Thread by @AaronWardDene

Ok, I wasn’t planning on doing any emotional labour today, & talking about the issues around the policies that attempted to literally destroy my family are labour.

But if any day is a teachable moment this is it.

Ready for the horror show?

This is a🧵

#Reconciliation #cdnpoli

I will be drawing from “21 Things You Didn’t Know About The Indian Act” - a book so good we published Indigenous authors are all jealous we didn’t write it first, ha.

So here we go, The Greatest Hits of Indigenous Genocide in Canada (or why things are the way they are today).

First, some background. Early journal entries of European contact with Indigenous peoples described them as such:

(ALT text enabled)

A note: there were hundreds of nations and therefore hundreds of cultures, languages, practices, and traditions. Each had their own unique characteristics and customs. There was diversity, extended, pan American trade routes, and advanced, complex farming, forest management, etc.

European Disease ravaged populations and collapsed empires, cities, communities, and families. Imagine you wake up in your City and 90% of the people were gone. It just wouldn’t function anymore. That was accidental, but catastrophic.

So when later Europeans came to colonize they marvelled at the abundance of the forests and fields, believing in some cases that God had prepared a paradise for them.

No, that was the work of millennia by the people who knew and expertly managed ecosystems with a light touch.

“But didn’t they war? They weren’t all peaceful forest sprites”

Yup. They warred. and sometimes the refinement of war became counting coup, sometimes it was marked by severity. But generally, the move was to toward peace, (the Iroquois Confedracy, the Cree Confrederacy).

Which brings us to Canada and the Indian Act.

I’ll avoid the process of how it came to be (you can find that out).

The important thing is that the Indian Act was designed to marginalize & disappear Indigenous people through destruction of culture, identity, means, and/or life.

So Indigenous people didn’t have problematic social issues, they had problematic enforced policy issues.

One of the first things that happened was the destruction of independent, traditional governance systems.

instead the European model of a Chief and Council was imposed.

This effectively striped women and Matriarchs of their power to negotiate or have a meaningful say about their communities both locally & in context of govt relations. Women were traditionally v/ politically prominent in most Northern American Nations. Their voices were silenced.

In fact, Indigenous women were stripped of their rights of personhood (thanks Europe) and if they married a white man they “lost” their Indian Status. Where did it go? Into the nothingness of policy.

They also couldn’t vote in Canada until the 1960s. My Grandmother couldn’t vote

That’s just the start. It gets so much worse, & i think I’ve been avoiding it.

We of course know about the horrors of Residential Schools, but what of the enforced starvation?

Enforced Starvation? Yes.

The govt thought it a grand idea to transition Indigenous ppl into farmers.

By this time the Treaties had been signed and of course, mostly betrayed.

So the reservation was in full effect.

You couldn’t even LEAVE the reservation without permission from an Indian Agent & often the permission was denied.

The artist Alex Janvier, alive today, was denied

He was denied education. He was such a talent that he had the opportunity as a young man for post secondary schooling in France. The Indian Agent said no.

That is in our lifetimes.

As was Residential School. They only ever show you the black and white photos for some reason.

So farmers. The govt decided that Indigenous ppl had to “develop” from the Stone Age to the modern age the way Europeans had done, so they gave them substandard, outdated tools to farm with.

And of course, they had the worst land.

But guess what? They produced. And well! But…

In order to remove competition in the market for immigrant farmers, the Indigenous crops were often left to rot. The tools wore out & were not replaced. The Indian Agents wouldn’t allow the indigenous ppl leave to go buy new tools if they were lucky enough to have any $ left.

So…without the means to hunt or farm, hunger encroached.

Hunger is a powerful tool.

And so the govt brought in rations. Not a lot. Just enough to survive. And if you misbehaved, you were denied rations. They used hunger to ensure submission.

This is very personal in my family

A story we had was the time my dad’s grandfather tried to save his kids from Residential School>

The RECEIPT was miraculously found tucked away in an old wood shack several years ago. HERE IT IS:

#Reconciliation #cdnpoli #ableg #yegcc #yyycc

Can you imagine. Knowing your children were being abused, tortured, told their culture and customs were evil, sexually assaulted, and on and on, and the choice you have is:

Die of starvation

Or let them live knowing what was happening to them?

Knowing it happened to you??

Another aspect of the Indian Act:

It was illegal or forbidden to engage in cultural practices, wear regalia, speak the language, hire a lawyer, or organize.

If you were found to be holding a cultural ceremony, believe it or not. Jail.

Potlatch, Sundance, etc

These are important and deeply meaningful ceremonies.

It was also a time for sharing.

There are ‘giveaways’ at these vents, and traditionally it was a time for those who had accumulated a lot to ceremonially share with those who had little. It was community care.

Everyone gave to the takeaway, even if you had next to nothing. It was a mark of pride for those who had done well to sometimes even give everything.

And at the end of the ceremony, all the gifts were distributed to the people.

You can see how this could not be allowed.

Hard to subjugate when people are able to help themselves to make their community strong.

What’s another tool?

RELOCATION

If a municipality felt a reserve was too close to them for comfort, they would relocate the entire community away. It’s why so many reserves are isolated.

And so Indigenous people were intentionally isolated.

From their culture
From the families
From economic participation
From social participation
From Dignity
From health
From recourse

On and on.

Tell me what happens to communities that face these things.

What we see today.

I’m not even going to get into the medical experimentation. It’s still raw. My mom was given an involuntary hysterectomy and these words were directly spoken to her:

“No more brown babies for you.”

She was white, friends. She dared love an Indigenous man.

These things are here

Look, my father and his siblings were taken from their home after my mosum (grandfather) (a WWII Indigenous veteran) died. The social worker checked up on her and found the place dirty. My Kokomo was in the midst of grief. And they stole her children.

This is here with us today

More than half the children in care in Canada are Indigenous despite making up a percentage of the Canadian population.

Residential School never stopped - it turned into Child Services.

It turned into Incarceration

It turned into addiction to hide the pain

It turned into now

We are where we are at due to govt policy.

Not just the active policy, the pernicious policy. The refusal to take responsibility.

Why are the majority of homeless, incarcerated, addicted, traumatized, and apprehended people and children Indigenous?

It’s not that hard to see.

Where would YOU be if generation after generation of your family and community had been systematically and actively oppressed? If your government tried to eradicate your identity? If they created policy that isolated and abused you and you had to allow them to take your babies?

Where would YOU be if your history & your story were hidden?

If the communities you were banned from witnessed your brokenness & dysfunction and decided your ENTIRE RACE was garbage, were criminals, were dirty, and not even human?

What if some ppl thought it was ok to kill you?

What of an entire nation was enriched to become one of the most prosperous countries on earth, but you & your family, who were the inheritors of this land, who’s history stretched back tens of thousand so years were a waste?

A waste of time, money, sympathy, effort or thought?

Who would you be and would you be okay?

What would it take to heal from hundreds of years of generational pain?

Could you do it?

HOW would you do it?

Here is the challenge and the sorrow.

And for Indigenous people it is with us every day of our lives.

It is with our children.

How do you heal when the world in which you live continues to demean and reject you?

We do it anyway. And it isn’t easy.

We find community.

Not everyone is lucky enough to find community. Indigenous peoples have been shattered and scattered.

But there is a lot of hope and there are a lot of heroes.

There are the unknown Elders who through the generations kept our knowledge secretly and quietly shared it.

There are the slow changes that allowed us to breathe and made it possible for us to teach our kids to dream, something many of us never dared to do.

There is the resiliency of our peoples and the deep ability to laugh & find humour even in the darkest times & darkest places.

There are the generations rising, and my friends, I almost cry as I write this. They are so beautiful, and they are taking their place in this world. They are staking their place. And they are wonderful.

And there are allies. Like you.

Indigenous people do not have social issues, they have policy issues.

(Sorry for the typos, I was trying to get this out so fast I didn’t give any of these tweets a second glance. I don’t have a Kokomo, but autocorrect obviously has no understanding of “kokum” (grandmother).

Although if I had a Kokomo, you’d all be invited.

Some personal notes. There’s more. Lord, there is so much more. But I think that’s enough for today.

You’ll note I didn’t include my personal experiences. Maybe one day, but not now. I hope you understand.

You can change things by demanding loving change.

Are we allowed to say loving in politics? If not, I guess I’m just wild.