Content area
Full Text
WOMEN ARE THE FIRST ENVIRONMENT
Sekon/Greetings to our honored guests and visitors, the representatives of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the representatives of the New York Power Authority, the numerous presenters, our hosts, the Kanienkehaka Nation Council of Chiefs and the Akwesasronen here today.
I would ask that my presentation both oral and written with supporting documents be made part of the official record of today's proceedings.
My name is Katsi Cook. I am a traditional Kanienkehaka midwife. In the Mohawk language, a midwife is "one who helps them with their first breath" or "one who scoops them from the water." My responsibility to the mothers and infants of Akwesasne was passed down to me from my grandmother, Elizabeth Kanatires Herne Cook, who delivered me at home here at Akwesasne in 1952. I also serve as Principal Investigator of the First Environment Communications Project, an Environmental Justice Program funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. As I speak these words to you, I carry the eagle feather I use in my work to pray for the women in their suffering and I ask Sakoiatison our Creator and source of all power to guide my words to the minds of the New York Power Authority.
The St. Lawrence-FDR Power Dam project emerged from the ideology of progress which characterized the post World War II boom in economic development. Subsequent industrialization of Mohawk ancestral lands due to the availability, of cheap hydroelectric power to local industries over the past 40 years has substantively changed the subsistence based economy of Akwesasne. Moreover, the proliferation of industrial activity has resulted in toxic contamination of our environment and local food chain including the contamination of human breastmilk. Indeed, Mohawk people of Akwesasne pay enormous social, economic and cultural costs not factored into the per kilowatt hour price made available to corporations who have contaminated our lands, our soil, our water, our very future with toxic chemicals.
Women are the first environment a new life experiences. Our grandmothers taught us that in pregrancy, our unborn child sees through our eves and hears through our ears. At the time of the child's birth, it is greeted by its' family and is identified with the events that occur in the natural...