From The Pemmican Eaters. Published by ECW in 2015.
Louis planted his beaded moccasin on the survey chain cutting across André Nault’s river lot pitched there by men slung with transits, levels, and measuring sticks men looking to the horizon calculating the free land for homesteaders “You go no further,” commanded Louis blocking their line of sight their ledger of lines angles, meridians, and parallels corrections for curvature iron stakes at the corners of perfect square miles although over fifty million acres was surveyed made ready ready-made for occupation there were no quarter sections for “the miserable halfbreeds,” “the pemmican-eaters” but any man over eighteen with a vacant quarter in the NWT homesteaded did the survey record in its calculations witness whose lives were fragmented by these precise coordinates? could their instruments determine the number of years Nault had lived and cleared brush harvested firewood on the same land he was now barred from? did the surveyor’s coordinates record the number of letters, the number of signed petitions did it detect the colourless voices of the Settlers’ Rights Association joining in Louis’ protest did their instruments detect their words plain as bread “we have not been consulted in any way as a people entering into the Dominion” where did this penchant for measuring and marking derive? this desire to count and delineate this land account for it rename and grip it like shovels, axes, and saws lug like trunks, steer like plows pile like lumber where did this taste for counting begin its long rooted self calculating angles and slopes long conjuring “empty” land into property the long root of capitalism boring mineral veins drilling wells forcing steam down bored holes extracting dark thick fluids stabbing the land-belly sucking every seam and filling the gaping holes with with the toxic unseen I am told when I survey from the top of a hill I take into account the entire land upon which I stand; I count this place what conjuring does the mind do measuring a hill, the angle of its slope, is it easier to climb? is it in the imagined embrace of mother? minds hover oversee her capture, hold I take into account this entire land land, upon which I stand I count this place I count this space my own when two lines cross, the saleable land is multiplied by two the survey lines that scored this land were so it could be ripped along its edges, cliffs, and deeper memories