The Wrong Side of the Tracts: Abstract, Extract, Distract

“Now they worry and they hurry and they fuss and they fret
They waste your nights and days
Them, I will forget
You, I’ll remember always”
- Bob Dylan, from “Workingman’s Blues #2”

”Crazy Horse
We Hear what you say
One Earth, one Mother
One does not sell the Earth
The people walk upon
We are the land
How do we sell our Mother?
How do we sell the stars?
How do we sell the air?”
- John Trudell “Crazy Horse”

Adults, teens and some kids got duped. The slick, climate confidence tricksters distracted people by fixating on CO2 air quality and temperatures at the expense of the very land you're standing with.

"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" they shouted, hurling numbers, measurements, and projections at the dart board of your mind so they could usher in a trendy era greenwash cash cow – buy now and save the planet! Their rewrite of Henny Penny more like the fox guarding the hen-house for an ugly penny i.e. billions. Fixating on the sky while habitats being mined and destroyed beneath the very land you're standing with, but are you, too, yearning for a piece of that pie in the sky?

There's an African saying, "No one shows a child the sky.” I interpret that as: Children naturally look to the sky, there is an innate knowing and rapport, they don’t need to be told. Yet if overly instructed, children can miss out on the wonder of finding out and experiencing for themselves. If manipulated, children and adults can be misled.

My proof of how all that seeps into the mainstream everyday society is via web-searching for a few days to find a corded weed trimmer because I don't enjoy the gas fumes or noise from the old one; virtually every trimmer and other such gadgets, including vacuums, now use lithium batteries.

“As of February 29, 2024 an estimated 21,897 active, filed, and submitted placer claims, have been located in Nevada, presumably for lithium or lithium brine in 18 different hydrographic basins,” not to mention the rest of the world, and already destruction of sacred Native lands at Thacker Pass/Peehee Mu'huh in so-called Nevada. A case of destroy the land out west so the suburban east and elsewhere can feel good about greenwashed tools that are helping to protect the environment by destroying it! By the way, the cost of trimmer and electric cord was much less expensive than the others.

The sky story (not to diminish actual air quality issues and other data) is a textbook distraction or dis-tract attention, the word meaning “dis-” “away from” and “tract” “tracts of land and water.” Yet “distract” is step three of a simplified three-stage “tract” pattern of colonialism and disaster capitalism.

First comes “abstract” from “ab-” “to draw away from” & “tracts of land and water.” Abstract so as to get your attention in your head and disregard the feet and heart and soul of things. A prime example comes from Dr. Tink Tinker (Osage – Wazhazhe); the conversion of land into “property” which “chopped up our Grandmother [Earth] into pieces.”

Fast-forward to bizness lingo:

“A tract of land is a well-defined piece of property with specific boundaries.

• It plays a key role in real estate transactions, zoning regulations, and property disputes.

• It can range from small residential lots to extensive commercial developments.

• Knowing what constitutes a tract of land is essential for demarcating property lines.”

Yet not even a homeowner’s God’s little acre backyard is sacred. In the 1950s chemical companies turned the medicinal Dandelion Nation into an abstract noun, “weed,” then got brainwashed yard-gardeners to poison (a form of extraction) the dandelions; thus distracting people from the medicinal values available from the very land they were standing with.

Number 2 is “extract” — from “ex-” “draw out of” & ”tracts of land and water.” Abstracting consciousness – which is a cutting off of empathy and recognition of the very substances that nurture us — enables the extractive industry mechanism to proceed without a care. Most of the extraction has to do with mining minerals and pumping oils, yet chopping down trees for solar panel 'fields' or another Amazon “fulfillment center” warehouse is another form of extraction, especially if you're a tree whose deep roots are ‘drawn out of the Earth.’

Number 3 is “distract” — so as to keep your consciousness away from Land and Water, so as to enable the extractive industry to continue as if it's normal business as usual. Distractions run the gamut from the more immediate and in your face corporate media, tabloid news and mainstream so-called culture to longstanding institutionalized religions that dis-empower people by keeping them at a distance from their direct and personal relating with Mother Earth and Spirit. Plus there’s the educational system as Information Factory, or as Birgil Kills Straight (Oglala Lakota) summed up the systemic process, “They cut you off from your heart, stick you in your head, and manipulate you out of a book.” Yet: “No one shows a child the sky.”

Though not specifically included in the “tract” etymology, Air can be considered an extension of Land and Water since what is done to them often affects the Air.

All of Land and Water as Property
The two more recent, mostly hidden, insanities are:
1): deep-sea mining
“Deep sea mining is the extraction of minerals from the ocean floor at depths of 200 metres (660 ft) to 6,500 metres (21,300 ft). Deep-sea mining uses hydraulic pumps or bucket systems that carry deposits to the surface for processing.”

What could go wrong?

My investigative call to the Octopus has not been returned. I pray they are ok.

2): The NYSE valuing of all of Nature aka Mother Earth as an “asset class.” I read about that in 2021 but don't recall hearing of anything else until an interview with Rebecca Adamson (Cherokee) on First Voices Radio (FVR), well-worth the listen.

From a 9/14/2021 article: “NYSE and Intrinsic Exchange Group Partner to Launch a New Asset Class to Power a Sustainable Future”:

“This new asset class on the NYSE will create a virtuous cycle of investment in nature that will help finance sustainable development for communities, companies and countries,” said Douglas Eger, CEO of IEG. “Together, IEG and the NYSE will enable investors to access nature’s store of wealth and transform our industrial economy into one that is more equitable.”

You have to have money to invest, so the “virtuous cycle of investment in nature” con game is rigged from the get-go. And, “more equitable” is an oxymoron because “equitable” is “just and fair, equal,” therefore ‘equal is equal’ and “more equal” is bullshit. Then again, the masters of fine print manipulation may be referring to another dictionary definition of “equitable” along the lines of the title of Peter d’Errico’s book Federal Anti-Indian Law: The Legal Entrapment of Indigenous Peoples – “of or relating to rights historically enforced in courts of equity.”

In an article by Whitney Webb and Mark Goodwin from 2/8/2024, “Tokenized, Inc: BlackRock’s Plan To Own The Fractionalized World,” there’s an excellently concise analogy summary of the current potential global disaster: “Nature, the New Gold.”

History 101 shows a progression:
- gold rush, gold
- black gold, oil
- white gold, lithium
But now the powers that do too much are going for the whole kit and caboodle: Nature/Mother Earth as gold. This should bring shudders to anyone with an ounce of empathy. Or else, another line from Trudell’s “Crazy Horse”: ”Mirrors gold, the people lose their minds.”

As highlighted by Rebecca Adamson in the FVR interview, also in on the deal is Bloom23, a slickly-worded website proclaiming “protecting nature” and working with “BIPOC” [Black, Indigenous, (and) People of Color], yet it's all under the banner of business, or more accurately, as the website name attests to, GreenBiz.

Here’s a blurb from Theresa Lieb, Sr. Director, Nature and Food Systems:
"Biodiversity has quickly become a hot topic for companies and investors. At Bloom 23, the flourishing group of nature-focused business leaders will come together with policymakers, entrepreneurs, Indigenous groups and other key stakeholders to transform rising awareness into real progress."

Sounds pretty good, right? But a FAQ spill$ the bean$:
”Who attends Bloom 23?
The majority of attendees will come from Fortune 500 companies, investment and insurance firms, service providers, leading nonprofits and government agencies. Experts from community organizations, academia and nature tech startups will also participate.”

Indigenous Peoples have been doing “nature tech” for thousands and thousands of years. For one in-depth example, read the book Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence by Gregory Cajete.

According to Rebecca Adamson’s article “Water + Indigenous Peoples Rights = Risk”, 3/8/2024:
“80% of the planet’s remaining biodiversity is within Indigenous territories along with 40% of the terrestrial areas, 33% of the intact forest landscapes and 70% of tropical forests.”

So there’s the not new battle line, as most at risk from such investments are Native/Indigenous Peoples on the front lines — and “nature focused” woke inclusivity won’t stop the destruction.

The least one can do is to de-abstract the thinking process so as to access the true nourishing energies; be wary of any and all extractive processes; and minimize being distracted from caring about Land and Water — and maximize actually caring for Land and Water by doing whatever you can to thwart those who see dollar signs instead of true gold: Sunlight amplifying Daffodil, Forsythia, Dandelions, Marigolds, Freesia, Black-Eyed Susan, Goldenrod . . . . .