By Paul Hawken
In the Inuit tradition, there is a story of a fisherman
who trolls an inlet. When a heavy pull on the fisherman’s
line drags his kayak to sea, he thinks he has caught the
“big one,” a fish so large he can eat for weeks,
a fish so fat that he will prosper ever after, a fish so
amazing that the whole village will wonder at his prowess.
As he imagines his fame and coming ease, what he reels up
is Skeleton Woman, a woman flung from a cliff and buried
long ago, a fish-eaten carcass resting at the bottom of
the sea that is now entangled in his line. Skeleton Woman
is so snarled in his fishing line that she is dragged behind
the fisherman wherever he goes. She is pulled across the
water, over the beach, and into his house where he collapses
in terror. In the retelling of this story by Clarissa Pinkola
Estes, the fisherman has brought up a woman who represents
life and death, a specter who reminds us that with every
beginning there is an ending, for all that is taken, something
must be given in return, that the earth is cyclical and
requires respect. The fisherman, feeling pity for her, slowly
disentangles her, straightens her bony carcass, and finally
falls asleep. During the night, Skeleton Woman scratches
and crawls her way across the floor, drinks the tears of
the dreaming fisherman, and grows anew her flesh and heart
and body.
This myth applies to business as much as it does to a fisherman.
The apologists for the WTO want more-engineered food, sleeker
planes, computers everywhere, golf courses that are preternaturally
green. They see no limits; they know of no downside. But
Life always comes with Death, with a tab, a reckoning. They
are each other’s consorts, inseparable and fast. These
expansive dreams of the world’s future wealth were
met with perfect symmetry by Bill Gates III, the co-chair
of the Seattle Host Committee, the world’s richest
man. But Skeleton Woman also showed up in Seattle, the uninvited
guest, and the illusion of wealth, the imaginings of unfettered
growth and expansion, became small and barren in the eyes
of the world. Dancing, drumming, ululating, marching in
black with a symbolic coffin for the world, she wove through
the sulfurous rainy streets of the night. She couldn’t
be killed or destroyed, no matter how much gas or pepper
spray or how many rubber bullets were used. She kept coming
back and sitting in front of the police and raised her hands
in the peace sign, and was kicked and trod upon, and it
didn’t make any difference. Skeleton Woman told corporate
delegates and rich nations that they could not have the
world. It is not for sale. The illusions of world domination
have to die, as do all illusions. Skeleton Woman was there
to say that if business is going to trade with the world,
it has to recognize and honor the world, her life, and her
people.
Skeleton Woman has been brought up from the depths. She
has regained her eyes, voice, and spirit. She is about in
the world and her dreams are different. She believes that
the right to self-sufficiency is a human right; she imagines
a world where the means to kill people is not a business
but a crime, where families do not starve, where fathers
can work, where children are never sold, where women cannot
be impoverished because they choose to be mothers and not
whores. She cannot see in any dream a time where a man holds
a patent to a living seed, or animals are factories, or
people are enslaved by money, or water belongs to a stockholder.
Hers are deep dreams from slow time. She is patient. She
will not be quiet or flung to sea anytime soon.
