Non-Indigenous People Supporting Indigenous People

How Non-Indigenous Activists Support Indigenous People by Educating themselves and others.

This is the focus of Great Lakes Networking Society of BC, working with Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Organizations, and educational Institutes to educate other Non-Indigenous peoples, through Dialogue, Conferences and Workshops, organized by the Indigenous peoples who seat on our Board as Bord members.

It’s difficult to know where to jump into supporting or working with Indigenous people as activists/a community. To help those still in the infancy of their journey to being an ally to Indigenous people, we took the following steps: Some of us African people still feel like we are just existing, not living, until we establish that we are completely comfortable in our skin and we need as well to be accepted as a people

Most of the education system in the U.S. and Canada does an abysmal job educating students about Indigenous people, not about anything on Residential schools, losing their culture, language etc, not even the African’s Transatlantic Slave Trade, Unless you have made a concerted effort to educate yourself, chances are that you have some inaccurate or stereotyped misconceptions about Indigenous and or People of African Descent’s history, struggle, endurance and the contributions to their nation . We encourage to take the first step to supporting us by educating yourself. Start by learning about the area where you live. Who lived there before colonization? What happened to them? How was the land you live on appropriated by the settler state? Find out about Indigenous people who live in our area today, remembering that over half of Indigenous people in the U.S. and Canada now live in urban areas. If there truly is no Indigenous presence near you, find out what historical processes led to that (removal, warfare, and relocation are some starting points).

Educate yourself as well about the larger history of what happened to Indigenous people in North America and what life is like for them today. This includes everything from the real history of Thanksgiving, its legacy to the effects of boarding and residential schools to the modern-day removal of Indigenous children from their homes, the Slave Trade, present poverty, mental health issues, addiction, homelessness, police brutality, youth and the law etc. We encourage that people should take care to look everywhere for Indigenous resistance, their story is not just one of tragedy and victimhood but also one in which we have agency. Once we’ve educated yourselves, we can then use our new knowledge to educate other non-Indigenous people about what we’ve learned. It is important to take care not to speak over Indigenous people, but we can encourage others to listen to Indigenous voices and to educate themselves as well.

To Center Indigenous people

Doing activism in North Americas, this means we are working and living on Indigenous land. No matter what our history before us or our ancestors arrived here, we should recognize that not all came here by choice, we nonetheless now have a stake in the welfare of this land and as a result, in its original people. When we think of centering Indigenous people, It doesn’t mean that everything needs to be about Indigenous people all the time and never anybody else. What it means is that people who consider themselves activists should recognize the ways Indigenous people affect and are affected by our activism. Above all, we should challenge the invisibility and marginalization of Indigenous people in activist communities.

One simple way to start centering Indigenous people is to acknowledge publicly the original people of the land where we are standing. Announcing this, such as at a public event, we should ask people to recognize Indigenous people/land, even for just a second. This shows respect for the original people and makes listeners aware of colonization as an active force in North America. A more powerful way to center Indigenous people is to place Indigenous voices and concerns at the core of our activism, programs, and activities. To start with, this means listening to Indigenous people and becoming aware of what some of their issues are, and then considering how our work can further Indigenous’ goals. Ideally, it also means Indigenous people taking leadership positions, in our activities/programs. We should look for Indigenous peoples where we might not have noticed them before. Indigenous people have been activists against colonization and its accompanying ills for over 500 years or so.

Support Indigenous struggles

At GLBC as other organizations, we encourage those wishing to support Indigenous peoples to lend their efforts to their struggles. As we have noticed, seen and or heard, thousands of Indigenous people and allies have gathered together to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline, which threatens the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux and potentially of millions of others living along the Missouri River. The proposed expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline (also known as the Kinder Morgan pipeline) which has a controversial issue in British Columbia. Struggles like these are exactly the sort of things that we non-Indigenous Peoples/organization should be aiding in whatever ways we can. Whether in the form of donations, protest, monetary, otherwise, or of our own time and labor, there are many ways to support the ongoing resistance of Indigenous people. These forms of resistance are going on constantly and what non-Indigenous peoples simply need, is to pay attention and make the effort to find them.

As we educate yourselves and make connections with local Indigenous communities, let us, as well take note of issues that are important to them in this moment, and ask how we can contribute. As we do this, it is essential that we remember to center those we are supporting, and not step in where unwanted or call too much attention ourselves. These are delicate balances that can only be managed through building sustained relationships with Indigenous people. Ultimately, supporting Indigenous people means recognizing the connections that bind us together, whether we call it treaty, kinship or solidarity. When we see each other through the lens of those relationships, we also see the need to fight for one another in each other’s battles, as well as care for one another.

On our website we have this – “If you want to learn something, you must first learn this.” a sign that reads in English and Nishnaabemwin. Refers to the wampum belt displayed on the sign, known as the Dish with One Spoon. The wampum belt, which commemorates a treaty ending decades of warfare between the Haudenosaunee and Algonquian peoples in the Great Lakes Region, carries the teaching with it that all of us living together in this land are eating from the same dish, with the same spoon. It reminds us of our connections with one another, and our individual responsibility to preserve the common dish and spoon for all of us.

In this spirit, I ask those communities wishing to be allies to Indigenous people to first learn this: building genuine relationships with Indigenous people that center their concerns and boost their voices. It is through these relationships that we will learn to protect one dish and spoon together.

In 2015, when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) released its six-volume report on residential schools it brought the details, impacts and outcomes of the schools starkly into the spotlight. Canadians were shocked to hear that the federal government enacted policies of cultural genocide as a means to achieve the ultimate goals of separating Indigenous Peoples from their lands and sovereignty. The report presented a harsh contrast to the common perspective of Canada as a benign nation shaped through the foresight of the founding fathers and hard work of settlers.

Genocide against Indigenous Peoples recognized by Canadian Museum for Human Rights

The TRC’s report provided context for Canadians to understand the historical relationship between the federal government and Indigenous Peoples. Understanding the context is a key component for Canadians to understand why there must be Reconciliation. To the Commission, “reconciliation” is about establishing and maintaining a mutually respectful relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in this country. For that to happen, there has to be awareness of the past, acknowledgement of the harm that has been inflicted, atonement for the causes, and action to change behaviour. Reconciliation is an immense undertaking. For some, the necessity is beyond question, and the process straightforward. For others, the necessity is not as clear and there are barriers that impede the process.

Here are four common barriers to reconciliation and some suggestions for solutions. There are common elements among the solutions

Denial

Apathy

Misconceptions

Solutions

At GLBC we started looking at the Solution which is, Education:

We encourage and ask Non-Indigenous to – Read about the residential schools; and, here’s a list of books about residential schools read to the children in your life

Learn about the Indian Act

Learn about treaties

Start looking for examples of Indigenous art, literature, articles in the news

Learn about Indigenous Peoples

Take an introductory Indigenous awareness course to gain insights on misconceptions

Look for Indigenous events to attend, such as a pow wow.

We will Start a book club that reads books by Indigenous/Afrikan authors

Build a framework of understanding of what reconciliation is and what it is not so that you can identify opportunities that are a fit with you

Read the TRC’s calls to action for inspiration and

make a list of what you can do on a personal level, a professional level, and a community level

Talk to family, friends, co-workers about what they are doing, while there remains significant work to be done, progress has been made.

Indigenous awareness training is a common element in the TRC’s calls to action. If you are planning to take awareness training or are planning awareness training for your team, look for a trainer who does not play the blame game. Reconciliation is not about blame.

Reaching someone who has resistance to reconciliation is not going to be achieved via guilt, shame, or aggressive anger.

Indigenous cultural competency trainer criteria

If reading the entire six-volume TRC Report is too much to bite off, consider reading What We Have Learned Principles of Truth and Reconciliation.

There may have been some setbacks and there will be more along the way, however, we cannot let inertia take over when there are setbacks. It means we must work harder, thinking and working towards a better Canada for our children’s children worth the effort.

TRC Final Report, Vol 6, p 3

Psychology Today, The Curse of Apathy: Sources and Solutions

Bob Joseph with Cynthia F. Joseph, Indigenous Relations Insights, Tips & Suggestions. To Make Reconciliation A Reality, Indigenous Relations Press, 2019 p 31

Stephen Harper, 2009 Group of Twenty (G20) meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Indian Residential School Survivors Society

Donald Keys, Earth at Omega: Passage to Planetization (Epigraph of Chapter VI: The Politics of Consciousness), Quote Page 79, Published by Branden Press, Boston, Massachusetts 1982

Denial

Some people don’t want to accept the hard truths about Canada, the actions of the founding fathers of Confederation, the Indian Act, assimilation policies that were branded as “cultural genocide,” land seizure, disregard/disrespect for treaties. The reality does not fit with their image of Canada as a country that has had a reputation for respecting human rights. It’s not just everyday Canadians who have trouble coming to terms with reality. This perspective was on display when Stephen Harper, one year after reading the statement of apology to residential school survivors and their families, spoke to the G20 meeting and said: “We also have no history of colonialism. So, we have all the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them.” 2009-09-28 · “We also have no history of colonialism…” Prime Minister Stephen Harper dropped this outrageous assertion into a response to a question at a G20 news conference on Friday in Pittsburgh. That PM can not only harbour this delusion in his mind but also feel unembarrassed enough to verbalize it is a shocking testament to his own profound ignorance and to the pervasive racism-fuelled

Apathy

“Through some psychological research, it’s now accepted science that we must experience feelings about something if we’re to take personal meaningful action on it. And without any compelling emotion to direct our behavior and apathy literally means “without feeling”, we just aren’t sufficiently stimulated to do much of anything.” Apathy lurks as a barrier to Reconciliation due to a prevailing indifference some Canadians feel about Indigenous Peoples. The absence of emotional engagement makes the intergenerational harm caused by residential schools “not their problem.” This apathy also takes the shape of “Are we done yet?” or “Why can’t they just get over it?” Reconciliation will take time.

Here is the background to how the indifference towards Indigenous Peoples was established over time: “invisible”.

The Doctrine of Discovery provided a framework for Christian explorers, in the name of their sovereign, to lay claim to territories uninhabited by Christians. If the lands were vacant, then they could be defined as “discovered” and sovereignty claimed. When Christopher Columbus arrived in North America in 1492, the Indigenous Peoples, as non-Christians, were invisible.

Savages:

The founding fathers of Confederation, including our first prime minister John A. Macdonald, referred to the Indigenous peoples as “savages” in official documents.

Erased:

The federal government’s “objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic”.

Not people:

At the midpoint of the previous century, when the Indian Act was revised in 1951, Indigenous Peoples were finally; and legally acknowledged as people. In earlier versions of the Indian Act, “The term ‘person’ means an individual other than an Indian unless the context clearly requires another construction.”

Misconceptions

There are many misconceptions about Indigenous Peoples, many of which relate to the fiduciary responsibilities of the federal government as laid out in the Indian Act. Holding onto these misconceptions does not contribute to Reconciliation. The three most commonly held misconceptions are that Indigenous Peoples (specifically status Indians) get free housing, free post-secondary education, and don’t pay taxes. People who hold these beliefs don’t see the need for reconciliation because to them, Indigenous Peoples have it pretty good, and actually have an advantage over non-Indigenous Canadians.

Working Effectively with Indigenous Peoples

https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/four-common-barriers-to-reconciliation-with-indigenous-peoples

Why do Canada’s Indigenous people face worse health outcomes than non-Indigenous people?

Medical student Paul Kim on the need for trauma-informed care, addressing the social determinants of health. For its fourth consecutive year, Canada has been ranked as number one in the world for quality of life, according to the U.S. News/World Report. A factor that drove the ranking was Canada’s advanced health care system, but when it comes to accessing health care and health outcomes, the glaring disparities that separate Canada’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations cast an ugly shadow on the ranking.

Statistics Canada report indicated that, 2019-06-28, presents suicide rates for the 2011 to 2016 time period among self-identifying First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and non-Indigenous people in private dwellings in Canada. It also explores the influence of socioeconomic factors in the disparity in risk of suicide between First Nations people, Métis, Inuit and non-Indigenous people in Canada. How Indigenous people face worse health outcomes – Suicide rates among Inuit youth in particular are one of the highest in the world, and 11 times greater than the national average. In some Indigenous communities, the suicide rate among youth under the age of 15 is almost 50 times greater than the rate among non-Indigenous youth.

Lower life expectancy and the prevalence of chronic conditions, such as hypertension, obesity, diabetes, arthritis as well as disproportionately burden in the Indigenous population. Tuberculosis, a disease that is both curable and preventable, is reported at a rate that is more than 40 times higher among Indigenous people living on-reserve than among non-Indigenous people. Several aspects of trauma-informed care are especially important for care providers to keep in mind. Best practices include practising non-judgement when people discuss their trauma, as well as empathy with how one’s trauma may relate to an inability to seek help or heal, with emphasizes, using a patient’s knowledge of their trauma to facilitate strengths-based skill-building. “Trauma is a negative thing, “but people are resilient.” At a systems-level, overcoming Canada’s health inequities requires implementing policies that specifically address social determinants of health, particularly on reserves and rural areas. This includes access to clean water, fresh food, job opportunities, mental health support systems, electricity, event/arts/cultural, education, New tech-knowledge (Internet) access. “The next time you happen to be on a reserve, think about where the closest hospital is, or where the closest tertiary hospital is, as well as where the closest grocery store is where you can get fresh Food/Fruits with those needing special tertiary because of the chronic and other threating illnesses.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Final Report is a very good start, but policy recommendations need to be “granular and specific” in order to be effective, its the right thing to do and a moral obligation. For GLBC, we created this as the starting point of what will hopefully become an ongoing dialogue, between Black peoples and Indigenous peoples in Canada, about relationships to this land, and for those of us who have experienced diaspora and settlement here. It’s purpose is to clarify what the bases of relationships entail, in the interests of a deeper solidarity, which will particularly be important in view of the ongoing struggles relating to the presence of Black citizens within Indigenous nations that have developed in different Native communities in the United States/Canada struggles, which represent only one site in which Native–Black relations are taking place globally.

At Great Lakes Society of BC we opened a chapter, to hopefully, offer some points of connection, and above all, the commonality of the things that both communities shared overtime, with a good heart.

Canadian policies toward Indigenous peoples and toward diasporic racialized communities have been distinct from those in the United States. At the same time, we are mindful that claims to Canadian specificity and difference from American contexts are primary ways in which Canadians deny the prevalence of anti-Black racism and the virulence of colonial relations toward Indigenous peoples in this country. However, the legacies of Indigenous genocide and slavery – how deeply both processes have shaped relations between Black people and Indigenous people in the United States, have had a different shape in Canada, for a number of reasons.

We therefore begin by clarifying certain Canadian contexts. Let us refer to how American discourses of both antiracism and Indigeneity that have penetrated and influenced Black–Native relations north of the border. We as well wish to break through and deconstruct postures of innocence, the ways in which both Black and Indigenous people may insist that the primacy of their own suffering and powerlessness is so unique and all-encompassing, that it erases even the possibility of their maintaining relationships of oppression relative to another group. It is particularly important to talk about postures of innocence when referencing Black–Native relations because both Black and Indigenous peoples who have experienced unique global levels of devastation as races. Genocide in the Americas represents the largest holocaust that the world has ever known, which destroyed almost one quarter of the earth’s population within 150 years, and in the ensuring 400 years successfully changed the face of two entire continents; today’s survivors have descended from the 2–5% of Indigenous peoples who survived. Moreover, the gold and silver claimed during the initial sixteenth-century genocidal plunder that provided Europe with the finance capital necessary to mount the expeditions to the Far East, and to build the ships that made global mercantilism possible, particularly the triangular trade of slaves and goods between Africa, the Americas, and England

The Atlantic slave trade, meanwhile, was unique in its global scale.

the manner in which it harnessed chattel slavery to industrial production, thereby bankrolling the industrial revolution; the global relations of imperialism it shaped; and the diasporic Black realities it created. Perhaps most important, however, is the fact that these unique experiences still shape the lives of Indogenous and Black peoples today in particular ways. Indigenous peoples are still being targeted for physical and cultural destruction and are widely assumed to have already “vanished”. Erased from history as viable nations, their

lands therefore continue to be seen as “there for the taking,” either as ongoing sources of resource theft or as real estate for the world’s wealthy migrants. Indigenous peoples globally are still relentlessly being pushed toward extinction, as peoples. Meanwhile, Black diasporic peoples today continue to be uniquely racialized by a discourse created through slavery, whereby everything from standards of beauty to notions of criminality hinge on degrees of phenotypic blackness. Furthermore, globally, the legacy of five centuries of slavery, and the rape of Africa that it enabled means that the Black-led nations of the world, while nominally recognized as nation-states, are still the poorest and most disenfranchised of nation-states.

Because of the specificity and intensity of historical and contemporary disempowerment that both Black and Indigenous peoples in the Americas have experienced, claims to innocence for both groups are particularly potent and can be (and in some cases are being) used to cancel out any form of criticism of one group’s

behaviour toward another group. We wish to both acknowledge and

avoid this posturing of innocence, by exploring the grounded realities and that may help to clarify relations. As part of this process, it is important to consider what it means when we refer to “Indigenous” peoples and “settlers”. The claims of Indigenous peoples have been hotly contested globally, and perhaps this is reflected in the confusion of definitions that arises when the term “Indigenous peoples” is used. Because of this we have chosen the definition used by the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples.

While some people are raised to be aware and proud of their Indigenous heritage, it’s never presented to others as their primary cultural identity. In the past some parents encouraged their children to embrace their multiracial background; a task that would have left them friendless in a terribly segregated society then governed by Jim Crow laws and an official policy of genocide toward Indigenous peoples.

Where Are the Struggles Today and What Are the Implications? – For the increasing numbers of people in Canada who are not only from historic Black Mi’kmaq or Black Ojibway communities but are the product of contemporary intermarriage between Caribbean or African peoples and Native people in Canada, as well as numerous Black people of Caribs or Taino descent from the Caribbean, relations between Black and Aboriginal peoples are complex, but not inherently contradictory. The strength of the historic connections between Black and Native people has been weakened by exclusionary racial classification, by anti-Black racism among Native people and a profound ignorance on the part of many contemporary Black people about Indigenous presence, nevertheless, it appears that there will be growing movements of Black–Native people across both Canada and the United States to reclaim Indigeneity, not only to lost African roots but to contemporary Native realities in Canada.

Black people without known Indigenous heritage, however, exist in a profoundly contradictory relationship to Indigenous peoples. Despite both groups having distinct histories of cultural genocide, and sharing present marginality, Black peoples at present have little option but to struggle for power as settlers in Canada. This

overwhelmingly speaks of a failure among Indigenous leadership to provide an alternative vision for those racialized peoples who may have little real allegiance to the Canadian settler state but have no option for their survival but to fight for increasing power within it. There is also the reality that Black peoples have been profoundly changed through processes of struggle for racial empowerment. Throughout days of slavery, Africans and Indigenous people were enslaved together on plantations in the United States as well as in various parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. Throughout this history there have been alliances between groups and the formation of community as a form of resistance. The crucial difference was that these alliances took place within strong and viable Indigenous cultures whose vitality had not been attacked and usurped through physical extermination and cultural genocide.

In “Canada,” Indigenous communities such as the Rotinosoni adopted runaways into their clans and their communities. There was an Underground Railway not generally taught about in schools, run by Rotinosoni, where renowned Tuscarora guides risked their lives at a time when Indigenous people could have been enslaved, killed, or dispossessed of their land for helping runaways. Once “adopted

in” runaways became Rotinosoni. They became Bear, Wolf, or Turtle clan members, etc. Elders describe processes where the Clan Mothers would decide which clans needed more people and they assigned runaways to the neediest. Africans, both in Canada and the United States, did not live as Whites or even as African settlers in these communities. They lived under the laws and the social dictates of the

Indigenous nations into which they were adopted.

The reasons as to why Blacks and Indigenous people got along so well in this early phase of colonial expansion had to do with cultural similarities. Both peoples, in Canada had a spiritual worldview, land-informed practices, and were held together by a kinship structures which created relationships that allocated everyone a role in the community. These commonalities helped Africans and Native Americans to maintain good relations but, of course, there was also a common cause: the colonial project threatened the very existence of both Black and Indigenous peoples. With minor exceptions, African runaways were not enslaved in Indigenous communities located in what we now know as Canada. Indigenous communities looked to African newcomers as people who could inject new life, new blood, and new ideas into nations threatened with extinction by European disease and genocidal policies.

Africans who spoke the languages of the settlers and knew their battle tactics were an asset to many communities defending themselves against or negotiating European aggression. Today, at the risk of generalizing, the struggle for an equitable distribution of resources within or among nation-states that form a part of antiracist and diasporic struggles of Black peoples can be critiqued from Indigenist points of view for internalizing colonial concepts of how peoples relate to land, resources, and wealth. There is no indigenous framework around which such struggles are carried out. Diasporic Black struggles, with some exceptions, do not tend to lament the loss

of Indigeneity and the trauma of being ripped away from the land that defines their very identities. From Indigenous perspectives, the true horror of slavery was that it has created generations of “de-culturized” Africans, denied knowledge of language, clan, family, and land base, denied even knowledge of who their nations are.

Moreover, while many African diasporic peoples took up Christianity as a theology of liberation and “racial uplift”; there are tenets of Christianity that are profoundly anti-Indigenous, which equate Indigeneity (both North American and African) with savagery. Whether or not Christianity is responsible, to put it bluntly, Black activists in the Americas have internalized colonial, imperial, and Eurocentric values while they decry them. What many Black struggles tend to be centered around is how the legacy of racism and slavery rationalizes their inequality and hampers their ability to compete for power, wealth, and opportunities in colonial,

settler states or the global economy.

Even socialist-oriented movements are not framed around, nor are they inclusive of, Indigenous struggles, even when integrating an antiracist framework. Socialist discourse maintains a perspective on spirituality that ranges from antagonism to ridicule. Identification with a “national” identity is seen as some sort of protofascism. Indigenous economics have never been well understood in the scholarly work of self-identified socialists or Marxists.

“Clearly, the Six Nations presented a full and complete history not only of how the Crown had frauded our lands away, but also how they had usurped the authority of our Traditional Government, imposed their laws on our people which is a violation of the ancient agreements between us, but far more concerning, a Direct Violation Against Creation.” However, in a parallel discourse, the Clan Mothers, Elders, and Confederacy supporters constantly remind us that the seizure of this land and the negotiations they have entered into with the province and the federal agencies are not about contesting Eurocentric concepts of ownership. The Confederacy and its supporters Indigenous Peoples and Black People in Canada, have made a decision that is perfectly legal under Rotinoshoni Law to prevent further development of the land in order to protect it for generations to come, whether

those generations are Onkwehonwe (Indigenous) or not. Hazel Hill’s July 12, 2006.

Some’s story: when I was growing up, identifying as “Black Indian” was often seen as an attempt to claim some sort of light-skinned privilege. With the Black Power movement at its height, I identified simply as Black in my high school years. Though when it came up I never denied Indigenous ancestry and felt pride in it. However, I was never presented with an opportunity to embrace the culture or connect with an Indigenous community or develop a relationship with the land.

Today I really wonder how Indigenous I can claim to be given that I am clanless, my Indigenous family history, African and Cherokee – has been lost in the colonization process and I do not have any familial relationship with the land. I have come to understand that this self-doubt is common to urban Indigenous people whether with White or African ancestry. It is a consequence of genocide.

Indigenous Ways of Maintaining Relatedness

In seeking to understand ways of working together, we can learn much from the oral histories and stories of Indigenous peoples concerning the framework in which relationships are understood. While the examples below are taken from Indigenous Turtle Island stories and teachings, the values inherent in them are common to all

Indigenous cultures from around the globe. Probably the most fundamental principle of many Indigenous cultures is human interdependence with other life-forms in non-hierarchical ways. Creation Stories, for example, emphasize the interdependence of two-leggeds (Human beings) with the plants, animals, sun, moon, and the land itself. In the Rotinosoni (Iroquois) Creation Story, Sky Woman, the land animals, sea creatures, and winged ones cooperated and had different roles in the formation of Turtle Island and in growing food that sustained the human lives that came afterward.

Indigenous worldviews give us other ways of looking at “cultural pluralism.” To illustrate, consider this Cherokee teaching. Mother Earth and all her children teach us that diversity is necessary to our health and well-being. You do not see the trees insisting that they all bear the same fruit. You do not see the fish declaring war against those who do not swim. You do not see corn blocking the growth of squash and beans. What one plant puts into the soil; another takes. What one tree puts into the air another creature breathes.

What one being leaves as waste another considers food. Even death and decay serve to nurture new life. Every one of Mother Earth’s children co-operates so that the family survives. In Rotinosoni communities every gathering; ceremonial; social; or business is

opened with what is known as the Thanksgiving Address, a prayer expressing, appreciation to all “living” creatures (plants, animals, waters, stars, sun, moon, etc.) for their contribution to providing two-legged with food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and everything else that is required for healthy living. In Anishinabe gatherings the term “All My Relations” is used to honor a concept of family that does not stop with living blood relatives but includes ancestors, the generations to come, and a whole host of “spirit beings” that inhabit another realm,

all of whom play various essential roles not only in sustaining life on Mother Earth but in facilitating our spiritual development –collective and individual.

It’s also Indigenous Peoples and Black People in Canada, who include, in a non-hierarchical way, the animal and plant life that are a necessary part of Indigenous survival. In this worldview, “extended family” takes on a whole new meaning. This concept of family challenges us to evolve beyond philosophies urging tolerance of “otherness” in the expectation that “diversity” or even equity can enrich us in either material or esoteric ways. Inherent in cultivating relationships with “others”, we must understand our mutual interdependence, both in terms of our very survival as a species as well as our evolution as spiritual beings (and there is no endpoint to

spiritual development). In this framework, individuals do not and could not exist outside of community or the land.

Our past, present, and future relationships define who we are and determine what roles we play as well as responsibilities we have to the community and to the land that sustains it.

Likewise, who we are and what we do as individuals impacts that broad sense of community. The notion that roles and responsibilities are assigned to all beings, genders, age groups, clans, nations, etc. is thematic in Indigenous histories, stories, and worldview. Inherent in this concept is that we need to understand, respect, and celebrate what everyone brings to the circle. Anyone who has ever worked in a

team is challenged to respect the notion that individuals bring something unique to the group’s work. Likewise, communities, with our particular histories, cultures, and experiences have something to contribute to the human family: indeed to “all our relations.”

Consequently, leadership is just another role someone is expected to play in service to community. Leadership opportunities are understood less as privileges that come with perks than they are responsibilities to serve and remain accountable to a community and a set of values that the community aspires to. As we develop an understanding of these concepts, it is important to realize that

they reflect value systems or sets of ideals that have been profoundly damaged by colonialism. And yet, these fundamental values have survived in many contemporary Indigenous communities and are the source of every successful defense of the land and the life-forms that rely on it. It is easy, from the outside, to romanticize and idealize Indigenous societies (past, present, and future); however, such romanticism prevents outsiders from seeing in real terms the actual strengths and values that contemporary Indigenous communities maintain today. Viewing the world through the lens of Indigenism highlights the fact that Native communities are still here, that they know the histories of their own traditional lands, and that these realities, despite their erasure from the mainstream, need to be taken into account by activists from other communities. More profoundly, it can offer a template to understand how deeper connections can be developed, across our differences, as Black and Indigenous peoples.

How we understand our relationships also shapes and is shaped by what academics write about these issues. It is theory and literature which “train” successive generations in how to think about certain issues, and for that reason, it is crucial to explore this aspect further, as well.

Black Writing in Canada

Dry rivers in the valley

The thirst at the banks of plenty

The room at the streetcar shelter

A bus stop bed…

The last postcard you sent was kinda weird

Poor people sleeping at the bus stop?

Surely you don’t have that there?

Anyways, I’m dying to come to Canada

I’m a pioneer.

(Lillian Allen 1989, “Unnatural Causes”)

The above spoken-word poem, from the album Conditions Critical, by Jamaican – Canadian dub poet Lillian Allen, reflects the ambiguous position of Black people in Canada relative to Indigenous peoples, as portrayed in critical Black writing. In her poetry, Allen encompasses the realities of those who leave (or flee from) homes already devastated by colonialism globally, those who have bought in to the myth of Canada as an empty land where they can remake themselves and their lives, and the violence of racism that all Black migrants encounter at the point of arrival in Canada (whether in the eighteenth century or the twenty-first). For Allen, a politicized vision of Canada’s anti-Black racism is highlighted by a gesture toward its

colonial relationship to Indigenous peoples, as referenced by the satirical ending “I’m a pioneer.”

And yet, this gesture – which a growing number of Black Canadian writers make toward the colonial nature of the Canadian state – is insufficient to address the ongoing erasure of Indigenous realities within critical Black writing. This erasure is neither deliberate nor accidental – it flows inevitably from a theoretical framework that separates racism from colonialism and genocide, and grants priority

to racism. It is perhaps not surprising that this approach would dominate in Black Canadian writing; the reality of Black suffering in Canada is mediated through racism – whether it is through the structural realities of poverty, job discrimination, discrimination in housing and in education, or the lived daily realities of police

violence and over-incarceration. By comparison, when Aboriginal peoples, across Canada, address racism, it is in the context of colonialist genocide, the ceaseless targeting of Aboriginal people for destruction as peoples in a colonial order, whether through removing

people from land and livelihood, or removing children through child welfare agencies (and formerly through residential schooling), too often resulting in the relentless spirals of alcoholism, drug addiction, family violence, Mental illnesses, and sexual abuse that are devastating Aboriginal communities.

In such a context, the pressures to relinquish culture, language, and identity as Indigenous nations are constant and overwhelming; Indigenous Peoples and Black People in Canada and the price for those who cannot survive the losses are the highest rates of Indigenous incarceration and suicide in the world, accompanied by such a phenomenal rate of sexual violence against Indigenous missing and murdered women that it has brought international attention to this issue (Amnesty International 2004). Andrea Smith, addressing both Canadian and American contexts, has highlighted the role that sexual violence plays in ongoing colonial control, noting that Native women AND Native youths are approximately 50% more likely to experience violent assault than any other racial group, including Black people, and that, unlike any other racialized group, Native women are assaulted more often by White men than by men of their own group: 60% of the perpetrators of sexual violence against Native women are White (Smith 2005, p. 28. Indeed, when epidemics of diabetes and fetal alcohol syndrome, poor housing, mental Health,

and unsafe drinking water are taken into account, it is very clear that Indigenous communities, in Canada and globally, form the “Fourth World” as described by the late Rodney Bobiwash (2001

The Fourth World is the world of Indigenous people, the original peoples of the Americas and across the globe who have been marginalized on their own lands, excluded from civil society, denied economic opportunity, and stigmatized by the Myth of Conquest

and The Doctrine of Discovery, who have fallen off of even the lowest rungs of the false ladder of economic determinism, called progress.

Particularly now, under globalization, the very survival of Indigenous peoples throughout the world is threatened. In Africa, Indigenous peoples face land appropriation, resource theft, and

policies of genocide, often organized by Black African elites, in partnership with colonial or imperial powers, who have internalized colonial values. But whether we are talking about contemporary migration from Africa itself, or the ongoing diaspora of peoples of African descent created by slavery, the reality is that African

peoples living in the Americas are living on the lands of other Indigenous peoples. And for all peoples forced to live on other peoples’ lands, a crucial question becomes what relationships they will establish with the Indigenous peoples of that land whose survival is so under siege. Ultimately, to fail to negotiate a mutually supportive relationship is to risk truly becoming “settlers,” complicit in the extermination of those whose lands they occupy.

What renders the situation more complex, of course, the peoples of African descent in the Americas are primarily those who are survivors of the holocaust and cultural genocide that is slavery; others are survivors of direct colonial occupation or genocide in Africa.

Most peoples of African descent in Canada, whether recently arrived or “old stock” from the seventeenth century, are therefore in a profoundly contradictory relationship to Indigenous peoples here. As racialized people, inevitably positioned as outsiders to the Canadian nation, and survivors of one or another form of genocide, they have much in common with Indigenous peoples. Perhaps this is the reason that most Black Canadian writers routinely make gestures toward Indigenous presence. And yet their very marginality within Canada generally also forces them, contradictorily, to make settler claims as part of challenging Canada’s racism. Z. Amadahy and B. Lawrence

Rinaldo Walcott, for example, in his work frequently references Indigenous genocide and a subordinated First Nations presence, positioning Black people implicitly as allies to Indigenous peoples.

And yet, contradictorily, he also advocates that the eighteenth-century loyalist land grants offered to Black Loyalists, but subsequently denied, should be honoured (1997, p. 36). In so doing, he is erasing not only the reality of the eighteenth-century genocide of Mi’kmaq people that accompanied the loyalist presence in Nova Scotia, but the fact the Mi’kmaq people today have never formally ceded their land to any settlers. In such a context, to urge the “honoring” of Africadian land rights means demanding the right to retroactively participate with Whites in an ongoing illegal land grab. Another contradiction within Walcott’s writing, which appears common in most critical Black Canadian writing is the ongoing erasure of Black Mi’kmaq people, by referencing all Maritimers of African descent simply as “Black.”

We thus deepen an already profound silence about Black Native identity which few Black Native people in Canada have broken, to date. Indeed, Walcott’s work highlights a fundamental contradiction within most critical Black Canadian writing, particularly Black history: even as the writing attempts to reference Canada’s subordination of Indigenous peoples, it normalizes relations of colonialism. For example, in Black Canadians, restricts his coverage of the presence of eighteenth-century Indigenous people to the fact that the family of Joseph Brant, as acculturated elite Mohawks, historically owned slaves. In this treatment, the eighteenth-century presence of White AND Black people on Indigenous lands is normalized, as if colonial domination and the claiming of Indigenous lands for settlement are inevitable and beyond question.

Such treatment is not only inaccurate, given that in the eighteenth century, the European presence in North America was still being consolidated.

It also invites the posturing of Black innocence as settlers: if colonization is inevitable and beyond question, the presence of Black settlers on Indigenous lands can be normalized; they are, in fact, not colonizers, but victims, of slave-owning Native people such as Joseph Brant. If we do not normalize colonization, it becomes clear that Black struggles for freedom have required (and continue to require) ongoing colonization of Indigenous land. While the Underground Railroad frequently ran through the cross-border reserves of Indigenous peoples, it brought Black peoples to Canada to claim

land that was newly taken from Indigenous peoples. And yet it is clear that, because of slavery, in this context there was little choice. Moreover, Black settlers, unlike White settlers, were generally forced to proceed without the support of established colonization programs.

We can see these contradictions in the writings of Daniel Hill about Blacks in early Canada. By leaving out the presence of Indigenous peoples, Hill positions Black settlers simply as noble in their fortitude in clearing the land, not as those who are displacing Indigenous peoples in the process. However, his work also demonstrates that while Blacks in Ontario attempted to claim land as Whites did, they were not included in settler programs but were forced to forage out on the land on their own, often clearing bush recently claimed from Indians only to be later displaced by Whites. Indigenous Peoples and Black People in Canada were, in a sense, ambiguous settlers, tied to the colonization process not only through a desperate need to survive after slavery, but by Christian beliefs that land must be cultivated to do God’s work and by their acceptance that the land would be theirs if they could claim it. Hill demonstrates these contradictions in the writing of John Little, a Black refugee from North Carolina, who settled in the Queen’s Bush with his wife, in 1840:

http://www.lynngehl.com/uploads/5/0/0/4/5004954/zainab_amadahy_and_bonita_lawrence.pdf

We will develop programming for the cultural events on Six Nations territory. Six Nations youth to be hosted at Harambecouver 2021

Black–Indigenous solidarity and the use of hip-hop to educate youth about anticolonial resistance

The need for the Black community to support Indigenous struggles.

Freedom Cipher –

Youth that enables urban racialized youth to interact and collaborate with Six Nations youth around arts and cultural activities.

Black and Indigenous women devoted to exploring relationships between the two communities in BC. Our discussions will be internal but interesting to see how the group evolves and how its activism impacted.

To gather the Coalition in Support of Indigenous Sovereignty, activists representing the Coalition against ???? Apartheid, the Vancouver Coalition Against Poverty, No One is Illegal, Our Homes Can’t Wait, CCAP, VANDU, as well as unaffiliated activists, from a variety of ethno-cultural backgrounds in the Greater Vancouver, to begin a process of “decolonizing our mindsets” and looking seriously at what it means to be an ally to Indigenous struggles, which means being an ally to the land.

All parties to commit to a long-term process aimed at exploring the implications of Indigenous solidarity work as well as the impact

of Indigenism on various settler struggles. This and future gatherings to discuss the question of expectations we have of each other and how we hold each other accountable.

Any questions that emerge from the work described above will be shared with the Indigenous peoples: Where do racialized settlers fit in the vision of Indigenous sovereignty? For the purposes of this program/chapter we will need to ask where Black people fit into the vision. This is a huge question. If Indigenous sovereigntists expect Black community support of nation-to-nation negotiation processes regarding land, resources, and reparations, we have to recognize how Blacks become completely disempowered in that process. Through such a process, Indigenous nations inherently (and begrudgingly) acknowledge Canada’s nationhood. But Black people have no power or even validity in the Canadian nation state. This leaves Blacks who do not identify or are not accepted in whole or part as Indigenous North Americans in a kind of limbo, waiting for a colonial state and

Indigenous nations to “work out” a relationship while they continue living in a land that denies their contribution to “nation building,” whether that contribution was forced, coerced, or willful. Worth remembering here is the fact that many Blacks historically contributed to sustaining the Indigenous communities such as the

Rotinoshoni that helped them achieve freedom from slavery.

Settlers working in solidarity with Indigenous struggles have pointed out that they have a particular responsibility as “Canadians.” As legal citizens or residents of Canada to hold the state accountable to recognizing sovereignty and negotiating in good faith with the true leadership of Indigenous communities. Though this might be a perfectly moral stand, the reality is that Blacks, and other racialized settlers combined, do not have the political clout to make a significant impact in this regard. Furthermore, on the face of it, they

cannot be sure they will survive such a political stand, particularly when one considers the racism that Indigenous communities have internalized as a result of colonization.

Indigenous Peoples and Black People in Canada

This challenges grassroots Indigenous leadership to develop a vision of

sovereignty and self-government that addresses the disempowered and dispossessed from other parts of the world who were forced and/or coerced into being here in BC here (a global phenomenon in which Canada shares culpability). How much support should be expected from communities when there are glaring examples in our midst, such as the expulsion of Black Cherokees in Oklahoma, that there is no guarantee that Black Indians and Black people who lend their support to Indigenous communities will have a place in or beside

them?

Having experienced some challenges, it is important to recall that the fundamental framework for how Indigenous peoples relate to non-Indigenous peoples is laid out in our histories, stories, and spiritual tenets. Whatever emerges from relationship-building between Black and Indigenous communities should take place within this framework as opposed to competitive materialistic ones, which to date have not served either people.

We also want to acknowledge that Indigenous communities are consumed with simply trying to stay alive, waging struggles that must address youth suicides, violence against women, Mental health, addiction, missing and murdered girls/women, the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS, housing shortages, contaminated drinking water, mining and deforestation on their lands, the loss of language and ceremonial knowledge, etc. Thus, there is limited capacity to drop these struggles to “develop a vision” on how racialized settlers and Indigenous people generally can coexist. Black communities are also waging significant struggles with life-and-death implications. The colonial system benefits greatly from the fact that our communities are in a perpetual state of crisis. But do we not owe it to the coming generations to find a way of supporting each other and the land that sustains us all?