Thread by @gindaanis

Being Anishnaabe is a social and political identity. Like being French. Or Chinese. It is not a race.

Like the French and Chinese we emerged as a people after centuries of migrations, merges, and splits.

That emergence, is connected to the land where it happened. Just like other nations.

We existed as nations with our own political structures and over centuries we developed boundaries and treaties with our neighbours. We participated in trade relationships.

We also had religious beliefs that explained our place in the cosmos and governed our relationships with all beings.

When the discoverers first arrived in the 15th and 16th centuries, France, Britain, Spain, and others were also emerging as people. Their religious and political structures were solidifying into something new.

Contemporary ideas of Indigenous peoples remains very much rooted in enlightenment ideas about the noble savage, peoples who did not progress or change. People who had existed in their current state for 1000s of years.

So when white people want to connect with something "Indigenous" they think that their own roots are lost in some prehistoric mist.

What if we all developed as peoples along the same timeline, but just in different trajectories?

The Anishnaabe, the Hopi, the French, the Japanese, etc etc etc. All emerging as distinct political and social groups in the same modern era. But in different ways. Prioritizing different things.

Except that because of colonization and the ideas of the enlightenment era we got stuck in amber and not permitted to develop further. Our identity became fixed in a pre contact time.

Nobody who discovers their Irish heritage suddenly starts grasping for 15th century Irish life

You don't realise that you have a German great grandmother and decide to explore your heritage according to how the Holy Roman Empire existed in the 1300s.

But people do that to us.

We do it to ourselves.

Of course we have history and rootedness that goes back millennia that remains part of our current existence.

The song Be Thou My Vision goes back 1500 years. Nobody expects the Irish to live like it's the 5th century.

Of course our language reaches back into misty places. So does English. So does French. And Croatian. And all of them.

I'm Anishnaabe whether I feel it in my heart or not. Speak the language or not. Ceremonial or not. I'm not always a good citizen. I try to be.

But it's necessary for people to see us as valid political peoples. This noble savage rhetoric, this racial, spiritual identity is how Canada patronizes us. Racial/spiritual groups don't have any rights to land. They might agitate for special rights or recognition

But they don't exist as a distinct political group with a land base so the govt can make Identity Rules for them, identity rules that are always at the mercy of general rules.

We do have a land base.

We always have.

Existing as social and political groups is a challenge to the state. It reminds the state that its occupation is no more legitimate than Germany annexing Poland or Austria.

We are sovereign states under political occupation. Not a race. Not a spiritual feeling.