Native warriors are “pirates” now?
By Special Correspondent Jessica Yee
Purported “root causes” for anti-industrial actions are complex, tied into land disputes and First Nations’ social issues. But such actions are proliferating because “warriors” are getting away with them. Caledonia’s Douglas Estates project has been illegally occupied since 2006, while Ontario refuses to enforce the law. When Mohawks blocked and threatened border agents at Cornwall Island this summer, apparently unhappy that the officers’ newly issued sidearms might disrupt bootlegging operations, Ottawa capitulated, relocating the crossing. When Terrance Nelson himself was chief of Manitoba’s Roseau River First Nation in 2007, his threat to blockade rail lines prompted Ottawa to gift his band 75 acres of Winnipeg land. More unlawfulness, Nelson knows — as do the 57 bands backing him for AFN chief — provokes bribes, not enforcement.
And so things will get worse. First Nations are bursting with waves of young, often unemployed, disaffected members reared on a sense of grievance. A 2006 Compas poll found 61% of aboriginals predicted more anti-industrial actions ahead. There’s no shortage of targets. “There’s hardly a road, a railroad line, a transmission line or oil pipeline that doesn’t go through some disputed property territory,” former Ontario premier David Peterson warned in 2007. The economic stakes are steep.
-Kevin Libin, The National Post on Anti-Industrial Actions By First Nations Militants Threaten The Canadian Economy. We Won’t Achieve Peace Until We Stop Giving Into “Warrior” Demands
Some starting points for discussion on this racist piece of shit I’d like to offer:
- First off it’s quite interesting the author bothers to dabble into the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) electoral results right off the bat of this article and attempt to analyze them as if he understands even a SMIDGEN of First Nations governance with Chief and Band Councils
- Oh, the misuse and misunderstanding of the term “warriors” yet again. When will these ignorant closeted bigots realize the English language translation kind of fucked it up for the real meaning of the word
- Piracy? We’re pirates? For real? Or are YOU the pirates seizing the land?
- As if this is really about industry for us “poor, young, unemployed Natives”. More like it’s industry for THEM. I think White people in this type of situation just can’t STAND the fact that we have our own rule of law – which is actually to take care of the environment – and preserve the land they are trying to stomp all over and denigrate for this young population he speaks of. Or more to the point – they just can’t stand it when they CAN’T do something.
__
Photo credit: The National Post
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
jvansteppes wrote:
Dear Kevin Libin,
People might respect the precious property laws if the land wasn’t stolen and the treaties were respected (at the very least). The real pirates are the development companies who expect to appropriate indigenous land without consequence.
Posted 14 Sep 2009 at 2:14 pm ¶
inkst wrote:
This quote, “First Nations are bursting with waves of young, often unemployed, disaffected members reared on a sense of grievance.” is very telling.
I honestly cannot believe how blatantly racist this article is! I do not live in Canada and am unfamiliar with the National Post. Is this type of writing typical for them?
Either way… wow.
Posted 14 Sep 2009 at 2:58 pm ¶
Minotaar wrote:
This is a really deep and serious issue. The article is clearly racist.
It’s also a piece of shit. I had to reread the first three sentences nine times before I figured out what the fuck they were talking about. Someone tell that guy how to write.
Posted 14 Sep 2009 at 4:41 pm ¶
Donnie wrote:
“inkst”, this is quite typical of how they write at the National Post. He may not even be wrong about the sense of grievance amongst our youth but he doesn’t list why and that might help people understand so many of our youth. He doesn’t list the other options our young people are faced with either like gangs and suicide. There’s a lack of positive approaches to things because the ones proposed to us by the government have given us very little if anything in the way of progress. Even what we are afforded is misunderstood and misconstrued by many same minded people as the guy who wrote the article that compelled this piece from Jessica.
What’s worse is that he failed to include info that should be included in such a piece. His interpretation of the protests in Akwesasne were missing the message that was highly evident and portrayed even in his own newspaper from those protesting. They just didn’t want guns in their community, especially at a highly contentious area. You may agree or disagree with that notion but why fail to mention it; he owed the reader that much.
He also fails in how he tries to elaborate on the motivations behind the votes for Terry Nelson. No one really knows the motivations for how anyone votes and not unless you ask each person and if you do can you really count on a completely honest answer? I know I don’t continue to vote for the Liberal party in Canada so the leader can force an election a year after the last one but I vote for them for different reasons and mainly because I feel they can best put forth policies that will represent a greater population in Canada.
Lastly, he talks about the justice system and this being a reason so many people set up shop here and invest in this country. Really? Maybe they do but this same justice system has actually led to the problems he writes about. It has ignored precedents and legal treaties that would end these disputes and lead to First Nations people being less of a “burden” on the justice system as well as the political system. Many of the people who do business in this country prey on this same justice system as well so that they can bog down any movement to stop what they are doing even when they are brazenly unethical in how they have achieved acquiring land or capital for their business.
Worse, this guy just made me mad enough to devote too much time to this. Or maybe, he hasn’t made me mad enough yet where I spend every waking hour showing people with more open minds how wrong this kind of thinking is.
Posted 14 Sep 2009 at 4:58 pm ¶
Donnie wrote:
btw, that beautiful and amazing man in the picture accompanying this article is Elmer Courchene, an Elder in his community (which I will spell wrong) and the broader national community as well. He’s a wise, wise man.
Posted 14 Sep 2009 at 5:03 pm ¶
m. wrote:
This fucking piece of shit article is just one of many examples of the garbage published by white people who can’t write, if only for the reason they are white and people are willfully uneducated and happily mired in their own settler mentality. It is such shit, this comment will be brimming with four-letter words. Hah.
I am sick of this shit. I need not elaborate on it because Donnie’s comments say so much, but that quote…it is indicative of how the majority of non-Native people feel about all of us, not just Canadians about Mohawk people. Many non-Native people, recent immigrants or long-time occupants, repeat variants of the same bullshit complaint about or to us all the time: “Those/you people need to quit feeling sorry for them/yourselves.” It’s about them feeling sorry for *themselves* because they don’t have it as easy as us: our lives are just that simple, our struggles are imagined and we’ve “got those sovereign nations” – as if true sovereignty really exists in the first place (it’s only a few feet deep, if anything). I ought to familiarize myself a little more with the situation at Akwesasne, because I only know so much and it’s a lot more complex than any ass with a vehicle to voice their racism could ever comprehend.
I’m sorry, I do not have anything of substance to add to this. That may or may not be because I am your typical, disaffected twenty-something Indian raised on a sense of grievance who would be unemployed if living at home, though! Or just because I’m tired.
@Donnie: Thanks for mentioning the man in the photo, I was afraid to click on the link for fear I’d be assaulted with anti-Native diatribe rather than finding the picture itself.
Posted 14 Sep 2009 at 8:33 pm ¶
Jadey wrote:
And the legal system he is so offended on behalf of is the same legal system that has been employed as a weapon against Inuit/First Nations/Metis people in Canada from the nation’s inception (and before!). Insult upon injury upon insult upon injury and so on ad infinitum.
I know the National Post is a crock, but many, many Canadians (particularly privileged white Canadians) really don’t understand why “some people” appear to be exempt from Canadian law (which, even just considering the over-representation of indigenous people in the CJS for starters, is a misunderstanding and gross oversimplification in and of itself). The mainstream comprehension of the implications of our colonialist roots and what it will take for us to be anti-colonialist is weak to non-existent.
Posted 14 Sep 2009 at 10:42 pm ¶
Shelby wrote:
I’ve been trying to keep my stress levels down these days so I decided not to read the entire quoted portion of the article and just glanced down at the title of the piece in question…
Dude.
Why not just call it “Savages Get Angry: What Canada can do to train ‘em not to be so uppity.” I mean, “Warrior demands?” For realz? See, this is what I get for reading. Ugh.
Posted 15 Sep 2009 at 4:11 pm ¶
urbia wrote:
Pirates?
Doesn’t sound like they’re even trying anymore. It’s like they randomly pulled that word out of a magical Insta-Stigma hat. If the media is focused on Native peoples as land-grabbing, wouldn’t they be land-lubbers and not pirates?
Posted 15 Sep 2009 at 6:37 pm ¶
Fantomex wrote:
And I seriously thought that this paper was going out of business (according to all of the other news reports about Canwest Global’s financial problems). It doesn’t seem so, from the looks of it, and we’re stuck with this piece of coarse toilet paper for life.
In case you’re all wondering, this isn’t the only crappy story we’ve seen from them-Christie Blatchford also writes racist drivel, having made her bones at the Toronto Sun in the ’70’s and ’80’s, and even being the subject matter of a calypso called ‘Christie’ by a local musician.
Typical journalism from them, always crappy and racist-but what else is new? I just don’t read it anymore; I wish more Canadians didn’t either.
Posted 16 Sep 2009 at 3:16 am ¶