'Settler', the Negative Canadian Identity

Canadian Or Settler, Which One Are You?

Photo by Silvestri Matteo on Unsplash

This post is by regular Woke Watch Canada contributor Michael Melanson.

The late philologist Victor Klemperer is best known for leaving us his memoirs of living in Dresden, Germany, during the Third Reich.  "I Will Bear Witness" is a view from inside the beast's lair.  Although Klemperer had converted to Protestantism, he was born a Jew and that was a virtual death sentence in Nazi Germany.  What kept Klemperer from his quick dispatch 'up the chimney' were two circumstances: he was a decorated WWI veteran and he was married to an 'Aryan' women.  In the end what spared Klemperer from being devoured in the Nazi maw snapping ever closer at his heels as the war dragged on was the firebombing of Dresden; Klemperer and his wife, Eva, escaped in the ensuing chaos.

A lesser known work of Klemperer was conceived in the same period, "The Language of the Third Reich."  With his keen eye to how language was used, Klemperer began to take note of how the Nazis used language.  Borrowing from Schiller, Klemperer saw the Nazi's use of language as 'language that writes and thinks for you.'

"... Nazism permeated the flesh and blood of the people through single words, idioms and sentence structures which were imposed on them in a million repetitions and taken on board mechanically and unconsciously."

Because Wokeism idealizes totalitarianism as a practical mean to its utopian ends, its use of language inadvertently veers towards that which 'writes and think for you.'  The readiest examples of this are 'White' and 'White privilege.'  'White' reduces a large and varied number of groups otherwise distinguishable by ethnicity and class to a homogeneous blanched mass suitable for stereotyping and trite dismissal.  'White privilege' follows in that vein by supposing the accident of birth that is a pale complexion automatically affords such people the blessings of a world run by people that look like them.  White privilege completely ignores the reality of what life was like for Irish, Italian and Ukrainian immigrants in Canada, for example.

Canadian Wokeists focus particularly on Canada's history as a colonial project and how the indigenous peoples of Canada were treated.  Social justice causes are the oxygen of Wokeists and Aboriginal people are the premier social justice cause in Canada.  So we find Kaitie Jourdeil writing in her essay, "This Canada Day, settler Canadians should think about land back."

"For most settler Canadians — myself included — July 1 is a day to celebrate the rights, freedoms and privileges that come with being Canadian. Privileges, however, come with responsibilities. A crucial one for settler Canadians is to build meaningful relationships with Indigenous people and nations."

Aware of how many Canadians - myself included - react bitterly to the term, Jourdeil explains, "Many Canadians dislike being labelled 'settlers.' The term refers to non-Indigenous people who, or whose ancestors, settled on Indigenous land, although recent debates question the inclusion of descendants of slaves and non-white immigrants."

"As a white scholar studying territorial rights, I see my status as a settler as part of being Canadian. It is not an accusation, but a reality of living on unceded Indigenous lands. It is a recognition that the benefits Canadians enjoy are built on the denial of Indigenous Peoples’ rights to self-determination of their land according to their laws."

In denying that the label 'settler Canadian' is an accusation, Jourdeil is acknowledging that there is a colloquial association of the term with a negative value, that people generally view being a settler as being wrong.  Indeed, Jourdeil spells out what is wrong with being a settler Canadian: they enjoy opportunity and wealth at the expense of the native population, occupying land unceded by the 'nations' who are the rightful owners.  Jourdeil proposes that our collective settler sins be redeemed through 'land back' which she defines not so much as the literal return of land but as " restitution: the return of jurisdictional control to Indigenous nations."  In identifying herself as a bona fide settler (White) Jourdeil automatically understands what comes with the identity: a debt to the settled.  Evidently cognizant of public sentiments on such matters, Jourdeil clarifies her position: "Contrary to people’s perceptions, however, land back does not mean the removal of all non-Indigenous people from North America."  Her statement. however, allows for the removal of some non-indigenous people.

In arguing for indigenous jurisdiction, Jourdeil is basically arguing for aboriginal sovereignty over Canada.  Or, a racial hierarchy for moral reasons.  If a foreign people stole Canada, then it is just to give control of Canada to the original inhabitants to whom the country rightfully belongs.  In that respect 'settler' is a verdict of guilt awaiting penalty.  Embedded in the settler idiom is the dichotomy of indigenous/non-indigenous which is really a determination of who belongs here the most and who the least.

Jourdeil understands that the settler doesn't belong here but she hopes that the settler will be allowed to stay here by accepting aboriginal rule.  The implicit Woke logic of believing white supremacists run Canada is to let Aboriginals run Canada as a morally justifiable correction, to counter white supremacy with red supremacy.  Arguments of universalism and majority rule can be brushed aside as Eurocentric imports that are beside the point of what was the original order of things here.  There is a palpable fear in the rejection of Enlightenment values as foreign contrivances and Klemperer, far more than Anne Frank could, articulates it well in "I Will Bear Witness."

In qualifying herself as a 'white scholar', Jourdeil qualifies how she must think and write.  If there is white privilege, then she has no need to philosophically oppose the "special rights" of aboriginal people.  If she accepts racial bias as a constant in both the state and society, the best she can hope for is substituting which race gets to exert its bias over state and society, which gets to the central moral bankruptcy of Wokeism.  They don't oppose racial discrimination, they covet its power and rather than rid the world of racial discrimination, they only want to control who gets to exercise racial discrimination over whom.

It wasn't long ago that if someone  said that they were a 'white scholar' they would have been taken as a white supremacist with intellectual pretensions because seriously identifying yourself as white meant seeing yourself as some sort of Aryan.  Jourdeil's identification as being white and its attendant privilege is her accepting the shame and guilt of being a white supremacist albeit an involuntary one.  'White privilege' connotes the general state of white supremacy; it's not just the province of right wing extremists.  Being white is an accident of birth but the original sin can be expiated with giving the levers and spoils of privilege to those whom were dispossessed in our settling of the land.  If our presence commenced as colonial, our presence can remain conditional.  

The idea of effectively ceding Canadian sovereignty to aboriginal people (who exactly would that be anyway) seems to lay somewhere between perverse self-loathing, oikophobia and vicarious racialism.  But in her pining for a civil proscription of the majority, Jourdeil is overlooking the barrel of accelerant in the room.  Canada stands accused of genocide past and present; how might that affect how aboriginal jurisdiction would be exercised over the settlers so accused?

Remember: "land back does not mean the removal of all non-Indigenous people from North America."