why killer whales?
A great question. For a long time, I’ve had dreams and psychic transmissions of the orca, and they’ve always been extremely graphic, leaving an impression on my outlook of the world. It takes a child’s heart to understand the importance of speaking for those who can not speak for themselves. I’d like for this work to be a reflection of that in some way. I feel that, because I have the freedom to speak, it is imperative to, and I feel that the captive cetaceans want me to.
Before I was born as the human who wrote this book, I was Junior, an Icelandic orca captured in November 1984, and housed at a horrid place, until, in 1989 he/I moved to a tank of solitude at Marineland Canada (Niagara Falls). The tank was small and cramped, with no access to direct sunlight or fresh air. Also, it was never quiet. Sounds from surrounding sea lions bounced off the walls and into the water, where (as an orca with exceptional hearing) Junior heard everything and exhibited what is known as ‘stereotypical behaviors’, such as ramming into the wall and gnawing concrete until his teeth were worn down. Junior died on June 1st 1994. He feared he’d die alone, away from his pod, and he almost did. But on April 22nd, 2020 I visited him in a dream, and he was not alone. I was with him.
On March 30th, 1995 at 16:09 EST, I was reborn Kristian Kenneth Thompson, middle named for my father in much the same way Michael Joseph Jackson was. On October 8th, 1998, my name was legally changed to Kristian Austin Wilson. I’ve always found names to be of great importance in the way that we express ourselves. They denote both our relationship with the universe, and with God. They are the call received by us from the universe. In many ways, we become them.
The first video-game I ever played was called Ecco Jr. on the Sega Genesis. Being that it is a game where you have the choice to play as either dolphin or orca, and you utilize your echolocation abilities to find certain crystals, it is no coincidence that (Ecco) Junior was making his presence known through the connections that God gives us in our experiences. I also remember cuddling with my mom in those days, and feeling inklings of the last life as Junior (orcas stay with their mothers for life, so it was likely a healing experience for him/I to have the relationship that I did with her).
Eerily enough, I and my childhood family actually visited Marineland Canada once when I was probably 7 or 8. I don’t remember much from that visit, save for petting a gray beluga whale, but I just thought that it was worth mentioning.
Killer whales have a complex history with humanity. Before they were known for ‘Free Willy’ and Shamu, orcas were feared by western culture. They are, after all, the apex predator of the ocean, which is the most intense habitat on Earth. And yet, there have been zero recorded attacks of wild orcas on humans. It’s almost as if we have some unwritten truce, (one which humans have indeed violated).
On Thursday March 30th, 2023, plans were made to free Tokitae, the orca who had spent the most time of any in captivity at more than 50 years. Not only was this announced on my birthday, (which was also a Thursday back in ’95), but on my moms birthday as well. So there is another connection with the emphasis that the orca have on matrilineal hierarchies. Unfortunately, Tokitae died before she was freed. If she had been freed, there was hope for her to reunite with her mother, Ocean Sun, a long-lived Grand-Mother of L pod of the Southern Resident Killer Whales (an endangered subspecies, with 74 living individuals at the time of this writing).
Knowing that Ocean Sun was predicted to have been born around 1928 brings a certain heaviness to my heart, because it means that these sentient beings are particularly long-lived, and so many of them are wasting their lives away in tiny tanks for the sake of the hypercapitalistic goals of a lost humanity. Furthermore, they have the most gyrified brains of the animal kingdom, meaning that they have the most wrinkles, which means they have the most surface area, which means, in layman’s terms, that they have the most potential for synaptic communication. Also, the part of their brains that rules over empathy is exceedingly larger than ours.
At the time of this book’s publication, 232 orcas have died in captivity at the hands of mans neocolonial ideals. I’m not the first author to juxtapose the Black experience with cetaceans (see ‘Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals,’ by Alexis Pauline Gumbs), but I think I am the first to share my past life concerning the topic. Therefore, I had to highlight the themes and symbolism that God wrote.
