Women+Heart+Earth

Patricia Fero, Michigan psychotherapist and author of "Mining for Diamonds," invaluable nuggets for overcoming adversity and achieving resiliency, has a new book about to be born. Watch for its arrival here: http://www.patriciafero.com

"What Happens When Women Wake Up?" explores 11 personal stories of awakening. The experiences resonate with truth and urgency, and with purpose. Pat identifies the goal of her lifework as "Divine Assignment" and the book is extraoardinary proof of her mission as a guide to personal and planetary transformation.

On page 35 of the book Pat releases us with Permission to Rage. As our planet deteriorates, we must abandon our powerlessness to get well and truly mad. Patricia Fero: "The following essay is a demonstration of laying claim to my anger and using it to mobilize action. I offer this rant in the energy of Mother Bear fierceness. The niceness and pacifity we've been programmed into no longer serves us or our planet."

The book is a Call to Action, and Pat has inspired me to act.

To begin again, I revisited my bookmarks for "Ecology" and checked on the status of the Eagle Project on the Yellow Dog Plains near the Big Two-Hearted River in the Upper Peninsula. Kennecott Minerals (part of Rio Tinto, "a world leader in finding, mining and processing the earth's mineral resources") has been working hard since about 2004 to put an acid sulfide mine in the wilderness near Marquette, MI. This mine will create approximately 100 jobs, maybe for as long as 7 years. This is "creating jobs."

The mine will also net Kennecott about $2.8 billion in profits, and endanger the Salmon Trout River headwaters with acid drainage into the groundwater. No metallic sulfide mine has ever not polluted its watershed.

On April 21, 2009, activists, working for years just as hard as Kennecott, wrangled a stay of execution for the pristine area from Ingham County Circuit Judge Paula Manderfield, who reversed her earlier decision to approve the lease of 120 acres of state land for a copper and nickel mine. Good on ya! Judge Manderfield.

And good on ya' Chauncey Moran and the Yellowdog Watershed Preserve, who have personally checked water quality in the Yellow Dog Plains wilderness, and filed stays, protested at innumeral hearings and gotten decisions reversed over the years. http://www.yellowdogwatershed.org

Revisiting the Rio Tinto dredge mine project in Madagascar revealed that there is review of a SEIS (Socio-Economic Impact Study). Rio Tinto has claimed that the ilmenite mine (a whitener used in plastics and toothpaste) is a model for future mines in Africa and the rest of the underdeveloped world. Rio Tinto presents their mine project proposals as environmentally sound, and a boost to local economies. Rio Tinto has not lived up to its promises to maintain sustainable resources, to compensate local populations for land use, and to keep it clean overall, darn it. Are we surprised?

Redfern Resources Tulsequah Chief Mine suspended operations as reported in Feb. 2009 because of lack of funding, but the court has allowed them a stay of execution through 2010 to continue to seek money to keep the mine going, including building an access road toward Atlin, British Columbia, where the Atlin Art Centre has its wilderness retreat.

But meanwhile, check what Redfern has accomplished in the Sacred Headwaters of the Stikine, Taku and Tulsequah Rivers. Their last effort to expand their Mother Earth gouging was to use hovercraft to transport mine minerals on the Taku River. http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/021809/loc_392505894.shtml

And why is the EPA "powerless" to enforce compliance of US agreements, initially agreed to by the mining companies?

Fortunately, the heroes of the efforts to heal Earth's wounds and restore her vitality are many and strong.

Dr. Wangari Maathai, founder of the Greenbelt Movement in Africa has planted millions of trees, been beaten unconscious for her efforts more than once, fought machete-wielding farmers and corrupt government, and stood on the stage in 2004 to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. http://www.greenbeltmovement.org

These heroes have re-awakened my passion to keep our planet healthy, clean, viable and thriving.

"What Happens When Women Wake Up?" has launched me back into the river of being awake, of acting on my wakefulness, and encouraging others to do the same.

As Patricia Fero has said with insight and clarity: "we are the ones we've been waiting for."

There is no one else. There is no other time. Our generation is the last and only generation who has one foot in the beginnings of the feminist awakening, and one foot in the new dawn.

Get involved. Act locally, heal globally. The Upper Peninsula in Michigan is where my great-grandmother homesteaded from Finland, and its resources and beauty are ours to nourish and preserve.

Find your roots, identify the places where you can help prune, or fertilize. We all have an enormous and profound stake in the survivability of Earth and her treasures. Speak loud and often, act with vigor, get well and truly mad.

Feminine energy, Earth energy is rising. It is inevitable that the Sacred Feminine will wash the Earth clean, staunch her wounds, and restore her to health. We have evidence of this in the fact that Rio Tinto and Redfern are in financial difficulty (due variously to falling metal prices, expenditures related to mandated clean-up and enforced compliance, and the rising costs of court cases). Even so, we must remain vigilant and loud to assure that the injuries made are closely watched. Mining operations that have closed down leak carcinogens into the watershed the abandoned mines still silently abuse.

And it will take Dr. Maathai, Patricia Fero, our sisters, brothers and millions of committed others to trumpet the charge, to give us heroes to emulate and ongoing missions to embrace.

Good on ya', Patricia Fero!