Indigenous americans

Pope Francis affirms genocide of first nations by Canada and Catholic schools

THE SINS OF THE FATHERS VISITED UPON ALL THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS It has taken 500 years for the fallacies of the European ‘Age of Discovery’ in the New World to finally become more truthfully revealed for its true genocidal history towards First Nation peoples and their cultures. This truth has now been affirmed by Pope Francis, the head of[Read More...]

It is Not Love that Abandons Its Treaties

The Tsilhqot’in Struggle On 26 March 2018, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau spoke of the six Tsilhqot’in chiefs who were arrested during a sacred peace-pipe ceremony and subsequently hanged for their part in a war to prevent the spread of smallpox by colonialists: “We recognize that these six chiefs were leaders of a nation, that they acted in accordance with[Read More...]

What Does It Mean for the Dispossessor to “Compensate” the Dispossessed?

Settlers enjoyed a seeming free permission: to dispossess natives at will of all the best land, turn them out of traditional fishing locations, disrespect elders, women, children and religion, leave whole communities without political representation and punish men for breaking laws which they could have no means of knowing existed. It was inconceivable that all this change could happen overnight[Read More...]

What Do an Apology, Reconciliation, and a Sacred Obligation to Constitutionally Guaranteed Rights of First Nations Look Like in Canada?

They send a hundred RCMP to go protect a pipeline and not protect people’s lives so we need to push back. They put industry, they put fracking, they put gas and oil over everyone’s lives. — Eve Saint, a Wet’suwet’en land defender In the nineteenth century, Gilbert Malcolm Sproat, a colonial official, wrote an account — The Nootka: Scenes and[Read More...]

Native Americans: The First and Forgotten Slaves

“Modern perceptions of early modern slavery associate the institution almost solely with Africans and their descendants. Yet slavery was a ubiquitous institution in the early modern world…The story of European colonialism in the Americas and its victimization of Africans and Indians follows a central paradigm in most textbooks. The African “role” encompasses the transportation, exploitation, and suffering of many millions[Read More...]

Canada is Waging an All-Front Legal War Against Indigenous People

Canada is developing a new image: one of burning churches, toppling statues, and mass graves. There are thousands more unmarked graves, thousands more Indigenous children killed at residential schools, remaining to be unearthed. There can be no denying that this is Canada, and it has to change. But can Canada transform itself for the better? If the revelation of the[Read More...]

Fire Words for Canada Day

Dear Paleface, Let’s make things right for the longstanding Indigenous inhabitants of this land. Following the late May discovery of 215 concealed burials of First Nations children at a former residential school in Canada there was a post from a Jewish group on Facebook basically saying ‘Yes, this is an example of genocide.’ I am sure there are other Jews[Read More...]

About half of Oklahoma is Native American land, rules U.S. Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that about half of the land in Oklahoma is within a Native American reservation. The court ruling will have major consequences for both past and future criminal and civil cases in the U.S. The U.S. court’s ruling hinged on the question of whether the Creek reservation continued to exist after Oklahoma, one of the[Read More...]

The Hypocrisies of Recognition: The Supreme Court, Native Americans and the McGirt Case

The Supreme Court of the United States has barely had time to gather its collective breath this last few days.  Among its decisions, including those dealing with President Donald Trump’s financial records, was that of McGirt v Oklahoma. The case furnishes a detailed discussion on the extent Native American self-governance survived the assaults of the US Congress and the creation[Read More...]

Sub-Humans — Just What Are We To Do with Them, The Vermin?

I just now read an article that states: Native American slavery “is a piece of the history of slavery that has been glossed over,” says Linford D. Fisher, associate professor of history at Brown University. “Between 1492 and 1880, between 2 and 5.5 million Native Americans were enslaved in the Americas in addition to 12.5 million African slaves.”  From Colonial[Read More...]