[Indigsol] FW: Hoping Against Hope

[Pei-Ju Wang]

Hoping Against Hope - Transcript of the Audio Documentary


http://intercontinentalcry.org/hoping-against-hope-transcript-of-the-audio-d
ocumentary/  

The following is a transcript of part 1/3 from a new audio documentary
entitled Hoping Against Hope: The Struggle Against Colonialism in Canada.

For details of the documentary or to download the full transcript, [1]
please see here <http://www.praxismedia.ca/cs_hope.html>  - and, if you'd
like to read a review of the documentary, please see [2] this page on
dominionpaper.ca <http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/1019> 

Part One - Colonization and the Killing of History

Welcome to Hoping Against Hope? The Struggle Against Colonialism in Canada,
a three-part series produced by Praxis Media Productions and the Nova Scotia
Public Interest Research Group. This is the first installment, Colonization
and the Killing of History Narrated by Ardath Whynaught

Narration: Aboriginal communities throughout Canada are beset with record
levels of suicide, high infant mortality rates, rampant sexual exploitation,
epidemic levels of gas-sniffing, and alcohol, drug and solvent abuse.
Furthermore there is an over-representation of indigenous people in the
prison system, and chronic levels of desperate poverty.

Exploring why this is happening is the theme of this piece. Throughout,
we'll be exploring the underbelly of our history to paint a picture of our
humanity. We will challenge the myths that justify today's reality of
colonialism in Canada.

We are frequently given explanations that somehow locate the source of these
problems within Aboriginal individuals themselves. Notice that most
explanations blame Indians: genetic predispositions to alcoholism or
suicide, lack of education, or even one's personal lack of cultural
identity. Others blame social or geographic isolation, cultural deprivation
in the community, corrupt band councils or difficulties adjusting to a
legacy of colonialism that may not have been pretty, but is now- somehow-
behind us.

Dr. Roland Chrisjohn is Oneida from the Haudenaushaunee Confederacy and the
Director of Native Studies at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. He
disagrees with these explanations and summarizes the situation at the outset
of his book 'The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian
Residential School Experience in Canada.'

Roland Chrisjohn: What if the Holocaust had never stopped?

What if no liberating armies invaded the territory stormed over by the
draconian State? No compassionate throng broke down the doors to dungeons to
free those imprisoned within? No collective outcry of humanity arose as
stories of the State's abuses were recounted? And no Court of World Opinion
seized the State's leaders and held them in judgment as their misdeeds were
chronicled? What if none of this happened?

What if, instead, with the passage of time the World came to accept the
State's actions as the rightful and lawful policies of a sovereign nation
having to deal with creatures that were less than fully human?

What if the Holocaust had never stopped, so that, for the State's victims,
there was no vindication, no validation, no justice, but instead the dawning
realization that this was how things were going to be? What if those who
resisted were crushed, so that others, tired of resisting, simply prayed
that the 'next' adjustment to what remained of their ways of life would be
the one that, somehow, they would be able to learn to live with? What if
some learned to hate who they were, or to deny it out of fear, while others
embraced the State's image of them, emulating as far as possible the State's
principles and accepting its judgment about their own families, friends, and
neighbors? And what if others could find no option other than to accept the
slow, lingering death the State had mapped out for them, or even to speed
themselves along to their State-desired end?

What if?

Then, you would have Canada's treatment of the North American Aboriginal
population in general, and the Indian Residential School Experience in
particular.

And here and now we are going to prove it to you.

Narration: In 1492, Christopher Columbus reached the Americas. He was not
the first visitor to cross the ocean from faraway lands, such as the Norse
or Chinese, but he did represent a new way of life that violently spread
across the so-called New World.

Contrary to popular belief, the roots of European colonialism do not begin
here, but rather in Europe itself. Michael Parenti is an outspoken scholar,
activist and author.

Michael Parenti: The earliest regions in which the Western powers imposed
economic underdeveloped were on Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe was European,
Caucasian. That was in the 16th century. Britain's oldest colony was a white
colony. Its oldest most oppressed colony at least for any number of
centuries; going back 700 years or more was populated entirely by white
Europeans. I'm talking about Ireland. If the Imperialists exploited darker
peoples, it was for economic gain. They didn't care what race you were. If
you've got a good farm, you got something going there that I want. I don't
care if you're white, black, yellow, red, whatever.

Narration: The expansionist nature of European societies required the
subjugation of peoples to feed the growing needs of burgeoning capitalism.
As such, anybody who got in the way of the seizure of lands or other
material wealth became the subjects of colonialism. Dr. Roland Chrisjohn-

Roland Chrisjohn: Residential schools for the Irish for the Welsh, for the
Scottish during the development of what we now call Great Britain was
exactly what they were doing to First Nations people, and that is stripping
them of their language, stripping them of their tribal backgrounds and their
cultures and substituting a series of invented traditions, so the picture
today for example of the Scotsman with the tartan and kilt and the tam Shan
is manufactured! Scottish people, Irish people and Welsh people were tribal
societies and living as tribal societies, they rejected and resisted being
forced into an industrialized,depersonalized system where they were supposed
to treat themselves as more or less fodder for someone else's industrial
machine. They fought about it and they lost. It's not a nice history, but
there is a history there. Without that history, it seems, as Indian
residential schools are something that fell fully formed out of the sky as
something that the Canadians were trying to do to indigenous peoples. No! It
happened to indigenous peoples all over the world. There are residential
schools today!

Narration: Ward Churchill is a member of the Keetowah Cherokee nation and
Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Boulder, Colorado.
He has been involved with the American Indian Movement since 1972 and has
authored numerous books on the topic of Indigenous people, colonialism and
genocide.

Ward Churchill: Colonialism, in its legal definition, simply means the
assertion of primacy by one nation over another, as indicated by a desire to
benefit from the land and/or resources and/or labor, it can be any or all of
the above, of the subject people by the colonizing people.

The classic colonial formation, of the countries of Europe exporting
themselves literally in terms of their population, in terms of their
technology, in terms of their ideology, in terms of what Adolf Hitler would
eventually call their 'belton-slaung', and imposing themselves upon the rest
of the planet.

There was a period of time in the 19th century, when at least four fifths of
the planetary surface was claimed by one or another European power,
parasitically draining them of their assets, of their vitality, in order to
enrich and empower itself, to assert itself ultimately the cutting edge of
advancement of the entire human project since day one and to entitle itself
to a status of privilege and pre-preponderance in terms of politics, which
remains essentially unabated to the present moment.

So you have the British empire, upon which the sun never set, of which
Canada and previously the area now known as the United States was once a
part, extended itself into the Caribbean, into small sectors of what's known
as Ibero-America, out across the pacific, expounded itself in India, wielded
a certain hegemonic influence in its self-proclaimed sphere in China, which
dominated sectors of Africa for a better of a century and so on and so on.

Narration: Colonialism is not just the theft of territory, and populating it
with new settlers and their way of life. It also involves the destruction of
the social, political, and economic institutions of the original
inhabitants.

Many Indigenous nations were instrumental Allies to the crown during the
colonial wars between the English and French. As a result, it became
difficult for Canada to claim indigenous territory through right of
conquest. When Canada became a country in 1867, the problem of how to steal
Indigenous land took a new direction.

The solution to the Indian Problem became a reduction of those who were
'officially' considered 'Indian'. The Indian Act came into existence in
1876, nine years after Canada morphed from a British colony into a country,
superseding over 600 sovereign indigenous nations. The Indian Act of 1876
introduced initiatives, which were entirely consistent with the need to
bureaucratically eliminate Indians. In essence, the motto; 'The only good
Indian is a Dead Indian' became: 'The Only Good Indian is a Non-Indian.'

The Indian Act involved the imposition of the band council system of
government over pre-existing traditional forms of social and political
organization. In some communities, Canadian band council democracy was
literally introduced by force of arms. 

Patricia Monture-Angus: I don't have a perspective on being aboriginal. I
am, period. I am a Mohawk woman. It's not a perspective. It's a way of
being. 

Narration: Patricia Monture-Angus is Professor of Law at the University of
Saskatchewan.

Patricia Monture-Angus: Don't tell me a Band Council is traditional
Government, don't tell me it's Indian Government. Those are the government
structures they forced on our people. They come out of the Indian Act. As
far as I'm concerned I'm going toreject anything that comes out of the
Indian act because of the pain it has caused our communities.

Narration: It isn't surprising that most Canadians do not understand the
legacy of colonialism, and its existence on these lands since this history
is not properly taught in schools.

Andrea Bear Nicholas: Also we talk about history, at least from our
perspectives as First Nations people that it distorts, it omits, it lies
about our history.

Narration: Andrea Bear Nicholas is Maliseet from Tobique and Atlantic Chair
in Native Studies at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. She describes
some common misconceptions about treaties.

Andrea Bear Nicholas: For those of you who live in the Maritimes, you
probably know what a big issue treaties have become, but I like to use this
example because it shows that most Maritimers did not even hear of treaties
until the last decade or decade and a half ago. Why? Because someone or some
group of someone's chose not to include it in what children learn; what
people learn in school. And I'm pretty convinced that that's been fairly
deliberate. There has been an attempt to get rid of Aboriginal people since
day one, to get rid of the truth about our past with the settler, the
immigrant society, the details of that past, to forget that our relationship
is not a relationship of simply an ethnic group, but that we actually are
nations, we have a nationhood relationship with the Canadian state, the
Canadian nation. And I would insist that this be the understanding of the
reason why this has been left out of the textbooks. These treaties are not
just Aboriginal treaties. These are treaties between Aboriginal people and
the Canadian state, the Canadian people.

In the Maritimes, the only existing treaties were Peace and Friendship
Treaties. They were nation-to-nation agreements, which promised to end the
hostilities between the encroaching settlers and Aboriginal peoples. The
Peace and Friendship Treaties, unlike most of the treaties across the
country, are treaties between First Nations and the British. They were
treaties signed at the end of six wars that spanned a period of about 100
years. Not one deals with the land question, not one is a land surrender of
any kind.

Roland Chrisjohn: Nova Scotia is not surrendered territory. Canada has no
right to write Canada across Nova Scotia, to collect taxes from the people
who inhabit the land, cut down trees, to allocate natural resources, to
pollute water in Nova Scotia. At least 90% of Quebec is not surrendered
territory. About 75% of Ontario is not surrendered territory. The status of
the Prairie treaties, which do appear to be surrenders, are questionable on
two bases: One, The Indians have no memory of land surrender being raised'
And there is actually documented evidence of the people who were signing the
treaties as saying: 'Ha! Ha! We put one over on the Indians. We didn't tell
them what they were actually signing. We mistranslated it!' Or John MacLean
is a really great one for that, he says; 'the people we wanted to sign the
surrender wouldn't, so we found some other people, liquored them up and
declared them the Chief and tribal council and got them to sign it!' In a
fair court, how much would hold up? So the status of the REAL surrendered
land is still questionable. 75% of British Columbia is not seeded territory;
only the far Northeastern arm it's covered by Treaty 8 in Alberta may be
surrendered territory. The Yukon Territory is not ceded territory. Where did
Canada get the right to write 'Canada' across that? When you add it all up,
for about 90% of Canada, even under the best possible scenario, there is no
legal transfer of title from the Aboriginal inhabitants to the Crown.

What that means is that the absence of such, according to European laws, it
doesn't matter if the Indians had a law about this, but according to
European laws the legal inheritors of property- you get your legal
inheritance! You don't have to have a will. I get my share simply by the
fact that, under European law, I am legal progeny of that person. The
Aboriginal people in Canada today are the legal successors under European
law of the unseeded territory. So- not only is all this land NOT Canada. But
they owe for everything they've taken out. The trees have to come back, the
lobsters have to come back, the gold, the nickel up in Voise's bay, the
trees up in Lubicon territory, the oil under the Stonechild reserve up in
Edmonton. How many supposed transfers of possession were illegal?

When I talk to non-indigenous people they often say, well' That was a long
time ago and I didn't have anything to do with that. Well, sorry- the
receiver of a stolen good is also a criminal. The fact that you've got a
deed from your Grandfather who stole it from the Indians doesn't make it any
more legal; it's still a theft. You're still the receiver of stolen goods.
None of this is expiated. It's expiated less than one circumstance; if the
Indians are eliminated. If the land becomes literally uninhabited then it's
free. Free and clear. So, one of the problems of European political
economics in terms of its expansion in the world has always been,
terminating indigenous peoples.

Narration: A commonly held belief of European superiority holds that one
'advanced' society will inevitably replace another inferior or 'primitive'
society. Michael Parenti challenges this notion:

Michael Parenti: If you look closely at the indigenous peoples of North
Central and South America for instance. Compare them to what life was like
in Europe in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, they had agricultural skills
that were as good as anything in Europe. They had horticultural skills, they
had crafts, they had medicine and herbs and tribal democratic practices that
were not in abundant supply in Europe. But these Indigenous, these Native
people, these First Nation people, Native Americans, Indians, whatever the
names we give them, they did lag behind Europe in a number of things:
Hangings and murders, Europe had a much higher rate. Syphilis, gonorrhea,
small pox, typhoid, bubonic plague, much higher in Europe, a fact unknown in
North America. Slavery and prostitution. There was some African slavery,
there were instances of African slavery to be sure but it was nothing like
what you had in the Roman Empire or during serfdom and the like. Religious
wars, witch hunts and inquisitions, Europe had them beat in all of these
things.

Narration: The myth of European superiority masks the violence behind the
implementation of colonialism, as if it was the necessary outcome of an
evolutionary process. Of course, colonization in Canada was not as pretty as
some want us to believe.

Andrea Bear Nicholas-

Andrea Bear Nicholas: The province of New Brunswick came out with a textbook
last year. Their whole thing was that relations had always been 'pretty
good' between Indigenous peoples and the invading peoples. When one looks at
the details, the particular stories of those contacts, although these
stories and accounts are sparse, we don't have a lot for this area of the
world.

Almost every last one of them has violence, has invasion, has arrogance, has
ignorance, immediate oppression of the peoples who are being met. Immediate
conflict, so it's very difficult in my head for anybody to characterize that
whole first contact or couple of centuries of first contacts as anything but
violent and anything but oppressive. It was entirely an attempt to get at
our land, our resources and if it meant being friendly to us for a while, it
usually didn't last.

Narration: Andrea Bear Nicholas describes one method of eradication that was
used in the first wave of colonization. Bounties were paid by the crown for
confirmed death of Indians, including women and children.

Andrea Bear Nicholas: One of the most obvious and perfect examples of the
violence, the genocide that was practiced against us: the bounties were
bounties on our scalps or our bodies, if a scalp could be produced in lieu
of a whole body that was okay too.

They were issued quite often against particular First Nation groups at the
time. For instance, the people on the Penobscot River and not the rest.
Unfortunately, if you've selected out one indigenous group that has the
physical characteristics of them all, then it becomes something against the
whole people, not just the particular nation. Any bounty hunter could
produce any scalp and get money for it and there would be no way to prove
that it was the particular group of people that was named in the original
bounty.

The other thing is that most of our textbooks have never included anything
about bounties and of course when we first tried to get this into textbooks,
we met with incredible opposition. Finally, people were saying, 'The only
way we'll include it is if you can footnote it,' thinking that we could
never footnote it. But of course, the colonizers kept very good records of
what they thought was just behaviour and those records are there, just that
they've been left out of the history rather conveniently.

Narration: Andrea Bear Nicholas has coined the term 'historicide' when
talking about colonialism in Canada.

Andrea Bear Nicholas: I very much fell in love with Frantz Fanon's statement
'One of the first things a colonizer does when faced with a people that they
wish to colonize is to turn to the past of that colonized people and
pervert, distort and destroy it.'

That's the essence of it. That it's very important to make the colonized
people into the image of the colonizer to make them forget their past, which
is their oral tradition, their history, their whole way of being in the
world. If you're going to manipulate them or use them to your own purposes
to exploit their land or their labour, one must have that whole history
erased, so historicide ' the killing of history ' becomes an essential part
of the colonizers duty to his own goals in colonial efforts.

Andrea Bear Nicholas: And one example, just one example is the story of an
attack on one of our villages, Kingsclear which is right near Fredericton,
an attack on one of those villages in the middle of the night by virtually
an army of woodsmen, primarily- from the perspective of the woman who told
this story- primarily an attack on the women. And I couldn't find anything
anywhere other than this story from this woman in the Maliseet language to
verify in any other way that it happened until recently with the help of
some archivists, found the record that this actually did happen at 3 o'clock
in the morning on June 17 in1861. A piece of history that is pretty
important in a people's history, but a piece of history, that were it not
for the language and this storyteller in her language, we would not know
this. So, I guess I'm just saying that that's the tip of the iceberg that
I'm talking out. Just imagine how many other stories will never be gathered
because the speakers are dying with their languages.

Conclusion: You've been listening to Colonization and the Killing of
History, Part One of Hoping Against Hope? The Struggle Against Colonialism
in Canada, a three-part series produced by Praxis Media Productions and the
Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group. A special thanks to the
Department of Native Studies at St. Thomas University in Fredericton

For more information, please check out our websites at [3] praxismedia.ca
and [4] nspirg.org

  _____  

This article was orignally posted by Ahni on On February 21, 2007 @ 10:51 am


URLs in this post:
[1] please see here: http://www.praxismedia.ca/cs_hope.html
[2] this page on dominionpaper.ca: http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/1019
[3] praxismedia.ca: http://praxismedia.ca
[4] nspirg.org: http://nspirg.org

 

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