Heirs to the Wreckage

The Columbia River Basin has long been host to an array of dams that infringe upon the way of life of the Indigenous Tribes that depend on the river. Such dams, constructed through government or private contract, produce a host of effects that typically go unnoticed by government forces. Unique in certain contexts, but it also seems as if this story repeats itself globally over and over again. We are familiar with it by now, the banishment of Indigenous politics and problems to the periphery of cultural thought. Even to some of the most “liberal” of “liberals” in the First World, such a case as this might easily be brushed off as another unfortunate instance of a people meeting the harsh but inevitable march of modernity (this sentiment is often played with a utilitarian bent: “most will eventually be better off for it”). So when food and water contamination, erratic water flows, and habitat destruction lead a group of people to decades-long litigation with the US Government, an outside observer might assume that this is happening all over the world, and might conclude its a futile struggle.

And yet…they won. In 2024, the Kwoneesum Dam, blocking approximately 7 miles of stream and fish habitats, was deconstructed. The deconstruction finished last month, can you imagine the sensation? This thing which stood for decades, impeding people’s lives, seemingly immovable despite generations of litigation against its presence, gone completely. It is insane to think the generations that came before must have tirelessly worked to bring that dam down, every single day feeling the impacts of its pretense but still litigating, still advocating, still functioning despite the utter contempt and indifference the world seemed to show their cause at times. And here’s the real mindfuck, can you imagine the psychology of a person who struggles every day for a future they know they won’t see? (Andor touches on this beautifully, albeit in very different contexts). There were decades of struggle, which means people in the past, got up and worked years all without seeing the dam budge an inch, but continuing anyway.

Strictly speaking, one might conclude this isn’t my struggle. But perhaps this mentality of “strictly speaking” needs to change, not for me to fulfill my libidinal demand for moral validation, but because I live on this earth, I breathe the same air, and through roundabout ecological processes actually drink the same water. What modern problems reveal, not just climate change but conflicting national identities, marginalization of people, culture wars, genocides, is perhaps that countries are an outdated cultural model to combat them. The separation of our people into countries impede the emergence of a larger collective, the UN (a half-baked collective) is the best living example of this. Legacy is typically thought of as an individual thing: “What will people have to remember me when I die?” Many people in this situation would despair at their legacy being reduced to a dam that has not fallen, because it says little of them individually by the metrics of achievement that our society so elevates. But it’s not just about one person, it never is. Legacy is always collective and it’s always entrusted to a larger community- your legacy only persists because your descendants and loved ones bear it into the future.

Let me be clear, Kwoneesum is one dam among many others that remain erected. But that’s ok, because the communities involved are on a journey of over 100 years. A decades long journey of litigation and toil that goes far beyond any single person’s life, indeed a journey that goes beyond most peoples’ lifespans. Perhaps similarly, we’re all on a 100-year journey, even a 1000-year voyage as Yukimura Makoto put it in his Vinland Saga. A journey towards a collective destination that persists even after death, one that’s not guaranteed to succeed but will endure if we entrust it to others. And what does the removal of Kwoneesum prove if not that the 100-year journey eventually does lead somewhere?

There’s this moment I keep coming back to in James Gunn’s Peacemaker (spoilers ahead). In the first season, our titular character (played by John Cena) has to overcome the abusive influences of his white supremacist father (played by Robert Patrick), and is forced to kill him in the penultimate episode. Season 2 introduces an interdimensional portal through which Peacemaker stumbles upon an alternate world, where not only are his father and brother still alive but live together as a loving family. Yet, in what is intended as sharp political commentary, Peacemaker is oblivious to the signals that this utopia is in fact, a Nazi dimension. When the deception is revealed (for Peacemaker chooses to permanently replace and masquerade as his doppelgänger), we are shown that this world is a reversal in more ways than one. In contrast to his original father, his alternate father is actually opposed to Nazi values and clandestinely works against them. And James Gunn has Robert Patrick give this phenomenal monologue at the moment of disclosure, where he says:

“I didn’t create the problems in my world, and I don’t agree with them. I applaud you if your world is perfect and you fight every injustice you ever see. Unfortunately I haven’t got the strength for that. I fight the madmen, murderers and monsters in front of me because that’s all I can control. And at the end of my life when I stand in judgement before God, I hope that he knows that I did the best I could, and I left this world a better place than when I came.”

Sadly this revelation comes too late for Peacemaker’s allies, who kill the alt-father under the belief that he remains as evil as the original, if not worse in the Nazi Dimension; leaving the distraught Peacemaker only a few moments to mourn his father a second time, this time mourning him as the good man he might’ve been. But like this monologue expresses, maybe that’s all we can do within this 100-year journey: work on what we can control, do what we can, hope that at the end we have contributed in some small way, and know that we will not make these gestures alone in our struggle to be better human beings. Perhaps this means accepting that whatever choices I make are unlikely to immediately shift the pillars of the world, but certainly does not mean recusing myself from the process and entrusting it to the next generation.