Today is the First Nations National Day of Action. According to organizers The Assembly of First Nations (AFN), the event is a chance for all Canadians to call for "immediate action to improve [aboriginal peoples'] quality of life." Basically, bands from across the country are demanding the government work with First Nations to gain control of the programs, services and decisions that affect their lives. At noon, there will be a peaceful demonstration supporting the National Day of Action. Then the group will march from King's College Circle to Queen's Park, where participants can to enjoy music, food (mmm...bannock), dance, and inspirational words until 5 p.m. Sounds pretty sweetgrass to us.
But wait a second, a group of Mohawk protesters got a jump on the day by setting up barricades on a rail line and a stretch of highway in Eastern Ontario last night. And anarchists have declared July 1 to be Anti-Canada Day: The Real National Day of Action & Resistance. They are calling the AFN "collaborators."
Are they trying to tell us that not all Natives share the same vision for the future of the First Nations? Does everybody in your family like the same kind of music? Of course they don't. But while there's dissent, all agree that the major problems in the community (land claims, poverty and poor education) have gone unresolved for hundreds of years and action is needed now. Last year's Caledonia blockade is just one sign that these issues are reaching a boiling point.
Photo by Bahman. from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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What's hotter than boiling? 'Cause I think we're there now.
Plasma, baby!
There needs to be more outspoken First Nations leaders. People like Shawn Brant give the communities a bad name. Actual, informed Native activists need to tell him to back the hell off, because nothing he does helps the situation. Illegal blockades just causes a loss in public support. If First Nations leaders were to publicly denounce his behavior and stop hiding him when arrest warrants are issued it might be a step towards showing that they're willing to come to an agreement without breaking the law.
I'm not sure which is worse - that Brant's crew subverted the rail signalling system or that the media are determined to tell every bored jackass in Canada how they are doing it.
No, I'm sure - it's the journos. Heads up guys - maybe there's a tiny chance that if you don't mention it, the bored jackasses won't get ideas and start firing up google to fill in the very few blanks left. I often think they must teach such blatant "who cares if it's dangerous - it's news" at journo school and at the same time they look down at bloggers for a "lack of ethics".
As an immigrant to Canada this whole issue depresses me. Should Canada just stop immigration, since people who come here just get caught between the First Nations and the State? The influx of 250,000 immigrants a year continues to distort the demography of Canada but the 1982 Constitution reflects a parity of nations which the ordinary citizen doesn't grasp easily.
Only in former British colonies like CA/AU/NZ/US etc is it the case, because of their penchant for so-called treaties, that a person can immigrate but that their children onto the nth generation will always be considered foreign invaders. Even if the Kelowna Accord had been implemented I feel it would have merely been a different milepost on the same road and I don't see a good end to it.
I also wonder about newspapers like NOW, who filled their paper with articles supporting the first nations cause this week but who regularly invite Canadians to feel sorry for and seek to amend injustices elsewhere in places like Darfur - and see no internal contradiction or hypocrisy in that stance. If we are tainted here we are surely tainted there.
PS - hopefully this is redundant but reading what I wrote I'd like to head off any explosions - by "bored jackasses" I meant it in a general population sense looking for something to do and people to irritate rather than specific groups such as other first nations. The kind of folk that find dropping things off overpasses and causing horrific injuries to those below amusing.
i say: grind the country to a halt. then maybe the govt and the people will pay attention to the wrongs done to First Nations People. playing nice and quietly voicing an unheard complaint hasn't worked much. time to ratchet up protests and shout the complaints imho ...
Oppose the state and the state will oppose you. Breaking the law, or even just coming off as a jerk, is not going to make politicians sympathetic. Get involved with smash-the-state-grrrr types and you just antagonize the ones who actually have the means to change things. Don't people read the Tao te Ching anymore?
(When's the last time anarchists actually achieved something? I've known my share of them, but it's all talk talk talk, some organizing here and there, and nothing happens. And that includes self-declared hardcore syndicalists, quite willing to let scores of people die for their cause.)
Unfortunately for our state, Aboriginal or First Nations Claims, especially in the area of Lands and Resources will not be settled in a dignified manner! The Government and the people of Canada are powerless and ineffectual in dealing with multi-national corporate entities! The only people who can stand up to for instance to Oil Sand projects whose environmental destruction you can see from space are the First Nations, we as Canadians cannot do anything to stop them or diamond mines. As a Canadian I feel no shame in thinking of Aboriginal people and how as a Country we have not lived up to fiduciary obligations of the Treaties, basically how Canada became a Dominion and than country! As a First Nation of strong blood and ancestry, my heart is warm today knowing that for now the Great peace still holds. I must enjoy and uphold this at all costs, Serbians and Albanians between 1996-99 in Kosovo, had a great peace at one time too.