Name Change of the Aboriginal Forum to Indigenous

60 posts / 0 new

Wed, 2018-01-03 20:15

Pogo

I am close to someone who has a 100% British heritage and is yet is a Status Indian. There is a long and convoluted tale that involved a lot of issues including an acceptance process with the band elders. I imagine that another band (or this band at another time) would make a different decision. The point being that asking for a flow chart of rules ignores the inability to translate easily the rules into our black and white semantics, ignores the consensus nature of how these decisions are made, and ignores the different cultures that exist in Indigenous communities.

If you truly need to know. Speak to people in the community - though they may not be interested in educating you.

Wed, 2018-01-03 21:32

(Reply to #52) #53

Ken Burch

Rev Pesky wrote:

From unionist:

It means you and I.

If you have to ask, you are one.

Not much one can say to this. It is such a misuse of the word settler that it defies reason.

Here is what a 'settler' is, and has been for a long time:

Settler: Meaning "a person who moves into a new country" is from the 1690's

I was born into this country, I did not settle here. If I was to be sent back to where I came from that would be Chilliwack, BC. In fact if you define me as a 'settler', you'd also have to define everyone in Canada as a settler, because all of the people who live in this country came from somewhere else, or are the descendants of people who came from somewhere else.

My father was in fact a settler, coming to this country from Eastern Europe when he was three years old. My mother's family lived in this country for quite a few generations, and given the intermingling that has gone on over the years, there is a reasonable chance that I could find some "Indigenous" blood in the family tree.

And as far as the caps used as above, what do you do when you start a sentence with Indigenous? How is the reader to know whether you mean Indigenous or indigenous?

The point we're trying to make, Rev, is that it's the government you should be being a stickler with regarding the definitions of "Indigenous" and "settler", not this forum. It doesn't really matter precisely how Babble itself defines those words...it goes without saying that we here are always going to implicitly define "Indigenous" in the most inclusive manner, a manner that includes Metis, and that by "settler" we're talking about people of European descent, in particular people of Anglo-Celtic descent, the groups that oversaw or eventually benefited from the combination of land theft, cultural oppression and cultural erasure imposed on the Indigenous peoples of North America.

You have no reason to get all "answer the question! stop evading the question!" with us. Those who participate in this forum aren't the problem and the way Metis are treated will not be decided by whatever definitions we might use.

It's the government, not Babble.

Thu, 2018-01-04 01:35

#54

Rev Pesky

From Mr. Magoo:

I guess, the same as we would with any other word used to start a sentence.

As you probably guessed, I was being a bit facetious. But honestly, the word indigenous has a meaning, and it's not the meaning that is being given to it by others in this thread. Making a proper noun of it doesn't change that. I mean, why not capitalize 'settler' as well, if we're into giving brand new meanings to words?

If you read the article I posted, you'll see it was even done with 'Metis'.

But here's a guy with all the right words, writing in Maclean's:

The case for guaranteed Indigenous representation in Ottawa

David Moscrop makes the case for a separate 'Indigenous' parliament, or a guaranteed number of seats for Indigenous Peoples in the existing parliament. A "movement of real power away from settlers and towards Indigenous peoples, on terms that the latter can accept."

But like everyone else who tosses around the words Indigenous and settler, I suspect he doesn't have any idea of what he means. I suppose it would be nice if we could clearly define what everyone is (or was), but that is impossible.

Thu, 2018-01-04 02:37

#55

NDPP

Guaranteed seats in the Canadian parliament, that national house of ill-repute, would merely be the completion of the usurpation-as-genocide envisaged by Sir John A Macdonald: "The great aim of our legislation has been to do away with the Tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the other inhabitants of the Dominion as speedily as they are fit for the change."

Better to start from some real recognition of the true extent of existing but denied Indigenous rights, titles and sovereignties, and also an acknowledgment of just how broken the Canadian Constitution actually is.

"Since my traditional government never agreed by any treaty to be governed by your government, why does your legal system apply your government's laws to me on my indigenous nation's unceded, national territory?"

An Identification of the Conflicted Relationship Between the Indigenous Nations and the Legal Profession in Canada

https://dissidentvoice.org/2009/01/an-identification-of-the-conflicted-r...

Thu, 2018-01-04 10:03

(Reply to #55) #56

Unionist

Rev Pesky wrote:

Here is what a 'settler' is, and has been for a long time:

Settler: Meaning "a person who moves into a new country" is from the 1690's

I was born into this country, I did not settle here.

Um no, you're confusing "settlers" with "immigrants". Quoting some definition allegedly from the 1690s (with a wrong use of the apostrophe) doesn't bolster your case much.

Settlers are colonialists. They come uninvited, and they come to disenfranchise and rob and exploit. Being the child of one doesn't immunize them from that stain - unless of course they decide to unite their destiny with that of the Indigenous peoples, rather than import their 17th century colonial definitions with them to justify their innocence.

Look up "settler colonialism". Please.

Thu, 2018-01-04 10:25

(Reply to #56) #57

MegB

Rev Pesky wrote:

From unionist:

It means you and I.

If you have to ask, you are one.

Not much one can say to this. It is such a misuse of the word settler that it defies reason.

Here is what a 'settler' is, and has been for a long time:

Settler: Meaning "a person who moves into a new country" is from the 1690's

I was born into this country, I did not settle here. If I was to be sent back to where I came from that would be Chilliwack, BC. In fact if you define me as a 'settler', you'd also have to define everyone in Canada as a settler, because all of the people who live in this country came from somewhere else, or are the descendants of people who came from somewhere else.

My father was in fact a settler, coming to this country from Eastern Europe when he was three years old. My mother's family lived in this country for quite a few generations, and given the intermingling that has gone on over the years, there is a reasonable chance that I could find some "Indigenous" blood in the family tree.

And as far as the caps used as above, what do you do when you start a sentence with Indigenous? How is the reader to know whether you mean Indigenous or indigenous?

Where to start. Well, if you have to reference a 17th century definition of settler to prop up your privilege, that speaks volumes. Your suggestion that going back 13,000 years all people living in the country we call Canada are settlers is racist. Also, we can all trace our ancestry back to Africa. Does that make you Black? Stop quibbling and stop demeaning the heritage of Indigenous peoples.

This falls under babble's policy of not having to re-argue the understanding of long fought for progressive issues, definitions etc. My job is not to educate you - that's your job. Until you've done that, stay out of Indigenous threads.

BTW, Canadian, Metis, Inuit, Innu, etc. are all capitalized. As is Indigenous. Get it?

Thu, 2018-01-04 13:33

(Reply to #57) #58

Ken Burch

Unionist wrote:

Rev Pesky wrote:

Here is what a 'settler' is, and has been for a long time:

Settler: Meaning "a person who moves into a new country" is from the 1690's

I was born into this country, I did not settle here.

Um no, you're confusing "settlers" with "immigrants". Quoting some definition allegedly from the 1690s (with a wrong use of the apostrophe) doesn't bolster your case much.

Settlers are colonialists. They come uninvited, and they come to disenfranchise and rob and exploit. Being the child of one doesn't immunize them from that stain - unless of course they decide to unite their destiny with that of the Indigenous peoples, rather than import their 17th century colonial definitions with them to justify their innocence.

Look up "settler colonialism". Please.

I'll take this opportunity to own being a "settler colonialist beneficiary" myself, on the other side of the once disputed "national" border.

My mother's side of my family came to the Pacific Northwest on the Oregon Trail. I'm in the process now of trying to learn everything that went into the land theft process neeeded to claim that trail for "Manifest Destiny". The territory they moved to officially dispossesed Indigenous peoples of virtually all their land in a series of treaties in the 1840s and 1850s, passed a law barring people of color from even living within its boundaries on the establishment of statehood in 1859, had an early U.S. Senator who supported slavery and the Confederacy, and elected a member of the Ku Klux Klan governor in 1920. In my home town of Salem, the state capital, the Chinese community was at one point literally forced to live underground, then completely expelled from the city(most ended up in Portland)during the Chinese exclusion era, and no motel or hotel in the city would rent a room to Paul Robeson when he performed in 1948 in support of Henry Wallace's Progressive Party presidential campaign(in the same era, there was a sign on display in the Salem Greyhound depot which read "Welcome to Salem, population 25,000. 99.25% White").

My father's side of the family came to Oregon in 1910 from Tennessee, traveling from an area stolen from the Indigenous, which became a slave-owning state and part of the Confederacy and a bastion of legal Jim Crow until the 1960's(and spiritual Jim Crow to this day) to a state where all of the facts in the previous paragraph obtain.

I can't actually feel guilt for these facts, since I wasn't alive when they occurred, but they do leave me with a sense of responsibility to be part of the creation of the just world we should have had in the first place.

So I will call myself a product of "settler colonialism", acknowledge the material and racial privileges settler colonialism bestowed upon me, and spend the rest of my life seeking to kill the settler and the colonial within, for the days of settlement and colonialism must end if the world is to be born.

Thu, 2018-01-04 16:15

(Reply to #58) #59

Unionist

Ken Burch wrote:

So I will call myself a product of "settler colonialism", acknowledge the material and racial privileges settler colonialism bestowed upon me, and spend the rest of my life seeking to kill the settler and the colonial within, for the days of settlement and colonialism must end if the world is to be born.

That works for me too! Thanks, Ken.

Thu, 2018-01-04 16:51

(Reply to #59) #60

Ken Burch

Unionist wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

So I will call myself a product of "settler colonialism", acknowledge the material and racial privileges settler colonialism bestowed upon me, and spend the rest of my life seeking to kill the settler and the colonial within, for the days of settlement and colonialism must end if the world is to be born.

That works for me too! Thanks, Ken.

You're welcome.

Name Change of the Aboriginal Forum to Indigenous

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