“Flora Banks”
Prints available in store:
http://voicesbook.storenvy.com/collections/1422062-photography/products/18306446-flora-banks-lax-uula-2016
Shot on 35mm B&W Film with no digital editing. Original photograph by Wülfgang Zapf.
50% of all sales goes directly to Land Defenders featured in the Voices Project.
Photo of the Flora Banks at low tide. It is where one generation of salmon cross the next. Located in the channels between Lax’U’u’la and adjacent islands.
Lax U’u’la, is located at the mouth of the Skeena river. Adjacent to the island are the Flora Banks, an area made up of glacial silt from the last ice age where eel grass flourishes. The Flora Banks and the eel grass that grows there is a crucial habitat for young Salmon smolts who as adults will run the Skeena river. The eel grass provides shelter from the strong currents and tides while the smolts acclimatize to their new lives in saltwater and adult salmon re-adjust to begin their journey up the river. This is a place where one generation of salmon passes another. The straight next to Lax U’u’la teams with porpoises, humpback whales pass through the region and wolves hunt the deer who find bountiful food on the island. We were told the ancestors and wild spirits of the animals protect Lax U’u’la.
It is on this small marshy island, covered in berries, ancient cedars and eagle’s nests that Petronas and Pacific North West LNG (PNW LNG) scheme to build an export facility for gas fracked in the North East of so called bc.
There are 8 facilities planned for the Tsimshian’s territories around colonial Prince Rupert.
In August of 2015 five Women of Haida, Gitxsan and Tsimshian descent, with the support of the Hereditary House Leader for the Gitwilgyoots tribe responsible for Lax U’u’la, began an occupation of the Island. Since that moment they have been offering their prayers, utilizing the medicines of the island, raising their children and going out onto the water to courageously stop the work of surveyors hired by PNW LNG. Many warriors and supporters have joined these women in their fight for the land, waters and life.
#waterislife #voicesbook #leluisland #indigenousresistance #bwphotography (at Lelu Island)
https://www.voicesfrontlines.com/flora-banks-prints-available-in-store/
