The only good Indian is a dead Indian

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From Canada.com June 7, 2012:

The federal government has just voted to repeal Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. While the bill still has to pass a Senate vote, Canadians likely now have permission to speak more freely.

But what of hate speech, you may be asking. Isn’t there an avenue in Canadian law to protect people against promotion of hatred?

Yes, actually. It’s in the Criminal Code, where it’s supposed to be.

Section 318 states that anyone who promotes or advocates genocide is liable for up to five years in prison, and it has to be a pretty blatant case of it. To be prosecuted under this section, you have to say something along the lines of “Let’s all go out and kill some Englishmen” if you’re going to face any jail time. It’s a law that governs clear instances of hate promotion, not language “likely to” create it.

You’re still on the hook if you advocate mass murder against an ethnic group, or for wilfully promoting hate in a way that could disturb the peace. We have clear, stringent laws to stop that from happening. But we need not introduce vague laws that add to them unnecessarily.  (source)

I supported the repeal of Section 13. It was too broad, and the system to prosecute people under it was too skewed in favour of complainants. When Section 13 was repealed we were promised that it didn’t leave us in the wild west though, there were still protections as mentioned above against people who advocated violence and promoted genocide.

I have to wonder what’s happened to even those protections though.

Since the Idle No More movement came to the fore, the internet has been flooded with anti-Native racism. Most of it is just ignorance (and I will happily defend the *right* of any subnormal inbred idiot to sh*t hate on his keyboard), but some crosses the line. Here are some comments from the Facebook pages of the National Post and Sun News.

If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think that they were encouraging this kind of talk.  But certainly not, I mean these are hard-assed law and order types. Surely they’ve already called in the feds on some of these people below and are only leaving the comments up in order to ‘preserve the evidence’. Right? Riiight?

Another Tory insider on native rights: “repeal the Indian Act and fix this nonsense”

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I’ve actually got a backlog of these. It’s another Tory insider with some feelings about native rights.

First there was the ‘Dumb Indian‘ comment. Then the constituency rep for David Sweet that responds to native issues with (and I am paraphrasing here) ‘f*ck off and get a job’, and now this fellow – President of the Edmonton Sherwood Conservative Electoral Association, Greg Douglas (his comment is in the middle, just above the tanks comment and the ominous ‘let them pay the price’ comment, but below the comment labelling Idle No More protestors as terrorists):

The comment was made to a post on Sun News’ Facebook post asking “Should politicians and police chiefs that don’t enforce the law be fired?”.  Many of the comments on that page advocated violence against natives.

Background on Mr Douglas is here:

Taken in context, with the other Tories mentioned at the start of this blog post, what questions does that leave us with about the Conservative Party and its Aboriginal policy? I’ll leave that to you to figure out for yourselves.

John Duncan quoted on aboriginal affairs

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There’s an an article circulating around on Twitter that contains some damning quotes by Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, John Duncan. That article is a hoax – an old one in fact. Here’s APTN exposing it. But to be honest it’s not that far from the truth.

I spent a few minutes looking through Hansard (the ‘minutes’ of House of Commons proceedings) to find records of what John Duncan had said on aboriginal affairs while he was critic for the Reform Party.  Below you’ll find some representative quotes that I think are helpful in interpreting his government’s recent moves to work around aboriginal rights.

Below you’ll see calls for collective punishment of aboriginals, deep mistrust of natives (saying they can’t run a highway between 2 native villages because they might put a blockade on it), and a consistent rejection of native sovereignty and of meaningful self-government, or what he calls “the false promise of native sovereignty”.

Now before you get carried away, none of the following is racist, because some of John Duncan’s best friends are native:

I so much remember my Haida friend, on hearing that I was leaving the Charlottes, saying to me: “John, many people have come to the Charlottes, worked, and then left without contributing a thing. I can tell you that you are an exception because you have made this a better place”. Madam Speaker, these words meant so much to me.

Monday April 25, 1994 (source)

So without further etc…, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, John Duncan in his own words:

A suggestion on the coordination of INM actions

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A lot of suggestions are being made in the Idle No More groups on actions to put pressure on the Canadian government.  Those actions which fit in with traditional forms of protest such as flash mobs, and twitter protests go far.  These go far because individuals can do their part entirely on their own. One person sets a time and a place and everyone makes their way to the protest independently.

But a lot of other actions aren’t going anywhere because they require a tonne of ongoing coordination.  Here then is a suggestion for how to coordinate these type of actions.

Step One – on the Facebook page, suggest an action. Discuss it with the group, take feedback and criticism.

Step Two – if feedback is positive, create a new post on the action called ‘looking for volunteers’.

• Explain what the action is, & link back to the original post where the action is discussed.
• List how many volunteers you need for the action to go forth.
• Say how much time you need them to commit.
• Say when you want the action to take place / or be accomplished by.
• Ask people to say ‘yes’ if they are interested in participating.
• Tell them in the post, that if they say ‘yes’ you will send them a Facebook message with more details.
• Ask people to invite their friends to participate by sharing the post with them.

Step Three – When you reach the required number of volunteers (people saying ‘yes’ in the comments to the post), send them a Facebook message. In the facebook message ask them who wants to be chair of the action committee.  The chair of the action committee must create a private facebook group for the action, and must coordinate meetings.  Just because you came up with the idea does not mean you are the best person to chair the action committee.  Once the chair is selected, move on to step four.

Step Four – Chair sets up private Facebook group and invites all volunteers to attend.

Step Five – Using the private group, together agree on the goal for your INM action. Create a step by step plan to achieve this action, and create a ‘to do’ list, and get people from the group to volunteer to do each of the items on that list.  Wherever possible, all items should be done on the Facebook group page. If you need to share docs, I suggest creating a group email that everyone can access on Gmail, and using Google Drive and Google Docs. All to do items must have an agreed on ‘due date’.

Step Six – When the ‘to do’ items are done and your action is ready, execute it.

Step Seven – Report back to the main Idle No More facebook page with details of your action, and any media impact it had.  If no media impact, request help on publicizing your action.

Step Eight – Once your action is successfully completed, close the facebook group page and disband the group; freeing people up to take part in other actions.

Some suggestions for things to keep in mind about Idle No More actions:

• They should be achievable.
• They should not be racist, prejudiced or promote violence.
• They should have a clear goal.
• Goals should be inline with INM goals.
• Actions should be as small as possible – ex. Overthrowing capitalism is not small. Pushing a specific company not to hold a conference in Canada is small. Putting a petition on the White House website and getting 25,000 signatures is small. Having the US impose sanctions on Canada is not small.  Small is better because it can be done in a short amount of time, and it is more likely to be completed successfully.
• The last item on your action to do list is ‘Publicize the Action’. Always think about how to tell people about your action.

As I said above, these are suggestions only. I don’t presume to be some grand poobah of the INM movement. If you choose to use these suggestions, I think you will find them to be very effective.

Canadian soliders on IdleNoMore – ‘ Lets play “cowboys n injuns” ‘

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Quite a lot of commenters on line are calling for violence against natives who join in the Idle No More demonstrations. Here are a few examples (more are readily available in every news comments section):

With so many keyboard Pattons people calling for armed force to be used against peaceful marchers, it got me thinking: what do the actual armed forces think of Idle No More?

I searched through comments threads on Facebook and pulled out comments from people who appeared to have a connection to the Canadian forces, most who claim to be currently serving members, or list their network as the Canadian Forces.

I want to stress one thing – of the 4 – 5,000 comments I reviewed, I did not encounter a single soldier who was in any way supportive or neutral on the protests. The feeling was universally antagonistic towards the protests, and I would say some of these can be read as antagonistic towards native people in general.  Here are some of the comments I found, going from least to most hostile (if they refer to a specific person, it is Chief Spence):

I could go on – but these are representative. Now what does this say about these particular soldiers? The first one isn’t the worst thing in the world. It’s factually incorrect but it’s not violent or racist or anything. The further you get down the list though … hearing a solider say he wants to ‘play cowboys n injuns’? It’s unsettling – and it could be read as a threat; especially as it was written on the anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre – reminding us how soldiers treated natives back in the ‘cowboy n injun’ era.

Finally, the fact that every soldier online follows this same script could be saying something bad about our military establishment and its tolerance or support for these views.

Another Tory staffer on Native concerns: “Too bad so sad”

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Here is Chelsea Vowel on the Idle No More movement:

Whether the particular focus has been on housing, or education or the environment, or whatever else. What lies at the heart of all these issues is our relationship with Canada. And Canada? This relationship is abusive [...]

The Canadian government continues to mouth platitudes about its supposed dedication to this relationship, while it slashes funding, ignores our emergencies, pulls out of comprehensive land claim discussions, “consults” with us and then ignores everything we told them, all while pursuing a hard-line agenda which accepts only termination as a result.

We have been backed into a corner and we are literally fighting for our lives. We are literally dying, in so many preventable and unacceptable ways. I’m not being poetic or hyperbolic here and I don’t just mean culturally.

Chief Spence has gone on a hunger strike to try and force a summit meeting between the Prime Minister and the chiefs.

A lot of people out there say that regardless of what the law says, we natives don’t deserve a nation-to-nation meeting with the federal government. That if we have a problem we should go speak to our local MP.

So what happens if you want to speak to your MP? You go to their office, meet their staff, share your problems and concerns, and what answer do you get back?

This is a constituency assistant for Conservative MP David Sweet.  Commenting on an article about the hunger strike by Chief Spence, and the Idle No More movement in general – her answer: “Too bad so sad“.

Or to translate that into more direct English: “Tough shit, get a job”. Which I think surprises no native person who’s had to deal with this government or its representatives.

And as I tried to show earlier today, this isn’t a unique point of view. It is *widespread* throughout the Conservative Party.

More to come (one for sure, maybe two).

People saying racist stuff about natives

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I’m cautious about what I say about people. In this case though, I have no reservation in saying that these people below (from the Sun News Facebook page) are saying totally racist stuff about natives. This isn’t the worst stuff on there, I didn’t even look that carefully. These are representative samples of Tory supporters / Sun News viewers. Of the comments on the web about Idle No More, a quarter of it boils down to comments like these. And the most incredible thing is that they’re not hiding, they’re not ashamed, all of these people are posting their names and pictures, even workplaces – almost all have multiple people ‘liking’ their comments too.

NB: The ‘Ken Mans’ one blows my mind because he’s literally describing the Apartheid-era Bantustan system.  The Riley one is there just to be ironic – it isn’t racist in itself, it’s just ballsy given the context.

The ‘her’ they’re referring to is a cheif doing a peaceful hunger strike. That’s the one they want the army to visit. The train thing is a reference to the peaceful blockade in Sarnia.

 

Some of my best friends are native . . .

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As everyone in the world knows, if you have an acquaintance of a particular nationality, race, orientation, or ethnicity, it’s physically impossible to be racist against that group. In fact it’s incumbent upon you to use all the insight you’ve gleaned from your black friend to ‘tell it like it is’.  Why just look at Strom Thurmond, black daughter, and the greatest defender of African Americans in the history of the Senate:

“I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theatres into our swimming pools into our homes and into our churches.”

It’s ok, he has a black friend, so that’s not racist. It looks racist, it uses racist language, but trust him, it’s not racist.

So too with First Nations. There are a f*ck of a lot of people out there who have a native friend, a native boss, a native acquaintance, or who may in fact be part native – who, without those ties, would be well at least questionable. But with those ties, well, a few mild examples:

This one is a 2-parter:

And my personal favourite as an employer …

siggy666
So, it’s all the white man’s fault?
I’m sure you will do well in life with that attitude.

For your information, I have, and know, more ABORIGINAL friends who own their own
homes, have families they support with money they have worked hard for and…..
and get this….. they are PROUD of what they have.
Imagine that.
I asked my good friend (he’s treaty) and recently promoted (my boss), why he wasn’t
like “other” natives.
” why the **** would I want to live like that” was his answer.
Food for thought.

Oh my god you dumb idiot, I would so fire you. Have you never heard the term ‘hostile work environment’? What is in your tiny empty head that you would speak to your boss like that? Good god.

** All screenshot quotes are from Sun News’ Facebook page.