RADIO ART ARCHIVE
 
Earth Police
1994, 7:00 min.
Leonard Fisher
Earth Police by Leonard Fisher was developed from a live performance Leonard Fisher did at The Banff Centre for the Arts during Radio Rethink. Radio Rethink was a 1994 radio art exhibition and event with accompanying book and CD that I have found to be a helpful resource. In the text, Leonard Fisher writes, “Earth Police is a concept I have been mulling over as a conceptual explanation of what aboriginal people are doing right now in defense of their homelands and territories. They are being Earth Police, monitoring expansion and resource development....I was rethinking radio in terms of waves and energy...I was opening up to the spirits about who I was, what I was about, and trying to receive messages from what was around me...Radio is a tool and a place but it is also a transformational thing.” Fisher adds, “In 1989, I said to myself I am not going into the next century suppressed or under the influence of anybody other than my own community.” After five years of artistic involvement in the Canadian art world and a year after making Earth Police, Leonard Fisher returned to his community in Chilliwack, BC. Chilliwack, B.C. has become a widely-known site of indigenous resistance. In 2020, the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs are maintaining an eviction order to Coastal GasLink to leave the traditional territories of the Wet'suwet'en. Since 2010 land defenders have created camps to prevent Coastal GasLink workers from building a pipeline on these unceded territories. - Described by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow 2019/2020, Karen Werner.