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Yesterday while I was at the gym, I overheard a young soldier laughing about how his fellow soldiers took a course on Indigenous culture in Ontario. He thought it was funny how not a single one of the soldiers actually read any of the material. Not even one soldier bothered with it, but they all passed the course.
While he laughed, I recalled how a Canadian soldier felt justified in thrusting a bayonet into the chest of a 14-year-old Mohawk girl who was holding her baby sister at the time. I thought about how RCMP officers have been terrorizing and harassing Wet'suwet'en people on their own land multiple times per day for weeks now. I thought about how cops shot at women at 1492 Land Back Lane in 2019 just so they could videotape the aftermath: angry men charging toward the police cruiser afterwards. The footage was released to the media who shared it, no questions asked, without talking to any of the Anishinaabeg or Haudenosaunee people. I remembered how one of the terrified elders there had sent me a text message saying, "They're shooting at us!"
Canada is built on genocide, and government attempts at reconciliation are a joke. It's the worst sort of joke, because it isn't funny.
Over ten thousand graves of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit children have been found at the concentration/re-education camps still referred to by the government as residential "schools," and there are over a hundred more of these child prisons to search. And somehow, Canada still has a reputation as a polite country filled with nice people. And somehow, most Canadians refuse to acknowledge the genocide that is still going on.
There is an apartheid in this country. Indigenous people do not get the same legal protections as other people. Forced sterilization is still taking place, as are birth alerts where Indigenous babies are taken away from their families right after birth and placed in foster care where they are abused, molested, and removed from their culture. The "residential schools" may be closed, but children are still being kidnapped by the government.
There's a trope in movies and books where bad shit always happens on Indian burial grounds. This entire continent is an Indian burial ground. Our bodies are everywhere, and the Prime Minister is still fighting against Indigenous children receiving the same medical care as other children.
Indigenous people live in a post-apocalyptic world.
While he laughed, I recalled how a Canadian soldier felt justified in thrusting a bayonet into the chest of a 14-year-old Mohawk girl who was holding her baby sister at the time. I thought about how RCMP officers have been terrorizing and harassing Wet'suwet'en people on their own land multiple times per day for weeks now. I thought about how cops shot at women at 1492 Land Back Lane in 2019 just so they could videotape the aftermath: angry men charging toward the police cruiser afterwards. The footage was released to the media who shared it, no questions asked, without talking to any of the Anishinaabeg or Haudenosaunee people. I remembered how one of the terrified elders there had sent me a text message saying, "They're shooting at us!"
Canada is built on genocide, and government attempts at reconciliation are a joke. It's the worst sort of joke, because it isn't funny.
Over ten thousand graves of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit children have been found at the concentration/re-education camps still referred to by the government as residential "schools," and there are over a hundred more of these child prisons to search. And somehow, Canada still has a reputation as a polite country filled with nice people. And somehow, most Canadians refuse to acknowledge the genocide that is still going on.
There is an apartheid in this country. Indigenous people do not get the same legal protections as other people. Forced sterilization is still taking place, as are birth alerts where Indigenous babies are taken away from their families right after birth and placed in foster care where they are abused, molested, and removed from their culture. The "residential schools" may be closed, but children are still being kidnapped by the government.
There's a trope in movies and books where bad shit always happens on Indian burial grounds. This entire continent is an Indian burial ground. Our bodies are everywhere, and the Prime Minister is still fighting against Indigenous children receiving the same medical care as other children.
Indigenous people live in a post-apocalyptic world.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-28 03:39 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2022-04-29 01:48 pm (UTC)From:What was done (and continues to be done) is disgusting because it's so easily justified and rug swept by the rest of us. I have a cousin who was part of the 60s Scoop, stolen from her parents and adopted into a nice Catholic family. As soon as she was legally able, she left and cut contact. Not that I blame her, since I've cut contact with them, too, because they are fucking bullies and made my life hell to satisfy some superiority-complex-power-over-me bullshit.
If it was that bad for me, I can only imagine how much worse it was for her.
I'm sickened that my family has benefited from this, through stolen land (farm land in the area was stolen from the Anishinaabeg and given to German immigrants) or knowingly participation in the destruction of culture and language for generations.
I'm sorry. :(
no subject
Date: 2022-05-07 06:25 pm (UTC)From: