Russel Barsh and his helper, demonstrating water testing

a view of the white board

 
So, a typical example of this island’s penchant for yielding unexpected treasure: We were all invited to the school to learn about testing the water in our wells. About 10 of us showed up, and Russel Barsh and his helper (whose name, alas, I don’t know) had come to the island to teach us a little about the chemistry of our drinking water and its potential contaminants.

He gave a lecture which was extraordinarily interesting, while demonstrating the techniques of using the testing kit that he was leaving with us. His teaching style was casually excellent, relaxed and conversational and somehow just perfect at conveying information in an interesting way.

As I sat down to write this blog post, I thought I should find out who this guy is. Other islanders knew him well enough to invite him; I didn’t know him at all. He was just a really good teacher there in our classroom, hanging out with us in stocking feet (we’re not supposed to wear shoes in the school) and eating the odd potluck medley we’d put on the school counter. So I googled him. And when I first skimmed through the results, I thought – wait, is this a different Russel Barsh? He was what? An attorney with the United Nations on behalf of indigenous peoples worldwide? A teacher at the law schools of NYU, at Dartmouth, at other colleges? An author/explorer/ ecologist?

Here is a quote from a talk he gave somewhere on Marine Protected Areas, which he’s working on in the San Juans:

The three concepts that have a lot of meaning to us within the Samish
community are wealth, cleanliness, and power. Before you go to a ceremony,
or seek power, you bathe yourself. You can draw upon the powers of the
spirit world to give you a hand, but the spirits don’t like the smell of
meanness or anxiousness or conflict, emotional dirt, and you seek them in a
place that is clean because it’s not polluted by human anger and silliness.

Power is our connection with all that has been and ever will be. You find it
in clean places and when you’re clean yourself. When you find that power, it
brings wealth to you. The maintenance of refuges where you don’t hunt or
fish, build camps or fires, to keep areas clean is important for this reason.
Each family looked after family estates that were good oyster and clam beds,
fishing areas and camas areas. Why not insist on doing it the old
way? Which family used to take care of this place? Was this a ‘clean’ place
that was kept specially and why shouldn’t it continue that way? This is a
way of putting the map of responsibilities back on the landscape.

So now the red plastic tote of water-testing equipment, which is currently sitting on our front porch, has WAY more depth and context behind it than I knew. How very very cool.