This is a great article. As a teacher, like Igor, I object most to the woke indoctrination in schools, as with land acknowledgements. Students are fed lies on a daily basis without the educational right to question or disagree. Schools have become brainwashing centres for an ancient part of the population that grifts and for politicians who virtue signal for votes.
When I was a kid we sang O Canada in the morning at school and the teacher read "The Lord's Prayer," which we all recited. O Canada was sung before most public ceremonies, now I mostly hear it at sports games. Now we have "Land Acknowledgements," not only at schools but before every ceremony or public meeting. They have replaced all other forms of national and religious ritual prior to these events, and in schools. I've been to music and arts events where the acknowledgement goes on to become a condemnation of Western society, an original sin for disrupting what was allegedly a pristine "Garden of Eden."
Post-factum verbal land grabs have become an involuntary national yawn... #historyhasbeendecided
When I think of my young daughter's astonishment that I did not know the hand gestures to the local tribe's new anthem (a karaoke type sing-along played with video prior to the National anthem of
Canada!) During a recent graduation ceremony from a school district in BC, I am reminded of the level of indoctrination and inculcating effort heaped on the psyche of my children as they enter the wider world. What is the message to take away in our youth as a "new western" country? Were we not born at Vimy and Juno shedding our Canadian blood upon foreign soil in freedom's name?
Apparently, I have drawn the ire of "parochial", self-appointed demigods recently. Those held aloft in their perches of vice-regal superintendent status by attendants of oak & ivy loyalty! A letter was dispatched from a plebian to a patrician, as a footnote, it aimed at inclusion, diversity and equity...
As follows:
"Lands of Canada Acknowledgement:
I/we would like to thank those settlers and newcomers who brought their science, knowledge, skills, trade, craft, art, music, tools, daring, courage and determination to forge a new prosperity in harmony with our Earth, here in what is now known as the continent of North America, owned by no one in particular but the people who inhabit, pay taxes for the services provided by the industries built for the betterment and quality of life we enjoy; from: hospitals, schools, road and rail to hydro, wind and heat keeping our families warm and last but not least our military who stand on guard for thee. "God keep our land glorious and free... In all thy sons command." - Long Live the King!"
PS - Feel at liberty to substitute "Kallipolis" for 'Kanada' ;-)
There’s a great book written in the 1850s “The History of the Ojibway People” by a guy who spoke ojibway and gathered many stories from the chiefs. (Torturing captured enemies by fire, to death, including children was common.) There are excellent stories too. But you begin to think maybe it is for the best that other “ways of knowing” were introduced to them. Which is not to diminish their superb survival skills. (There is a story about witch doctors that is horrifying, sobering and inspiring-in how they were defeated.) At one point i went to a blanket exercise that was vivid yet one sided. Some attendees were emotionally destroyed by the end. It was all true but half-true because so much is left out that hides the full humanity of these peoples. Both heroic and horrific. I descend from the miq maq so when the feather came to me to share at the end i gave the other side as gently and respectfully as possible. The indigenous woman running it respected and appreciated my input. I was pleasantly surprised. Our relatives lived in the same small town and look similar to her.
The church who hosted it had for years preached against “rules rituals and routines that keep people from god.” But weeks later they were doing smudging remotely via zoom on a Sunday morning service livestream. The smoke is meant to purify the air from evil spirits. Do you think that the grandfathers who designed it did so presuming the smoke travels via web-cam across the internet to anyone watching so the air in their apartment in the sky is cleaned? This also does not recognize the creator’s power to cleanse us without any magic efforts of our own. So it seemed a miss from both perspectives. In real life i can smell the sage at least.
When the speaker begins their “Land Ownership Acknowledgment” could one stand up & say “not I, thank you”?
Leave, then return?
Raise a hand during & afterward ask “what exactly was that about?”
Seriously though…
If only I were a performance artist who could flagellate myself with a copy of the TRreport. “Woe! I’m a genociding-settler! Send me back to where I came from!”
"Is there a practical way to politely resist?" Not for kids in public schools, that's for sure. Acceptance and belonging are so important to school-age kids, and the ostracism that would follow any type of resistance would be crippling for a child, unless the entire student body resisted en masse, which is not going to happen. No doubt some students do (or will eventually) raise questions, because they don't realize how the repercussions will impact them. To get back into the good graces of their teachers and fellow students, they'll have to undergo "compassionate re-education" until they're ready to pretend along with their peers.
The real truth of this entire fiasco. 1 Lies 2 Money grab 3 Land grab 4 Falsehoods 5 Government lies 6 Indigenous fairy tales 7 Media corruption
It would appear that the only persons believing the narrative laid down by that infamous so called Truth Commission are Trudeau & his lackies, a few other whacko NDP types and the uneducated sheeple
To attempt to go backwards and rewrite history is a non-starter and nothing worthwhile can come from that. people from any race that continually whine and moan "oh woe is me" do nothing but wallow in a self pity that does absolutely nothing to make things better for themselves.
I would suggest they show some gumption, develop some self esteem stop drinking and or using drugs, clean yourself up get some education and a job and break that circle of everlasting reliance on other people to supply you with the necessities of life.
A few years back a friend shared with me this "Indigenous World View" video that she and her fellow employees had been required to watch as part of their Indigenous awareness training. It's about 5 minutes long, and you've probably seen similar productions if you're still in the world of work. This one was made in 2014, and has probably been replaced with something more sophisticated in the DEI curriculum, but it's still worth a shudder, er, I mean, a share. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?view=detail&mid=92A78860DA60E855E68A92A78860DA60E855E68A&q=indigenous
This video mirrors the ongoing idea that Indigenous ways are good and superior, and Western ways are evil and destructive, although the video speaks in generalities and doesn't give specifics. The Inuit in the film, for example, seem to live in "Western" style housing, not tents or igloos. To create that housing, you'd need steel tools, a non-Indigenous invention. Indigenous people like the Aztecs and Maya, who moved much further than the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and who formed Empires not unlike ones everywhere else in the world, are not mentioned. The idea that today's Western culture is based totally on a Hobbesian model is ludicrous, since most Western countries are democracies, founded on the ideas of "demos" "rule by the people" developed from the Greeks and John Stuart Mill, Locke, and others of that ilk. The countries ruled by Hobbesian Leviathans are places like China and North Korea, and to a lesser extent Singapore. In fact, in a hunter-gatherer society, life was often nasty, brutal, and short, given the harshness of day to day survival especially in Canadian winters. On Vancouver Island, intertribal warfare was common, as the groups there and on the West Coast of B. C. had better access to good food and a more mild climate, so had time to create more sophisticated class based cultures, complete with a slave class that served the nobility. Not that there weren't upsides to being a hunter-gatherer, and there aren't things we can learn from those ways, but that lifestyle was hardly the Garden of Eden model outlined in the video.
"Old attitudes have to change. Statements like “The Indians are the only true Canadians.” This implies that the Indian is a better type of Canadian than newly-arrived immigrants and this is not true. The further ideas that Indians were the first owners of the country and the land was taken from them are again misconceptions. At the time of the arrival of the white man the Indian did not occupy all of the country, therefor it cannot be said that the land was taken away from him"
Indians are not "inherently " different than any other ethnic group. The same things make them laugh, the same things make them cry, they want the same things for their children.
If the government announced tommrow that all children who had ever attended a public school were eligible for compensation in amounts from $20,000 to $225,000 for uncorroberated abuse of any kind (physical, psychological or otheise), what do we think the responce might be in the general non-native population?...we have the recent Covid-19 government messures which might give us some guidance in our estimate
Except the government's own inspectors saw and reported those abuses, physical and psychological to the Indian Affairs ministers of several governments both Liberal and Conservative who did nothing about it. "Many students suffered abuse at residential schools. Impatience and correction often led to excessive punishment, including physical abuse. In some cases, children were heavily beaten, chained or confined.
Some of the staff were sexual predators, and many students were sexually abused. When allegations of sexual abuse were brought forward — by students, parents or staff — the response by government and church officials was, at best, inadequate. The police were seldom contacted, and, even if government or church officials decided that the complaint had merit, the response was often simply to fire the perpetrator. At other times, they allowed the abuser to keep teaching." https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools
Another form of abuse was this: "Moreover, research by food historian Ian Mosby (published in 2013) revealed that students at some residential schools in the 1940s and 1950s were subjected to nutritional experiments without their consent or the consent of their parents. These studies were approved by various federal government departments and conducted by leading nutrition experts. They included restricting some students’ access to essential nutrients and dental care in order to assess the effect of improvements made to the diet of other students. Overall, the experiments do not seem to have resulted in any long-term benefits." https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools
Every time I hear one of these grandiose appeasement statements, I feel like standing up in a most dignified and regal fashion to say, "You're welcome. My people brought electricity, flush toilets, and motor cars to this world. Please, use them as often as you like quite freely."
At the end of the day you're either a sovereign country or you're not. US context here so a bit different since we're also busy obsessing about 1619 and slavery, but land acknowledgements are ubiquitous here too in blue states at least, and I want to scream every time. My Celtic ancestors were driven to the edges of the European continent by my Germanic ancestors and all of us are descended from slaves and enslavers, rapists and raped, colonizers and colonized. Enough with the identitarian absolutism! "The evil European oppressor/noble Indigenous victim narrative" indeed. Such good versus evil binaries are the perfect precursor to genocide (see also Yugoslavia or Rwanda or many other tragic examples). We have to counter this, and powerfully, without resorting to the same destructive tribalism. Thank you for your voice!
In about 1996 I read in an E.I.R. magazine that the Bilderburger group had decided to change the name of the Georgia Strait to the Salish Sea. The name of Queen Charlotte Island will be changed to Haida Gwai. and B.C. will be given back to the Indians.
People that advocate to give our land to the Indians should get the hell out of here. Put your feet in action with your words. thank you, Marylyn
Instead of acknowledging that we are on native traditional land they are now saying that we are on native land. The plan is to give Canada or B.C. back to the natives just like they did to Rhodesia.
There is a "Land Back" movement among activists and others. Today on the CBC "Land Back" advocates railed against "industries on our traditional territories," asking for the return of "Indigenous based governance" as opposed to democratic elections - which were perceived as "Colonialist", and questioning Marc Miller - the Minister of Crown-Indigenous relations, about the return of crown land to Indigenous groups. He said "we as a government are still wanting to hang onto our power, but that has to change." So your hypothesis might not be that far off track.
Every time I hear one of these grandiose appeasement statements, I feel like standing up in a most dignified and regal fashion to say, "You're welcome. My people brought electricity, flush toilets, and motor cars to this world. Please, use them as often as you like quite freely."
Link read and saved for future reference. I like your down-under acknowledgement, but I especially like the suggested dissent phrase, "In this matter, you do not speak for me." Not sure I'm brave enough. Yet.
Registering dissent is always 'a courageous moment'. I haven't done it either yet because I am looking for 'a right moment' to cut across a meeting agenda where I think I have enough space to do it that isn't obviously aimed at disrupting/hijacking the meeting or directly and intentionally offending someone I am fond of, have some respect for or regularly work with.
As I reflect on this personally momentous decision, I think the best way forward is to respectfully flag to the organizers of the meeting that one intends to dissent from the Woke position, but initially, no more than that; i.e., one has a very limited agenda that makes the point as briefly as possible. It disrupts the existential continuum without disrupting business. And one has shown the appropriate empathy and consideration by letting people know that it isn't personal and aimed at them in particular, but is a matter of principle.
The second part of 'the whammy' gets administered if and when one needs to get up and speak to the business of the meeting. One legitimately has the floor and like the first speaker who does the traditional acknowledgement of country, one simply takes 30-45 seconds to do one's own acknowledgement of country. Afterall, if they can do it, so can others if they are of a mind.
And if one is challenged one says that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. The Woke narrative is not the only legitimate expression of 'country' or 'history'.
One has one's own version of 'country' for which one is prepared to fight, even against people who were once friends. Sometimes it comes to that, when one says to the other, "Do I owe you and what you believe some sort of loyalty or fielty; that yours is the only legitimate child of our common history and that you have the final and unchallengeable word? Are you so conceited that you believe that our history and future is captured by you alone and that only your version qualifies to look back or go forward?"
Have not millions of our common ancestors fought and died to prevent the victory of fascist and communist totalitarians? The country and civilization they fought for looked and looks nothing like the Woke Version. The Woke are the aliens and the ones out of line here.
Just because The Woke represents an important private sectional interest, doesn 't mean it owns the whole block or has a totalitarian final say on what is OK and not OK,
Wokes are no more entitled to throw one aside than brown shirted Sturmarbteilung were entitled to throw out Jews and Social Democrats from public meetings, or Communist Young Pioneers entitled to push aside perceived 'bourgeois counterrevolutionaries'. The Woke is just another conceited and overblown hegemon wannabe inside what is still a democracy, if we are still prepared to fight for it.
And I am......We are.
I hope dear Joan that provides a little more bolstering for that terribly uncertain moment when one takes the huge risk of breaking new ground and establishing a new presence that has to be reckoned with and cannot be just pushed aside, because what you have done is exercised that magical, dangerous and almost unknowable commodity; leadership, which is why shepherds are few and the sheep are many.
Very good bolstering, and a valuable conversation to be having. Your approach is the right one, and your arguments solid.
Funnily enough, six months ago the chair of our neighbourhood association took it upon herself to do a land acknowledgement at the start of a Zoom meeting. No pushback (perhaps an awkward silence) from the dozen or so people on the Zoom, but as the chair is a good and valued friend of mine, I considered raising the appropriateness of the acknowledgement in private with her later. I never did, but perhaps someone else did, because she hasn't done it again since. Bullet dodged. With your valuable advice in mind, I may have the courage if it comes up again.
The Australian acknowledgement presented in this link makes some sense, but then, what makes sense is cancelled in these times. What we were proud of in the past we are ashamed of today. The Indigenous land acknowledgement becomes internalized, esp. if repeated often enough to young children, and following from the premise that lands and customs were stolen or deliberately destroyed, "Indigenous ways" are seen as somehow superior and more authentic. I just listened to a CBC radio broadcast on "braiding sweetgrass" and how marvellous that was to get back to authentic roots and traditional ways of being, as opposed to, let's say, learning tradesmen's arithmetic - a colonialist import. Not that there's anything wrong with learning how to braid sweetgrass.....
No there isn't anything wrong with braiding sweetgrass, but petty bourgeois romantics wouldn't want to be living the mezzolithic lifestyle for more than a week before they realized how hazardous, slow lane, hard work and sometimes hungry it really is, and if they're a woman, how low status they become......and just how at the mercy of their ever lovin' man they are. Ho hum
Jack, as to 'theft', it's application is irrelevant in the context that it is being used, for it's unstated
de jure assumption devolves into questions of legitimacy of ownershp & the extent of social & economic license that arises from it.
And that is on top of the de facto assumption that no one owns anything that they cannot defend against someone who would take it from them.
Capitalism has always been a disruptor of older means & relations of production since European peasants lost their land to superior productivity & wealth generation enabled by the enclosure movement, that provided the capital that propelled the industrial revolution.
And at the end of that convulsion, the enormously wealthy landed gentry that had funded the industrial revolution were themselves expropriated by inheritance taxes.
They ran out of social license. Their continued monopoly of land & wealth was no longer considered legitimate. Boo Hoo.
That is what happened to aboriginal peoples, as they found their wanderments since time immemorial were overrun by tenement owners, whose ancestors, through superior land use, organization & cultural arrangements had overwhelmed.their own hunter & gatherer neighbours at the end of the stone age, millennia before.
For the European invaders of New Worlds (for them) there was no question that they represented a superior civilization in every respect & that was immediately recognized by societies that were sufficiently sophisticated to understand just how far behind the eight ball they really were. They wanted to get their hands on whatever it was that the white people were having, that made them not just overwhelmingly powerful, but legitimate interlocutors that needed to be copied..
The Japanese went to European school for a whole generation to learn how to run a modern industrial state as a modern people, & everyone else tried to copy that model with varying success, according to how sophisticated their start point in this game was....except the Chinese, who refused to admit that anyone was superior to them, & they spent the following century learning otherwise, at a hideous cost
Indigenous mezzolithic societies were so far behind they struggled, flopped & slumped into the backwaters of history.....until found by the Woke to be a useful tool whose abject failures to modernize could be 'reconstructed' (fictionalized) as a monstrous sorry story that they could use as a stick to beat the legacy victors of history by clutching heroic defeat out of the mouth of discredited old victory....
This is a great article. As a teacher, like Igor, I object most to the woke indoctrination in schools, as with land acknowledgements. Students are fed lies on a daily basis without the educational right to question or disagree. Schools have become brainwashing centres for an ancient part of the population that grifts and for politicians who virtue signal for votes.
When I was a kid we sang O Canada in the morning at school and the teacher read "The Lord's Prayer," which we all recited. O Canada was sung before most public ceremonies, now I mostly hear it at sports games. Now we have "Land Acknowledgements," not only at schools but before every ceremony or public meeting. They have replaced all other forms of national and religious ritual prior to these events, and in schools. I've been to music and arts events where the acknowledgement goes on to become a condemnation of Western society, an original sin for disrupting what was allegedly a pristine "Garden of Eden."
Post-factum verbal land grabs have become an involuntary national yawn... #historyhasbeendecided
When I think of my young daughter's astonishment that I did not know the hand gestures to the local tribe's new anthem (a karaoke type sing-along played with video prior to the National anthem of
Canada!) During a recent graduation ceremony from a school district in BC, I am reminded of the level of indoctrination and inculcating effort heaped on the psyche of my children as they enter the wider world. What is the message to take away in our youth as a "new western" country? Were we not born at Vimy and Juno shedding our Canadian blood upon foreign soil in freedom's name?
Apparently, I have drawn the ire of "parochial", self-appointed demigods recently. Those held aloft in their perches of vice-regal superintendent status by attendants of oak & ivy loyalty! A letter was dispatched from a plebian to a patrician, as a footnote, it aimed at inclusion, diversity and equity...
As follows:
"Lands of Canada Acknowledgement:
I/we would like to thank those settlers and newcomers who brought their science, knowledge, skills, trade, craft, art, music, tools, daring, courage and determination to forge a new prosperity in harmony with our Earth, here in what is now known as the continent of North America, owned by no one in particular but the people who inhabit, pay taxes for the services provided by the industries built for the betterment and quality of life we enjoy; from: hospitals, schools, road and rail to hydro, wind and heat keeping our families warm and last but not least our military who stand on guard for thee. "God keep our land glorious and free... In all thy sons command." - Long Live the King!"
PS - Feel at liberty to substitute "Kallipolis" for 'Kanada' ;-)
There’s a great book written in the 1850s “The History of the Ojibway People” by a guy who spoke ojibway and gathered many stories from the chiefs. (Torturing captured enemies by fire, to death, including children was common.) There are excellent stories too. But you begin to think maybe it is for the best that other “ways of knowing” were introduced to them. Which is not to diminish their superb survival skills. (There is a story about witch doctors that is horrifying, sobering and inspiring-in how they were defeated.) At one point i went to a blanket exercise that was vivid yet one sided. Some attendees were emotionally destroyed by the end. It was all true but half-true because so much is left out that hides the full humanity of these peoples. Both heroic and horrific. I descend from the miq maq so when the feather came to me to share at the end i gave the other side as gently and respectfully as possible. The indigenous woman running it respected and appreciated my input. I was pleasantly surprised. Our relatives lived in the same small town and look similar to her.
The church who hosted it had for years preached against “rules rituals and routines that keep people from god.” But weeks later they were doing smudging remotely via zoom on a Sunday morning service livestream. The smoke is meant to purify the air from evil spirits. Do you think that the grandfathers who designed it did so presuming the smoke travels via web-cam across the internet to anyone watching so the air in their apartment in the sky is cleaned? This also does not recognize the creator’s power to cleanse us without any magic efforts of our own. So it seemed a miss from both perspectives. In real life i can smell the sage at least.
Is there a practical way to politely resist?
When the speaker begins their “Land Ownership Acknowledgment” could one stand up & say “not I, thank you”?
Leave, then return?
Raise a hand during & afterward ask “what exactly was that about?”
Seriously though…
If only I were a performance artist who could flagellate myself with a copy of the TRreport. “Woe! I’m a genociding-settler! Send me back to where I came from!”
"Is there a practical way to politely resist?" Not for kids in public schools, that's for sure. Acceptance and belonging are so important to school-age kids, and the ostracism that would follow any type of resistance would be crippling for a child, unless the entire student body resisted en masse, which is not going to happen. No doubt some students do (or will eventually) raise questions, because they don't realize how the repercussions will impact them. To get back into the good graces of their teachers and fellow students, they'll have to undergo "compassionate re-education" until they're ready to pretend along with their peers.
Here is the result of one woman's fight against this sort of thing in the public school system. UNDRIP was cited in the court ruling as a rationale for this. Mysticism and spiritual rituals are fine to demonstrate in the public schools, as long as they are Indigenous mysticism and spirituality. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mother-who-fought-against-smudging-demonstration-in-port-alberni-school-loses-appeal-1.6683235
The real truth of this entire fiasco. 1 Lies 2 Money grab 3 Land grab 4 Falsehoods 5 Government lies 6 Indigenous fairy tales 7 Media corruption
It would appear that the only persons believing the narrative laid down by that infamous so called Truth Commission are Trudeau & his lackies, a few other whacko NDP types and the uneducated sheeple
To attempt to go backwards and rewrite history is a non-starter and nothing worthwhile can come from that. people from any race that continually whine and moan "oh woe is me" do nothing but wallow in a self pity that does absolutely nothing to make things better for themselves.
I would suggest they show some gumption, develop some self esteem stop drinking and or using drugs, clean yourself up get some education and a job and break that circle of everlasting reliance on other people to supply you with the necessities of life.
A few years back a friend shared with me this "Indigenous World View" video that she and her fellow employees had been required to watch as part of their Indigenous awareness training. It's about 5 minutes long, and you've probably seen similar productions if you're still in the world of work. This one was made in 2014, and has probably been replaced with something more sophisticated in the DEI curriculum, but it's still worth a shudder, er, I mean, a share. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?view=detail&mid=92A78860DA60E855E68A92A78860DA60E855E68A&q=indigenous
This video mirrors the ongoing idea that Indigenous ways are good and superior, and Western ways are evil and destructive, although the video speaks in generalities and doesn't give specifics. The Inuit in the film, for example, seem to live in "Western" style housing, not tents or igloos. To create that housing, you'd need steel tools, a non-Indigenous invention. Indigenous people like the Aztecs and Maya, who moved much further than the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and who formed Empires not unlike ones everywhere else in the world, are not mentioned. The idea that today's Western culture is based totally on a Hobbesian model is ludicrous, since most Western countries are democracies, founded on the ideas of "demos" "rule by the people" developed from the Greeks and John Stuart Mill, Locke, and others of that ilk. The countries ruled by Hobbesian Leviathans are places like China and North Korea, and to a lesser extent Singapore. In fact, in a hunter-gatherer society, life was often nasty, brutal, and short, given the harshness of day to day survival especially in Canadian winters. On Vancouver Island, intertribal warfare was common, as the groups there and on the West Coast of B. C. had better access to good food and a more mild climate, so had time to create more sophisticated class based cultures, complete with a slave class that served the nobility. Not that there weren't upsides to being a hunter-gatherer, and there aren't things we can learn from those ways, but that lifestyle was hardly the Garden of Eden model outlined in the video.
"Old attitudes have to change. Statements like “The Indians are the only true Canadians.” This implies that the Indian is a better type of Canadian than newly-arrived immigrants and this is not true. The further ideas that Indians were the first owners of the country and the land was taken from them are again misconceptions. At the time of the arrival of the white man the Indian did not occupy all of the country, therefor it cannot be said that the land was taken away from him"
William Wuttunee Ruffled Feathers
Indians are not "inherently " different than any other ethnic group. The same things make them laugh, the same things make them cry, they want the same things for their children.
If the government announced tommrow that all children who had ever attended a public school were eligible for compensation in amounts from $20,000 to $225,000 for uncorroberated abuse of any kind (physical, psychological or otheise), what do we think the responce might be in the general non-native population?...we have the recent Covid-19 government messures which might give us some guidance in our estimate
Except the government's own inspectors saw and reported those abuses, physical and psychological to the Indian Affairs ministers of several governments both Liberal and Conservative who did nothing about it. "Many students suffered abuse at residential schools. Impatience and correction often led to excessive punishment, including physical abuse. In some cases, children were heavily beaten, chained or confined.
Some of the staff were sexual predators, and many students were sexually abused. When allegations of sexual abuse were brought forward — by students, parents or staff — the response by government and church officials was, at best, inadequate. The police were seldom contacted, and, even if government or church officials decided that the complaint had merit, the response was often simply to fire the perpetrator. At other times, they allowed the abuser to keep teaching." https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools
Another form of abuse was this: "Moreover, research by food historian Ian Mosby (published in 2013) revealed that students at some residential schools in the 1940s and 1950s were subjected to nutritional experiments without their consent or the consent of their parents. These studies were approved by various federal government departments and conducted by leading nutrition experts. They included restricting some students’ access to essential nutrients and dental care in order to assess the effect of improvements made to the diet of other students. Overall, the experiments do not seem to have resulted in any long-term benefits." https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools
Every time I hear one of these grandiose appeasement statements, I feel like standing up in a most dignified and regal fashion to say, "You're welcome. My people brought electricity, flush toilets, and motor cars to this world. Please, use them as often as you like quite freely."
At the end of the day you're either a sovereign country or you're not. US context here so a bit different since we're also busy obsessing about 1619 and slavery, but land acknowledgements are ubiquitous here too in blue states at least, and I want to scream every time. My Celtic ancestors were driven to the edges of the European continent by my Germanic ancestors and all of us are descended from slaves and enslavers, rapists and raped, colonizers and colonized. Enough with the identitarian absolutism! "The evil European oppressor/noble Indigenous victim narrative" indeed. Such good versus evil binaries are the perfect precursor to genocide (see also Yugoslavia or Rwanda or many other tragic examples). We have to counter this, and powerfully, without resorting to the same destructive tribalism. Thank you for your voice!
In about 1996 I read in an E.I.R. magazine that the Bilderburger group had decided to change the name of the Georgia Strait to the Salish Sea. The name of Queen Charlotte Island will be changed to Haida Gwai. and B.C. will be given back to the Indians.
People that advocate to give our land to the Indians should get the hell out of here. Put your feet in action with your words. thank you, Marylyn
Instead of acknowledging that we are on native traditional land they are now saying that we are on native land. The plan is to give Canada or B.C. back to the natives just like they did to Rhodesia.
There is a "Land Back" movement among activists and others. Today on the CBC "Land Back" advocates railed against "industries on our traditional territories," asking for the return of "Indigenous based governance" as opposed to democratic elections - which were perceived as "Colonialist", and questioning Marc Miller - the Minister of Crown-Indigenous relations, about the return of crown land to Indigenous groups. He said "we as a government are still wanting to hang onto our power, but that has to change." So your hypothesis might not be that far off track.
Excellent!
Every time I hear one of these grandiose appeasement statements, I feel like standing up in a most dignified and regal fashion to say, "You're welcome. My people brought electricity, flush toilets, and motor cars to this world. Please, use them as often as you like quite freely."
https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2277970-Acknowledgement-Of-Country
Link read and saved for future reference. I like your down-under acknowledgement, but I especially like the suggested dissent phrase, "In this matter, you do not speak for me." Not sure I'm brave enough. Yet.
Registering dissent is always 'a courageous moment'. I haven't done it either yet because I am looking for 'a right moment' to cut across a meeting agenda where I think I have enough space to do it that isn't obviously aimed at disrupting/hijacking the meeting or directly and intentionally offending someone I am fond of, have some respect for or regularly work with.
As I reflect on this personally momentous decision, I think the best way forward is to respectfully flag to the organizers of the meeting that one intends to dissent from the Woke position, but initially, no more than that; i.e., one has a very limited agenda that makes the point as briefly as possible. It disrupts the existential continuum without disrupting business. And one has shown the appropriate empathy and consideration by letting people know that it isn't personal and aimed at them in particular, but is a matter of principle.
The second part of 'the whammy' gets administered if and when one needs to get up and speak to the business of the meeting. One legitimately has the floor and like the first speaker who does the traditional acknowledgement of country, one simply takes 30-45 seconds to do one's own acknowledgement of country. Afterall, if they can do it, so can others if they are of a mind.
And if one is challenged one says that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. The Woke narrative is not the only legitimate expression of 'country' or 'history'.
One has one's own version of 'country' for which one is prepared to fight, even against people who were once friends. Sometimes it comes to that, when one says to the other, "Do I owe you and what you believe some sort of loyalty or fielty; that yours is the only legitimate child of our common history and that you have the final and unchallengeable word? Are you so conceited that you believe that our history and future is captured by you alone and that only your version qualifies to look back or go forward?"
Have not millions of our common ancestors fought and died to prevent the victory of fascist and communist totalitarians? The country and civilization they fought for looked and looks nothing like the Woke Version. The Woke are the aliens and the ones out of line here.
Just because The Woke represents an important private sectional interest, doesn 't mean it owns the whole block or has a totalitarian final say on what is OK and not OK,
Wokes are no more entitled to throw one aside than brown shirted Sturmarbteilung were entitled to throw out Jews and Social Democrats from public meetings, or Communist Young Pioneers entitled to push aside perceived 'bourgeois counterrevolutionaries'. The Woke is just another conceited and overblown hegemon wannabe inside what is still a democracy, if we are still prepared to fight for it.
And I am......We are.
I hope dear Joan that provides a little more bolstering for that terribly uncertain moment when one takes the huge risk of breaking new ground and establishing a new presence that has to be reckoned with and cannot be just pushed aside, because what you have done is exercised that magical, dangerous and almost unknowable commodity; leadership, which is why shepherds are few and the sheep are many.
Very good bolstering, and a valuable conversation to be having. Your approach is the right one, and your arguments solid.
Funnily enough, six months ago the chair of our neighbourhood association took it upon herself to do a land acknowledgement at the start of a Zoom meeting. No pushback (perhaps an awkward silence) from the dozen or so people on the Zoom, but as the chair is a good and valued friend of mine, I considered raising the appropriateness of the acknowledgement in private with her later. I never did, but perhaps someone else did, because she hasn't done it again since. Bullet dodged. With your valuable advice in mind, I may have the courage if it comes up again.
The Australian acknowledgement presented in this link makes some sense, but then, what makes sense is cancelled in these times. What we were proud of in the past we are ashamed of today. The Indigenous land acknowledgement becomes internalized, esp. if repeated often enough to young children, and following from the premise that lands and customs were stolen or deliberately destroyed, "Indigenous ways" are seen as somehow superior and more authentic. I just listened to a CBC radio broadcast on "braiding sweetgrass" and how marvellous that was to get back to authentic roots and traditional ways of being, as opposed to, let's say, learning tradesmen's arithmetic - a colonialist import. Not that there's anything wrong with learning how to braid sweetgrass.....
No there isn't anything wrong with braiding sweetgrass, but petty bourgeois romantics wouldn't want to be living the mezzolithic lifestyle for more than a week before they realized how hazardous, slow lane, hard work and sometimes hungry it really is, and if they're a woman, how low status they become......and just how at the mercy of their ever lovin' man they are. Ho hum
Jack, as to 'theft', it's application is irrelevant in the context that it is being used, for it's unstated
de jure assumption devolves into questions of legitimacy of ownershp & the extent of social & economic license that arises from it.
And that is on top of the de facto assumption that no one owns anything that they cannot defend against someone who would take it from them.
Capitalism has always been a disruptor of older means & relations of production since European peasants lost their land to superior productivity & wealth generation enabled by the enclosure movement, that provided the capital that propelled the industrial revolution.
And at the end of that convulsion, the enormously wealthy landed gentry that had funded the industrial revolution were themselves expropriated by inheritance taxes.
They ran out of social license. Their continued monopoly of land & wealth was no longer considered legitimate. Boo Hoo.
That is what happened to aboriginal peoples, as they found their wanderments since time immemorial were overrun by tenement owners, whose ancestors, through superior land use, organization & cultural arrangements had overwhelmed.their own hunter & gatherer neighbours at the end of the stone age, millennia before.
For the European invaders of New Worlds (for them) there was no question that they represented a superior civilization in every respect & that was immediately recognized by societies that were sufficiently sophisticated to understand just how far behind the eight ball they really were. They wanted to get their hands on whatever it was that the white people were having, that made them not just overwhelmingly powerful, but legitimate interlocutors that needed to be copied..
The Japanese went to European school for a whole generation to learn how to run a modern industrial state as a modern people, & everyone else tried to copy that model with varying success, according to how sophisticated their start point in this game was....except the Chinese, who refused to admit that anyone was superior to them, & they spent the following century learning otherwise, at a hideous cost
Indigenous mezzolithic societies were so far behind they struggled, flopped & slumped into the backwaters of history.....until found by the Woke to be a useful tool whose abject failures to modernize could be 'reconstructed' (fictionalized) as a monstrous sorry story that they could use as a stick to beat the legacy victors of history by clutching heroic defeat out of the mouth of discredited old victory....