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Happy National Indigenous Peoples Day
Jun. 21st, 2021 03:37 pmToday is National Indigenous Peoples Day in so-called Canada, and I have a free performance this evening at 19:00 EDT at http://www.facebook.com/CFACToronto . I will be storytelling and throat singing.
I spent today working on a tapestry of one of the Inuit creation stories. Back just before Covid times, I attended a printmaking workshop at the Textile Museum of Canada for Inuit. My unfinished piece hung there for about a year, and now that I have it back, I've begun adding embroidery. I also want to add beadwork, and maybe hair embroidery and sealskin.
I also made a pair of sealskin fringe earrings today.
While I was busily working along on happy things, I found out my sister's cat was dying of organ failure. Too many deaths are all around us. Big deaths, little deaths, and I think we are collectively in a languishing state of mourning.
I found out I'm even more Indigenous than I thought, today. I found out my Dad could have status, but never applied. All of the women in his family were Mi'kmaq or Inuit. The European men came over to the "new world" and married Indigenous women. I know so little about these women. My European ancestors brought misogynistic world views with them, and women were considered as little more than a way to generate sons. I looked into getting status, but I don't have all the information I need. I'm a first-generation Canadian on my Indigenous side of the family, and third-generation Canadian on my Mom's side (which is Scottish/German). How did this happen? It happened because my Dad was born in Newfoundland while it was still a British colony and not yet part of Canada. He was declared Canadian without having any say in the matter. Go figure.
Today I was specifically targeted by a racist on Instagram. I reported the comment, but who knows if IG will actually do anything about it? IG has a bad track record when it comes to dealing with racism. They often come down on the wrong side of things, like when they pulled most of the posts about Missing and Murdered Indigenous people on May 5, the day of mourning. I'm not going to let that act of hatred ruin my day.
My Mi'kmaq ancestors were refugees from Nova Scotia on account of Cornwallis issuing a bounty of 50 pounds for each Mi'kmaw scalp. That included children. My family escaped that genocide, and that scalping decree is still in the law books, because this country was built on genocide. I've lost friends because they disagreed with there ever being genocide against Indigenous people. The big bad Hitler himself based his concentration camps on the residential school model, and the control of people via starvation from the practices of John A. MacDonald, the first Prime Minister of Canada. That campaign of starvation is still going strong today, with the department of fisheries regularly stealing the boats and fishing traps from Mi'kmaq fishers in NB and NS.
I'm still here. Cornwallis can keep his nasty 50 pounds, and may his corpse choke on it.
I'm still here, and genocide still dogs me. Racists "joke" about running folks like me over. They call us "speed bumps." They joke about bringing Covid to reservations, in an echo to the smallpox-infected blankets distributed to my ancestors to free up the land for white folks.
I'm still here, and I'm going to do my damnedest to help other Indigenous folks who had their culture stolen from them.
I spent today working on a tapestry of one of the Inuit creation stories. Back just before Covid times, I attended a printmaking workshop at the Textile Museum of Canada for Inuit. My unfinished piece hung there for about a year, and now that I have it back, I've begun adding embroidery. I also want to add beadwork, and maybe hair embroidery and sealskin.
I also made a pair of sealskin fringe earrings today.
While I was busily working along on happy things, I found out my sister's cat was dying of organ failure. Too many deaths are all around us. Big deaths, little deaths, and I think we are collectively in a languishing state of mourning.
I found out I'm even more Indigenous than I thought, today. I found out my Dad could have status, but never applied. All of the women in his family were Mi'kmaq or Inuit. The European men came over to the "new world" and married Indigenous women. I know so little about these women. My European ancestors brought misogynistic world views with them, and women were considered as little more than a way to generate sons. I looked into getting status, but I don't have all the information I need. I'm a first-generation Canadian on my Indigenous side of the family, and third-generation Canadian on my Mom's side (which is Scottish/German). How did this happen? It happened because my Dad was born in Newfoundland while it was still a British colony and not yet part of Canada. He was declared Canadian without having any say in the matter. Go figure.
Today I was specifically targeted by a racist on Instagram. I reported the comment, but who knows if IG will actually do anything about it? IG has a bad track record when it comes to dealing with racism. They often come down on the wrong side of things, like when they pulled most of the posts about Missing and Murdered Indigenous people on May 5, the day of mourning. I'm not going to let that act of hatred ruin my day.
My Mi'kmaq ancestors were refugees from Nova Scotia on account of Cornwallis issuing a bounty of 50 pounds for each Mi'kmaw scalp. That included children. My family escaped that genocide, and that scalping decree is still in the law books, because this country was built on genocide. I've lost friends because they disagreed with there ever being genocide against Indigenous people. The big bad Hitler himself based his concentration camps on the residential school model, and the control of people via starvation from the practices of John A. MacDonald, the first Prime Minister of Canada. That campaign of starvation is still going strong today, with the department of fisheries regularly stealing the boats and fishing traps from Mi'kmaq fishers in NB and NS.
I'm still here. Cornwallis can keep his nasty 50 pounds, and may his corpse choke on it.
I'm still here, and genocide still dogs me. Racists "joke" about running folks like me over. They call us "speed bumps." They joke about bringing Covid to reservations, in an echo to the smallpox-infected blankets distributed to my ancestors to free up the land for white folks.
I'm still here, and I'm going to do my damnedest to help other Indigenous folks who had their culture stolen from them.
