Our peoples face unprecedented challenges and have for a long time. When the Vikings first set foot in North America, their first act was to attack our people for blood. Our peoples drove them off. Then came christopher columbus (and yes I wrote his name in small letters, because his does not deserve capitalized names), whose first act was wholesale slaughter of every Indigenous person he could find, approximately 250,000 by conservative estimates. But by then, we could not drive them off fast enough as other “explorers” came in droves.
Those who came after columbus came less violently and gained friendships with our peoples. Our first mistake. After contact, we were subjected to purposeful biological warfare, “ethnic cleansing”, genocide, unending war, land infringements, residential schools (aka death camps where nearly half of all children sent to these schools died of torture, starvation, beatings, freezing, etc. with those that survived being subjected to degradation, sexual, physical, emotional and psychological abuse), sixties scoop (where mothers were lied to that their babies were still births, and then the babies, very much alive, were adopted out to white families), the Indian Act legislating reserves to become concentration camps where people were arrested and beaten if they were caught leaving the camps and many were intentionally starved to death, outlawing of our languages, outlawing of our cultures, etc.
The list can go on and even today our struggles are no less:
· Our children are denied equitable access to education – often funded and 50% less per pupil that white children
· We are denied equitable access to health care – often forced off our own communities for treatment
· Our babies suffer the highest infant mortality rates in Canada
· Many of our communities have no running water and many that do are chronically underfunded by the Federal government so that they are under “boil water” advisories
· We have some of the highest rates of TB in the world – primarily due to Federal underfunding of adequate housing causing multiple families to live in houses that are often no more than shacks
· Some of the highest rates of suicide in the world
· High rates of chronic diseases due to lack of access to healthy foods
· Shorter life expectancies
· A rate of incarceration that is 5-6 times the national average; filling up to 50% of Prairie prisons even though we make up less than 15% of the population.
· Our peoples are often judged harsher and given stiffer sentences
· We suffer police brutality unparalleled by another group in Canada
· Our lands are raped by transnational corporations for mining and oil, leaving us with NO benefits, NO equitable royalty payments, and devastating pollution causing disease and illness
· We face continuous racism and prejudice by the public and media
· We have higher rates of unemployment and economic exclusion
Reading all of that is depressing. However, there is one important fact to remember.
WE ARE STILL HERE!
That is a powerful fact. Despite 300 years of genocide, we are still here. Despite all the challenges levelled against us, we are still here. In the face of everything that the colonial government seeks to do to us, we are not only still here, but we are gathering strength.
The colonial governments are teetering on the verge of economic collapse:
The Occupy movement gathering around the world is an example of the failure of the colonial system. The global recession, started by greedy colonial men in Wall Street, is an example of the failure of the system.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/world/archives/2011/11/20111106-095133.html
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/world/archives/2011/11/20111106-095133.html
Yet, there are more and more examples of our Indigenous peoples beginning to rise up in strength. Some examples include:
· Westbank First Nation
· Oosoyos Indian Band
· Tsawwassen First Nation
· Membertou First Nation
· Buffalo Point First Nation
· Opaskwayak Cree Nation
· And many more
Our path to victory and to strength will come from DOING the right things and not waiting for permission or approval or funds from the Federal government. Yes we will fight for those things, but we must not wait for them to be concluded before doing anything. Our destinies lie in our own hands. If we have survived 300 years of oppression, then really, nothing can stop us.
This is the irrational fear that has Canada ordering spies and military monitoring of our peoples.
Harper, the conservatives, the elite, the colonials all see that we are beginning to rise to our feet and they fear it. They are afraid that they will no longer be able to sit upon the top of the teetering ladder. They are afraid of losing their privileged, exclusive position. They are likely afraid of the tables turning and becoming oppressed themselves.
It is an irrational fear because we are not seeking to oppress them, despite all that they have done to us. We are not seeking to impoverish them or take anything away from them. We simply seek our rights, fairness, and control of our own destinies. We seek respect for our peoples, our land, our rights, our cultures, our sovereignty.
We are not asking to make them our enemy, even though they see us as theirs. We have a higher vision of the spirit of cooperation, friendship and human harmony.
Is there hope for us? Yes. We must support one another and support our young generation rising up. We must mentor them, encourage them, and stand with them as we lift the yoke of oppression from our backs.
We are still here.
Miigwech
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