Indigenous Peoples - Tumblr Posts
Last week, former Prime Minister Paul Martin, told the media that the failure to address the many overlapping crises faced by Indigenous peoples is not a problem with Canadians – Canadians are not racist. The problem is with Indigenous peoples – we are invisible. Martin further alleges that Canadians are “a generous people” that will “rise to the occasion” to support others in need – if they are aware of the issue.
Had these statements been made by anyone else, I might have let this insanity slip by as a severe case of willful blindness. However, Mr. Martin is a former Prime Minister and he knows better. Not only do we have a very deep and long-standing race problem in some segments of Canadian society, this racism has also infected every level, branch and institution of the municipal, provincial, territorial and federal governments.
This race problem is not new. It is in fact, one of the primary root causes of the challenges faced by Indigenous peoples today. Canadians are well aware of both the racism issue and the many overlapping crises in First Nations.
Racism in Canada is Real
The racism experienced by Indigenous peoples in Canada is not just a matter of insult or offence. While there are no shortage of racist, hateful comments made about us as individuals, communities and Nations – the racism we face is lethal.
It doesn’t just hurt our feelings – it leads to our premature deaths in a large variety of ways. Scalping bounties led to the deaths on thousands of Mi'kmaw people. There was a higher death rate for Indigenous kids in residential schools than for soldiers in the Second World War. Thousands of Indigenous peoples are murdered or are disappeared. We have higher rates of disease and injury. And deaths while in the custody of hospitals, foster parents and police show how prevalent racism against Indigenous peoples is in Canada.
This isn’t just my opinion. The Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall Prosecution in 1989 found that he was wrongfully prosecuted and failed by everyone in the justice system because he was Native. 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples spoke about racism against Indigenous women. The Aboriginal Justice Inquiry in Manitoba in 1999 admitted the justice system fails Indigenous peoples on a “massive scale.” The 2007 Ipperwash report confirmed that racism in the Ontario Provincial Police was widespread. And there have been many other reports which all speak to the deep-seated racism within Canada and its institutions.
We’ve known for a very long time that stories in the media about Indigenous peoples draw a high number of racist and hateful comments from all segments of society including teachers, professors, authors, professionals and politicians. In November of 2015, the General Manager and Editor in Chief of CBC News Canada issued a statement explaining why CBC will no longer allow comments on stories about Indigenous peoples. The reason for this is that Indigenous-related stories brought out “higher-than-average” comments which were not only hateful but also racist.
Maclean’s magazine even went so far as to say that Canada’s race problem is far worse than America’s and part of what makes it so bad is that Canadians keep denying they are racist.
In case you require something a little more official, the Ontario Human Rights Commission confirms that Canada has “a legacy of racism – particularly towards Aboriginal persons.”
The fact that Canada is so systemically and overtly racist is one of the reasons why Canada has so many laws against racism and hate speech, including federal and provincial human rights acts, the Criminal Code and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and is a signatory to numerous international human rights instruments. There would be no need for these protections if there were no issues around racism in Canada.
Invisibility versus Racist Indifference
Let’s just address this fiction before it becomes the new Liberal mantra. Neither Indigenous peoples, nor the many overlapping crises we face are invisible. While 50 per cent of Indigenous people live in remote reserves, about 50 per cent live in or near urban centres. One can’t walk down the street in Winnipeg or Saskatoon without seeing Indigenous people. In terms of the challenges we face, First Nations like Attawapiskat have put our higher rates of suicide, poverty, homelessness in the forefront and is a prime example of Canada’s racist and differential responses to First Nation crises versus Canadian crises(Walkerton, Halifax, Fort McMurray).
Indigenous activists like Cindy Blackstock have ensured that Canadians are well aware ofthe over-representation of First Nations kids in foster care. The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal concluded that the reason for the chronic underfunding and disproportionate number of kids in foster care was because they were Native. The problem of racism in Canada means that a tribunal actually had to direct Canada to stop its discriminatory treatment of Indigenous kids – and we are all still waiting for Canada to abide by this decision.
The Native Women’s Association of Canada led the way with public education and advocacy to focus the country’s attention on the thousands of murdered and missing Indigenous women. Even Canada’s own Attorney General and Office of the Correctional Investigator rang the alarm on Canada’s discriminatory treatment of Indigenous peoples which led to under-funded education systems and prisons over-represented with Indigenous peoples. We are far from invisible, but don’t take their words for it – the numbers speak for themselves.
In 2010, a study by Environics showed that 60 per cent of Canadians are either somewhat or very familiar with Indigenous issues. This is nothing new. In fact, over the last two decades, at least half of Canadians were familiar with Indigenous issues. The majority of Canadians also believe that the challenges faced by Indigenous peoples are the result of the attitudes of non-Indigenous people and government policies. Since 1993, Canadians have ranked addressing the living conditions on reserve as one of the top priorities. There is absolutely no doubt that Canadians and their politicians know about the issues.
Idle No More, the largest social movement in Canada’s history, brought the issues of social conditions and unresolved treaties and land claims to the front of the media, government and world’s attention and held it there for nearly a year. But Indigenous peoples didn’t just capture the media headlines in 2012. There have been regular flash points over the last few decades that garnered a great deal of media attention including Listuguj, Oka, Gustafsen Lake, Ipperwash, Burnt Church, Elsipogtog, Caledonia and others.
There are few in Canada who could claim that Indigenous peoples are invisible. They may not want to acknowledge the lethal results of this kind of racism, but they are aware it exists. After the Truth and Reconciliation Report, few can deny the racist underpinnings of Canada’s genocidal policies against Indigenous peoples.
So, no, racism is not a figment of our imaginations. The many tombstones from Indigenous peoples killed at the hands of priests, doctors, foster parents, police and bureaucrats prove otherwise. And, no, Indigenous peoples are not invisible. There isn’t a newspaper, news channel or magazine that hasn’t had pictures of dirty water, run down homes, or deceased Indigenous women as their lead story at some point. And finally, no, most Canadians are not unaware of our dire circumstances. It’s the racist segments of society that make a conscious choice to turn a blind eye to our suffering while running to the aid of their non-Indigenous neighbor.
With all due respect, former Prime Minister Paul Martin’s statements are themselves inherently racist. To deny the racist intentions held by the countless individuals and institutions who have stolen, sterilized, experimented on, scalped, beaten, raped, murdered, and dispossessed Indigenous peoples of their identities, cultures, children, lands, resources and independence is itself an act of racism.
It is far too convenient to be willfully blind or indifferent to the lethal impacts of racism on Indigenous peoples. Apologies are easy, as are empty diversity policies and promises for a new relationship. The hard work is in making amends for the damage done and which continues to be done to Indigenous peoples by people and governments that still have racist ideologies and intentions.
Canada was built on the dispossession, oppression and genocide of Indigenous peoples. Addressing racism now means far more than apologies, photo-ops and fancy words – it means the return of our lands and resources, the recognition of our jurisdiction, and the full implementation of our rights. This means land, wealth, and power changes hands – it means an uncomfortable recognition that Canada benefits from our continued oppression. Justice will require some discomfort. If it isn’t uncomfortable, it isn’t justice.
This isn’t a multicultural issue or one of diversity – we are not asking for “equality,” we are demanding justice. If we are going to move forward, we can’t hide behind the convenience of the status quo or the relief felt when a former Prime Ministers say there is no racism. We have to be brave enough to shine a light on the problem and work together to address is. Indigenous peoples have many allies in Canadian society – not everyone is racist. Unfortunately, many still hold racist views which threaten our lives.
I think we can all do better than pretend the problem of racism against Indigenous peoples doesn’t exist.While the new theme may be reconciliation, reconciliation is not a process in an of itself – it starts first with the truth. If Canada cannot admit it has a racism problem, then we can never take steps to address it. Let’s start the process.
so can we start hunting down white liberals now or what
Two-year-old Albert Apsassin feeling the spirit at National Indigenous Peoples Day in Camrose, Alberta.
#We'llCrossThatBridgeWhenWeGetThere
Winnipeg... where the earth is flat and the roads are straight.
Western colonizers: How did you move the statues?
Indigenous people: well, technically they walked. You see, we tied them with three ropes and pulled from three angles to-
Western colonizers: so aliens
Indigenous people: no, we used a very smart technique-
Western colonizers: aliens is the only logical reason
Genocide experts warn that India is about to genocide the Shompen people
Who are the Shompen?
The Shompen are an indigenous culture that lives in the Great Nicobar Island, which is nowadays owned by India. The Shompen and their ancestors are believed to have been living in this island for around 10,000 years. Like other tribes in the nearby islands, the Shompen are isolated from the rest of the world, as they chose to be left alone, with the exception of a few members who occasionally take part in exchanges with foreigners and go on quarantine before returning to their tribe. There are between 100 and 400 Shompen people, who are hunter-gatherers and nomadic agricultors and rely on their island's rainforest for survival.
Why is there risk of genocide?
India has announced a huge construction mega-project that will completely change the Great Nicobar Island to turn it into "the Hong Kong of India".
Nowadays, the island has 8,500 inhabitants, and over 95% of its surface is made up of national parks, protected forests and tribal reserve areas. Much of the island is covered by the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, described by UNESCO as covering “unique and threatened tropical evergreen forest ecosystems. It is home to very rich ecosystems, including 650 species of angiosperms, ferns, gymnosperms, and bryophytes, among others. In terms of fauna, there are over 1800 species, some of which are endemic to this area. It has one of the best-preserved tropical rain forests in the world.”
The Indian project aims to destroy this natural environment to create an international shipping terminal with the capacity to handle 14.2 million TEUs (unit of cargo capacity), an international airport that will handle a peak hour traffic of 4,000 passengers and that will be used as a joint civilian-military airport under the control of the Indian Navy, a gas and solar power plant, a military base, an industrial park, and townships aimed at bringing in tourism, including commercial, industrial and residential zones as well as other tourism-related activities.
This project means the destruction of the island's pristine rainforests, as it involves cutting down over 852,000 trees and endangers the local fauna such as leatherback turtles, saltwater crocodiles, Nicobar crab-eating macaque and migratory birds. The erosion resulting from deforestation will be huge in this highly-seismic area. Experts also warn about the effects that this project will have on local flora and fauna as a result of pollution from the terminal project, coastal surface runoff, ballasts from ships, physical collisions with ships, coastal construction, oil spills, etc.
The indigenous people are not only affected because their environment and food source will be destroyed. On top of this, the demographic change will be a catastrophe for them. After the creation of this project, the Great Nicobar Island -which now has 8,500 inhabitants- will receive a population of 650,000 settlers. Remember that the Shompen and Nicobarese people who live on this island are isolated, which means they do not have an immune system that can resist outsider illnesses. Academics believe they could die of disease if they come in contact with outsiders (think of the arrival of Europeans to the Americas after Christopher Columbus and the way that common European illnesses were lethal for indigenous Americans with no immunization against them).
And on top of all of this, the project might destroy the environment and the indigenous people just to turn out to be useless and sooner or later be abandoned. The naturalist Uday Mondal explains that “after all the destruction, the financial viability of the project remains questionable as all the construction material will have to be shipped to this remote island and it will have to compete with already well-established ports.” However, this project is important to India because they want to use the island as a military and commercial post to stop China's expansion in the region, since the Nicobar islands are located on one of the world's busiest sea routes.
Last year, 70 former government officials and ambassadors wrote to the Indian president saying the project would “virtually destroy the unique ecology of this island and the habitat of vulnerable tribal groups”. India's response has been to say that the indigenous tribes will be relocated "if needed", but that doesn't solve the problem. As a spokesperson for human rights group Survival International said: “The Shompen are nomadic and have clearly defined territories. Four of their semi-permanent settlements are set to be directly devastated by the project, along with their southern hunting and foraging territories. The Shompen will undoubtedly try to move away from the area destroyed, but there will be little space for them to go. To avoid a genocide, this deadly mega-project must be scrapped.”
On 7 February 2024, 39 scholars from 13 countries published an open letter to the Indian president warning that “If the project goes ahead, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide.”
How to help
The NGO Survival International has launched this campaign:
From this site, you just need to add your name and email and you will send an email to India's Tribal Affairs Minister and to the companies currently vying to build the first stage of the project.
Share it with your friends and acquittances and on social media.
Sources:
India’s plan for untouched Nicobar isles will be ‘death sentence’ for isolated tribe, 7 Feb 2024. The Guardian.
‘It will destroy them’: Indian mega-development could cause ‘genocide’ and ‘ecocide’, says charity, 8 Feb 2024. Geographical.
Genocide experts call on India's government to scrap the Great Nicobar mega-project, Feb 2024. Survival International.
The container terminal that could sink the Great Nicobar Island, 20 July 2022. Mongabay.
[Maps] Environmental path cleared for Great Nicobar mega project, 10 Oct 2022. Mongabay.
Genocide experts warn that India is about to genocide the Shompen people
Who are the Shompen?
The Shompen are an indigenous culture that lives in the Great Nicobar Island, which is nowadays owned by India. The Shompen and their ancestors are believed to have been living in this island for around 10,000 years. Like other tribes in the nearby islands, the Shompen are isolated from the rest of the world, as they chose to be left alone, with the exception of a few members who occasionally take part in exchanges with foreigners and go on quarantine before returning to their tribe. There are between 100 and 400 Shompen people, who are hunter-gatherers and nomadic agricultors and rely on their island's rainforest for survival.
Why is there risk of genocide?
India has announced a huge construction mega-project that will completely change the Great Nicobar Island to turn it into "the Hong Kong of India".
Nowadays, the island has 8,500 inhabitants, and over 95% of its surface is made up of national parks, protected forests and tribal reserve areas. Much of the island is covered by the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, described by UNESCO as covering “unique and threatened tropical evergreen forest ecosystems. It is home to very rich ecosystems, including 650 species of angiosperms, ferns, gymnosperms, and bryophytes, among others. In terms of fauna, there are over 1800 species, some of which are endemic to this area. It has one of the best-preserved tropical rain forests in the world.”
The Indian project aims to destroy this natural environment to create an international shipping terminal with the capacity to handle 14.2 million TEUs (unit of cargo capacity), an international airport that will handle a peak hour traffic of 4,000 passengers and that will be used as a joint civilian-military airport under the control of the Indian Navy, a gas and solar power plant, a military base, an industrial park, and townships aimed at bringing in tourism, including commercial, industrial and residential zones as well as other tourism-related activities.
This project means the destruction of the island's pristine rainforests, as it involves cutting down over 852,000 trees and endangers the local fauna such as leatherback turtles, saltwater crocodiles, Nicobar crab-eating macaque and migratory birds. The erosion resulting from deforestation will be huge in this highly-seismic area. Experts also warn about the effects that this project will have on local flora and fauna as a result of pollution from the terminal project, coastal surface runoff, ballasts from ships, physical collisions with ships, coastal construction, oil spills, etc.
The indigenous people are not only affected because their environment and food source will be destroyed. On top of this, the demographic change will be a catastrophe for them. After the creation of this project, the Great Nicobar Island -which now has 8,500 inhabitants- will receive a population of 650,000 settlers. Remember that the Shompen and Nicobarese people who live on this island are isolated, which means they do not have an immune system that can resist outsider illnesses. Academics believe they could die of disease if they come in contact with outsiders (think of the arrival of Europeans to the Americas after Christopher Columbus and the way that common European illnesses were lethal for indigenous Americans with no immunization against them).
And on top of all of this, the project might destroy the environment and the indigenous people just to turn out to be useless and sooner or later be abandoned. The naturalist Uday Mondal explains that “after all the destruction, the financial viability of the project remains questionable as all the construction material will have to be shipped to this remote island and it will have to compete with already well-established ports.” However, this project is important to India because they want to use the island as a military and commercial post to stop China's expansion in the region, since the Nicobar islands are located on one of the world's busiest sea routes.
Last year, 70 former government officials and ambassadors wrote to the Indian president saying the project would “virtually destroy the unique ecology of this island and the habitat of vulnerable tribal groups”. India's response has been to say that the indigenous tribes will be relocated "if needed", but that doesn't solve the problem. As a spokesperson for human rights group Survival International said: “The Shompen are nomadic and have clearly defined territories. Four of their semi-permanent settlements are set to be directly devastated by the project, along with their southern hunting and foraging territories. The Shompen will undoubtedly try to move away from the area destroyed, but there will be little space for them to go. To avoid a genocide, this deadly mega-project must be scrapped.”
On 7 February 2024, 39 scholars from 13 countries published an open letter to the Indian president warning that “If the project goes ahead, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide.”
How to help
The NGO Survival International has launched this campaign:
From this site, you just need to add your name and email and you will send an email to India's Tribal Affairs Minister and to the companies currently vying to build the first stage of the project.
Share it with your friends and acquittances and on social media.
Sources:
India’s plan for untouched Nicobar isles will be ‘death sentence’ for isolated tribe, 7 Feb 2024. The Guardian.
‘It will destroy them’: Indian mega-development could cause ‘genocide’ and ‘ecocide’, says charity, 8 Feb 2024. Geographical.
Genocide experts call on India's government to scrap the Great Nicobar mega-project, Feb 2024. Survival International.
The container terminal that could sink the Great Nicobar Island, 20 July 2022. Mongabay.
[Maps] Environmental path cleared for Great Nicobar mega project, 10 Oct 2022. Mongabay.
How high can you jump?
If you watch closely, you'll notice that this guy doesn't even really put his knees or his elbows into it. But one more jump, and he'd have shot right up to the moon. Mind you, he's not the only Maasai/Samburu warrior who can jump this high. Of course, one of the better known Maasai tribesmen is David Rudisha the 800m WR holder.
Meantime, in sketchy news.
Apparently a person or persons unknown have decided that this oil portrait that's previously been on display at the National Museum in Nairobi, should no longer be part of the national collection but instead go either into storage or become part of someone's private collection.
Subject; Maasai elder standing outside his manyatta.
Whoever took this painting please allow the Kenya national museum access to it. It's meant to be part of the national gallery collection.
Evolving culture.
Used to be that Maasai warriors were known for their fearlessness, especially in taking on lions armed with nothing but spears.
But guess what, there's a new type of Maasai warrior in town.
And while the Maasai still honour many aspects of their culture including male circumcision, these days thanks to the anti-FGM efforts of educated men from their community, more Maasai girls are staying in school and studying up to a university level of education.
Heritage & Humour.
Yes, yes. Got it Sitting Bull. There's no confusing a Native American for a Punjabi Sikh who looks like Dr Manmohan Singh for some reason.
The Ainu are pretty much the only ones recognized as indigenous by the Japanese government, which is crazy, considering there were MANY more indigenous groups in Japan, whose numbers are even smaller, and with even less than the already-meager protections the Ainu have. It's so bad that a decent portion of the Japanese population genuinely aren't aware of the situation (I've spoken to a few who didn't know until like, last year that some of these groups are still around).
Not to try to detract from this post- just wanted to add that it's important not to forget that, just like indigenous groups in the west (specifically North and South America), they're not just one lump sum (many people like to act as if all native Americans are just one group and not literally hundreds if not thousands of tribes with their own unique languages and practices), and they've all suffered just as much from oppression, colonization, and discrimination.
We can't rewind time, but we can try to improve what we have now. Acknowledging, learning, and spreading as much information about these indigenous cultures and celebrating them is so important. I'm no expert- as far as I know, I'm neither from any of these groups nor do I personally know people who willingly acknowledge that they are (many Ainu, for example, deny their own heritage because of discrimination, as highlighted by the post above), so I can only encourage people to try and speak to, learn about, and help these communities in any way they can.
As a young boy in school, Masaki Sashima would be dragged out of his classroom and beaten by his fellow students.
Masaki, now 72, was different to the other kids.
He was Ainu, an Indigenous people from the country's northern regions, most notably the large island of Hokkaido.
"During recess, the hallway door would open, and several guys would yell at me to come out," he said.
"I clung to my desk in the classroom and kept quiet.
"Everyone would surround me and beat me."
Japan has long portrayed itself as culturally and ethnically homogenous, something that some have even argued is a key to its success as a nation.
More than 98 per cent of Japanese people are descendants of the Yamato people.
But the Ainu are distinct, with their own history, languages, and culture.
But, as the victims of colonialism, assimilation, and discrimination, much of that identity has been lost.
Whenever we talk about Truth and Reconciliation, we use very passive language. These tragedies did not only “happen” or “occur” to the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. Genocide doesn’t come out of nowhere. These heinous, violent, racist crimes were repeatedly and purposefully perpetrated by the white, European colonizers who settled on stolen land that was never signed away, sold, or surrendered. Some of the monsters who committed these crimes are still alive and have not faced trial. There can never be true justice for the victims of residential schools, the ‘60s scoop, and the other abhorrent acts against Indigenous peoples until those still alive who were in power at the time—the people who either perpetrated the crimes themselves or who did nothing to stop them—are brought to justice. Shame on the Canadian government, shame on the Anglican and Catholic churches. There is no pride in genocide.
when I drew this comic 3 years ago I had NO idea how far it would reach. I'm happy to finally share a corrected version with proper abbreviations, and even MORE state names of indigenous origin ♥️
however, the goal of this comic was to inspire people to do your OWN research on indigenous history. To question everything we have been taught, and everything that has been pointedly left out. This erasure, this “forgetting”, of history is not just of the past… it is happening now. - Across so-called Canada, the US, and US-occupied islands, native women are victims of murder at 10-12x the rate of non-native people, and are the most likely to go missing without being searched for by the law. - Native reservations have the highest rates of poverty in the US, with over HALF of tribal homes with no access to clean water (with more joining this list by the year) - Native people are 6-10x more likely to be unhoused than the rest of the population, and native teens suffer suicide rates higher than any other demographic. This list of modern day genocide goes on (thank you for compiling @theindigenousanarchist <3) and yet take a look at those environmental stats!
Native people manage to do SO much for the planet as a whole - thanklessly - and with all this stacked against them. Don't even get me started on kin fighting in south america. Could you imagine if there was help? #landback is resistance to genocide, and it is the key to saving our warming earth.
So look into it and the other hashtags, cuz a cartoon goose ain't a substitute for a proper education. Love to my grandparents who always kept a map of tribal territories of turtle island on their wall, to speaking on our Tsalagi & Saponi heritage. Love & solidarity forever, happy research, and happy #indigenouspeoplesday
LANDBACK.ORG
(Also, if you care to support the artist, I'm publishing a book ! and writing another - a fantastical afroindigenous graphic novel - that I post exclusively about with tons of other art on my patreon.)
Everyone say thank you american indigenous people for cultivating corn, potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, cacao, pumpkin, squash, and anything i missed. Makes life more meaningful globally
To those living in America, Happy Indigenous People's Day! In honor of this amazing holiday, lets all take a moment, take a big breath and scream in unison,
FUCK CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS!!!!
