy: Seldom is there time to consider the meaning of existence. How, what, why, are we what we are?
Lionel: I think before I say any...anything to you, there is one thing that we as Indian people, maintain within our lives, and that is our contact with Mother Earth our spirituality to Mother Nature. So if you would bear with me at this time, and I would ask all the cameras to be turned off.
Jimmy: The Columbia River used to have one of the largest salmon runs in the world. Idaho's Redfish Lake used to host 25,000 Sockeye Salmon spawning along its shores. Last year only one fish returned. One fish! What is the number for extinction? What is necessary for existence?
First let us consider the thoughts of earlier thinkers. For Isaac Newton, we are abstract points in empty space. For the natural philosopher René Descartes, space can never be empty. Space that is empty takes no space at all. For Newton, we are separate individuals competing through collision. In Descartes' view, there is no separating the vast oneness. No separating the seer from the seen. We are all participants within the same movement. A movement that we direct with each decision. Thus, how we perceive existence is of vast importance. Is the world empty or is the world full? Newton's abstract emptiness or Descartes' fluid fullness? What we think is what become. Cogito ergo sum.
Lionel: Those are things that you have to keep in your minds. Talk to yourselves within your hearts and think about it. It was expressed of the many dams that are taking a toll on the many progeny that leave these waters, not only of the Sockeye, but of the Chinook, the Steelhead, the Sturgeon, the Eel. Many of those are not with us now in these waters that they once came to: the Sockeye, the Coho.
Every cause has an effect.
Each effect is itself a cause.
Jimmy: The earth is bathed in light from the sun. Plants fold the light into plant matter, exhaling oxygen. Animals breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide which the plants breathe. This is an example of a symbiotic loop. With the continuing flow of sunlight, the loop grows. More plants means more animals. More animals means more plants. A causal loop that resonates.
I believe we're crossing the great ravine
Still yearning half-way a stranger
I believe in our multiplicity
still part-blind no reason for anger
Lionel: We have a few salmon that return, the children of the one female that came back. To give us a sign, and I think if you thought deep within your minds, deep within your hearts, the importance of that one fish returning.
Jamie Lee Curtis: I have a six and half year old daughter. And like everyone here and everyone around the world I am battling my own battle between man and nature. How much do I allow of technology into my life and how much of Nature do I continue to include in my life.
I thought myself wise
through all of these hopeless times
but I told myself I told myself
you got to hold on.
Jimmy: Our society is built on walls and barriers extracting energy from the desire to be what one is not. Slowly these walls are disappearing. A new society is emerging. A symbiotic world that does not profit by creating another's loss.
Why won't you tell me the truth about you
Jimmy: In 1934 the Idaho Fish & Game destroyed the buttress of Sunbeam dam, and auspicious event as the ecology and the salmon began to recover. But soon thereafter, ecologics would take a back seat to an attempt to restore economics. Many more dams were built. New jobs with new money. New money to buy new things. But where does the money come from and do we still need the dams? Every cause has an effect. Each effect is itself a cause. Do we choose to believe in the economic or the ecologic? What we think is what we become.
Jimmy: Upon graduation from one of the most famous schools in Europe, Descartes found that he had gained nothing from his attempts to become educated. To Descartes, the sciences were like old buildings, remodeled by several hands. Or like codes of law that changed as circumstance demanded. He decided to reject his former beliefs, reject what he'd been taught in school and by himself, René Descartes, would rebuild the foundation of knowledge.
Descartes learned and would later teach, that to find truth, we must first doubt everything. Doubt if two and three make five. Doubt if what we see is what we believe it to be. Even doubt one's self existence. To find truth we must first doubt everything. But there is no doubting that we are doubting. At least we know that we are thinking. We think, therefore, we are. But what then are we?
For Newton, we are built of unbreakable parts, each part possessing a number. Attraction, repulsion, and distance between parts, are measurements made with more numbers. Numbers rule interactions where what has less yields to what has more. Energy fades away until no motion occurs. Numbers soon spread to the other branches of science. Economics was born and our fate was decided.
Conrad: I mean where does economics come into play here? How important is economics? Well economics is important.
Jimmy: With numbers we count on separate things, things separate from their surroundings. But what then connects one moment to the next? What connects one self to another?
Time has come today
Young hearts can go that way
Can't put it off another day
I don't care what others say
Jimmy: Our economic world cares only for those who have money. Those that are not on the economic playing field are simply ignored. The homeless have no money. The fish have no money. So who cares about a fish?
The rules have changed today
I have no place to stay
Thinking about the subway
The love has flown away
My tears have come and gone
Oh my lord I have to roam
I have no home
I have no home
Jimmy: We trust the numbers to make the decisions. And find profit in societal division. Winners require losers in there struggle to survive.
Now the time has come
No place to run
I might get burned up by the sun
but I had my fun
Sue: It is not that we need more electricity. It is that the government needs money to avoid any economic disruption. It is in the economic interest of the U.S. Government that large amounts of electricity be consumed.
Now the time has come
There are things to realize
Time has come today
Time
Time has come today
Time
Lighting consumes a quarter of this nation's electricity
If utilities sold light rather than electricity,
we would surely use compact fluorescents
and use a fifth of the electricity.
Jimmy: There is profit in the inefficiency on the consuming side of the line. One side's profit is the other side's loss. In symbiosis, efficiency and cooperation brings growth. Mass production, mass persuasion, mass consumption, mass destruction, collectively we feed a spiral of decay.
Sue: It's easy for a someone to come out here and say, "You have to stop cattle grazing, you have to stop logging the forest", and then drive home to where they left the lights on and have aluminum cans piled up in their trash. We can't just change things piecemeal fashion. It is going to take a complete paradigm shift - - a completely different way of looking at reality.
Lionel: My people, before the coming of the white man, lived with this... this cycle of life. We were there where the seasons found us. We lived with the return of the salmon, we lived with the growing of the roots, the berries, the seasons, the cold seasons, the hot seasons.
Jimmy: Imagine the universe composed solely of the flow of light. And all the parts that we have named like electron and proton are actually vortices or whirlpools within this flow of light. When we begin to grasp these ideas we begin to see the interconnectedness of all reality. We find that we are all within one movement. There is no separate other from which to decay. But when we blindly support a world of winners and losers, we wonder at our world of loss.
Charles: Idaho Sockeye are nearly extinct. The reason they are extinct is because their migratory habitat, from here 900 miles to the Pacific Ocean, has been so profoundly disrupted by man's activities.
Cecil: . . . their juveniles will head downstream. That downstream passage is as lethal as the death chamber in any of the penitentiaries in America.
Jimmy: In Newton's world of numbers, we are asked to believe that we traveled to the moon through an emptiness. But for Descartes, there can be no such thing as empty space. It is more like we are fish traveling through water, ". . . where motion occurs not as a passage through emptiness, but as vortices or whirlpools in which a broad area of movement is established."
"The universe is a dynamic sea of energy, a web of interactions."
Charles: We have the biological expertise to restore Idaho's wild salmon and Steelhead. We also have the technical expertise. To date, we lack the collective political will necessary to bring about the changes in the river operation.
Jimmy: Imagine as Descartes did, an interconnected universe. A movement fully complete, a geometry completely full. Where the heavens are liquid and reality is fluid.
Out where the river broke
The bloodwood and the desert oak
Holden wrecks and boiling diesels
Steam in forty five degrees
Conrad: I mean where does economics come into play here. Uh... and how is that going to be affected by the recovery of a few Sockeye in a few lakes in Idaho or some Chinook salmon in the Snake River basin. I mean how do you balance that against the potential impact on a huge economy.
Jimmy: Why do we think the economy is worth saving? Is a system of numbers going to lead us to a better tomorrow? Are other species expendable in man's pursuit of numbers?
How can we dance when our earth is turning
How do we sleep while our beds are burning
How can we dance when our earth is turning
Sue: The sale of hydroelectricity, through the Bonneville Power Administration, is the second greatest producer of revenue for the U.S. Government. So there is a conflict of interest. It's in the economic interest of the U.S. government to have large amounts of electricity consumed. But, the paradox is, it's the duty of the U.S. government to recover endangered species. This is our responsibility and it's the law.
Charles: We need to see changes. There is no time left for obstruction, for denial, for misinformation, for delay, or for political subterfuge by the agencies the law says must restore these salmon.
Cecil: I think the total disregard was demonstrated by the Army Corps of Engineers day before yesterday when they said, "Well... we're not going to do anything that we think will save the salmon. Until we're going to experiment into 1996 and then we will have 3 years of experimentation then we're going to have some other things of retrofitting the dams." It will be about the year 2000, ladies and gentlemen, and frankly what those interests are believing is that by that point in time there won't be any salmon left, therefore, the question will be moot.
How can we dance when our earth is turning
Sue: Aluminum production consumes a quarter of the BPA's electricity which the government sells to them at a greatly reduced rate. So even though aluminum recycling is twenty times more efficient, aluminum production is encouraged. Increasing electric consumption increases government revenue.
How do we sleep while our beds are burning
Paul: It's a system that is in place. It's hard to change.
The time has come
To say fair's fair
To pay the rent
To pay our share
The time has come
A fact's a fact
It belongs to us all
Let's give it back
Paul: Well once you beat a population down to a very low number they don't have that bounce back capability. There simply aren't enough of them to waste. You can't have a high rate of attrition and still have reproduction and replacement. At some point you're going to be losing and headed toward extinction.
Charles: To the Bonneville Power Administration, the Corp of Engineers, the National Marine Fisheries Services, the entrenched bureaucracies and the pork barrel beneficiaries that have held this river system in a strangle hold for forty years, now must yield. They must give a little of the river back to the fish.
Jimmy: Thoughts that are in harmony with truth resonate within reality. While thoughts of misconception, without the support of propaganda and misdirection, are transitory, fleeting as ripples that dissolve in a stream of consciousness.
In my shoes, in my shoes
There is so much to remind me
As the stars come out above me, home
Cool wind, clear my head
Bright sun grow my food
strong rain clear my heart
Fill my land
It's a new day
I don't know why it is sold,
Don't know why it's so cold
In this life that we live
New day new day new day
In my shoes, in my shoes
There is so much to astound me
As the whirlpool spins around me, home
All of our energy
comes from a sun.
All of it.
Bushfire, burn and grow
Sunset watch and rest low
Long night holding child close, feed my dream
Economic or Ecologic?
I don't know why it is sold,
Don't know why it's so cold
In this life that we live
New day new day new day
The realities of the business world are money-values,
that is to say, matters of make-believe.
-Thorstein Veblen
It's larger than life, it's darker than death
We're gonna move those mountains aside
Here come the messages
There it goes again.
Jimmy: When Newton used numbers to describe the motion of the moon, he established numbers as a truth of reality. But mathematicians now recognize that numbers are either incomplete or inconsistent. The complexity of reality cannot simply be ruled by numbers. Yet our society has lagged in coming to this understanding. We continue to cling to our belief in numbers and point to other reasons for our shortcomings.
Each effect is itself a cause.
Jimmy: We cannot count the clouds anymore than we can separate the twilight from the dawn. Count the fish. Count the water. How many trees including the seeds? When we are taught to count five on the fingers of one hand, what are we to believe? The thoughts we create, in time resonate, passing to each generation. But what do we accept and what do we reject? To find truth, we must first doubt everything.
1940's Narrator: New dams must be built or America's vital electro-industries will fail to develop or be forced to go abroad for their power. Industry we can ill afford to lose.
If we are to control the restless Columbia we must first develop it. Develop it for all its values. Ten million horse power of new energy, swiftly can be harnessed on America's mightiest stream. Tame the hazardous rapids. Open the Columbia waterway to navigation 500 miles inland.
Bonneville
The Dalles
John Day
McNary
Ice Harbor
Lower Monumental
Little Goose
Lower Granite
1940's Narrator: Provide endless water power to meet the grave electric shortage. Power to extend the frontiers of opportunity for countless men and women who look westward hopefully for land and jobs, for security and happiness.
Jimmy: This is not an issue of irrigation or flood control. This is a story about power and money. Surplus power discounted to the most inefficient user. Money for the U.S. government to help pay the interest on five trillion dollars of debt. A debt that will never be repaid.
1940's Narrator: Today, the inexhaustible power of the Columbia is speeding housing for all our people, giving birth to over half the nations' supply of vital aluminum. Tomorrow, it can do infinitely more for America's greatest power stream is still less than one tenth developed. Thirty million horsepower wasting to the sea. A tremendous force for good or for evil. So the mighty Columbia flings a challenge to a nation, daring it to show that our democracy has the vitality to develop a great river for all its values, for all its people. Set a pattern for the other nations of the world to follow. Prove they can have food as well as freedom, peace as well as plenty. That is the challenge of the Columbia!
Jimmy: It is as though there were an evil genius amongst us, creating misinformation and propaganda, using all its powers to deceive. When we grasp ideas of truth, on truth our ideas will resonate.
Lionel: Those are things that you have to keep in your minds, talk to your selves within your hearts and think about.
Jimmy: Will this be the end of our faith in numbers, or will we adhere to our obsolete ideas of private isolation and self absorption. Focused upon a particular point in space and time, where our effects are lost in the surrounding emptiness.
Lionel: I think these are things that you should be concerned about. You should be taking care of them. Do we need the mines. Let's rebuild this Mother Earth. Let's put it back into as close as it was before mechanization. And I think with your help, if you are concerned, each of you can touch and speak to people, maybe people that make those decisions.
I know that the sunset empire shudders and shakes
I know there's a floodgate and a raging river
I say see the silence of the ribbons of iron and steel
I say hear the punch drunk buddle drive hammer and wheel
Sometimes you're beaten to the call
Sometimes
Paul: ...and I don't think anyone will disagree that dams effect fish. That takes place.
Juvenile fish have to spend more energy and actively swim through those reservoirs where they used to essentially float into the ocean.
I know that the cannibals wear smart suits and ties
I know they arm wrestle on the altar
I say don't leave your heart in a hard place.
Charles: I think it's a tribute to their incredible strength and to their persistence and to their will to survive. We all need to think about these fish. We need to assume a little of their will a little of their single minded determination. That's what it's going to take.
Sometimes you're taken to the wall
Lionel: . . . our contact with Mother Earth our spirituality to Mother Nature.
Cecil: In spite of the inertia of the Federal Government, in spite of the opposition, in spite of the money of the downstream utilities and industries, and in spite of all the forces, you have continued to fight the battle here as Mr. Boyer pointed out.
Sometimes you're beaten to the call
Sometimes
Paul: The whole situation is very complicated and as you are aware very political.
mostly
Sometimes you're shaken to the core
Sometimes
Paul: There are people on all sides that support many different issues and things that can come from managing habitat a certain way. And it has become complicated because of the number of different players and uses of the system.
Sometimes you're taken to the wall
But we don't give in
But we don't . . .
don't give in . . .
oh no!
Lionel: The children of the one female that came back.
Charles: The river system that they migrate through is blocked by eight dams operated by the Bonneville Power Administration, and the Army Corps of Engineers. The river system is out of balance.
Reduce Consumption
Use Compact Fluorescent
Reuse more containers
Recycle all aluminum
Sue: What we are talking about is removing just four reservoirs in eastern Washington. These reservoirs produce only 2% of the region's electricity. Only 2%! But like the ancient pyramids these walls are symbols to our society. We fear that if we remove one wall, all the walls might fall.
(The script would more accurately say 4% and not 2%)
Jimmy: With simple Newtonian thoughts, and simple dividing lines, the fluid world we dam. We seize power from separation.
Lionel: We talk about what is happening today is progress. Progress is leaving very important things behind and destroying everything in its way. This is part of the example.
Scott: Inside these walls supply light and heat. Toss away the food that the suits don't eat. Outside these walls the homeless sleep. Cold and alone with nothing to eat.
The Little Prince: "Your cigarette has gone out. Three and two make five. Five and seven make twelve. Twelve and three make fifteen. Good morning. Fifteen and seven make twenty-two. Twenty-two and six make twenty-eight. I haven't time to light it again. Twenty-six and five make thirty-one. Phew! Then that makes five-hundred-twenty-two thousand, seven-hundred-thirty-one. Eh? Are you still there? Five-hundred-and-one million -- I can't stop . . . I have so much to do! I am concerned with matters of consequence. I don't amuse myself with balderdash. Two and five make seven . . ."
Jimmy: Our faith in numbers is built on our ignorance. Ignorance of numbers over simplicity. Numbers give credence to the individuated self. Each self struggling for its own salvation. Is this the best of all possible worlds where each part is in a world of its self? Do we choose to stay in this divided world or do we change when we see the similarities in the errors of our past? Will we overcome our past inertia? What we think is what we become. Cogito ergo sum.
Cogito ergo sum.
Now the time has come
No place to run
I might get burned up by the sun
but I had my fun
I been loved and put aside
I've been crushed by tumbling tide
and my soul has been psychedelicized
Now the time has come
There are things to realize
Time has come today
Time has come today
Time
Lighting consumes a quarter of this nation's electricity.
A fifth of that to cool buildings
from the heat of inefficient lights.
Jimmy: A number defines an instant of time somehow apart from the past and the future. Clinging to obsolete numeric ideas we spring ahead and fall back, deeper into delusion.
Numbers support the idea of permanence and unchanging things. But all is flowing, all is changing, the permanence is only illusion. Patterns persist through resonance, the flow sustains the existence. To change the flow is to change the mind. Reality is fluid.
Alright, let's begin, I am ready, let's begin
Sell my soul to him
Shed my skin, I just wanna shed my skin
I don't wanna sell my soul to him
Turbine bypass for young salmon
where birds eat stunned fish
1 of 4 fish die at each dam.
(1 of 5 would be a more accurate statement)
Mechanize, city bursts and farmers die
They cry "sell my soul to him"
Sleep face down in a goods train
heading south in the rain
The West Coast has a large power surplus.
- BPA Annual Report 1995.
In this world I often think you'd understand me
In these words I often think you'd recognise me
I just wanna swim with the fish in the sea
and I want faith to heal so that I can be clean
DAMS KILL SALMON
Paul: There are people that benefit from a series of consecutive reservoirs. And there are local politicians that were elected by local interests that are protecting reservoirs that should not be protected.
It's a system that is in place. Its hard to change.
Charles: We've turned 350 miles of free flowing river into 350 miles of deadly reservoirs.
Lionel: We have come round in a circle. We have come in, we have expended all of the resources that are here. The minerals, they are creating much damage on the waters that's going down. All of the mines that have created a lot of chemical flow. A lot of that is getting into the water is keeping the salmon down. The minerals, the ores that are leaching into the water are directing them someplace else. The salmon that come up, they can tell, they can tell, they can taste it in the water.
I just want to celebrate
I'm not going to sell my soul to him
Sell my soul to him
Price is right
Sell my soul to him
Jimmy: We are all participants within the same movement. A movement we direct with each decision. Thus, how we perceive existence is of vast importance. Is the world empty or is the world full? What we think is what we become. Cogito ergo sum.
Everywhere is freaks and hairies
Dykes and fairies
tell me where is sanity
Tax the rich, feed the poor
'til there are no rich no more
I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you
Population keeps on breeding
Nation bleeding, still more feeding economy
Life is funny, skies are sunny
Bees make honey, who needs money
monopoly
no more for me.
I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you
Oh yeah !
World pollution, there's no solution
Institution, electrocution
Just black and white, rich or poor
Them and us, stop the war
Ice Harbor
Lower Monumental
Little Goose
Lower Granite
I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you
Time!
What if 1=2+3?
Jimmy: Its time to change the metaphysics, to change what is the metaphor.
1940's Narrator: . . . set a pattern for the other nation's of the world to follow.
Lionel: . . . our contact with Mother Earth our spirituality to Mother Nature.
Jimmy: Remind the self absorbed, that the rest of the universe has no need for numbers.
Teach the Truth and Resonate.
