welcome to this site--a space for people in activist communities who have faced trauma in actions, people who want to learn about trauma recovery and other generally interested folks. this site was established quickly to get info out to all the people who were assaulted by the police during actions against the ftaa and has grown daily since then. we want to explore issues of mental health as they relate to activist communities--including political trauma, ptsd, dissociation, burnout and how to create healing spaces to work through trauma and sustain the important work we do.

case study -- forest defense camp at owain lake
temagami region of ontario canada -- 1996

written by michelle arsenault
61 morse st. toronto on m4m2p7

excerpts. source:
arsenault, michelle, speaker. crisis intervention and prevention for civil disobedience activists and action support.
national conference on civil disobedience. american university, washington dc, january 22, 2000

[this paper is broken up into negative and positive psychological effects]

negative psychological and psychiatric effects
of organized resistance and civil disobedience

sure, we knew how to tie ropes, climb, encase ourselves in cement, lock ourselves into roads, tree-sit, construct tripods, monkey wrench machinery, stealthily sneak through the night to dismantle a bridge in construction, and even how to speak to media, deal with police and legal processes, drive people from jail, create effective visual displays, guide a tour, build phone trees, fax our politicians, make slide presentations, post bail, etc., etc., etc.— but we did not know how to handle the physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological duress of the organized resistance and civil disobedience actions and related situations we would suddenly be in.

we certainly didn’t anticipate that pre-existing mental illness would be triggered. now i know that of course a high-stress situation can create, expose or trigger psychological and psychiatric vulnerabilities. and that these symptoms may or may not have already been surfaced in that person before - they could be diagnosed or undiagnosed, and some of the activists were still young. specifically i saw symptoms of mood disorders (mania, depression, and bi-polar depression), as well as alcoholism and addiction.

i also saw what i now recognize as acute stress disorder appear, not be recognized and thus fumble undealt with among camp participants.

we didn’t even think to recognize that we were unprepared in these terms, that our actions were potential critical incidents. we naively and nakedly exposed ourselves to a terrible psychological crisis situations. despite are openness, there is so much that we did not know and we did not discuss and we did not debrief. we felt the effects though. and as surely as the potential for incidence of post traumatic stress disorder was alive, it occurred among us."

relevant case study -- backgrounder

further background about this campaign and relevant history can be found at:

• earthroots website: http://www.earthroots.org/ - campaign history link
• bray, matt and thomson, ashley (eds.). temagami: a debate on wilderness toronto: dundurn press, 1990
  specifically recommended: chapter 9 — the native dimensions: key dates — this list was compiled by the teme-augama anishnabi

in autumn of 1996, i spent 6 weeks as an activist and activist support person at the pre-dominantly earthroots-sponsored forest defense camp at owain lake - temagami region of ontario canada.

the land we were defending was unceded teme-augama anishnabi native land. the native people of the region had been government-forced off the land earlier this century and relegated to living to bear island (also in the temagami region). the government then determined the owain lake area to be crown land. for several decades the bear island teme-augama anishnabi fought through legal channels to reclaim this land - land they had never legally signed away.

this land was also an area of old growth red & white pine: an endangered species in north america. the ecology of the area also included several rare or endangered species of vascular plants.

despite the critical nature of the ecology and unresolved land claim issues, as well as many years of public information, media and legal campaigns aimed and defending this area, the ontario government’s ministry natural resources gave goulard lumber of north bay ontario permission to execute an ecologically damaging shelter-wood cut, to commence in sept 1996.

from the beginning to the end, the injustice and corruption were stupefying.

we knew then that this cut was not only ecologically wrong and an injustice to the anishanaabe people, but, in fact it was also actually illegal.

two years later - in 1998 — "owain lake forest defence camp vindicated as the ontario divisional court declares the 1996 temagami forest management plans and associated work schedules failed to comply with the crown forest sustainability act and the forest management planning manual. (february). therefore the logging at owain lake in 1996 was illegal." [earthroots website]

of course we spoke to the government and media about these particular illegalities prior to, during and after the destruction of the owain lake stand. but it wasn’t until the forest was already cut, mines staked, and our 62 arrests (typically charges were "mischief" and "intimidation" — in ontario law "intimidation" means ‘blocking a road’), our time in jail, and fines were already 2 years past (2 years we were out-on-bail: incovenient to travel, make plans with families and employers) that the courts finally acknowledged this illegality. we were in essence arrested, jailed and prosecuted by the ontario government for our attempts to peacefully enforce its own legislation. and of course it was never portrayed by the media this way. and of course we never saw any apology or recompense. further insult to injury, summaries of my ‘dropped’ charges still exist on my police record to this day.

further, several weeks after the cut began, the area was quietly staked for heavy metal mining. like the land rush of an earlier time, a starter’s pistol signaled to hired u.s. university track stars - to run on behalf of mining companies, placing flags on desired pieces of that land. the temagami region has a history of ecologically unsound open-pit mining. practice was that after the economic life of the mine had been exhausted, the pit would fill with water, and then the hydrology of the area with heavy metals, making area water sheds poisonous killers.

many people firmly believed, i still believe, that after all of the forest had been cut, the land devastated beyond any sustainable agriculture and the water poisoned by leaking open pit mines, the ontario government will then, and not until then, ‘grant’ the land to the natives.

despite support for conservation of the land from 75% of the people of ontario (public opinion poll, 1996), wwf spokesperson hrh prince philip duke of edinbourogh, popular scientist david suzuki, former ontario government premier bob rae, author margaret atwood, artist robert bateman, as well as greanpeace and many other individuals and organization, the cut began as scheduled in sept 1996.

protective legislation and the courts had failed. corruption, greed, injustice and significant irreparable ecological damage - a man made disaster zone - were evident.

"we’ve been front-line eye-witnesses to an on-going man made disaster daily for 3 months. it has destroyed 1000’s of acres of habitat, old growth forest, unceded teme-augama anishnabi land. this disaster is the result of a illegal act. it could have been prevented, we have been trying to prevent it. but now all of the damage is nearly done. we are mortified by the devastation of the land around us; by the 10’s of thousands of what were old-growth trees we now watch being incessantly wheeled down the road on their backs; by the injustice that this illegal disaster has been permitted, and that this act is being protected by law enforcement despite the fact that it is illegal.

we feel alienated, isolated: while, people we speak with outside of the direct situation actually agree that it may be unethical, they think us as deluded lunatics for stating that it is illegal: because if it were illegal, why is law enforcement spending a half of a million dollars to prevent anyone from stopping the act?

beyond repeatedly arresting and incarcerating us, they wasted money on surveillance: night vision goggles, infiltrating the camp, sound bugs. helicopters and at one point, we had to travel through 7 opp checkpoints to get to the campsite. on crown land.

it has become a war for us. one front in a global war. a war of supreme overiding importance. either we sustain ecology on this planet or we will die. these values are not significantly recognized by most people we meet in our everyday lives.

we are however directly recognized and supported by people as far away as hrh prince phillip (on behalf the wwf), david suzuki, margaret atwood, farely mowat, greenpeace, earth first!, the mohawk nation and the american indian movement. we are very aware that we are their warriors. and the world is watching: regular visits from press across canada, and we’re also getting coverage from the nytimes and the bbc.

our names and faces make the news back home, where we’re definitely a topic of discussion. our identifiable body-marks and fingerprints make it into police and likely csis files. we’re cautious in our e-mail and phone calls. sometimes, i don’t know if i’m being neurotic and paranoid or simply safe and realistic. we believe the camp is bugged.

the issues and our actions and campaigns, and monitoring during all of this time are complex, demanding, and for the most part, well organized. we have funding. we are environmental resource grads, biologists, ecologists, journalists, teachers; greenpeace, earthroots. we are determined empathic activists from all walks: earth first!ers. former clayquot sound arrestees, treeplanters and yes, more than just a few hippies kids. we are people whose spiritual values and ways of life are, in are sight, being unapologetically devastated, stolen and disrespected: local traditional trappers, native mohawk spiritual leaders from kanasataghe (oka) and teme-augama anishnabi from bear island.

we are a small genuine community of determined and skilled and angry and frustrated people living a camp that is as close as we can create to permaculture (solar energy, grey water, etc), in northern ontario boreal "bush". definitive capital-w ‘wilderness’, in late autumn snow storms, 75 km down a logging road in —20 something celsius temperatures. these days, it is an uncommon experience in itself to live in such an alternative community and winter wilderness conditions. in itself this is an adjustment. for me, these aspects of our living situation are often a beautiful, cherished, very positive learning experience.

i am suddenly a warrior. i am not alone at being at a point where if laying down my own life would actually protect that land, i would do so. grateful to ended the destruction.

from the values and perspectives of some people, such issues are tangible matters of life and death in terms of the threat imposed on all life’s survival on this planet.

i never knew i could feel this frustrated. sometimes it is so hard not to resort to violence or certain property destruction. what was i taught about war in school? - to take out transportation, means of destruction and communication. occasionally clandestine groups quickly form and do.

but i have come to realize that even though i am willing to give my own life, to do so is impotent here. i never knew i could be this powerless.

some of the activists have families who aren’t particularly supportive - my common-law partner of 5 years has left me as a result of my stance, others have been thrown out of their parents’ homes for their involvement. other activists have spent too long up here, without an income to pay rent and have thus become homeless. some people we know are even angry with us. or think of us as "unstable" or deluded.

every now and then, mostly individually, we go back to "civilization." surprisingly to me, urbanization already feels like a culture-shock. while visiting toronto, one of us hid under a restaurant table, unable to cope. and, although, at camp, we can’t even pickup radio signals, we find that there is, in civilization, a concurrent alternate (and occasionally grossly distorted) reality narrated by the great deal of media-attention about our actions. as a result, on these occasions when we do get out of the bush, we are each suddenly treated very differently by people (be it new acquaintances, community groups, friends or family) and we suddenly see that we are suddenly perceived and characterized as many things: heroic in stature by some, ridiculous and unstable by others. irregardless, we are now ‘different’: distinguished, freaks, radicals, courageous, selfless, selfish, set apart, exemplified, objectified, and / or examined.

no - we are not categorically against logging. forests when sustainably managed are a generous resource in the fact that they are renewable. i thus champion sustainably managed forests as an energy and product resource. i do not however champion unsustainable forestry, destruction of endangered genetic material, massive irreversible ecological damage to habitat, injustice and corruption. regardless, i know that we are often mislabled as ignorant unsound idealistic tree huggers. this is offensive. i feel at the very least, misunderstood, belittled, ignored, betrayed, disillusioned, powerless, discriminated against and persecuted.

the devastation is and eye-level, morning noon and night, continuously. there’s not much left. it is imperative that it stop now.

in the wilderness, people can and do become lost. the threat of serious injury (particularly due to exposure, frostbite and hypothermia) is very real. in running reconnaissance or getting to an action site we have navigated / orienteered miles in dark, cold and wet night wilderness — although it’s been rare, people have become injured and lost here. informally, we learn, out of necessity, fear or interest, how to provide for ourselves in the wilderness - how to build shelters, mark safe drinking water sources, navigate by the sky, emergency first aid. a native elder teaches me (a vegan) how to snare rabbits and catch grouse. i am grateful. the only other food recognizable to me that is still available are now frozen mint leaves and berries. i constantly carry lighters, matches, wire for a snare, dry socks, a compass and trail mix. but i learn that i will dehydrate if i don’t have a greater ratio of potable water than the amount of protein i ingest.

our bodies are changing noticeably, from the cold, in terms of where the fat goes on them. we crave fat. most of us are vegans tho. we now try to fry a lot of food.

we have grieved. we have mourned.

this is now our warzone. this is now our home. we are now our family. we are changed people. - our roles, our interdependence, the way we live our days, our common values, community, our very necessary purpose here, the length of time that we’ve been separated from so-called civilization (we can’t even pick up radio; and the solar generators power for the satellite is unreliable), what our eyes take notice of and the primal memory of senses and bodies, now in an anciently ingrained wilderness survival mode tells us this is so.

a few of us stay in camp / on the front-lines until the bitter end. 3 months in total — sept 1^st - november 30^th 1996. we’ve lost this stand. we strike camp in knee deep snow, 75 km down a logging road, in the last eastern canadian tract of wilderness. we’re exhausted by all of the actions we’ve engaged in, and the devastation and corruption we’ve seen. we all disperse, and go back to whatever is left of what were our homes before this experience. we went home as individuals, mostly scattered among ontario cities. initially, i kept in touch with some other camp participants by e-mail. we were pretty bent out of shape, had difficulty readjusting to and redefining our lives. we had lost much of the normal rhythms patterns that had constituted our days (both before and during camp). our previous social supports (both before and during camp) had changed. many of us are now financially broke. many of us had left our jobs (in my case, my own business) to dedicate ourselves to the camp and now had to find employment. we have criminal records or are out-on-bail. some of us are so culture-shocked by urbanity versus eco-vegan camp bush wilderness, we go home only to leave again with tents on our backs, in december, to go anywhere in the woods, including local ontario woodlots, because this civilization no longer makes sense. others drink a lot of booze. or incur large gambling debts. or make rash decisions to quit careers and move across the country. others remain in jail over christmas.

on nov 30^th 1996 we struck down camp. it was no longer safe (threat of being snowed in: the cell phone didn’t always have power: how could we handle a serious medical emergency) or effective: we had lost that stand. watch it all happen front row seat. it was bigger than anything else in our lives.

we get off after 2 years, because yes it was illegal, and that was our defense all along. but the damage has been done, the forest and habitat, it’s ecology are gone. and will soon be full of open pit mines and look like the moon, and then, maybe, they’ll give it back to natives.

to this day, most folks i talk to still find this story to be what crisis interventionists would call "a unique experience beyond the realm of normal activity". it was by definition, a crisis.

the actions were hard. i cannot emphasize enough how, in my opinion, how many organized resistance and /or cd actions are in themselves critical incidents, meeting the defining criteria.

the potential for resulting psychological injury is increased by the fact that in actions, despite the best planning, experience and best people who are participating, things can quickly go wrong and do.

the 2 strategies of the action that i was arrested in were simple:

1. block a road:

the sleeping dragon:

place an arm length steel pipe (with small steel crossbar welded to across one of the ends) vertically (crossbar end in 1^st) into a large container. pour cement around but not in it. let dry. —dig a slightly larger whole than this cement shape into the road. place cemented steel pipe inside (crossbar end 1^st). fill outside gaps with cement, or in our case just stones and water — it froze fast. have a person lay on the road, place their hand into the sleeping dragon and handcuff themselves to the crossbar. (note: the opp ontario provincial police and rcmp special forces units were particularly impressed by this one. it takes enough time to free someone from it - definitely enough time for the press to make it into the wilderness).

also, one tripod-sitter on the road

2. and disable a bridge (this is where i was):

4 of us, in 2 pairs, locked down to a bridge; laying flat on the top of the bridge, we reached down between beams to handcuff are arms together in lock-boxes around bridge support beams. since our hands/ lock-boxes were under the bridge, they were to high above the water for the police to reach from below — they would have to use chainsaws to saw beside us into the bridge support beams (rather than into the lock boxes as is the usual case) to release us.

things that didn’t go according to plan that day included (but were by no means limited to): myriad effects of hypothermia (hallucinations, psychosis, inability to reason), frostbite, unanticipated brands of difficult to endure police compliance techniques, unexpectedly prolonged duration of the action (the police stated and enforced compliance technique for that particular day was to leave us locked own for hours, it was the standard —22c cold windy weather ), neglectful (distressed) support workers, reaction to the physical stress of being locked down, the stress of being locked down to someone who is in distress, unexpectedly tightening cuffs that reduce blood circulation, suddenly realizing that we could even temporarily discretely or otherwise release ourselves to get a medical assessment of injuries (frostbite).

despite my exposure and experience as a support worker in prior actions, and the fact that i had thoughtfully chose to express myself in the exact form of action i was involved with, i didn’t choose many of the unanticipated events that subsequently unfolded:

in my case, to have most all of my freedom of movement restricted for 9 and a half painfully contorted hours eventually became a quiet psychological torture. the 1^st 6 hours were fine enough, but level of stress i would feel in that last 3 and a half hrs i simply had not anticipated. later, i read somewhere like in an amnesty international piece, that "restricting freedom of movement" is in itself, not surprisingly to me anymore, a very effective means of torture.

we had locked down without gloves (i don’t know what happened with communications that night, but at 5am we suddenly believed that the constant police presence on the road was near and was about to interrupt our action before we had even started it — we had suddenly rushed, in a sleep-deprived yet action-buzzed state of mind, without any hand or wrist protection to lock down). we thought that are hands would be safe anyways: we knew that someone had brought packs of those chemical handwarmers — but, one after another, they didn’t work. hence, the girl i locked-down with began to get frostbite on the hand i was also cuffed to. remember: our bare hands are in a steel lock box under a windswept bridge. also, the cuff was tightening with her movements and restricting blood flow to her hand. after awhile our hands were so cold and disabled we couldn’t get ourselves out of the situation if we wanted to. how did we know this? as a result of her frostbite, she tried, then i tried, discreetly, to simply manipulate either the handcuff key, or the carbeaner that the chains of our cuffs were fastened by, to temporarily unlock and readjust ourselves ourselves — but we couldn’t. we were locked down for as long as the police decided we would be. we discussed all this quietly between us, and we decided that we were both ready and willing to suffer it out. most people didn’t even know that this private situation was occurring. among those who did, no one questioned or interfered with our decision.

unable to unlock ourselves, our health was then de facto in the hands of the police. the police pointedly stated that they had no intention of "getting us down / unlocking / removing us" too soon.

our conditions became physically painful. it was a greater test of stamina and endurance than we had anticipated.

the six of us who locked down that day began to get hypothermia and accordingly exhibited appropriate symptoms of mental impairment, hallucinations and distress. none of knew at the time that this was characteristic of hypothermia. none of us knew what acute or critical incident stress, crisis etc, were by definition. we were simply inexplicably and somewhat unknowingly-to-ourselves losing our minds. and in ignorance, and in the circus of events, no one there seemed to even accurately notice that.

circus? — while 5 out of the 6 of us were locked into positions where are bodies were flush against ground level, in contrast, 20 members of a school field trip, half-dozen or more members of the media, 20 police, a dozen or more loggers, and other camp participants were mostly standing.

we were covered with so many blankets that i now realize that we no longer resembled human forms. we resembled bean furniture and tables, and after about 6 hours, people began to act accordingly: speaking and eating over us, not fully acknowledging us.

we became in a sense invisible as people. we were objects. they couldn’t even hear us over some of the noise when we spoke: who ever speaks to you from ankle level? due to the covering we were under, even our body language was invisible. it became a social scene for those standing (and i am happy for them: actions can be a joyful morale building experience), however, after awhile, we were simply not a part of that that party. we couldn’t bend our heads to see, we were too covered up to be seen, too low down to be heard… too often unacknowledged. and all the while, we were under more physical and emotional distress than, i believe anyone there, including ourselves, realized. this aspect of the action was very isolating and alienating and difficult to endure. i felt very separated from the situation. like i was watching tv. even then i knew that no one there picked up on what we were going through. we were not able to breakthrough the isolation: the fact that others were simply not aware of it, that none of us had anticipated it, coupled with the hypothermia (drowsiness, difficulty in thinking and in speech), we weren’t in any shape to begin to communicate or try to articulate it in order to come to terms with it.

after a while the police turned the action into a crime scene wherein it would be illegal for our support workers to go into the area to give of food or water or adjust our clothing/covering from the cold. inexplicably, loggers and press were however still allowed on the site. interestingly, they turned out to be good company to me and the girl i was locked down with. talking, joking with and feeding cigarettes to us.

funny - although i knew they were going to cut us off of the bridge, for some reason, it had never crossed my mind to pre-visualized that act. somehow in planning, i had skipped over that part in my brain, instead likely mentally check-marking the usual sight of slow handsaws on metal. i wasn’t prepared. i never in my life planned on hearing the deafening noise, smelling the hot sawdust, and actually feeling the friction’s heat of a chainsaw less than an inch from my head as it cut into the beam of a bridge. (stoned on hypothermia as i was, that really got my attention. remarkably surreal, one hell of a rush, unforgettable. and paradoxically, i laughed! with my eyes wide-the-fuck-open-wow! i wasn’t going to miss a second of this!) the chainsaw’s proximity to the head: we did not see that one coming, at all. regardless, suddenly that was part of what they did to extricate four of us. they had given us a protective visor, placed a thin but apparently safe plastic divider between our head and the chainsaw, but still, not much can immediately prepare you for that. one activist, who i could only hear (i was in a contorted position unable to view much at all) was being cut away before me. he began screaming, in uncontrollable horror! i couldn’t see anything that was happening. they immediately stopped cutting (and apparently checked him out, he wasn’t being physically hurt, rather, psychologically, the stress of the situation had just become that overwhelming for him.) then, without telling us what just happened, they started up the chainsaw again. the girl i was locked to met my eyes. each of us had tears welling, understanding that this had been a very long hard day, and a very different day than we had bargained for.

as part and parcel of our cd actions, we were also, 62 of us in total, individually intermittently briefly jailed for non-violent actions during this time. prison (maximum security for the men, medium security for the women), in my experience, was a vacation. a respite of warmth, and cozy, clean and light weight clothes and bedding, with hot running water, non-life threatening climatological and environmental elements, and meals and drinking water you didn’t have to unthaw or even work to prepare. it was the rest i needed after the ordeal of some of these actions. however, i shared my 3 concurrent cells with an activist who soon could no longer cope with being confined. she was agitated, irritable, fearful anxious and angry. she began to lose her wits, yelling and desperately pacing. she was distressed that we had gone beyond 24 hours in jail without having ‘juris prudence.’ she was stressed for a cigarette and a tampon and even at least one damn piece of toilet paper. she was stressed that despite all of her yelling for a guard we hadn’t seen one in more than 6 hours: "aren’t you disturbed by that?" she asked, "i mean, i could kill you and no one would be here to stop me!" —i had just met this girl the night before. ultimately, she was simply scarily over-the-top, don’t-know-why, losing-it, fucking stressed. neither one of us had ever been in jail. how we would react was a crapshoot that we hadn’t even given much thought to in respect to it being a part of our action. in my case, i submitted very well to confinement. it represented the safe end of a successful yet very strenuous difficult action. in her case, it prompted acute stress (and / or exacerbated the undiffused stress of the action we coming from).

that action met criteria of a critical incident.

i believe that i personally developed post traumatic stress disorder and subsequently became suicidal for months. one night weeks after i left camp, i was inside of a small carolinian (e.g. deciduous trees: appearance very dissimilar to conifers like pine) forest. i suddenly entirely believed / hallucinated that i was surrounded by majestic cathedrals of soon to cut old growth white pines. i was literally hugging them so happy to see them alive. minutes later when i realized where i really was, and that i had been in a vivid hallucination for all of the several minutes prior, i felt, in a metaphorical sense that i was in an earthquake: that the ground beneath my feet, the ground that my sanity was tenaciously tethered to, would not stop shaking. i cried. it felt like things were spinning. i then looked for a place, in the snow covered winter forest to sleep for the night. dry pine needles, dry wood to burn, overhead canopy etc.; this was inappropriate: i was staying with friends who were approximately a half-hours hike away. i believe that this wilderness shelter-seeking behaviour was simply a conditioned-response i learned at camp when faced at times with the very real prospect of being lost in the wilderness. the next day, i arranged accommodation in a rural wooded-area cabin for myself to stay at indefinitely. the urban world, the world at large no longer made sense to me and seemed to violate my beliefs. instead, however, when i returned my urban apartment from that trip, i was unable to even make it back to that cabin: i had immediately withdrawn almost entirely from human contact. i couldn’t answer the phone or even open mail for months. i put masking tape over the peephole on my door. i couldn’t work. i was soon broke. i couldn’t even make a welfare appointment. a friend started leaving food at my door. afterawhile, my door was posted with an eviction notice (non-payment of rent). homelessness was imminent. like i said, i ultimately became suicidal, and required medical intervention. the treatment given to me was exclusively for manic-depression, specifically the depressive aspects the time, not any treatment or recognition ptsd (by myself or others). the activist experience i had went through was very foreign to the physicians treating me, and was regarded as a symptom (a manifestation of the kind of trouble one can get into during an ‘episode’) and not at all as a potential cause of my illness.

it took about 8 hard months, but i eventually recovered to the point of being able to work and to begin to rebuild my health and my life.

organized resistance and/or cd actions — *positive* psychological effects

please note: i feel it essential to qualify that, despite the trauma around and inside of us, we also grew as people and as a community in many positive aspects. we learned new skills and developed existing and new-found interests. the skills, personal qualities and life experiences of the participants were fascinating, and impressively accomplished. it is very empowering to take a very public stand for something that you believe in to your deepest core; to tangibly directly assist in a critically important movement. to exercise your beliefs. to forever become a part of the long proud diverse global history of civil disobedience, direct action, conscientious objection: justice and positive change. i am privileged to have acquired the gifts of such strength, courage, dignity, integrity and awareness from this experience. my participation there as both an arrested-activist and general camp participant expanded my social-political and ecological conscious, gave me greater self-awareness and assisted me in making changes to live in a more positive, gentle and authentic manner. in these respects it has positively marked the course of my life and my daily living to this day.

how it worked out -- today

1 year later: significant success: of the 7 ontario old growth white and red pine stands that had been slated for cut in 1997, none were. we believe that our campaign in 1996 had direct bearing on their preservation.

2 years later: all charges against all of us were dismissed: it had played itself out in the courts. in deed we had won on our defense, that indeed the cut was illegal.

3 years later. i have never returned that region, and have become, for the most part, inactive in related environmental cd movements. many things associated with that trauma fills me with much anxiety — for example i declined, with significant dread, an invitation to go on a temagami canoe trip with my current boyfriend this past summer. i really didn’t think that i could psychologically cope w/ being in such a similar landscape again. despite my distance from the area, i imagine that owain lake is likely coming closer to looking the goddamned moon, and i know that the land claim still unresolved.

and i know that i’m both enriched, wiser and still scarred up by all that i witnessed and learned there. i might have remained active in cd had i known all that i am telling you now. and i might yet become active again, because i am finally learning just what it was that went so wrong.

4 years later — today. i wrote all of the above one year ago. it was necessary and good to process it. i remember crying as i wrote. i learned a lot more about crisis intervention etc. - that definitely helped. i’ve recognized the positive application of this whole experience and spoke about in washington. that in itself helped — seeing and hearing the immediate understanding, recognition and common shared experience of what i described. i’ve finally recovered. i feel good. i know that others can benefit from this education and insight. this education, these skills, are the best of what i can offer to activism, sustainable life, justice, and positive change. as a facilitator of these skills, i’m ready to be involved in activism again. although i haven’t been back to owain lake yet, i spent a peaceful vacation in an area near the temagami region last summer — without bail restrictions, and without any incident.