tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/settler-colonialism-71792/articlesSettler colonialism – The Conversation2024-01-29T23:20:17Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2204592024-01-29T23:20:17Z2024-01-29T23:20:17ZWhat’s unsettling about Catan: How board games uphold colonial narratives<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567624/original/file-20240102-19-2tzi0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C254%2C5121%2C3165&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Catan experienced a revival over the pandemic. However, the most potent and painful relationship between Catan and our world today remains largely unexamined.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/whats-unsettling-about-catan-how-board-games-uphold-colonial-narratives" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The death of <a href="https://www.catan.com/catan-fans/news/we-mourn-passing-klaus-teuber">Klaus Teuber, creator of popular board game Catan</a>, marked the passing of a board game giant. </p>
<p>Teuber died on April 1, 2023, after a brief illness. The German-born <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65194096">dental technician-turned-game designer</a> invented the game, originally called Settlers of Catan, in 1995 while <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/05/business/klaus-teuber-dead.html">managing a dental lab</a>. That same year <a href="https://www.polygon.com/23669496/settlers-of-catan-creator-klaus-teuber-dead-70-obituary">Catan won</a> one of board gaming’s most prestigious awards, the German <a href="https://www.polygon.com/22583960/spiel-des-jahres-2020-winner-micromacro-crime-city-in-stock">Spiel des Jahres</a>.</p>
<p>He once recalled in an interview <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/08/07/897271885/families-stuck-at-home-turn-to-board-game-catan-sending-sales-skyrocketing">how the idea began to percolate in 1963 as an 11-year-old in post-war Germany</a>. According to Teuber, Catan was <a href="https://www.polygon.com/23669496/settlers-of-catan-creator-klaus-teuber-dead-70-obituary">inspired by tales of Viking exploration</a>, and it places players together on a remote island, where they must competitively collect and cultivate territory through resource extraction, trade and expansion by building roads and settlement.</p>
<p>Since 1995, the game has sold <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65194096">more than 40 million copies and has been translated into more than 40 languages</a>. It fundamentally changed the board game industry, with dozens of spinoffs and new editions, including electronic versions.</p>
<p>In 2010, <em>The Washington Post</em> named Settlers of Catan the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/24/AR2010112404140.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_13">“board game of our time,”</a> and this is true in many regards. For example, during the early months of the pandemic, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/08/04/898853332/sales-of-settlers-of-catan-skyrocket-during-coronavirus-crisis">Catan experienced a revival as sales skyrocketed</a>.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, however, the most potent and painful relationship between Catan and our world today remains largely unexamined.</p>
<h2>Settler colonialism</h2>
<p>In interviews, Teuber said he started creating games in the 1980s to help deal with the stress of his dental career. <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-man-who-built-catan">“I developed games to escape,” he said. “This was my own world I created.”</a> The Settlers of Catan — <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2015/6/23/8661435/the-settlers-of-catan-has-a-new-name-new-look-for-5th-edition">renamed Catan</a> in 2015 — wasn’t really Teuber’s own world, it was a <a href="https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/bgs-2020-0004">playable version of the American dream</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567612/original/file-20240102-25-uqfy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man wearing a suit holds the Settlers of Catan board game. The game map is on a table in front of him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567612/original/file-20240102-25-uqfy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567612/original/file-20240102-25-uqfy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567612/original/file-20240102-25-uqfy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567612/original/file-20240102-25-uqfy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567612/original/file-20240102-25-uqfy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567612/original/file-20240102-25-uqfy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567612/original/file-20240102-25-uqfy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Klaus Teuber presents his game The Settlers of Catan in September 1995, in Frankfurt, Germany. Teuber created of the hugely popular board game in which players compete to build settlements on a fictional island.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Bernd Kammerer, File)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ultimately, through a set of game mechanics that motivates resource extraction in the name of settling a supposed empty land, the connection between the in-game narrative and the political histories of North America and other parts of the world is clear. As historian Lorenzo Veracini says, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/18380743.2013.761941">“the Settlers of Catan is really about settler colonialism.”</a></p>
<p>The success of Catan also codified a certain kind of game play that has similarly proliferated worldwide, one that’s invested in the specific historical, economic and political factors of settler colonialism.</p>
<p>This gaming rhetoric quickly began to shape the game mechanics and narrative strategies of not only European games but also <a href="https://edspace.american.edu/davidsonwilbourne/colonial-discourse-and-cultural-memory-in-eurogames/">global tabletop gaming culture</a>.</p>
<p>The Settlers of Catan was not the first time a board game touched on colonial or imperialist discourses. Risk, invented by French film director Albert Lamorisse and originally released in 1957, is an early example of how <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/material-game-studies-9781350202719/">discourses of conquest emerged in tabletop games</a>.</p>
<p>Here, players conquer their enemies’ territories by building an army, moving their troops in and engaging in battle. </p>
<p>However, because players in Catan explicitly take on the roles of settlers, this particular board game’s engagement in the rhetoric of settler colonialism set new precedents. And unfortunately, games that incorporate colonial histories and strategies into their narratives or game mechanic normalize these discourses through their status as a popular pastime.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569422/original/file-20240115-25-qshucb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The board game risk with game pieces on a map of the world." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569422/original/file-20240115-25-qshucb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569422/original/file-20240115-25-qshucb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569422/original/file-20240115-25-qshucb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569422/original/file-20240115-25-qshucb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569422/original/file-20240115-25-qshucb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569422/original/file-20240115-25-qshucb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569422/original/file-20240115-25-qshucb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Risk, originally released in 1957, is an early example of how discourses of conquest emerged in tabletop games.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Decolonizing gameplay</h2>
<p>Since 1995, board games have continued to include themes of settler colonialism, with several games published globally that even concretely engage Indigenous presence during and after their first contact with colonial powers. </p>
<p>In these games, Indigenous identity, history, culture and sovereignty emerge as essential elements of world-building and game mechanics. In the game <a href="https://www.laboitedejeu.fr/en/neta-tanka/">Neta-Tanka</a>, for example, the Frostrivers tribe dwells along the Great Frozen River in harmony with nature, obeying the laws of the Four Elders and in turn, guided by the most venerable of the Elders, the Neta-Tanka.</p>
<p>However, these features often merge or misrepresent Indigenous cultures and traditions in problematic ways. <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/260201/manitoba">In the board game Manitoba</a>, players become clan leaders of the Cree tribe and try to become the chieftain of them all. But the iconography associated with this already problematic playable version of Indigenous resource management and spiritual guidance are totem poles, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-board-game-controversy-1.4816975">which are not part of the cultures of Indigenous Peoples in Manitoba</a>.</p>
<p>These games seek to create a compelling story at the expense of Indigenous traditional knowledge and contemporary lived experience, ignoring the contribution of Indigenous voices through consultation while missing opportunities to engage concretely with issues that impact global Indigenous Peoples.</p>
<p>At the same time, a small group of Indigenous designers and board game enthusiasts have begun to develop counter-discourses through board game development. Board game designer and <a href="https://www.harrisburgu.edu/about/our-people/faculty-staff/gregory-loring-albright/">Assistant Professor of Interactive Media Greg Loring-Albright</a> has shown with <a href="https://analoggamestudies.org/2015/11/the-first-nations-of-catan-practices-in-critical-modification/">First Nations of Catan</a> that it is possible to modify and decolonize gameplay by drawing attention to issues of Indigenous sovereignty.</p>
<p>Another excellent example of this is <a href="https://radiussfu.com/sinulkhay-and-ladders/">Sínulkhay and Ladders</a> by <a href="https://nahaneecreative.com/bio">Ta7talíya Michelle Nahanee</a>, a Squamish decolonizing facilitator, creative director and Indigenous changemaker.</p>
<p>The design is based on Snakes and Ladders, but its goal is to teach players how to decolonize their actions and decision-making processes. </p>
<p>Similarly, the recent successes of the role-playing game <a href="https://coyoteandcrow.net/">Coyote and Crow</a>, by game designer Connor Alexander, and the board game <a href="http://nunamigame.com/index.php/en/">Nunami</a>, by Inuk graphic designer Thomassie Mangiok, demonstrate that board games can make valuable contributions to Indigenous self-representation in popular culture.</p>
<p>Players can also help to support Indigenous voices in the global game industry. For example, <a href="https://shop.pemetawe.com/">Pe Metawe Games</a> is an Indigenous-owned tabletop board game and roleplaying game store located on Treaty 6 territory in Edmonton. They are dedicated to creating an inclusive space for anyone to enjoy the hobby.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Biz Nijdam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Settlers of Catan codified a certain kind of game play based on the history of settler colonialism.Biz Nijdam, Assistant Professor, Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2135172023-11-20T13:18:15Z2023-11-20T13:18:15ZThanksgiving stories gloss over the history of US settlement on Native lands<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560223/original/file-20231118-17-87anep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C361%2C2389%2C2070&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Native Americans depicted at the first Thanksgiving feast, in a 1960 film about the Pilgrims’ first year in America.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/MoviesEducationalFilms/6e19fb0444d146fdb6f09520e734f7a7/photo?Query=thanksgiving%20dinner%20native%20americans&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=546&currentItemNo=9&vs=true&vs=true">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Too often, K-12 social studies classes in the U.S. <a href="https://theconversation.com/where-are-the-voices-of-indigenous-peoples-in-the-thanksgiving-story-51089">teach a mostly glossed-over story of U.S. settlement</a>. Textbooks tell the stories of adventurous European explorers founding colonies in the “New World,” and stories of the “first Thanksgiving” frequently portray happy colonists and Native Americans feasting together. Accounts of the colonies’ battle for independence frame it as a righteous victory. Native American removal might be mentioned as a sad footnote, but the triumph of the pioneer spirit takes center stage. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://english.utk.edu/people/lisa-king/">scholar of Native American and Indigenous rhetorics</a>, I argue that this superficial story hides the realities of what many historians and activists call “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/2201473X.2011.10648799?needAccess=true">settler colonialism</a>.” Historian <a href="https://www.swinburne.edu.au/research/our-research/access-our-research/find-a-researcher-or-supervisor/researcher-profile/?id=lveracini">Lorenzo Veracini</a> asserts that colonial activity isn’t just about a nation sending out explorers and bringing back resources, or what scholars refer to as “classical colonialism.” It’s also about what happens when a new people moves in and attempts to establish itself as the “superior” community whose culture, language and rights to resources and land supersede those of the Indigenous people who already live there. </p>
<p>When U.S. history, culture and politics are understood through the lens of settler colonialism, it’s easier to understand how, as <a href="https://www.vu.edu.au/library/about-the-library/special-collections-archives/patrick-wolfe-collection">historian Patrick Wolfe</a> wrote, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240">settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure, not an event</a>.” </p>
<h2>US policies and why they matter</h2>
<p>While settler colonial policies can include genocide, they take many forms. </p>
<p><a href="https://youtu.be/if-BOZgWZPE?si=Hp8OH6fRYz85pVqG">Deceptive and broken treaties</a> forced Native American nations to give up vast portions of their homelands. For example, in eastern Tennessee, the Treaty of Holston, signed in 1791, was made in theory to help establish clear boundaries between Cherokee and settler communities. </p>
<p>The U.S. government would receive land, and the Cherokee would receive annual payments, goods and the promise of the government’s protection in return. Instead, settlers moved onto Cherokee land and the U.S. government did not intervene. By 1798, the First Treaty of Tellico forced the Cherokee to give up the land the settlers had illegally taken, plus some. Year by year, the Cherokee and other tribes were pushed out.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/if-BOZgWZPE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">How the U.S. acquired Native land.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/indian.html#:%7E:text=The%20Indian%20Removal%20Act%20was,many%20resisted%20the%20relocation%20policy.">Forced outright removal</a> beyond treaties further deprived Native American nations of their land and attempted to erase them. Instead of supporting any kind of coexistence, legislation such as the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/indian-treaties">1830 Indian Removal Act</a> called for the complete removal of all tribes east of the Mississippi River. </p>
<p>Though the Cherokee and others fought such legislation in the courtroom, the result was the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/trte/learn/historyculture/what-happened-on-the-trail-of-tears.htm#:%7E:text=Between%201830%20and%201850%2C%20about,Many%20were%20treated%20brutally.">displacement of 100,000 Native people</a> from the eastern U.S. between 1830-1850 and the deaths of thousands of Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee and Seminole people on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-long-history-of-separating-families-in-the-us-and-how-the-trauma-lingers-98616">Trail of Tears</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/02/09/583987261/so-what-exactly-is-blood-quantum">Blood quantum systems of identification</a> attempted to make Native American people “disappear” by assigning Native American identity through counting the fractional amount of “Indian blood” and encouraging intermarriage with non-Native people. Once a certain degree of intermarriage was reached, a person was no longer considered Native and was not eligible for tribal enrollment.</p>
<p>As scholar and citizen of the Chickasaw Nation <a href="http://www.elizabethrule.com">Elizabeth Rule</a> notes, many Native nations today have adopted the use of blood quantum as a form of identification, which remains a controversial issue inside and outside Native communities. At the same time, she observes, it is the sovereign right of those nations to make these choices. However, the problem of erasure through this system remains, as blood quantum requirements can deny citizenship to clear lineal descendants and complicate discussions about <a href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/indigenous-affairs-communities-7-questions-about-freedmen-answered">Freedmen</a>.</p>
<p>Alongside these policies, <a href="https://www.bia.gov/service/federal-indian-boarding-school-initiative">education was used as a tool</a> to eradicate Native American languages and cultures by removing Native children from their families and forbidding them to speak their languages or practice their cultures. As the founder of the first boarding school, <a href="https://carlisleindianschoolproject.com/">Carlisle Indian Industrial School</a>, Richard Henry Pratt is well known for arguing to “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” Abuse of students was not uncommon. Many boarding school survivors experienced the trauma of losing connections to their families and cultures, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/native-american-boarding-schools-victims-3f927e5054b6790cef1c6012d8616ad6">a pain that is still felt today</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman protestor, standing with others, holding a sign that says 'This is Native America.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Native Americans and their allies hold a demonstration for Indigenous Peoples Day in 2015, in Seattle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if-BOZgWZPE">AP Photo/Elaine Thompson</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Twentieth-century U.S. policies of <a href="https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/11/01/uprooted-the-1950s-plan-to-erase-indian-country">relocation and political termination</a> further attempted to absolve the federal government of its treaty responsibilities to Native nations. If the U.S. government could “terminate” tribal nations by disbanding them as nations, then all obligations to tribes would legally disappear and all remaining tribal land would revert to government ownership. </p>
<p>After the passing of House Concurrent Resolution 108 in 1953, more than 100 tribes and 13,000 Native people <a href="https://americanarchive.org/exhibits/native-narratives/termination-relocation-restoration">experienced termination</a>, and more than 1 million acres of land were lost. Further federal policies such as the Indian Relocation Act of 1956 encouraged tribal members to permanently leave reservations and relocate to cities to find work and thus assimilate into U.S. society. </p>
<p>Overall, these policies were not fully carried out, and many tribal nations advocated for their status to be restored. Yet real damage was done to the tribal nations that endured termination, and relocated tribal members faced discrimination and disconnection. </p>
<h2>Reducing harm</h2>
<p>It isn’t possible to simply undo all of these policies and their impact. Yet scholars <a href="https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630">Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang</a> acknowledge that challenging those policies and reducing their influence, known as settler harm reduction, is a first step toward change. But for change to happen, those who benefit from the settler colonial system – whether original settlers or anyone today who gains advantage from these policies – need to work with Native American nations and communities toward finding active ways to do better. </p>
<p>The starting point is identifying the stories that still circulate in the U.S. about Native Americans and finding ways to <a href="https://rnt.firstnations.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/MessageGuide-Allies-screen.pdf">change settler colonial assumptions</a> that still reinforce Native American erasure. With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I believe teaching the <a href="https://www.mayflower400uk.org/education/who-were-the-pilgrims/2019/july/the-story-of-thanksgiving-and-the-national-day-of-mourning/">Thanksgiving story</a> alongside the Wampanoag peoples of today is an easy place to start. The past cannot be undone, but it doesn’t have to dictate the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Michelle King does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of Native American and Indigenous rhetorics writes about the harm done to Native American nations through colonization and what can be done to reduce it.Lisa Michelle King, Associate Professor of English, University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2161382023-11-07T18:02:45Z2023-11-07T18:02:45ZSeeing histories of forced First Nations labour: the ‘Nii Ndahlohke / I Work’ art exhibition<p>How do we learn and teach about First Nations labour in ways that connect to local economies and Canadian history education? </p>
<p>In a new exhibition, <a href="https://artwindsoressex.ca/exhibitions/nii-ndahlohke-i-work/"><em>Nii Ndahlohke / I Work</em></a>, at Art Windsor Essex, labour is the central theme for understanding the history and legacies of <a href="https://collections.irshdc.ubc.ca/index.php/Detail/entities/65">Mount Elgin Industrial School</a>, an Indian Residential School in southwestern Ontario. </p>
<p>The exhibition brings together artists from the communities whose children attended this institution, and it runs until June 24, 2024. It emerged from the Munsee Delaware Language and History Group, a community-based language and history learning project.</p>
<p>The group has worked together for many years to study and teach Munsee language and history, and supports research and teaching about Munsee people, communities, languages and territories.</p>
<h2>Manual labour demands</h2>
<p>Mount Elgin was located at Chippewas of the Thames First Nation in southwestern Ontario. Like <a href="https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/a-national-crime">other Industrial Schools of its era</a>, Mount Elgin was an underfunded religious federal boarding school and a model farm that was expected to generate income to pay for itself. </p>
<p>Students at the school were expected to work at the institute as much as they were expected to attend class. </p>
<p>Their labour was invisible within the school budget. However, the Indian department was aware that Mount Elgin students were not given progressive training in skilled trades and that manual labour demands on students kept them out of the classroom and therefore compromised their education.</p>
<h2>Farm labour, domestic service</h2>
<p>Manual labour prepared students for limited work opportunities: farm labour for boys and men, and domestic service for girls and women. </p>
<p>These jobs supported the <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315772288-14/would-like-girls-home-mary-jane-logan-mccallum">surrounding rural and urban settler economies</a> at a time when First Nations were pressured to lease and even surrender reserve land to area farmers to round out meagre incomes. </p>
<p>Significantly, forced labour was a key issue in student resistance at Mount Elgin including running away, setting fires and attempting to ruin farm equipment. It was also a key issue in parents’ letters of complaints to the department and band attempts to intervene in federal schooling. </p>
<p>Hard labour also impacted the children’s health, and poor diet and stress compounded to accelerate the spread and deadliness of diseases like tuberculosis. </p>
<h2>Labour as central theme</h2>
<p><a href="https://artwindsoressex.ca/exhibitions/nii-ndahlohke-i-work/"><em>Nii Ndahloke / I Work</em></a>, addresses histories of student labour at Mount Elgin but also its larger impact on reserve and settler economies of southwestern Ontario in the era. </p>
<p>The show also addresses histories of gendered experiences of Indian education, racism, student illness, intergenerational collaboration and the preservation of different forms of labour and the stories and metaphors that accompany them. </p>
<p>The majority of artists are from First Nations communities in southern Ontario.
Artists featured in the exhibit are: Kaia’tanoron Dumoulin Bush, Jessica Rachel Cook, Nancy Deleary, Gig Fisher, Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Judy McCallum, Donna Noah, Mo Thunder and Meg Tucker. </p>
<p>Each of the artists were given three sources in common to inspire their work: a silent film about Mount Elgin entitled <em>The Church in Action in an Indian Residential School</em> (1943) produced by the United Church of Canada to promote its Home Missions work; a basic timeline of the school; and a physical and audio copy of the 2022 book <a href="https://www.niindahlohke.ca/"><em>Nii Ndahlohke: Boys’ and Girls’ Work at Mount Elgin Industrial School, 1890-1915</em></a>. This book is the result of a project developed by the Munsee Delaware Language and History Group. </p>
<h2>Artists’ own histories</h2>
<p>The artists’ resulting works range widely and meaningfully address the artist’s own histories. </p>
<p>The exhibit presents the film in a separate room, with hand-sketched images of student uniforms and replica student graffiti from the walls of the last remaining Mount Elgin building, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qpZj2UsDNE">the barn</a>.</p>
<p>As part of the exhibition design, a red line along the wall follows visitors around the exhibit. This line represents a story told to Julie, one of the authors of this story, by our relative Norma Richter, about sewing the red piping featured on the yoke of girls’ uniforms at the school she attended in the 1930s and 40s – one of the only half-interesting things she remembered doing in her years at the school.</p>
<p>It also commemorates Norma’s refusal of work, and the two times she ran away from the school. The representation of the red line grounds the exhibit in family and community history. </p>
<h2>Community-based approach</h2>
<p>The exhibition reflects a different approach to both history and curation. </p>
<p>As well as being a source for this exhibit, <em>Nii Ndahlohke / I Work</em> was created for an audience of local students and for use in the Ontario history curriculum, <a href="https://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/social-studies-history-geography-2018.pdf">which, in Grade 8, covers the period 1890 to 1914</a>. </p>
<p>The book is split into two sections, one on boys’ work and one on girls’ work. It also features Munsee language and Munsee artwork highlighting certain sections or themes. </p>
<p>The exhibit amplifies and starkly interprets the history of student labour at Mount Elgin. </p>
<p>We hope people will leave with is a better understanding of the residential school system in Canada as a shared history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216138/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary Jane Logan McCallum receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and The Social Science Research Council of Canada, Heritage Canada, Ontario Arts Council. She is affiliated with the Munsee Delaware Language and History Group. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Rae Tucker receives funding from the Social Science Research Council of Canada and the Ontario Arts Council. She is affiliated with Art Windsor Essex and the Munsee Delaware History and Language group</span></em></p>Labour is the central theme for understanding history and legacies of Mount Elgin Industrial School, a former Indian Residential School, in a new exhibition at Art Windsor Essex.Mary Jane Logan McCallum, Professor of History, University of WinnipegJulie Rae Tucker, Head of Programs and Projects at Art Windsor Essex and Munsee Delaware History and Language group memberLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2134352023-10-17T18:01:05Z2023-10-17T18:01:05ZWe fact-checked residential school denialists and debunked their ‘mass grave hoax’ theory<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/we-fact-checked-residential-school-denialists-and-debunked-their-mass-grave-hoax-theory" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Recently a politician from a village in Prince Edward Island <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-murray-harbour-sign-1.6986901">displayed an offensive sign on his property in which he proclaimed there is a “mass grave hoax”</a> regarding the former Indian Residential Schools in Canada. Although <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/10007201/murray-harbour-councillor-calls-for-resignation-mass-graves-sign-pei/">many</a> have called for him to resign, he is just one of many people who subscribe to this false theory.</p>
<p>A hoax is an <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hoax">act intended to trick people into believing</a> something that isn’t true. Commentary that a “hoax” exists began circulating in 2021 around the time of public announcements from First Nations across the country that — <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/chooutla-residential-school-gravesite-investigation-anomalies-1.6978801">through the use of ground penetrating radar and other means</a> — the remains of Indigenous children are suspected to be in unmarked graves at or near some former residential schools.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go6Fpp03Voc">Commentators circulating allegations of a “hoax”</a> contend journalists have misrepresented news of the potential unmarked graves, circulating sensational, attention-grabbing headlines and using the term “mass grave” to do so. They also contend some First Nations, activists or politicians used this language for political gain — to shock and guilt Canadians into caring about Indigenous Peoples and reconciliation.</p>
<p>Like the councillor in P.E.I., many people — <a href="https://www.rebelnews.com/tags/buried_truth">in Canada</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egbXE18omy0">internationally</a>, fuelled partly by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKeagTWr7_M">misinformation from the far-right</a> — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ5qHwxDM50">are accepting and promoting</a> the “mass grave hoax” narrative and casting doubt on the searches for missing children and unmarked burials being undertaken by First Nations across Canada.</p>
<h2>There is no media conspiracy</h2>
<p>As two settler academic researchers, we decided to investigate the claims of a media conspiracy and fact-check them against evidence. </p>
<p>What did Canadian news outlets actually report after the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation made <a href="https://tkemlups.ca/wp-content/uploads/05-May-27-2021-TteS-MEDIA-RELEASE.pdf">their public announcements</a> about their search for missing children? </p>
<p>To find out, we analyzed 386 news articles across five Canadian media outlets (CBC, <em>National Post</em>, the <em>Globe and Mail</em>, <em>Toronto Star</em> and <em>The Canadian Press</em>) released between May 27 and Oct. 15, 2021. </p>
<p><a href="https://chrr.info/other-resources/debunking-residential-school-denialism-in-canada">What we found, according to our evidence from 2021</a>, is that most mainstream media did not use the terminology “mass graves.” Therefore, we argue that the “mass grave hoax” needs to be understood as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2021.1935574">residential school denialism</a>. </p>
<h2>‘Preliminary findings’ of ‘unmarked burials’</h2>
<p>After some public confusion over the specific details of the May 2021 Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announcement, which named “preliminary findings” regarding “the remains of 215 children,” the First Nation <a href="https://tkemlups.ca/t%e1%b8%b1emlups-te-secwepemc-fully-supports-the-appointment-of-the-special-interlocutor/">clarified the findings</a> as the confirmation of “the likely presence of children, L’Estcwicwéý (the Missing) on the Kamloops Indian Residential School grounds” in “unmarked burials.” </p>
<p>The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation had already <a href="https://nctr.ca/residential-schools/british-columbia/kamloops-st-louis/">identified 51 student deaths</a> at the Kamloops school using church and state records. </p>
<p><a href="https://rsc-src.ca/en/voices/%E2%80%98every-child-matters%E2%80%99-one-year-after-unmarked-graves-215-indigenous-children-were-found-in">A National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Memorial Register</a> has to date confirmed the <a href="https://nctr.ca/memorial/national-student-memorial/memorial-register/">deaths of more than 4,000 Indigenous children</a> associated with residential schools. </p>
<p>But the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) noted its register of missing children <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-names-of-2800-children-who-died-in-residential-schools-documented-in/">was incomplete</a>, partly due to a large volume of yet-to-be-examined and destroyed records. The TRC’s <a href="https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf">Calls to Action 71-76 refer to</a> missing children and burials.</p>
<p>The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation — responding to these calls — initiated further research to learn the full truth to facilitate community healing. </p>
<h2>Countering harmful misinformation</h2>
<p>In the two years since, a number of commentators, <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/archdiocese-apologizes-after-priest-accuses-residential-school-survivors-of-lying-1.5528472">priests</a> and <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/alberta/comments/y4f731/danielle_smith_the_premier_of_alberta_claims/">politicians,</a> including the P.E.I councillor with his sign, have downplayed the harms of residential schooling — or questioned the validity, gravity and significance of the the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation’s announcement.</p>
<p>One <em>National Post</em> commentator wrote that the account of a “mass grave” was reported “<a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-year-of-the-graves-how-the-worlds-media-got-it-wrong-on-residential-school-graves">almost universally</a>” adding that this narrative, and subsequent “discoveries” preceded a descent into “shame, guilt and rage …”</p>
<p>Despite the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation’s announcement never mentioning a “mass grave,” and Chief Rosanne Casimir saying in a news conference, <a href="https://www.squamishchief.com/bc-news/casimir-says-tkemlups-find-is-series-of-unmarked-graves-not-a-mass-burial-3848382">“this is not a mass grave, but rather unmarked burial sites that are, to our knowledge, also undocumented,”</a> some have even wrongly suggested the First Nation “<a href="https://nypost.com/2022/05/27/kamloops-mass-grave-debunked-biggest-fake-news-in-canada">announced the discovery of a mass grave</a>” and this was a “fake news story.” </p>
<p>In response, the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2022/06/independent-special-interlocutor-to-work-with-indigenous-communities-on-protection-of-unmarked-graves-and-burial-sites-near-former-residential-schools.html">independent special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves and burial sites associated with Indian Residential Schools</a> has amplified <a href="https://osi-bis.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/OSI_InterimReport_June-2023_WEB.pdf">calls for</a> Canadians to take responsibility for countering such harmful misinformation. </p>
<p>We hope that our research can contribute to this work and that <a href="https://chrr.info/other-resources/debunking-residential-school-denialism-in-canada/">our report</a> helps to debunk the “mass grave hoax” narrative specifically. </p>
<h2>Cherry-picked ‘evidence’</h2>
<p>Our report reveals that most Canadian news outlets did not use the language, “mass grave.” The idea that a “mass grave hoax” exists is a myth.</p>
<p>Myths, however, <a href="https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/N/National-Dreams">are not pure fiction</a>; they often contain a kernel of truth that is <a href="https://arpbooks.org/product/storying-violence/">exaggerated or misrepresented</a>. </p>
<p>This selective representation of evidence is commonly referred to as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2023.2209947">cherry-picking</a>, and it’s easy to see how those spreading the “mass grave hoax” narrative rely on cherry-picked evidence.</p>
<p>Of the 386 articles reviewed in our study, the majority of the articles (65 per cent, or 251) accurately reported on stories related to the location of potential unmarked graves in Canada.</p>
<p>A minority (35 per cent or 135 articles), contained some inaccurate or misleading reporting; however, many of the detected inaccuracies are easily understood as mistakes and most were corrected over time as is common practice in breaking news within the journalism industry. </p>
<p>Of the 386 total articles, only 25 — just 6.5 per cent of total articles — referred to the findings as “mass graves,” with most of the articles appearing in a short window of time and some actually using the term correctly in the hypothetical sense (that mass graves may still be found). </p>
<p>That means that 93.5 per cent of the Canadian articles released in the spring, summer and fall of 2021 that we examined did not report the findings as being “mass graves.” </p>
<p>It appears that some journalists and commentators misunderstood a large number of potential or likely unmarked graves for mass graves in late May/June 2021. By September, denialists were misrepresenting the extent of media errors to push the conspiratorial <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go6Fpp03Voc">“mass grave hoax” narrative</a> online. </p>
<p>Our research shows that the “mass grave hoax” narrative hinges on a misrepresentation of how Canadian journalists reported on the identification of potential unmarked graves at former residential school sites in 2021.
And we hope our report sparks a national conversation about how important language is when covering this issue. </p>
<p>Media needs to be precise with language and also acknowledge its errors (and avoid future ones), or clarify details in a way that feeds truth, empathy and more accurate reporting — not denialism, hate and conspiracy.</p>
<h2>Challenging Residential School denialism</h2>
<p>The “mass grave hoax” narrative cannot be reasonably seen as just skepticism. Rather, it should be understood as an expression of residential school denialism. </p>
<p>According to Daniel Heath Justice and Sean Carleton (one of the authors of this story), <a href="https://theconversation.com/truth-before-reconciliation-8-ways-to-identify-and-confront-residential-school-denialism-164692">residential school denialism</a> is not the denial of the residential school system’s existence. Nor do denialists, for the most part, deny that abuses happened. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/truth-before-reconciliation-8-ways-to-identify-and-confront-residential-school-denialism-164692">Truth before reconciliation: 8 ways to identify and confront Residential School denialism</a>
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<p>Residential school denialism, like climate <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-thinking-error-that-makes-people-susceptible-to-climate-change-denial-204607">change denialism</a> or <a href="https://theconversation.com/science-denial-why-it-happens-and-5-things-you-can-do-about-it-161713">science denialism</a>, cherry-picks evidence to fit a conspiratorial counter-narrative. This distorts basic facts and the overall legacy of the Indian Residential School System (IRSS) to <a href="https://thewalrus.ca/residential-school-denialism/">alleviate settler guilt</a> and block important truth and reconciliation efforts.</p>
<h2>Truth before reconciliation</h2>
<p>Our research shows how detailed analysis can be an effective tool in confronting the growing threat of residential school denialism and other kinds of misinformation and disinformation, as called for recently by many <a href="https://osi-bis.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/OSI_InterimReport_June-2023_WEB.pdf">Indigenous communities</a>. </p>
<p>Instead of directing ridicule and outrage at denialists — which can give them a larger platform — what is needed is deep and reasoned analysis of their discourse to show why they are wrong or misleading. </p>
<p>This is the strategy of disempowering and discrediting residential school denialism advocated by former TRC Chair <a href="https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/residential-school-deniers-white-supremacists-biggest-barrier-to-reconciliation-says-murray-sinclair/">Murray Sinclair</a>. </p>
<p>We hope others will join us in this type of research to help Canadians learn how to identify and confront residential school denialism and support meaningful reconciliation. </p>
<p>Our full findings can be <a href="https://chrr.info/other-resources/debunking-residential-school-denialism-in-canada/">read in our new report</a> for the Centre for Human Rights Research at the University of Manitoba. </p>
<p>As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said in its final report, without truth there can be no genuine reconciliation. </p>
<p><em>For those who may be experiencing trauma or seeking support, here are some resources:</em></p>
<p><em>— The Indian Residential School Survivors Society’s 24/7 Crisis Support line: 1-800-721-0066</em></p>
<p><em>— The 24-hour National Indian Residential School Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419</em> </p>
<p><em>The Conversation used the term “mass graves” in <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-longer-the-disappeared-mourning-the-215-children-found-in-graves-at-kamloops-indian-residential-school-161782">a story</a> published in the days following the announcement by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation. The article has since been updated to use the term “unmarked graves.”</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213435/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Carleton receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Centre for Human Rights Research at the University of Manitoba.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Reid Gerbrandt receives funding from The Centre for Human Rights Research at the University of Manitoba. </span></em></p>Contrary to what some ‘denialists’ believe, research shows that Canadian media outlets did not help circulate a ‘mass grave hoax’ regarding unmarked graves at former Indian Residential Schools.Sean Carleton, Assistant Professor, Departments of History and Indigenous Studies, University of ManitobaReid Gerbrandt, MA Student, Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of ManitobaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2104162023-08-07T13:59:55Z2023-08-07T13:59:55ZUmlungu: the colourful history of a word used to describe white people in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540800/original/file-20230802-23936-6zixs7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wreck of the British ship Charlotte in Algoa Bay, South Africa, 1854. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Print Collector/Heritage Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In South Africa “umlungu” is a word that’s commonly used to refer to white people. It comes from isiXhosa, the language of the country’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Xhosa">Xhosa people</a>. It’s always been a mystery how the word originated or what it actually means because no human beings were referred to as umlungu before the arrival of white people in the country by ship. There was, however, a word “ubulungu” which meant “that deposited out by the sea” or sea scum.</p>
<p>While it may have been considered impolite in the past, <a href="https://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/2016-11-21-experts-say-umlungu-is-not-negative-in-meaning/">today</a> umlungu is a polite word. Many white South Africans don’t mind calling themselves umlungu – there are even T-shirt ranges bearing the word. And it’s now also commonly used to refer to black people – meaning “my employer” or “a wealthy person”. So how did umlungu come to change its meaning?</p>
<p>As a linguist who teaches and studies isiXhosa, I recently published a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2989/16073614.2022.2153709">study</a> that considers the word from a sociolinguistic perspective. Sociolinguistics can be <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Introducing_Language_and_Society.html?id=gA4jAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">defined</a> as the link between language and society. I chose to frame my study through this theory because a language is not independent of the people who speak it. Individuals shape words to reflect the changing context of their society. </p>
<p>The word umlungu has taken on multiple meanings as a result of historical events, showing how language evolves through social interactions. </p>
<h2>Colonial times</h2>
<p>According to one <a href="https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2023.2188233">study</a>, the term umlungu arose from an incident in which shipwrecked white people were deposited from the sea. The sea’s tendency is to toss anything out that is dirty in order to clean itself. The shipwrecked white people were given the name “abelungu/umlungu”, which <a href="https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2023.2188233">means</a> “filth that is rejected by the ocean and deposited on the shore”. Some of those shipwrecked remained and the clan name Abelungu <a href="http://vital.seals.ac.za:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:28312?site_name=GlobalView">was used</a> to record their children.</p>
<p>The words umlungu and abelungu (plural) are used by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nguni">Nguni</a> people across South Africa. The Nguni are a large cluster of Bantu-speaking ethnic groups in southern Africa who have played an important role in the country’s history and culture. The Nguni ethnic groupings include the Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi and Ndebele. These subgroups share linguistic and cultural similarities while adhering to their own traditions and practices. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/handle/10413/20032">Zulu historians</a>, white people arriving in South Africa were called “abelumbi” (magicians). This is because <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/shaka-zulu">Shaka Zulu</a>, the powerful leader of the Zulu Kingdom, witnessed a white person killing a man without touching him (with a gun). He stated that only a witch could kill a person without any physical contact. As a result, he called them abelumbi, which was later altered to abelungu (philanthropists) as time passed.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/shaka-zulu-is-back-in-pop-culture-how-the-famous-king-has-been-portrayed-over-the-decades-207417">Shaka Zulu is back in pop culture – how the famous king has been portrayed over the decades</a>
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<p>Various events throughout the colonial era forced black people into poverty, particularly after the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nongqawuse">Nongqawuse</a> episode. Nongqawuse was a Xhosa prophetess who, in 1856, had a vision that if the Xhosa people killed all their cattle and destroyed their crops, the spirits would drive the British colonisers out of South Africa and bring about a new era of prosperity. Many Xhosa people then <a href="https://www.siyabona.com/eastern-cape-xhosa-cattle-killing.html">slaughtered</a> their own cattle and destroyed their own crops. Some people died because of hunger.</p>
<h2>Apartheid</h2>
<p>This poverty was exacerbated under <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> – an organised system of white minority rule in South Africa that imposed racial segregation and discrimination from 1948 until the early 1990s. </p>
<p>An umlungu was an esteemed member of society during the apartheid era because of the power and authority that they possessed. It’s my view that because of the apartheid system, black people were psychologically influenced to perceive everything linked with a white person as better and of a higher standard. </p>
<p>Due to the reality of colonisation and apartheid, most black South Africans were forced to work for white people and so an umlungu came to be defined as a white boss or employer. With time, this came to include all bosses or employers – even black people came to refer to a black boss as umlungu.</p>
<h2>Today</h2>
<p>I argue that the views of black people toward white people had a significant impact on the word changing and gaining numerous positive meanings. The concept that anything finer, richer and whiter in colour is umlungu has given rise to new positive connotations for the term. The word umlungu today can refer to an employer, a black person of a certain ethnicity with a lighter skin colour, someone of higher standing, a wealthy person – or simply a white person. </p>
<p>A black person who owns and runs a farm like a white person using a labour tenancy arrangement, for example, is <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/people-and-whites">referred to</a> as an umlungu. University students may be <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/ubuntu-abantu-abelungu">referred to</a> as abelungu since they represent class mobility and luxury. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/zulu-vs-xhosa-how-colonialism-used-language-to-divide-south-africas-two-biggest-ethnic-groups-204969">Zulu vs Xhosa: how colonialism used language to divide South Africa's two biggest ethnic groups</a>
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<p>Xhosa people have further adapted the term, with some naming their children Nobelungu (the one who is of white people), Umlungwana (young white person) or Mlungukazi (white woman).</p>
<p>Social class and status influence the evolution of language. Change is also related to the relative safety of a group’s standing in society, with lower-status groups generally imitating higher-status ones. As a result, those identified as abelungu, particularly among the black population, are seen as having ascended the social ladder. </p>
<p>“Umlungu” demonstrates how the meaning of a word can change to reflect a changing society. Language is not static, it is a growing and shifting way of reflecting the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andiswa Mvanyashe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The word shows that language isn’t static, it evolves to reflect developments in a society.Andiswa Mvanyashe, Senior lecturer in Languages and Literature, Nelson Mandela UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2062592023-06-01T15:37:24Z2023-06-01T15:37:24ZListen: Trans scholar and activist explains why trans rights are under attack<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/e2ecabe1-cf01-433c-bd7e-7aac7f1d241a?dark=true"></iframe>
<p>This year we’ve seen an aggressive push to implement anti-trans legislation across the United States. There are currently more than <a href="https://translegislation.com/">400 active anti-trans</a> bills across the country. </p>
<p>Some of the legislation <a href="https://time.com/6265755/gender-affirm-care-bans-u-s/">denies gender-affirming care to youth</a> – and criminalizes those health-care providers that attempt to do so. Other bills <a href="https://apnews.com/article/transgender-nonbinary-hormone-puberty-missouri-lawmakers-5a8922430ffab9e43cf9b7ce254bff9f#:%7E:text=Charlie%20Riedel%2C%20File">block trans students from participating in sports</a> and still others have banned books with trans content. </p>
<p>These bills have at least two things in common. They all aim to make being trans harder in an already hostile society and they are being spearheaded by the far-right. </p>
<p>Where does anti-trans sentiment come from? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529186/original/file-20230530-23-atrb5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529186/original/file-20230530-23-atrb5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529186/original/file-20230530-23-atrb5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529186/original/file-20230530-23-atrb5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529186/original/file-20230530-23-atrb5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529186/original/file-20230530-23-atrb5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529186/original/file-20230530-23-atrb5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black Lives Matter activists organize a sit-in at Yonge Street and College Street during the Trans Pride March, in Toronto, 2016. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Eduardo Lima)</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/transphobia-white-supremacy/">enforcement of a gender binary</a> likely has much to do with the preservation of white power. And, <a href="https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2022/5/20/through-line-critical-race-dont-say-gay-great-replacement">violence</a> against trans people continues as a result. </p>
<h2>Is Canada better?</h2>
<p>What do things look like in Canada? Are we a safe haven or are we following some of the same trends?</p>
<p>Recently, a <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/us-transgender-asylum-petition-1.6779692">petition</a> signed by <a href="https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-4268">over 160,000 people</a> asked the Canadian government to extend asylum to trans and gender non-conforming people from nations in the West, previously considered safe. </p>
<p>To get a better understanding of trans histories in Canada, <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/listen-to-an-american-canadian-trans-scholar-and-activist-explain-why-trans-rights-are-under-attack">we are joined by Syrus Marcus Ware</a>, an artist, activist and assistant professor at the School of the Arts at McMaster University. He is a co-curator of Blockorama/Blackness Yes! and a co-editor of <a href="https://uofrpress.ca/Books/U/Until-We-Are-Free"><em>Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada</em></a>.</p>
<p>We discuss the history of anti-trans and queer actions in Canada. We also speak about backlash and ways to move forward.</p>
<h2>Listen and Follow</h2>
<p>You can listen to or follow <em><a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/listen-to-an-american-canadian-trans-scholar-and-activist-explain-why-trans-rights-are-under-attack">Don’t Call Me Resilient</a></em> on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dont-call-me-resilient/id1549798876">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9qZFg0Ql9DOA">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/37tK4zmjWvq2Sh6jLIpzp7">Spotify</a> or <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com">wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts</a>. </p>
<p><a href="mailto:DCMR@theconversation.com">We’d love to hear from you</a>, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on <a href="https://twitter.com/ConversationCA">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheConversationCanada">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@theconversation">TikTok</a> and use #DontCallMeResilient.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A person with a rainbow on their shirt holds up a hand with a pointed finger and a sign in the other hand. They appear to be yelling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529465/original/file-20230531-24-q99it2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529465/original/file-20230531-24-q99it2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529465/original/file-20230531-24-q99it2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529465/original/file-20230531-24-q99it2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529465/original/file-20230531-24-q99it2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529465/original/file-20230531-24-q99it2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529465/original/file-20230531-24-q99it2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brenna Thompson protests this month against an abortion ban and restrictions on gender-affirming care for children in Lincoln, Neb.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Justin Wan/Lincoln Journal Star via AP/KOLN-TV OUT</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Resources</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-3814961">All Power to All People? Black LGBTTI2QQ Activism, Remembrance, and Archiving in Toronto</a> (<em>Transgender Studies Quarterly</em>) by Syrus Marcus Ware </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2023/05/30/pride-flag-wont-fly-at-york-catholic-schools-after-board-votes-against-the-motion.html">‘A travesty’: Outrage swells over York Catholic board’s rejection of Pride flag</a> (<em>Toronto Star</em>) </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2022/10/05/supreme-court-cant-ignore-equality-rights-claims-of-refugees.html">Supreme Court can’t ignore equality rights claims of refugees</a> (<em>Toronto Star</em>) </p>
<p><a href="https://xtramagazine.com/power/toronto-bathhouse-raids-40-years-194590">Everything you need to know about the Toronto bathhouse raids</a> (<em>Xtra</em>) </p>
<p><a href="https://xtramagazine.com/power/what-the-national-inquiry-into-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-and-girls-means-for-two-spirit-canadians-158992">What the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls means for Two-Spirit people</a> (<em>Xtra</em>) </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2009-015">Settler Homonationalism: Theorizing Settler Colonialism within Queer Modernities</a> (<em>Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies</em>) by Scott Lauria Morgensen </p>
<p><a href="https://blockorama.ca/">Blockorama/Blackness Yes!</a></p>
<h2>From the archives - in The Conversation</h2>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/transgender-hate-crimes-are-on-the-rise-even-in-canada-121541">Transgender hate crimes are on the rise even in Canada</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cuts-to-telehealth-in-ontario-mean-fewer-trans-and-non-binary-people-will-have-access-to-life-saving-health-care-198502">Cuts to telehealth in Ontario mean fewer trans and non-binary people will have access to life-saving health care</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-went-to-cpac-to-take-maga-supporters-pulse-china-and-transgender-people-are-among-the-top-demons-they-say-are-ruining-the-country-201442">I went to CPAC to take MAGA supporters' pulse – China and transgender people are among the top 'demons' they say are ruining the country</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/right-to-party-20-years-of-black-queer-love-and-resilience-80040">Right to party: 20 years of Black Queer love and resilience</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206259/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
This year, there are more than 400 active anti-trans bills across the U.S. What do things look like in Canada? Are we a safe haven or are we following those same trends?Vinita Srivastava, Host + Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientBoké Saisi, Associate Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2051662023-05-16T21:17:26Z2023-05-16T21:17:26ZIndia is using the G20 summit to further its settler-colonial ambitions in Kashmir<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526021/original/file-20230514-23610-wsa3ch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=64%2C64%2C4730%2C3127&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 2023 G20 logo on display in New Delhi, India. By attending events in Kashmir, G20 delegates are tacitly condoning India's colonial control of the region. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In September, India will host the 2023 Group of 20 (G20) summit in the capital, New Delhi. Events and meetings are already taking place in other venues around the country. Under its <a href="https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/02/28/indias-g20-presidency-will-be-a-win-for-narendra-modi">G20 presidency</a>, India will host a <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/g20-tourism-working-group-set-to-finalise-ministerial-communique-at-meeting-in-srinagar-101682417087282.html">Tourism Working Group meeting</a> in Srinagar, in Indian-administered Kashmir, in late May.</p>
<p>New Delhi wants to show the world that <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/13/india-kashmir-g20-meeting-autonomy-repression-elections/">normalcy has returned</a> to the picturesque, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/india-mixed-reactions-to-major-lithium-discovery/a-65016836">resource-rich</a> region and that the disputed territory is <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/g20-meet-in-kashmir-inside-indias-plan-to-pitch-jk-as-a-tourist-destination-again/articleshow/99344682.cms">open to visitors</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-jammu-kashmir-gets-first-foreign-investment-dubais-emaar-2023-03-20/">investors</a>. </p>
<p>The iconic <a href="https://kashmirreader.com/2023/05/10/dal-lake-cleaning-on-in-double-shifts-for-g20-meeting-in-srinagar-officials/">Dal Lake will form the backdrop for the meeting</a>. International delegates will also visit <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/03/20/693517010/surrounded-by-military-barracks-skiers-shred-the-himalayan-slopes-of-indian-kash">Gulmarg</a>, a popular winter destination, under <a href="https://sundayguardianlive.com/news/security-increased-in-jk-ahead-of-srinagar-g20-meet">tight security provided by India’s Ministry of Home Affairs</a>.</p>
<p>The route to Gulmarg is lined with barbed wire. Armed soldiers keep watch from fortified bunkers. The resort town is near the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-263B-8246">Line of Control</a> that <a href="https://politicalandlegalanthro.org/2020/07/30/which-kashmir-pakistan-wala-ya-india-konsa-kashmir-pakistans-or-indias/">bifurcates Kashmir</a> into Indian-held and Pakistani-held areas. </p>
<p>Hosting G20 delegates in Srinagar is a step towards normalizing India’s occupation of Kashmir internationally. But Kashmiris continue to demand their right to self-determination in accordance with <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/declaration-granting-independence-colonial-countries-and-peoples">international law</a> and <a href="http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/47">United Nations resolutions</a>. </p>
<p>International attendance of the meeting will seriously undermine their efforts.</p>
<p>In Canada, the NDP has called on the federal government to <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/ndp-wants-boycott-of-g20-events-in-india-s-kashmir-region-citing-human-rights-issues-1.6177173">boycott any G20 meetings that take place in Kashmir</a>, citing the Indian government’s human rights abuses. However, the Trudeau government has reportedly <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/canada-trudeau-led-govt-pushes-back-against-pressure-from-key-political-ally-to-boycott-g20-events-in-india-101670217416714.html">ignored those calls</a>.</p>
<h2>Normalizing occupation</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/chandigarh-news/srinagars-lal-chowk-readies-for-g20-summit-with-smart-city-project-officials-set-10-day-deadline-for-completion-of-works-101681367122782.html">Beautification projects</a> are underway in Srinagar on an industrial scale. These revitalization campaigns are designed to <a href="http://risingkashmir.com/kashmir-getting-ready-to-showcase-its-beauty-to-g20-delegates">create a sanitized image of Kashmir</a> for foreign delegates. The region remains troubled by <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/7/8/un-report-on-kashmir-calls-for-probe-into-human-rights-violations">violence and human rights abuses</a>, as well as <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/press-freedom-chilled-kashmir-reporting-criminalized-rcna35132">draconian media restrictions</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/21/kashmiri-journalist-irfan-mehraj-arrested-under-terrorism-charges">Human rights activists and journalists are being arrested</a> and there have been reports of hundreds of <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/chandigarh-news/former-j-k-cm-mehbooba-mufti-alleges-youth-arrests-ahead-of-g20-meeting-in-srinagar-questions-security-lapses-and-civilian-deaths-in-custody-101682795937372.html">young people being detained</a> by security forces. </p>
<p>Urban renewal in Srinagar is a tool of displacement and dislocation. I spoke with Asghar, a long-time Kashmiri resident of Srinagar, over the phone earlier this month. He described how urban redevelopment projects are changing certain sections of the city entirely. This, coupled with the government’s <a href="https://thewire.in/government/kashmir-name-changing">name-changing spree</a>, is creating a sense of alienation for locals who feel out of place in their own homeland.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526598/original/file-20230516-23757-xyaqib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A town on the banks of a lake with light blue waters. Green mountains are seen in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526598/original/file-20230516-23757-xyaqib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526598/original/file-20230516-23757-xyaqib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526598/original/file-20230516-23757-xyaqib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526598/original/file-20230516-23757-xyaqib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526598/original/file-20230516-23757-xyaqib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526598/original/file-20230516-23757-xyaqib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526598/original/file-20230516-23757-xyaqib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kashmir’s iconic Dal Lake will form the backdrop for the upcoming meeting of the G20’s Tourism Working Group.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Indian government is planning to temporarily minimize the visible presence of troops in <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/explained-kashmir-the-most-militarised-zone-in-the-world/z9s3tx5cq">the heavily militarized region</a> by building <a href="https://www.news9live.com/india/j-k-smart-bunkers-to-be-constructed-in-srinagar-ahin9-2111941">“smart bunkers.”</a> These are bunkers painted in pastel tones and subtly positioned so they remain unnoticed by foreign visitors.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjxq9fD6Oz-AhWLFFkFHX9yCLYQFnoECAoQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fkashmircentral.in%2Fa-gift-of-smart-policing%2F&usg=AOvVaw3rHMSokt7ZZNdMAsoCifpq">“Smart policing”</a> is also underway. This includes security agencies monitoring social media, gathering local intelligence, and <a href="https://www.greaterkashmir.com/todays-paper/front-page/new-surveillance-system-in-offing-as-police-eye-major-reforms">surveillance through CCTV cameras and aerial drones</a>.</p>
<p>Police officers handling foreign delegates are being <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/smart-policing-slick-bunkers-for-upcoming-g-20-meeting-in-srinagar/article66759927.ece">trained to display a softer and more polite image</a>. This is in sharp contrast to the <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa20/1874/2015/en/">treatment of Kashmiris by Indian security personnel</a>.</p>
<h2>G20 and tourism</h2>
<p>Founded in 2020, the G20’s <a href="https://www.g20.org/en/workstreams/sherpa-track/">Tourism Working Group</a> guides the development of local and global tourism among G20 countries with an eye to achieving the UN’s <a href="https://tourism4sdgs.org/tourism-for-sdgs/tourism-and-sdgs/">2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development</a>.</p>
<p>The G20 meeting is the first global event to be held in the Kashmir valley since India unilaterally removed the region’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/05/indias-settler-colonial-project-kashmir-takes-disturbing-turn/">semi-autonomous status in 2019</a>. Since then, the region has undergone significant <a href="https://scroll.in/article/946888/under-presidents-rule-jammu-kashmir-is-axing-1471-trees-in-designated-forests">rezoning and re-districting</a>.</p>
<p>Semi-autonomous status <a href="https://time.com/5644356/india-kashmir-article-370/">granted Kashmiris some territorial and cultural rights</a> while living under Indian rule. The designation recognized that India was only a <a href="https://adimagazine.com/articles/kashmir-a-historical-timeline/">temporary administrator of Kashmir</a>. And that <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/kashmir-in-the-aftermath-of-partition/idea-of-plebiscite-discontent-and-regional-dissidence/C848022634E0E26F304F22B0546DAD27">Kashmiris had the right to ultimately decide their own future</a>.</p>
<p>Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/10/11/what-is-secret-to-success-of-india-s-bharatiya-janata-party-bjp-pub-77477">Bharatiya Janata Party</a> (BJP) long opposed Kashmir’s special status. Revoking it was in the party’s <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/elections/lok-sabha-2019/story/bjp-top-promises-1496617-2019-04-08">2019 election manifesto</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1k7gGTGuQsw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Kashmir is divided by the Line of Control that separates the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled areas. It is one of the world’s most militarized regions.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Tourism is big business</h2>
<p>India is seeking <a href="https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/india/tourism-revenue">to capitalize</a> on the scenic beauty of the Kashmir valley that it illegally occupies. Domestic tourists from India visited Kashmir in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-jammu-kashmir-receives-most-tourists-75-years-2022-10-07/">record numbers last year</a>. </p>
<p>Since coming into power in 2014, Modi’s government has also <a href="https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/is-india-trying-to-subdue-kashmir-through-religious-tourism--18963">heavily promoted religious tourism</a> in the disputed territory. Last year an estimated one million people from all over India <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/30/amarnath-yatra-pilgrimage-begins-amid-heavy-security-in-kashmir">attended the annual Amarnath Yatra</a>, a 43-day Hindu pilgrimage, amid heavy security.</p>
<p>With the return of <a href="http://risingkashmir.com/srinagarsharjah-direct-flight-a-runaway-success-for-economy-of-jk">direct international air travel to Indian-administered Kashmir</a> and the construction of railway infrastructure that <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/india-worlds-highest-railway-bridge-intl-hnk/index.html">connects the region to India</a>, the Indian government is determined to <a href="https://www.dailyexcelsior.com/this-village-in-jk-has-indias-biggest-international-yoga-centre/">open Kashmir to the world</a>.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the mobility of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/8/13/kashmir-srinagar-a-maze-of-razor-wires-and-steel-barriers">local Kashmiris</a> remains severely restricted. Ultimately, we must question what kind of <a href="https://jnp.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/default/article/view/85/86">connectivity is desired, by whom and for what purpose</a>.</p>
<h2>Tourism and settler-colonialism</h2>
<p>The Indian government sees Kashmir as an <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/jk-was-is-and-shall-forever-remain-its-integral-part-india-tells-pakistan-at-unhrc-meeting/articleshow/74318873.cms">“integral part”</a> of the country and wants to make its occupation permanent. Tourism plays a direct role in legitimizing and expanding the Indian control of Kashmiri lands.</p>
<p>Kashmir scholar <a href="https://www.unco.edu/news/newsroom/expert/ather-zia.aspx">Ather Zia</a> cautions against <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-020-00234-4">uncritically accepting tourism as a form of development</a>. Tourism in settler-colonial contexts is an extension of imperial politics. It is the process by which colonized lands are absorbed by a hegemonic state. </p>
<p>This is achieved by fostering a sense of attachment for those with little or no connection to occupied lands. The Indian government has <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/property-/-cstruction/all-you-need-to-know-about-buying-property-in-jammu-kashmir/articleshow/70695987.cms?from=mdr">weaponized the law</a> to make it easier for Indians to visit and settle in Kashmir, disavowing and erasing Indigenous Kashmiri claims to the same lands.</p>
<p>The Indian government also aims to <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/16/new-delhis-demographic-designs-in-kashmir/?link_id=25&can_id=ef6e9f45e275fbd2fe97ce05c408ec57&source=email-take-action-tell-ontario-ndp-to-apologize-to-sarah-jama-and-stand-in-solidarity-with-detained-palestinians&email_referrer=email_1911306&email_subject=take-action-canada-must-withdraw-from-the-g20-meetings-in-indian-occupied-kashmir">change the demographics</a> in the Muslim-majority region in favor of Hindus.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526020/original/file-20230513-99298-1vu8dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young woman wearing a white hijab waving a small banner with the G20 logo on it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526020/original/file-20230513-99298-1vu8dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526020/original/file-20230513-99298-1vu8dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526020/original/file-20230513-99298-1vu8dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526020/original/file-20230513-99298-1vu8dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526020/original/file-20230513-99298-1vu8dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526020/original/file-20230513-99298-1vu8dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526020/original/file-20230513-99298-1vu8dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kashmiri students participate in an event ahead of the G20 Tourism Working Group meeting that will be held from May 22-24 in Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Decolonizing tourism</h2>
<p>All of this raises questions about the ethics of tourism in occupied territories.</p>
<p>Indigenous governance and Native Hawaiian scholar <a href="https://www.uvic.ca/hsd/igov/people/faculty/h%C5%8Dk%C5%ABlani--h%C5%8Dk%C5%ABlani.php">Hōkūlani K. Aikau</a> and <a href="https://manoa.hawaii.edu/undergrad/honors/3980-2/">Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez</a> argue that
colonialism is the <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/2667/DetoursA-Decolonial-Guide-to-Hawai-i">ultimate breach of guest protocol that violates a welcome that was never extended</a>. By visiting areas under occupation, tourists, unknowingly or knowingly, reproduce the violent colonization of peoples and places.</p>
<p>Those visiting Kashmir must first learn about the <a href="https://standwithkashmir.org/the-kashmir-syllabus/">decolonial history of the region</a>, one that honours Kashmiri calls for self-determination and sovereignty. They must follow the principle of <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/pacbi/ethical-tourism">do no harm</a> by not visiting tourist sites or using tour operators run by Indian authorities. They should support local Kashmiri-run businesses as much as possible.</p>
<p>There is no simple resolution for tourism on occupied lands. Tourism amid settler-colonialism manifests in exploitation, dispossession, commodification and other injustices and inequities. The goal of <a href="https://floridaseminoletourism.com/centering-anti-colonial-travel/">ethical travel</a> is not immediate perfection or self-exoneration. It is an invitation to think about our own actions and complicity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205166/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Omer Aijazi receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to conduct research in Kashmir and Northern Pakistan.</span></em></p>In Indian-administered Kashmir, the Indian government is using tourism as a tactic to strengthen its colonial control of the region.Omer Aijazi, Visiting Researcher in Anthropology, University of VictoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2047992023-05-04T15:52:02Z2023-05-04T15:52:02ZWill a UN resolution to commemorate the expulsion of Palestinians from their lands change the narrative? — Listen<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523711/original/file-20230502-403-b7c5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=55%2C38%2C943%2C606&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's been 75 years since Palestinians were first expelled from their homeland. Here, people from Tantura as they were relocated to Jordan, June 1948. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Benno Rothenberg/Meitar Collection/National Library of Israel/The Pritzker Family National Photography Collection)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The UN’s recent <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/us-news/2022/11/30/un-adopts-landmark-resolution-marking-palestinian-nakba-day/#:%7E:text=The%20UN%20General%20Assembly%20on,following%20the%20foundation%20of%20Israel">resolution to recognize Nakba Day on May 15</a>, to mark the anniversary of the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in 1948, helps to acknowledge past traumas but does the resolution have other implications? </p>
<p>On this week’s episode of <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em>, we meet up with M. Muhannad Ayyash, professor of sociology at Mount Royal University in Calgary to help unpack some of the meanings behind this resolution. </p>
<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/fed7128b-e00d-4c8f-a835-635c7a9ec539?dark=true"></iframe>
<h2>Palestinians were driven off their land</h2>
<p>Seventy-five years ago, starting on May 15, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/5/23/the-nakba-did-not-start-or-end-in-1948">Palestinians were driven off their land</a>. This event is what Palestinians have come to refer to as the Nakba.</p>
<p>In Arabic, Nakba means catastrophe.</p>
<p>At that time, approximately <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/israeli-palestinian-conflict">750,000 people were violently forced from their homes</a>. In the decades after, tens of thousands of others were murdered and displaced. And <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees">millions of Palestinians</a> became refugees.</p>
<p>Recently, the United Nations passed a resolution to acknowledge that day of catastrophe. </p>
<p>The Palestinian UN envoy, Riyad Mansour, said the significance of the UN resolution lies in the General Assembly’s acknowledgement of the historical <a href="https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/israel-decries-shameful-extreme-un-resolution-commemorating-palestinian-nakba/">“injustice that befell the Palestinian people.”</a></p>
<p>Why has the UN resolved to acknowledge this history now? Could it be tied to the recent surge in violence in the region?</p>
<p>Does the recognition impact anything? Does it change how the conflict is viewed by western powers, like Canada and the United States who actually voted against the UN resolution?</p>
<p><a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/will-a-un-resolution-to-commemorate-the-expulsion-of-palestinians-from-their-lands-change-the-narrative">Join us to hear more</a>. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Nobody is going anywhere. So we need to imagine social and political life on this land, beyond, the Euro American, colonial, ideology. We need to rethink fundamental questions about our relationship to the land and our relationship to each other. There are no shortage of alternatives.” - M. Muhannad Ayyash, Professor, Mount Royal University</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524192/original/file-20230503-1294-xvfehm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524192/original/file-20230503-1294-xvfehm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524192/original/file-20230503-1294-xvfehm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524192/original/file-20230503-1294-xvfehm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524192/original/file-20230503-1294-xvfehm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524192/original/file-20230503-1294-xvfehm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524192/original/file-20230503-1294-xvfehm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Palestinian women watch Israeli military vehicles, including a bulldozer, in Aqbat Jabr camp, southwest of Jericho on Feb. 4, 2023, during a search for Palestinian suspects after a shooting attack at a restaurant in a nearby settlement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/ Majdi Mohammed)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Read more in The Conversation</h2>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tantura-new-documentary-sparks-debate-about-israel-and-the-palestinian-nakba-189101">Tantura: New documentary sparks debate about Israel and the Palestinian Nakba</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lessons-for-the-future-from-jerusalems-palestinian-past-95768">Lessons for the future from Jerusalem’s Palestinian past</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nakba-day-in-palestine-past-catastrophe-future-conflict-26723">Nakba day in Palestine – past catastrophe, future conflict?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523720/original/file-20230502-26-7c2otd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523720/original/file-20230502-26-7c2otd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523720/original/file-20230502-26-7c2otd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523720/original/file-20230502-26-7c2otd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523720/original/file-20230502-26-7c2otd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523720/original/file-20230502-26-7c2otd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523720/original/file-20230502-26-7c2otd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Palestinian children play next to a painted wall depicting the keys to houses left by Palestinians in 1948, with Arabic writing that reads, ‘return is a right,’ in the West Bank, May 13, 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Mohammed Ballas)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Resources</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524223/original/file-20230503-2123-v7mq38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524223/original/file-20230503-2123-v7mq38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524223/original/file-20230503-2123-v7mq38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524223/original/file-20230503-2123-v7mq38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524223/original/file-20230503-2123-v7mq38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524223/original/file-20230503-2123-v7mq38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524223/original/file-20230503-2123-v7mq38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Uniformed and armed Israeli soldiers stand at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on June 15, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/Y1BdWi52y14">(Unsplash/Toa Heftiba)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/8/6/the-settler-colonial-siege-of-the-gaza">When will the settler colonial siege of the Gaza Strip end?</a>” by M. Muhannad Ayyash (<em>Al-Jazeera</em>) </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/05/16/palestinians-have-no-choice-but-to-continue-the-struggle/">Palestinians have no choice but to continue the struggle</a>” by Noura Erakat (<em>The Washington Post</em>)</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/9/the-deir-yassin-massacre-why-it-still-matters-75-years-later">The Deir Yassin massacre: Why it still matters 75 years later</a>” (<em>Al-Jazeera</em>)</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/from-turtle-island-to-gaza"><em>From Turtle Island to Gaza</em></a>” by David A. Groulx (Athabasca University Press)</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/may/18/a-jewish-case-for-palestinian-refugee-return">“A Jewish Case for Palestinian Refugee Return”</a> by Peter Beinart (<em>The Guardian</em>)</p>
<h2>Listen and Follow</h2>
<p>You can listen to or follow <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em> on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dont-call-me-resilient/id1549798876">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9qZFg0Ql9DOA">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/37tK4zmjWvq2Sh6jLIpzp7">Spotify</a> or <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com">wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts</a>. <a href="mailto:DCMR@theconversation.com">We’d love to hear from you</a>, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on <a href="https://twitter.com/ConversationCA">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheConversationCanada">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@theconversation">TikTok</a> and use #DontCallMeResilient.</p>
<h2>Transcript</h2>
<p>Go <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/will-a-un-resolution-to-commemorate-the-expulsion-of-palestinians-from-their-lands-change-the-narrative/transcript">here</a> for the unedited transcript.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204799/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The UN’s resolution to recognize Nakba Day on May 15, to mark the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in 1948, helps to acknowledge past traumas but does the resolution have other implications?Vinita Srivastava, Host + Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientBoké Saisi, Associate Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2032292023-04-06T19:32:12Z2023-04-06T19:32:12ZThe Vatican just renounced a 500-year-old doctrine that justified colonial land theft … Now what? — Podcast<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/a51538ad-52c3-4f39-b060-550a73ea8017?dark=true"></iframe>
<p>Last week, the Vatican finally <a href="https://apnews.com/article/vatican-indigenous-papal-bulls-pope-francis-062e39ce5f7594a81bb80d0417b3f902">distanced itself from the Doctrine of Discovery</a> — a hundreds of years old decree that justified land theft and enslavement of people who were not Christian. </p>
<p><a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/the-vatican-just-renounced-a-500-year-old-doctrine-that-justified-colonial-land-theft-now-what">In this episode of <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em></a>, political and Indigenous studies scholar Veldon Coburn explains why the Vatican’s repudiation of the Doctrine is a huge symbolic victory. We also examine what this repudiation may mean for members of Indigenous Nations, what prompted this renouncement, and what still needs to happen.</p>
<p>Coburn said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“For an Indigenous person like myself, it’s profound because after four, five hundred years, since the first Papal Bull was issued, I didn’t think I’d see it. Even though it may not have great material influence over my relationship with the colonial state, I do know that it’s very difficult to get the church to change positions on things because, I mean, you had to twist their arm for a long time to get them to see that the sun was at the centre of the solar system and not the Earth.” </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Moral justifications for settler colonialism</h2>
<p>Coburn explained how the Doctrine became the ideological justification for settler colonialism and enslavement in the Americas, Africa and much of the former colonies as well as the basis of a legal framework that continues to operate and support land dispossession today. </p>
<p>For example, Coburn brings up a 2005 court case involving the Oneida Nation. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I know people cherished Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but she wrote the decision for the courts in 2005… It was kind of a cruel decision too. It’s like, we stole your land. We get it. You’re not getting it back. And then she explicitly cites the Doctrine of Discovery [denying] Indigenous title to the Oneida Nation in New York State.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We also get into the difference between western ideas about land and Indigenous Knowledge. And how ownership and commodification were central to this decree.</p>
<p>Coburn explained how the original decree declared Indigenous territories ready to be claimed because, under western Christian philosophies, land was to be used to generate profit. Coburn said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“They viewed our ‘non-usage’ of the whole territory as wasting God’s gifts. So these were to be exploited … in market exchange for the creation of wealth.”</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A protest sign is held up. It says: Rescind the Doctrine of Discovery (sic)." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519874/original/file-20230406-28-jfzc31.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519874/original/file-20230406-28-jfzc31.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519874/original/file-20230406-28-jfzc31.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519874/original/file-20230406-28-jfzc31.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519874/original/file-20230406-28-jfzc31.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519874/original/file-20230406-28-jfzc31.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519874/original/file-20230406-28-jfzc31.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protester holds a sign as Pope Francis takes part in a public event in Iqaluit, Nunavut, July 29, 2022, during his papal visit across Canada.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The legacy of the Doctrine</h2>
<p>While the Church’s role in land theft was quickly taken up by new political entities, the lingering effects of the Doctrine are still evident in current legislative practices. </p>
<p>Christian and European supremacist ideas are evident in the decree: Indigenous Peoples and their existence on land was not sufficient evidence of proper governance. These ideas continue to function as a rationale for ongoing colonial practices. </p>
<h2>A welcome symbolic gesture</h2>
<p>For followers of the church, Coburn said, the Vatican’s official repudiation may work to alleviate the moral stain of colonial plunder. It may also serve as an admittance of culpability. </p>
<p>Mostly, Coburn suggests, the repudiation is a symbolic gesture offered alongside many others. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“…as we’ve seen with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau … the symbolic has moved ahead quite quickly [while] the material aspects of our lived existence still linger in a state that’s more resembling of the worst times of colonial assertions of sovereignty over it. So it really hasn’t changed. They’re still holding onto our land and saying, well, we said we’re sorry. What more can we do? There’s a lot more… the rightful return, restorative justice means: land back.” </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Read more</h2>
<p><a href="https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/capitalism-and-dispossession"><em>Capitalism and Dispossession</em> by Veldon Coburn</a></p>
<p><a href="https://humanrights.ca/story/doctrine-discovery">What is the Doctrine of Discovery?</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.afn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/18-01-22-Dismantling-the-Doctrine-of-Discovery-EN.pdf">Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery</a>:
Recommendations from the Assembly of First Nations on how to dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery</p>
<p><a href="https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/capitalism-and-dispossession"><em>Corporate Canada at Home and Abroad</em> (May 2022) (edited by David P. Thomas and Veldon Coburn)</a>: “This edited collection brings together a broad range of case studies to highlight the role of Canadian corporations in producing, deepening and exacerbating conditions of dispossession both at home and abroad.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/03/30/1167056438/vatican-doctrine-of-discovery-colonialism-indigenous?tpcc=nlraceahead">The Vatican repudiates ‘Doctrine of Discovery,’ which was used to justify colonialism</a>:
“The ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ that was used to justify snuffing out Indigenous people’s culture and livelihoods is not part of the Catholic faith.”</p>
<p><a href="https://thenarwhal.ca/rcmp-arrests-wetsuweten-gidimten-camp/">RCMP arrest five land defenders on Wet’suwet’en territory as Coastal GasLink construction continues</a>: Dinï ze’ (Hereditary Chief) Gisday’wa says: “There’s no such thing as Crown land in Canada … It belongs to us, the Natives.” In 1997, the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed the Wet’suwet’en never gave up their Rights and Title to the territory in a landmark case called Delgamuukw-Gisdaywa.</p>
<h2>Listen and Follow</h2>
<p>You can listen to or follow <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em> on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dont-call-me-resilient/id1549798876">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9qZFg0Ql9DOA">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/37tK4zmjWvq2Sh6jLIpzp7">Spotify</a> or <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com">wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts</a>. <a href="mailto:DCMR@theconversation.com">We’d love to hear from you</a>, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on <a href="https://twitter.com/ConversationCA">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheConversationCanada">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@theconversation">TikTok</a> and use #DontCallMeResilient.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203229/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The Vatican has repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery, a 500-year-old decree used to justify settler colonialism. Scholar Veldon Coburn explains this symbolic victory and what still needs to happen.Vinita Srivastava, Host + Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientBoké Saisi, Associate Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1934322022-12-07T21:39:48Z2022-12-07T21:39:48ZThe fur trade shows us that Canada has a long history of unethical business practices<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499658/original/file-20221207-18-cn92lf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C17%2C2377%2C1530&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">‘Winter fishing on the ice of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers,’ by Peter Rindisbacher, 1821.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(National Archives of Canada)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With rising prices caused by inflation, Canadians are struggling to afford the basic costs of living. According to a recent Angus Reid Institute study, <a href="https://angusreid.org/canada-economy-inflation-rate-hike-debt/">nearly 60 per cent of Canadians are struggling to provide food</a> for their families. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/canada-food-price-profits-1.6629854">profits are surging for grocery retailers</a>, raising concerns about monopolies.</p>
<p>In today’s market economy, competition means standing out by offering customers more while working faster for less cost. Among top grocery retailers in Canada like Loblaws, Sobeys and Metro, it also means protecting and growing their dominant market position. The pandemic and other global crises has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/food-giants-reap-enormous-profits-during-times-of-crisis-184223">especially profitable for the food business sector</a>.</p>
<p>There is nothing new or surprising about the lengths corporations will go to maintain market dominance. Canada has a long history of big business antics, <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/a-legacy-of-exploitation">stretching as far back as pre-Confederation fur trade</a>.</p>
<h2>Building customer loyalty</h2>
<p>In 1670, Charles II <a href="https://www.hbcheritage.ca/things/artifacts/the-royal-charter">granted one company exclusive privileges</a> to exploit the area around Hudson Bay. For a century, bayside factories bustled with trade activity, where Hudson’s Bay Company men operated as a type of trader know as factors.</p>
<p>The fur trade was about more than exchanging goods — it was about building loyalty. Speeches and gift exchanges <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=4-gZSsrCr5QC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA68#v=onepage&q=lengthy%20ceremony&f=false">stretched over multiple days</a>, practices that reflected the customs of the Indigenous societies participating in the commercial trade. These were <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=8_um3VW2zyMC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&dq=Between+Indigenous+and+Settler+Governance&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=necessary%20to%20trading%20relationships&f=false">required if HBC factors wanted access to the goods</a> and for Indigenous traders to return the next season.</p>
<p>Such practices created shared obligations between the parties, although this did not stop factors from shorting Indigenous traders. By applying the “<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=WHpucb-sXQUC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&dq=indians+in+the+fur+trade&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=factor's%20standard&f=false">factor’s standard</a>,” company traders could demand more from Indigenous traders for less than was customary, or offer worse quality items in exchange for the usual quantity of furs. </p>
<p>It was risky — accusations of cheating left the company with more than dissatisfied consumers, it could cause productivity problems if the Indigenous party refused to return in the future. After all, in addition to gifts and consumer goods, the items Indigenous traders received were a type of compensation for their labours and fostered social relations.</p>
<h2>Collusion and control</h2>
<p>When trade shifted inland in the 1770s, the factor’s standard shifted too. The HBC was in direct competition with the Montreal-based North West Company, and each side <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&redir_esc=y&id=4PsVAQAAMAAJ&dq=Merchant+Credit+and+Labour+Strategies+in+Historical+Perspective&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=patronize">tempted Indigenous traders away from their rival</a> by offering more in quantity or quality.</p>
<p>By the early 1800s, this became an expensive rivalry. Company men acted in ways that appeared contrary to their bottom lines, <a href="http://pam.minisisinc.com/DIGITALOBJECTS/Access/HBCA%20Microfilm/1M16/B22-A-1.pdf">driven by the desire to deny the other company profit</a>. </p>
<p>Yet amid what seemed like mutually assured destruction, the rivals conspired to <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=0AoqiZZZfYwC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=blacklisting&f=false">blacklist workers who deserted them</a>, floated <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=cQluEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=legacy+of+exploitation&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=informal%20collusion&f=false">the idea of an informal collusion</a>, and <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=LNUUAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=spencer%20sheriff%20assiniboia&f=false">secured legal protections and advantages from government officials</a> in Canada and Britain (<a href="https://archive.org/stream/cihm_18595/cihm_18595_djvu.txt">including the military</a>). Short term losses were nothing compared to long term gains in control.</p>
<p>Eventually, in an ultimate attempt to exercise control, the HBC established the Red River Colony (present-day Winnipeg) in 1812. Still <a href="https://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.lac_reel_c16/769">dependent on Indigenous Peoples’ labour and allyship</a>, this attempt to control Indigenous Peoples’ lands shows us how far the HBC would go to flex and protect their privileges.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The outside of a Loblaws grocery store" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495496/original/file-20221115-13-eoau6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C359%2C5685%2C3628&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495496/original/file-20221115-13-eoau6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495496/original/file-20221115-13-eoau6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495496/original/file-20221115-13-eoau6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495496/original/file-20221115-13-eoau6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495496/original/file-20221115-13-eoau6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495496/original/file-20221115-13-eoau6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Big Canadian businesses, like Loblaws, take dramatic steps to maintain customer loyalty and maintain market dominance the same way pre-Confederation traders did.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Still building loyalty</h2>
<p>Even though today’s market economy has changed a lot since the heyday of chartered monopolies, there are some similarities when it comes to company tricks and concerns about loyalty.</p>
<p>Faced with shrinking portion sizes and frozen or increased prices, consumers today are frustrated by “<a href="https://theconversation.com/shrinkflation-when-less-is-not-more-at-the-grocery-store-97240">shrinkflation</a>.” Some retail experts label shrinkflation a “<a href="https://www.supermarketnews.com/consumer-trends/podcast-shrinkflation-and-how-it-s-affecting-loyalty">consumer perception</a>” problem, which becomes a <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2022-07-25-gartner-survey-finds-consumers-stop-buying-from-brands-that-compromise-products">loyalty problem when consumers feel cheated</a>. Described by economics journalist Abha Bhattarai as “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/06/01/package-sizes-shrink-inflation/">retail camouflage</a>,” tricks like this are not necessarily illegal, <a href="https://morningconsult.com/2022/08/29/consumer-sensitivity-to-shrinkflation/">but they can destroy consumer trust</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A man in a suit speaking at a podium" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495495/original/file-20221115-25-yrjmqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495495/original/file-20221115-25-yrjmqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495495/original/file-20221115-25-yrjmqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495495/original/file-20221115-25-yrjmqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495495/original/file-20221115-25-yrjmqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495495/original/file-20221115-25-yrjmqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495495/original/file-20221115-25-yrjmqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Galen G. Weston speaking to shareholders at Loblaw’s annual general meeting in Toronto, in May 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Thornhill</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In October, Loblaw Companies president Galen G. Weston responded to customer outcry against grocery prices. This involved <a href="https://www.loblaw.ca/en/galen-announces-a-price-freeze-for-inflation">circulating a personalized note</a> announcing a three-month price freeze on one of the company’s own brands.</p>
<p>With this note, Weston tried to appear as a compassionate voice for corporate decision-making. He volunteered to share the burdens by sacrificing profits, and seemed to recognize some sense of duty while still managing to stop short of a <em>mea culpa</em>.</p>
<h2>More collusion and control</h2>
<p>Instead of increasing customer loyalty, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/business/2022/10/18/loblaws-price-freeze-nothing-but-a-publicity-stunt-critics-say.html">Weston’s public relations move backfired</a> — much like the short-lived “hero pay” for employees (<a href="https://financialpost.com/news/economy/how-hero-pay-scandal-prompted-ottawa-make-wage-fixing-illegal">now recognized as a collusive wage-fixing practice</a>). While these PR moves might have been well intentioned, they demonstrate a clear disconnect between grocery store chains and the needs of their customers.</p>
<p>Weston’s note suggested that companies like Loblaws can decide food costs at will, which undercuts claims that prices rose for reasons beyond their control, like <a href="https://www.loblaw.ca/en/galen-announces-a-price-freeze-for-inflation">rising supplier costs</a>. It also turns out that price freezes are not that special, although Loblaws framed it that way. In the industry, it is <a href="https://financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/loblaw-no-name-price-freeze-routine">routine for prices to remain relatively stable through the winter</a>.</p>
<p>These antics are the latest in Canada’s long history of monopolies using questionable practices to protect their dominant position in the market. When considered alongside pre-Confederation fur trade, we see that market dominance is about control, which is the cornerstone of settler colonialism itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193432/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Dianne Brophy received funding for her book from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Awards to Scholarly Publications Program. </span></em></p>A public relations move by Loblaw Companies is just the latest in a long line of big business antics stretching back to pre-Confederation fur trade in Canada.Susan Dianne Brophy, Associate Professor in Legal Studies, St. Jerome's University, University of WaterlooLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1910482022-09-27T21:16:22Z2022-09-27T21:16:22ZNational Day for Truth and Reconciliation: Universities need to revisit their founding stories<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486646/original/file-20220926-4427-ri7a1n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C392%2C5683%2C3450&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Indigenous histories often go unrecognized in institutional university memories.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole Burston</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/national-day-for-truth-and-reconciliation--universities-need-to-revisit-their-founding-stories" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Universities pride themselves on their founding stories. These stories, however, tend to privilege <a href="https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/hard-task-writing-university-history/">dominant institutional narratives</a> and reproduce settler memories — and erase <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-commonwealth-universities-profited-from-indigenous-dispossession-through-land-grants-185010">institutional participation in the dispossession of Indigenous Peoples from their lands</a>.</p>
<p>In our preliminary research <a href="https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/headandheartprogram_2022/24">on Indigenous presence at Western University</a> with <a href="https://indigenous.uwo.ca/faculty/sally-kewayosh.html">Sally Kewayosh</a>, a filmmaker and instructor with the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, we find compelling reasons to retrace the history of universities and expose Indigenous Peoples’ ongoing contributions. </p>
<p>Grappling with Western University’s origins, and the origins of all universities, means coming to a deeper understanding of how these origins are steeped in colonial and racist assumptions — and bolstered <a href="https://doi.org/10.32316/hse-rhe.v33i1.4891">by networks connecting different branches of colonial education</a>.</p>
<p>At the same time, it’s critical <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-an-indigenous-delegation-prepares-to-visit-the-vatican-its-worth-revisiting-trudeaus-2017-papal-gift-of-the-jesuit-relations-179258">to acknowledge the agency</a> of Indigenous Peoples who saw the university as a place of opportunity for their Nations, and to revisit historical promises.</p>
<h2>Early Canadian universities</h2>
<p>As the country shifts attention to <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/national-day-truth-reconciliation.html">the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation</a>, we call for universities to revisit their founding stories with a critical eye to how settler colonialism and Indigeneity have shaped them.</p>
<p>Many universities in what we now call Canada were founded within Christian traditions that demonstrated zeal for the assimilation of Indigenous Peoples into Euro-Christian traditions. </p>
<p>Over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/disciplined-intelligence--a-products-9780773521414.php">universities began to shed Christian religious and denominational aims</a> — yet they continued to benefit from appropriated lands and accrued financial capital.</p>
<p>As the Government of Canada ushered Indigenous Peoples <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indian-act">onto reserves, ramped up the residential school system and imposed other legal restrictions</a>, universities
contributed heavily to remaking Indigenous Lands <a href="https://uofrpress.ca/Books/D/Dissident-Knowledge-in-Higher-Education">into the political nation state</a> and developing white settler prosperity. Universities <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3899-0_69">reinforced settler ideologies</a> in the education of Canada’s political and thought leaders. </p>
<h2>Western University’s founding story</h2>
<p>Part of our early findings suggest Indigenous Peoples have an enduring presence at Western, despite colonial attempts to overlook them. </p>
<p>As records from the Anglican Diocese of Huron show, on Feb. 20, 1877, an “Association of the Professors and Alumni of Huron College” gathered in London, Ont., to encourage <a href="http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/hellmuth_isaac_13E.html">Isaac Hellmuth,</a> the Anglican Bishop of Huron Diocese, to work towards building an “undenominational School of Arts, Law, Medicine and Engineering.” A year later, on March 7, <a href="https://www.uwo.ca/about/whoweare/history.html">1878, Western University was born</a>.</p>
<p>But left out in many accounts is the role settler colonialism and promises of
Indigenous education played in securing the university’s early years.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A flag seen on top of a tower." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486607/original/file-20220926-25-s6agtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486607/original/file-20220926-25-s6agtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486607/original/file-20220926-25-s6agtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486607/original/file-20220926-25-s6agtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486607/original/file-20220926-25-s6agtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486607/original/file-20220926-25-s6agtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486607/original/file-20220926-25-s6agtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Despite colonial attempts to overlook Indigenous Peoples, they have an enduring presence at Western University.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Isaac Barefoot</h2>
<p>According to the resolution from that 1877 meeting, Isaac Barefoot was one of 42 men gathered to encourage Hellmuth to work towards the new university. </p>
<p>Barefoot was an Onondaga man from Six Nations of the Grand River. As a child he attended <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools">the Mohawk Institute, Canada’s oldest residential school</a>, and later trained to become a teacher <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/egerton-ryerson">at Egerton Ryerson’s</a> <a href="https://library.torontomu.ca/asc/2013/04/feature-from-the-collections-looking-back-at-the-history-of-the-normal-school-building-part-two">Normal School</a>.</p>
<p>From there, Barefoot went on to teach at <a href="https://woodlandculturalcentre.ca">the Mohawk Institute</a>. He was eventually ordained an Anglican priest <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Huron_College_1863_l963.html?id=olkXAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">at Western’s founding College, Huron, in 1878</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of people seen sitting on chairs next to a man speaking at a podium." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486614/original/file-20220926-24-1odjjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486614/original/file-20220926-24-1odjjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486614/original/file-20220926-24-1odjjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486614/original/file-20220926-24-1odjjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486614/original/file-20220926-24-1odjjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486614/original/file-20220926-24-1odjjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486614/original/file-20220926-24-1odjjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Survivors of the Mohawk Institute, with Six Nations Elected Chief Mark B. Hill at the podium, at a press conference in July 2021, requested a criminal investigation into, and a search for, unmarked graves on the grounds.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Peter Power</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Barefoot is a complex figure entangled in asymmetrical colonial power relations. His presence at this meeting also reminds us that the vision to train Indigenous Peoples was an early rationale for creating universities: For example, university founders in the United States <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska-paperback/9780803259669">used relationships with Indigenous Peoples to raise funds</a> for establishing universities that included the promise of Indigenous education deeply entwined with colonial aims.</p>
<h2>Indigenous Peoples and building universities</h2>
<p>Researchers at the Six Nations of the Grand River Lands & Resources Department and scholars <a href="https://www.sixnations.ca/LandsResources/SNLands-GlobalSolutions-FINALyr2020.pdf">document how McGill University</a> borrowed government-controlled Indian Trust Funds. </p>
<p>Educational studies researcher Rosalind Hampton references McGill’s use of the Indian Trust Fund and critiques intersections of settler colonialism, legacies of slavery and anti-Black racism at the university in <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487524869/black-racialization-and-resistance-at-an-elite-university"><em>Black Racialization and Resistance at an Elite University</em></a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lrHcjSFj2V0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Video from the Yellowhead Institute about the Indian Trust Fund.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hellmuth applied to the <a href="http://archives.algomau.ca/main/?q=taxonomy/term/1022">New England Company — which ran the Mohawk Institute</a> — for funds to start Western. The vision for the funds, according to company records, was “the training of both Indian and white students for the ministry.”</p>
<p>In 1879, <a href="https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.8_06916_451/1">as the newspaper</a> of <a href="https://anglicanjournal.com/about/our-story/">the Anglican Church of Canada</a> reported, Hellmuth approached Anishinaabe Anglican missionary Henry Pahtahquahong Chase to help him “solicit aid on behalf of the Western University.” </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-donors-from-canada-and-europe-helped-fund-indian-residential-schools-164028">How donors from Canada and Europe helped fund Indian Residential Schools</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>An Aug. 23 article, “The Indians and the Western University,” detailed how Chase hoped “to get admission for their youth into the institution, so that his people would have a chance of obtaining good learning.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.8_06916_550/1">Two years later, in July 1881</a> the newspaper reported Hellmuth worked with another Anishinaabe missionary, Keshegowenene (John Jacobs) to seek more funds for the university. This was while visiting Bkejwanong Unceded Territory. </p>
<p>According to this report, at the meeting, Hellmuth said: “When the Western University is opened, Indians from different parts will continue to avail themselves of the grand privileges of obtaining a university education.”</p>
<h2>Ties with residential schools</h2>
<p>While Western’s founder recruited Chase and Keshegowenene to help with his fundraising campaign, Huron’s first librarian, Edward Francis Wilson was involved in the residential school movement. </p>
<p>Common social and financial <a href="https://doi.org/10.32316/hse-rhe.v33i1.4891">Anglican networks were instrumental in the beginnings of Huron College, Western University and Shingwauk Residential School</a> in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. After attending Huron, Wilson moved to Sault Ste. Marie where he helped establish <a href="https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/srsc/chapter/the-industrial-shingwauk-home-1874-1935/">the Shingwauk Industrial Home</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486613/original/file-20220926-14-k4dqix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486613/original/file-20220926-14-k4dqix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486613/original/file-20220926-14-k4dqix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486613/original/file-20220926-14-k4dqix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486613/original/file-20220926-14-k4dqix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486613/original/file-20220926-14-k4dqix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486613/original/file-20220926-14-k4dqix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shingwauk Home, Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., circa 1900.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(BiblioArchives /LibraryArchives/Flickr)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/srsc/front-matter/shingwauk-residential-schools-centre/">A vision for a Shingwauk school</a> first emerged from <a href="https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/srsc/chapter/the-shingwauk-family">Chief Shingwaukonse’s vision for a “Teaching Wigwam” at Garden River</a> where his people and settlers would learn together. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2015/trc/IR4-9-1-1-2015-eng.pdf">Wilson promoted assimilation</a> and the school “<a href="https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/srsc/chapter/the-industrial-shingwauk-home-1874-1935/">gradually became absorbed into the Canada-wide Indian Residential School system</a>,” designed to effect cultural genocide.</p>
<p>In 2006, the Shingwauk Education Trust and Algoma University College signed a Shingwauk Covenant — an agreement to <a href="https://www.myalgoma.ca/2021/02/10/teaching-wigwam-the-reclaiming-shingwauk-hall-project-continues-to-build-archive-collection/">work together to realize Shingwauk’s vision for Indigenous education</a> and research.</p>
<p>The project involved a “<a href="http://shingwauk.org/srsc/node/28">Survivor-driven reclamation of the former Shingwauk Indian Residential School</a>” resulting in a collaborative project to create the <a href="https://algomau.ca/research/shingwauk-residential-schools-centre/">Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre (SRSC)</a>.</p>
<h2>Promises, Indigenous presence</h2>
<p>Our research into Western’s history continues. Importantly some of this work <a href="https://teaching.uwo.ca/teaching/indigenous-tl-resources.html">engages faculty</a> and <a href="https://www.huronresearch.ca/confrontingcolonialism">undergraduate students</a>. </p>
<p>We are sharing these early findings because, as our work to date demonstrates, Indigenous histories and how universities intersect with colonial aims often go unrecognized in university collective memories.</p>
<p>We look forward to sharing stories of Indigenous presence in the form of film, a website and publications. Every public institution should embark on similar decolonizing journeys.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191048/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Peace received funding from a SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant in 2018. He is an associate professor of history at Huron University College, an affiliated college at Western. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Candace Brunette-Debassige does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>University histories need to be re-examined with attention to the role of Indigenous Peoples, connections to Residential Schools and universities’ fundraising efforts.Thomas Peace, Associate professor, Department of History, Western UniversityCandace Brunette-Debassige, Assistant professor, Faculty of Education, Western UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1903862022-09-26T19:00:36Z2022-09-26T19:00:36ZReckoning with the history of public schooling and settler colonialism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485759/original/file-20220921-22-vgtple.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=100%2C19%2C769%2C480&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Alex Bird (second from the left) and his siblings from the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation were among the first students to attend this public school, near Prince George, B.C., in the early 1910s.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Royal B.C. Museum, Image B-00342, British Columbia Archives) </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In light of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), many Canadians are coming to terms with Canada’s history of schooling and settler colonialism.</p>
<p>The TRC’s findings, along with <a href="https://theconversation.com/every-child-matters-one-year-after-the-unmarked-graves-of-215-indigenous-children-were-found-in-kamloops-183778">revelations about locating unmarked graves</a> at many former residential school sites and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/day-schools-settlement-deadline-1.6519829">the recent conclusion of</a> <a href="https://www.indiandayschools.org/">the Indian Day Schools</a> settlement claim deadline, have challenged Canadians to confront a hard truth: their government, in partnership with various churches, devised, deployed and defended genocidal school systems for Indigenous Peoples for more than a century. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ignore-debaters-and-denialists-canadas-treatment-of-indigenous-peoples-fits-the-definition-of-genocide-170242">Ignore debaters and denialists, Canada's treatment of Indigenous Peoples fits the definition of genocide</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Indian Residential Schools and Indian Day Schools, however, have not been the only kinds of schooling complicit in colonialism.</p>
<p>The TRC stressed that we must have truth before reconciliation. Part of the “<a href="https://nctr.ca/records/reports/#trc-reports">complex truth</a>” is understanding that public schooling has also played an important role in settler colonialism in Canada.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man seen bending placing an item down in front of a carving on a wooden box." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486311/original/file-20220923-475-dia4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486311/original/file-20220923-475-dia4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486311/original/file-20220923-475-dia4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486311/original/file-20220923-475-dia4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486311/original/file-20220923-475-dia4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486311/original/file-20220923-475-dia4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486311/original/file-20220923-475-dia4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The TRC stressed that we must have truth before reconciliation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Building a capitalist settler society</h2>
<p>In my new book, <em><a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/lessons-in-legitimacy">Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia</a></em>, I examine how various kinds of schooling (day and residential schools, yes, but also public schools) supported the creation of a capitalist settler society in Canada’s westernmost province between 1849 and 1930. </p>
<p>I show how separate, though sometimes overlapping, kinds of schooling for Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous communities imparted similar “lessons in legitimacy” — the formal and informal teachings that justified colonialism and normalized the unequal social relations of settler capitalism.</p>
<p>Schools served as laboratories for learning colonial legitimacy and training students to contribute to the capitalist economy in British Columbia, <a href="https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/a-national-crime">throughout Canada</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00467600802106206">across the British Empire</a>.</p>
<p>There are a number of ways in which public schooling, in addition to day and residential schooling, was implicated.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of children seen in rows in front of a school photo." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486290/original/file-20220923-8038-ib8zuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486290/original/file-20220923-8038-ib8zuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486290/original/file-20220923-8038-ib8zuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486290/original/file-20220923-8038-ib8zuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486290/original/file-20220923-8038-ib8zuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486290/original/file-20220923-8038-ib8zuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486290/original/file-20220923-8038-ib8zuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students at the Capilano public school in North Vancouver, circa 1920s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Archives of North Vancouver, Image 6490)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Land and taxes</h2>
<p>In British Columbia, public schooling was largely paid for by dispossessing Indigenous Peoples of their land. </p>
<p>In the 1850s, Britain simply asserted sovereignty over what became the colony of British Columbia. Then, the province of British Columbia <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/making-native-space">refused to sign treaties</a> with Indigenous Nations. </p>
<p>As a result, much of British Columbia’s land base was — and remains — <a href="https://btlbooks.com/book/unsettling-canada-second-edition">stolen, unceded land</a>. During the early <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/contesting-rural-space-products-9780773528598.php">period of colonial settlement</a>, and in an effort to attract and retain colonists and their families, state officials often reserved “free” plots of land to be used for the construction of schools. </p>
<p>Property <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/tax--order--and-good-government-products-9780773549623.php">taxes were then introduced</a> to help pay for increasing schooling costs.</p>
<p>Thus, stolen Indigenous land underwrote the expansion and maintenance of the public school system in British Columbia, as elsewhere.</p>
<h2>Overlapping officials</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of a man seen in a military uniform." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486294/original/file-20220923-5293-3m15vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486294/original/file-20220923-5293-3m15vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=869&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486294/original/file-20220923-5293-3m15vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=869&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486294/original/file-20220923-5293-3m15vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=869&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486294/original/file-20220923-5293-3m15vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1092&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486294/original/file-20220923-5293-3m15vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1092&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486294/original/file-20220923-5293-3m15vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1092&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Israel Wood Powell, first Superintendent of Indian Affairs for British Columbia, lobbied the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) to create new Indian Day Schools and Indian Residential Schools in the province.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(The Royal BC Museum, Image F-03704, British Columbia Archives)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many school officials in British Columbia moved between different educational spheres. Residential school principals sat on public school boards and their students became teachers in day and residential schools. Public school graduates also taught in day and residential schools. </p>
<p>Israel Wood Powell, a doctor and early public school advocate in 1860s Victoria, served as the first Superintendent of Indian Affairs for British Columbia in the 1870s and 1880s. Powell used his position to lobby the <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1338907166262/1607904846325">Department of Indian Affairs</a> (DIA) to create new Indian Day Schools and Indian Residential Schools in the province. </p>
<p>Later, in the early 1900s, R.H. Cairns served as a public school teacher, principal of the <a href="https://collections.irshdc.ubc.ca/index.php/Detail/entities/44">Coqualeetza Indian Residential School</a>, and then as the DIA’s school inspector for British Columbia.</p>
<h2>Similar education materials</h2>
<p>Though day, residential, and public schools were supposed to be separate forms of education, they mostly shared the same educational materials. </p>
<p>In the 1890s, the DIA instructed day and residential schools to adopt and follow the local provincial public school curriculum. This included assigning <a href="https://doi.org/10.14288/bcs.v0i169.422">history and social studies textbooks</a> that disparaged Indigenous Peoples and people of colour through racist representations — and it normalized colonialism and racism as “commonsense.”</p>
<p>Many students in residential schools, however, only received academic instruction for half the day, with the other half being reserved for performing manual labour for the school. </p>
<p>As a result, by the 1920s the vast majority of Indigenous students <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/lessons-in-legitimacy">never advanced higher than Grade 1 or 2</a>. This is why some <a href="https://www.proquest.com/openview/de46ee0201e1a3e94487a96b71733627/1">historians</a>, building on <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/what-we-learned">Survivor testimony and Indigenous knowledge</a>, have argued that full assimilation into mainstream settler society was never the goal of policy makers. </p>
<p>Instead, Indigenous students in British Columbia, as elsewhere, were educated for inequality.</p>
<h2>Indigenous students in public schools</h2>
<p>Finally, many Indigenous children and youth attended public schools in British Columbia from the 1840s through to the 1940s and 1950s when integration became an official policy. </p>
<p>My research shows that Indigenous students, like those (in the lead image) at the South Fort George School in 1911, near Prince George, B.C., consistently attended public schools in greater numbers than <a href="https://www.proquest.com/openview/de46ee0201e1a3e94487a96b71733627/1">previously thought</a>. </p>
<p>Many Indigenous parents advocated for their children to have the right to attend public schools (instead of day or residential schools). Some settler parents and provincial and federal government officials approved and at times even defended this practice for various reasons, including to keep certain schools open throughout the province. </p>
<p>The links between public schooling and settler colonialism thus need more critical attention. </p>
<p>The Indian Residential School and Indian Day School systems have now ended. But public schooling continues to support settler colonialism and nation building, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7607422/school-history-education-60s-scoop-indigenious/">as some educators have pointed out</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People in orange shirts are seen attending a gathering." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486303/original/file-20220923-19-90yr9y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486303/original/file-20220923-19-90yr9y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486303/original/file-20220923-19-90yr9y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486303/original/file-20220923-19-90yr9y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486303/original/file-20220923-19-90yr9y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486303/original/file-20220923-19-90yr9y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486303/original/file-20220923-19-90yr9y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People attend a ceremony wearing orange shirts at Centennial Square in Victoria, B.C., Sept. 30, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito</span></span>
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<h2>Decolonizing education today</h2>
<p>Indeed, the core objective of state schooling — to educate children and youth in ways that will prepare them to contribute to and thus sustain an ever-evolving capitalist settler society — remains little changed from the mid-to-late 1800s. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/reckoning-with-the-truths-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-education-systems-must-take-action-166151">Reckoning with the truths of unmarked graves of Indigenous children, education systems must take action</a>
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<p>It is true that some teachers today are working hard to Indigenize and decolonize their classrooms to confront the racism embedded <a href="https://theconversation.com/reckoning-with-the-truths-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-education-systems-must-take-action-166151">in educational structures and practices — or want to — though more policy support is critical</a>. In B.C., some <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-first-nations-full-control-education-1.6311022">Indigenous Nations are taking over control of local schools</a>, but much work remains. </p>
<p>As Canada marks a second National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I hope that a better understanding of the relationship between public schooling and settler colonialism can help spark new questions about how to decolonize and transform education today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190386/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Carleton receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>In B.C., residential school principals sat on public school boards, and some Indigenous children even attended public schools. Understanding such links matters for truth and reconciliation.Sean Carleton, Assistant Professor, Departments of History and Indigenous Studies, University of ManitobaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1908692022-09-22T19:42:50Z2022-09-22T19:42:50ZSaskatchewan stabbing tragedy illustrates ongoing settler colonial violence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485728/original/file-20220920-9768-v7k3wu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=62%2C287%2C5928%2C2919&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People hold candles at a vigil remembering the victims of a mass stabbing attack in Saskatchewan.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Heywood Yu</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/saskatchewan-stabbing-tragedy-illustrates-ongoing-settler-colonial-violence" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The recent mass killings at <a href="http://www.jamessmithcreenation.com/">James Smith Cree Nation</a> have left many trying to understand what could have led to such a horrific loss of life. As things stand, it is unclear that there was any one motivator behind the violence that <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9133733/saskatchewan-stabbings-james-smith-cree-nation-bury-their-dead/">claimed 11 lives and wounded 18 others</a>. </p>
<p>As scholars of settler colonialism in Saskatchewan (Métis, and non-Indigenous), we have some thoughts about what led to these terrifying events and unimaginable pain that this small community is left to grieve through. </p>
<p><a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9107965/saskatchewan-stabbing-gloria-burns/">Much attention has been placed</a> on the causes of the men’s actions and histories, as well as the victims. However, the story goes much further than any of these individual lives. Ending the story here implies that the problem rests within Indigenous communities. Focusing on decisions made within the criminal justice system implies that this horrific event could have been avoided if a single person had been kept in jail. </p>
<p>Yet the three communities that make up <a href="https://teaching.usask.ca/indigenoussk/import/james_smith_cree_nation.php">James Smith Cree Nation</a> deal with much wider realities. <a href="https://paherald.sk.ca/i-am-so-so-very-sorry-archbishop-of-canterbury-apologizes-for-residential-school-role-at-james-smith-cree-nation/">Members of the bands</a> attended residential schools all around the area, from <a href="https://www2.uregina.ca/education/saskindianresidentialschools/prince-albert-indian-residential-school/">Prince Albert Indian Residential School</a> to <a href="https://www2.uregina.ca/education/saskindianresidentialschools/gordons-indian-residential-school/">Gordon’s Indian Residential School</a> or <a href="https://www2.uregina.ca/education/saskindianresidentialschools/st-barnabas-indian-residential-school-onion-lake/">St. Barnabas Residential School</a> in Onion Lake.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/saskatchewan-stabbings-why-myles-sanderson-was-granted-statutory-release-from-prison-190233">Saskatchewan stabbings: Why Myles Sanderson was granted statutory release from prison</a>
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<p>In 2018-19, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/james-smith-cree-nation-star-orion-diamond-mine-1.4879195">the nation fought a mining development</a> that threatened the land and ceremonial grounds. Chief Okimaw Wally Burns of the James Smith Cree Nation band explained, “the way things stand, everyone else gets the benefits of a mine, while we are left with all the consequences.”</p>
<p>Leaders from the community therefore <a href="https://thestarphoenix.com/news/local-news/james-smith-cree-nation-wants-to-re-open-diamond-mine-talks-with-province">attempted to balance</a> environmental and cultural concerns with economic benefits for the communities. Looking to innovate and offer opportunities within their community and to their neighbours, they <a href="https://paherald.sk.ca/u-of-s-and-james-smith-cree-nation-work-together-to-advance-radiology/">successfully launched an MRI company</a> through a partnership with the University of Saskatchewan.</p>
<p>And in 2020, the three communities tried to develop their own response to the pandemic, only to be frustrated by <a href="https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/12/01/Paternalism-Putting-Indigenous-People-At-Risk/">government agencies standing in their way</a> and asserting control at the cost of the well-being of the community.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485729/original/file-20220920-15266-awunyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo of a school building" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485729/original/file-20220920-15266-awunyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485729/original/file-20220920-15266-awunyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485729/original/file-20220920-15266-awunyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485729/original/file-20220920-15266-awunyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485729/original/file-20220920-15266-awunyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485729/original/file-20220920-15266-awunyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485729/original/file-20220920-15266-awunyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Prince Albert Residential School, established in 1947, grew to be the second-largest residential school in Canada. It was closed in 1997.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.irshdc.ubc.ca/index.php/Detail/entities/1174">(Indian Residential School History & Dialogue Centre)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All these stories are related. Residential schooling, the dangers of resource extraction, the challenges of economic development and government control and paternalism are all part of one system: settler colonialism.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/logging-company-clears-cree-nation-ancestral-trail-without-recourse-154921">Logging company clears Cree Nation ancestral trail without recourse</a>
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</em>
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<h2>The violence of settler colonialism</h2>
<p>Contemporary Saskatchewan is deeply shaped by early settler colonial tactics. The formation of settler communities through road, rail and economic practices is <a href="https://uofrpress.ca/Books/C/Clearing-the-Plains">directly linked</a> to the oppression of Indigenous Peoples. There is <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-political-science-revue-canadienne-de-science-politique/article/from-stonechild-to-social-cohesion-antiracist-challenges-for-saskatchewan/0A89420666875DC7495E656B09143486">deeply rooted racism</a> in the political culture of the province. The ongoing <a href="https://btlbooks.com/book/race-space-and-the-law">settler colonial violence</a> in Saskatchewan, specifically <a href="https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/naming-the-violence-that-has-taken-our-sisters">gender-based violence</a>, is directly rooted in this <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23531720#metadata_info_tab_contents">history of settlement</a>. </p>
<p>Settler colonialism is characterized by the marginalization <a href="https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Supplementary-Report_Genocide.pdf">and genocide</a> of Indigenous Peoples who are forcefully supplanted by settlers. The state takes the land from Indigenous nations who had until then thrived and governed themselves, and gives it to those who come to settle and occupy the land. These practices foster the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623520601056240">erasure of Indigenous society</a> and are <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230299191">inherently violent</a>.</p>
<p>In Canada, we can see the violence of this erasure in a few key moments in the settlement of the nation. For example, clauses concerning the surrender of Indigenous land <a href="https://uofrpress.ca/Books/N/No-Surrender">were added to treaties</a> after negotiations had concluded. Indigenous peoples were then physically marginalized through <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-reserves">the reserve system</a> or <a href="https://heritagesask.ca/projects/livingheritage/metis-road-allowance-memories">road allowance communities</a>, as the government regulated with the intent to eradicate Indigenous languages and cultures through policy, legislation and residential schools, often at the behest of churches.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485702/original/file-20220920-11051-c12wfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man hugs a woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485702/original/file-20220920-11051-c12wfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485702/original/file-20220920-11051-c12wfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485702/original/file-20220920-11051-c12wfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485702/original/file-20220920-11051-c12wfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485702/original/file-20220920-11051-c12wfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485702/original/file-20220920-11051-c12wfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485702/original/file-20220920-11051-c12wfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Darryl Burns, brother of victim Gloria Burns, shares an embrace during a Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations event at James Smith Cree Nation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Heywood Yu</span></span>
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<p>Settler colonial violence in Canada might not be obvious. For example, Canada’s reputation as a peaceful nation is <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/unsettling-the-settler-within">built through myth-making</a> based on perceptions of benevolence and saviourism towards Indigenous Peoples and racially marginalized newcomers. </p>
<p>This national myth <a href="https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/when-the-other-is-me">positions Indigenous cultures as uncivilized</a> and in need of saving through settler colonial benevolence. Above all, Indigenous people are seen as needing to be saved from themselves, whether it’s their own actions, those of their community members or from their cultures.</p>
<h2>A first step away from colonialism</h2>
<p>Violent settler colonialism and deep-seated racism have <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/aboriginal-peoples-in-canada/oclc/1244230475">created the conditions for substandard health, education and social services</a> in Indigenous communities.</p>
<p>These conditions keep Indigenous people in a state where they cannot effectively challenge settler colonialism. They are tethered to the settler colonial project that keeps Indigenous Peoples marginalized socially, physically and economically. </p>
<p>If the root of the problem is the attempt to eliminate people and destroy their capacity to make decisions for themselves, then the solution begins with agency. The principle of self-determination at the heart of the <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html">United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</a> has not yet had an impact on policy in Canada. </p>
<p>Against the enormity of this system, there is only one solution: to listen to the community. </p>
<p>James Smith Cree Nation has been clear about the issue of substance use and the need for direct action through the form of <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/aboriginal-peoples-in-canada/oclc/1244230475">on-reserve addictions supports</a>. It has also asked for better response time from police and, above all, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/first-nations-policing-calls-james-smith-1.6578455">control over its own policing</a>. </p>
<p>Those who are most affected by such far-reaching problems are the best placed to provide the solutions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190869/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To fully understand what led to the stabbings in James Smith Cree Nation, we need to look at how the legacy of settler colonial violence impacts Indigenous communities.Emily Grafton, Associate Professor, Politics and International Studies, University of ReginaJérôme Melançon, Associate professor of Francophone and Intercultural Studies, University of ReginaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1868892022-08-07T13:03:45Z2022-08-07T13:03:45ZWe need a better understanding of race, ‘status’ and indigeneity in Canada<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477959/original/file-20220807-71528-ob8b2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C1%2C989%2C630&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many people were excluded from Indian status.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Indigenous Services Canada)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/we-need-a-better-understanding-of-race---status--and-indigeneity-in-canada" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Queen’s University recently <a href="https://www.queensu.ca/indigenous/sites/oiiwww/files/uploaded_files/FPG%20Queens%20Report%20Final%20July%207.pdf">released its highly anticipated report</a> after a year-long exploration into the institution’s approaches to indigeneity. </p>
<p>The report came about after a call was made by hundreds of Indigenous academics and community members following the news that <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/queens-university-indigenous-identify-1.6082840">several white settler faculty claiming indigeneity were, in fact, “pretendians.”</a> </p>
<p>The report offers several recommendations that touch on everything from verification processes to developing a more robust Indigenous Studies program. While some Indigenous academics and community members welcomed the report, others suggested it relies too heavily on “colonial, imposed cards” and the concept of “Indian status.”</p>
<p>This critique based on cards and status is confusing, as the report is clear that individuals who have been disconnected from their communities due to colonialism have other avenues to demonstrate their genuine, integral connections. The report highlights the fact that we need a better understanding of race, Indian status and indigeneity in Canada.</p>
<h2>What does ‘pretendian’ mean?</h2>
<p>The term “pretendian” is new and stems from what renowned Indigenous scholar, Vine Deloria Jr., termed, “<a href="http://www.riversimulator.org/Resources/Books/CusterDiedForYourSinsAnIndianManifesto1969Deloria.pdf">the Indian Grandmother Complex</a>.”</p>
<p>Recently, president of the Indigenous Bar Association, Drew Lafond, penned <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-problem-with-labelling-people-pretendians/">an opinion editorial</a> suggesting the term “pretendian” is problematic. He said this is because the first people labelled as “pretendians” were “individuals who were unable to produce a status card under the Indian Act to ‘prove’ that they were Indigenous.” </p>
<p>But the word is actually a modern portmanteau that has gained traction with an established body of <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300264845/playing-indian/">critical academic literature</a>. </p>
<p>Lafond also suggested that the act of calling someone a “pretendian” has led to divisive and toxic interpretations of what it means to be Indigenous.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/stolen-identities-what-does-it-mean-to-be-indigenous-podcast-ep-8-166248">Stolen identities: What does it mean to be Indigenous? Podcast EP 8</a>
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<h2>Indian status and blood quantum</h2>
<p>While the concept of Indian status was, and continues to be, a tool that is imposed based on how much “native blood” one has, it is dangerous to centre Indian status, and not white entitlement and settler colonialism, as the issues plaguing tenuous or false claims to Indigenous identity. It is also dangerous to suggest that these conversations are undermining Indigenous self-determination. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-are-facing-a-settler-colonial-crisis-not-an-indigenous-identity-crisis-175136">We are facing a settler colonial crisis, not an Indigenous identity crisis</a>
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<p>Characterizing all individuals who have been called “pretendians” as simply people who don’t qualify for Indian status is misleading and has contributed to a rise in “anti-status” rhetoric that is, quite frankly, racist. </p>
<p>While Indian status is an imposed mechanism, “<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/02/09/583987261/so-what-exactly-is-blood-quantum">blood quantum</a>” cannot be disentangled from race. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aFMJ86s2xlk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Indian Country Today looks into ‘the pretendian problem.’</span></figcaption>
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<p>There are hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people across this country who are visibly racialized and not only hold Indian status, but also carry the trauma of generations of Indigenous family members who have endured the Indian Act and many other forms of colonial violence. </p>
<p>While it is true that <a href="https://opentextbc.ca/indigenizationfoundations/chapter/the-indian-act/">many people were excluded from Indian status</a> under the Indian Act because of gender or kinship ties to multiple Black and racialized communities, some of these issues have been corrected due to tireless work, often led by Indigenous women — like <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/mary-two-axe-earley">Mary Two-Axe Earley</a>, <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sandra-lovelace-nicholas">Sandra Lovelace Nicholas</a>, <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/mcivor-case">Sharon McIvor</a>, <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/jeannette-vivian-lavell">Jeannette Corbiere Lavell</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/woman-wins-32-year-fight-for-indian-status-1.4078317">Lynn Gehl</a>. </p>
<p>The important work of addressing the erasure of Black and other racialized Indigenous kin through state mechanisms is ongoing. This is why challenging Indigenous identity fraud in academia must name and focus explicitly on structures of whiteness, white entitlement and settler colonialism so we don’t recreate the harms of past policies. </p>
<h2>Misclaiming ‘non-status’</h2>
<p>Ongoing efforts <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rMYGACf5Rs">to challenge Indian status exclusion</a> show us that there’s a massive difference between 1) someone who is a non-status First Nations person and 2) a white settler who has perhaps one or two Indigenous ancestors from before the concept of Indian status was introduced. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100014433/1535469348029">term non-status</a> is meant to reflect the experiences of people who carry a real and intimate connection to historical and contemporary colonial and non-colonial expressions of recognition. This is often expressed through both their exclusion to specific agreements (like the Indian Act) and their inclusion and acceptance within traditional forms of Indigenous kinship.</p>
<p>It is not a generic category for anyone who locates one or two distant ancestors. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OhBrq7Ez-rQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The ‘Indian Act’ explained.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All institutions must be wary of and challenge the ideas that support the notion that Indian status = colonial, therefore any person inhabiting their Indian status = bad. </p>
<p>Because status is an imposed race-based mechanism based on “Indian blood,” many (not all) Indigenous people who hold Indian status in this country are racialized people and know what it means to walk into a settler colonial space and speak volumes as an Indigenous person without uttering a word.</p>
<p>Institutions that aim to advance equity, anti-racism and decolonization must centre the principles of integrity, truth and structural transformation. They must ask pressing questions like: Do your Indigenous employees include racialized, gender-diverse and socioeconomically diverse Indigenous people?</p>
<p>These questions don’t get answered when the loudest voices within the room say, “being Indigenous is not about race or status.” </p>
<p>The focus on status disrespects the millions of Indigenous people who struggle to survive in universities and other settler institutions while having to endure everyday forms of anti-Indigenous racialized violence. </p>
<p>The way forward must centre the lived experiences of Indigenous Peoples, while also refusing the efforts of settlers to re-centre themselves in the necessary transformations of colonial institutions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186889/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Celeste Pedri-Spade does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Challenging Indigenous identity fraud in academia must name and focus explicitly on structures of whiteness, white entitlement and settler colonialism so we don’t recreate the harms of past policies.Celeste Pedri-Spade, Associate Professor & Queen’s National Scholar in Indigenous Studies, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1839742022-06-29T18:06:20Z2022-06-29T18:06:20ZHas the meaning behind the Canadian flag changed? — Podcast<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471666/original/file-20220629-12-owodl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C49%2C2914%2C1931&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jubilant sports fans flew the Canadian flag in 2019 after the NBA playoffs. Since then, the 'freedom convoy' has used the flag to try to represent their values. Has the symbolism of the flag changed?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Tijana Martin</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe height="480px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/fb609e39-d729-4a54-860a-8a411be157ae?dark=false&show=true"></iframe>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-572" class="tc-infographic" height="100" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/572/661898416fdc21fc4fdef6a5379efd7cac19d9d5/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>As we approach Canada Day — and the prospect of the return of “freedom” protests in Ottawa — let’s consider the meaning and symbolism of the Canadian flag. </p>
<p>After weeks of the so-called freedom convoy last winter, many of us took a hard look at the symbolism of the Canadian flag and its recent association with white supremacy. Some, like me, felt a new fear or anger at what they feel the flag represents. </p>
<p>But other communities have always felt this way about the Canadian flag. </p>
<p>After unmarked graves were found at the sites of former residential schools, the Canadian <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-peace-tower-flag-to-remain-at-half-mast-for-canada-day-to-honour/">flag was flown at half-mast</a> in many places to show shame for our collective history and solidarity with Indigenous communities. And last year on Canada Day, many called for people to wear orange instead of red and white. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"881186908277280769"}"></div></p>
<p>Other movements like <a href="https://landback.org/">Landback</a>, Resistance150, Idle No More, Pride and Black Lives Matter have also raised awareness about challenges to Canadian nationalism and belonging. </p>
<p>Both of our guests <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/has-the-meaning-behind-the-canadian-flag-changed">on this episode of <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em></a> have studied multiculturalism, citizenship and belonging. Daniel McNeil looks at history and culture and the complexities of global Black communities. He is a professor and Queen’s National Scholar Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University. Lucy El-Sherif is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto in ethnic and pluralism studies. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="a sea of Canadian flags wave above a crowd" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471471/original/file-20220628-14646-v8t1en.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C103%2C8627%2C5639&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471471/original/file-20220628-14646-v8t1en.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471471/original/file-20220628-14646-v8t1en.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471471/original/file-20220628-14646-v8t1en.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471471/original/file-20220628-14646-v8t1en.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471471/original/file-20220628-14646-v8t1en.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471471/original/file-20220628-14646-v8t1en.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fans cheer and wave Canadian flags before the start of the Canada-Jamaica World Cup soccer qualifying action in Toronto on March 27, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Symbols can and do change</h2>
<p>In our conversation, Daniel McNeil said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The flag can be many different things. But I think the critical question is to ask, why are those who acknowledge its violence depicted as killjoys or marginalized or stigmatized?“</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lucy El-Sherif said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>"We really need to think about what does it mean to be a person of colour living as a settler on Indigenous lands. And what does it mean for us to express solidarity with Indigenous people? The stakes for people of colour are very different.… Whenever we question what’s going on with Canada, [we get]: ‘Go back to where you came from. You should be grateful that you came to this country.’” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>For a lot of people, the Canadian flag is a symbol to be proud of: it’s something they feel represents Canada’s multiculturalism, the idea that the country can welcome anyone. They want to fly the flag — whether at a Raptors game, World Cup match or rally. </p>
<p>Some writers of op-eds have pleaded audiences to fly the flag this year, to take back a symbol they feel proud of. </p>
<p>As McNeil said, Canada is defined as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“welcoming to others … with positive traits of fairness, openness and generosity … we have these feelings that we’re associating with a flag, but [we should also take] seriously how others may associate that flag with pleasure or with joy. And how do we open up space for those conversations about different historical memories?”</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Canadian residents from Iran who newly received their citizenship wave the Canadian flags after the citizenship oath ceremony in Vancouver, B.C., in July 2017" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471469/original/file-20220628-14613-tc0arl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471469/original/file-20220628-14613-tc0arl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471469/original/file-20220628-14613-tc0arl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471469/original/file-20220628-14613-tc0arl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471469/original/file-20220628-14613-tc0arl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471469/original/file-20220628-14613-tc0arl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471469/original/file-20220628-14613-tc0arl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New Canadian wave Canadian flags after taking the oath of citizenship during a special Canada Day ceremony in West Vancouver, B.C.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.cpimages.com/CS.aspx?VP3=DamView&VBID=2RLQ2JSENAWDY&PN=1&WS=SearchResults&FR_=1&W=1324&H=686">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Articles from <em>The Conversation</em></h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-canadian-flag-and-the-freedom-convoy-the-co-opting-of-canadian-symbols-176436">The Canadian flag and the ‘freedom convoy’: The co-opting of Canadian symbols</a> by Heather Nicol</li>
<li><a href="https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/oise/News/2019/This_Canada_Day_we_need_a_new_citizenship_oath.html">Canada needs a new citizenship oath: OISE expert</a> by Lucy El-Sherif </li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/o-canada-why-i-no-longer-stand-for-the-national-anthem-184027">‘O Canada’: Why I no longer stand for the national anthem</a> by Jason Laurendeau</li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/this-canada-day-settler-canadians-should-think-about-land-back-184816">This Canada Day, settler Canadians should think about land back</a> by Kaitie Jourdeuil</li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/raptors-victory-feel-good-multiculturalism-masks-reality-of-anti-black-racism-in-canada-118942">Raptors victory: Feel-good multiculturalism masks reality of anti-Black racism in Canada</a> by Corrie Scott</li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/black-canadian-activists-pressured-to-be-quiet-leaders-111027">Black Canadian activists pressured to be ‘quiet’ leaders</a> by Daniel McNeil</li>
</ul>
<h2>Resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>“<a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/10/24/why-did-masuma-khans-post-invite-censure-from-dalhousie-if-free-speech-is-so-vaunted-paradkar.html">Why did Masuma Khan’s post invite censure from Dalhousie if free speech is so vaunted?</a>” by Shree Paradkar</li>
<li>“<a href="https://csalateral.org/issue/8-2/webs-of-relationships-pedagogies-citizenship-muslims-canada-el-sherif/">Webs of Relationships: Pedagogies of Citizenship and Modalities of Settlement for ‘Muslims’ in Canada</a>” by Lucy El-Sherif</li>
<li>“<a href="https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2021v46n3a4155">‘Multicultural Snake Oil’ & Black Cultural Criticism”</a> by Daniel McNeil and Chris Russill</li>
<li>“<a href="https://classic.esquire.com/article/1936/7/1/let-america-be-america-again">Let America Be America Again</a>” by Langston Hughes</li>
<li><a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487529178/unsettling-the-great-white-north/"><em>Unsettling the Great White North: Black Canadian History</em></a>, edited by Michele A. Johnson and Funké Aladejebi</li>
<li><a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195178463.001.0001/acprof-9780195178463"><em>In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era</em></a> by Richard Iton</li>
<li><a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo3620902.html"><em>’There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack:’ The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation</em></a> by Paul Gilroy</li>
<li><em><a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/red-skin-white-masks">Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition</a></em> by Glen Sean Coulthard</li>
<li><em><a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/dear-science-and-other-stories">Dear Science and Other Stories</a></em> by Katherine McKittrick</li>
<li><em><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538143667/Bad-Faith-and-Antiblack-Racism-2nd-Edition">Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism</a></em> by Lewis R. Gordon</li>
</ul>
<h2>Follow and listen</h2>
<p>You can listen to or follow <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em> on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dont-call-me-resilient/id1549798876">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9qZFg0Ql9DOA">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/37tK4zmjWvq2Sh6jLIpzp7">Spotify</a> or <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/">wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts</a>. <a href="mailto:theculturedesk@theconversation.com">We’d love to hear from you</a>, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on <a href="https://twitter.com/ConversationCA">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheConversationCanada">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@theconversation">TikTok</a> and use #DontCallMeResilient.</p>
<p><em>Don’t Call Me Resilient is produced and hosted by Vinita Srivastava. Series co-producers are: Lygia Navarro and Haley Lewis. Vaishnavi Dandekar is an assistant producer. Jennifer Moroz is our consulting producer. Lisa Varano is our audience development editor and Scott White is the CEO of The Conversation Canada. Don’t Call Me Resilient is a production of The Conversation Canada and was produced with a grant for Journalism Innovation from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</em></p>
<h2>Transcript</h2>
<p>For an unedited transcript, go <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/has-the-meaning-behind-the-canadian-flag-changed/transcript">here</a>.</p>
<h2>Sound Credits</h2>
<p>Thank you to the following sources for additional sound:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/Resistance150/status/881320153551708162?s=20&t=cheAmRMWxDP42Vn9bcFT5w">Canada 150 protest</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/canadian-citizenship/take-part-citizenship/canada-day/great-canadian-oath.html">Citizenship Oath</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQSErcqYAhU">Convoy honking trucks</a></li>
<li><a href="https://freesound.org/people/KTManahan/sounds/523662/">Black Lives Matter rally in Kennebunk, Maine, on June 3, 2020</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/730431555724">Rosemary Brown speech, CBC</a></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183974/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
What does it mean to be a settler of colour in Canada? Has the symbolism of the Canadian flag changed since the Ottawa convoy?Vinita Srivastava, Host + Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1821502022-05-09T13:35:03Z2022-05-09T13:35:03ZNew book unpacks the complexities of whiteness in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460535/original/file-20220429-19-vyzzmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A multiracial crowd sings the South African National Anthem at 2019 memorial service for the late rugby Springbok Chester Williams.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rodger Bosch/AFP/ via GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his latest book <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/roger-southall-296862">sociologist Professor Roger Southall</a>, a prolific researcher who has written extensively about political dynamics in Southern Africa, avoids the “negative and condemnatory” approach generally seen in writing on white South Africans, the creators and beneficiaries of apartheid.</p>
<p>In the preface to the book, <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781847012890/whites-and-democracy-in-south-africa/">Whites and Democracy in South Africa</a>, he explains that he’s done this to instead undertake a nuanced and constructive assessment of white people’s adjustment to post-apartheid democracy.</p>
<p>Therefore, he enters the South African debate on critical race studies by setting his study apart from whiteness scholarship that assumes</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the homogeneity of white practices, ideas and attitudes and that being white is synonymous with being racist (p. 13).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Southall criticises academic writing that attempts the corrective re-orientation of white people towards adopting more desirable behaviour as “sociologically overambitious” (p. 13).</p>
<p>He regards such scholarship as prescriptive and removed from the everyday experiences of white people. Instead, he insists that analysis of whiteness must be based on empirical research.</p>
<p>With this approach, Southall cuts through the sometimes shrill debate on race in South Africa with findings that are grounded in solid research. The book assists in taking the sometimes overly abstract idea of whiteness to a more useful engagement with white people, and their actions and ideas. The findings provide a welcome update on white people’s political stances after <a href="https://www.gov.za/FreedomDay2022">almost 30 years of democracy</a>.</p>
<h2>Whiteness in South Africa</h2>
<p>The book is based on data collected through eight in-depth qualitative focus group interviews, conducted in the provinces of KwaZulu Natal, Western Cape, Gauteng and Free State. Southall anchors the study with a historical contextualisation, giving the long view over time of specifically the political development of whiteness.</p>
<p>He provides an analysis of the state of liberalism. There’s renewed interest in this because of controversial stances on <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-main-opposition-party-caught-in-an-unenviable-political-bind-150296">race taken by the main opposition Democratic Alliance</a>. The party is the primary representative of liberalism among opposition parties in the country. </p>
<p>He also analyses changes in Afrikaner politics over time, white people as citizens, and explores the politics of representation through to the politics of wealth redistribution.</p>
<p>The study confirms the diversity in the political positions of white people in the country. This is also <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Whiteness-Just-isnt-What-Used/dp/B01K0UDD44">found in other work</a>. </p>
<p>Whiteness stands centrally in a racial order in which those positioned as “other” to whiteness are regarded as inferior. But it also creates internal hierarchies through overlapping regimes of domination, whether economic, patriarchal, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/heteronormativity">heteronormative</a> or others. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-1994-miracle-whats-left-159495">South Africa's 1994 'miracle': what's left?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sitting-Pretty-Afrikaans-Postapartheid-Africa/dp/1869143760">Analysis</a>, when done from a critical vantage point of taking into account ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality, shows complex intersections within whiteness. In these, women, LGBT and economically marginalised people occupy “lesser” statuses.</p>
<p>Southall’s contribution is to show the political changes within whiteness. Bringing in these internal complexities is important as it guards against <a href="https://wiser.wits.ac.za/system/files/Achille%20Mbembe%20-%20Decolonizing%20Knowledge%20and%20the%20Question%20of%20the%20Archive.pdf">mythologising whiteness</a>, which can make whiteness appear to be an insurmountable form of racial exclusion and dehumanisation.</p>
<h2>Reluctant democrats but without apartheid nostalgia</h2>
<p>One of Southall’s important findings is that limited nostalgia for apartheid exists among his respondents. Not a single respondent expressed the wish that the apartheid dispensation should have continued.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Book cover showing no image ut the words 'Whites and Democracy in South Africa' written several times and the name 'Roger Southall' appearing once." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He shows in this book that white South Africans might be “reluctant democrats”, but they have accepted democracy (p. 239). This might seem like an underwhelming statement to make. But it serves as a reminder that an inclusive democracy in which all South Africans enjoy equal citizenship status was complete anathema to successive ruling white cliques for centuries.</p>
<p>The violent lengths that the white settler group went to, to sustain its dominance, are well recorded. As late in the day as the first half of the 1990s, the then ruling <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/South-Africa/The-National-Party-and-apartheid">National Party</a> had no intention of <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1770073051/ref=olp-opf-redir?aod=1&asin=1770073051&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1">giving up white power</a>.</p>
<p>In 1992 a whites-only <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/161008?seq=1">referendum was held</a>. The result showed support for a transition to democracy. This indicated that not only the apartheid ruling elite but also the majority of white people wished to open up the political space.</p>
<p>This contributed to, as Southall puts it, the country becoming a “failed settler state”. This is a liberating failure that has created the possibility for the extension of human dignity to all in the country. Those who lose sight of this downplay the gains made since the <a href="https://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/unit.php?id=65-24E-6">end of official apartheid in 1994</a>.</p>
<p>However, the point is not to congratulate white people. Historical conditions mostly beyond their control forced a rethink of political positions beyond the small groups of whites who were already critical. Sustained white dissidence against colonialism and apartheid falls beyond the scope of the book. But, it is important again to keep in mind the multiplicity in white people’s political positions.</p>
<h2>Needed: a ‘politics of responsibility’</h2>
<p>The study finds that white people are willing to admit to the “wrongness” of apartheid, even as they deflect responsibility to apartheid-era securocratic and political elites. They had “a sense of relief” when the country finally transitioned to democracy in the 1990s.</p>
<p>However, respondents in the study do not support redress to correct the effects of colonial and apartheid racist policies. This is despite the legacy of white privilege that remains highly visible in the present. </p>
<p>This worrying finding assists in understanding how white resistance to wealth redistribution partly contributes to continuing black poverty in South Africa.</p>
<p>Foremost postcolonial thinker <a href="https://wiser.wits.ac.za/users/achille-mbembe">Achille Mbembe</a> is quoted in the book to make the point that what is needed among white people, specifically, is a “politics of responsibility” (p. 240). This would include white people bearing a material responsibility towards black people to undo the ravages of centuries of colonialism.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/democracy-loses-its-glow-for-south-africans-amid-persistent-inequality-181489">Democracy loses its glow for South Africans amid persistent inequality</a>
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<p>Southall provides a useful set of criteria to give flesh to South Africa’s unique contribution to the global struggle against racism, namely the decades-old idea of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/42705231?seq=1">non-racialism</a>. When it comes to a “politics of responsibility”, non-racialism necessarily involves a socio-economic dimension. This must take the form of addressing racial inequality, the property question and eradicating black poverty. All this alongside strengthening the commitment to democracy and advancing interracial inclusivity.</p>
<p>He may be circumspect about fitting his book within whiteness scholarship. But Southall’s latest work adds significant insights to <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Critical-Studies-in-Whiteness/Hunter-Westhuizen/p/book/9780367403799">a newly critical literature on studies of whiteness</a>, which seeks fresh pathways out of the destructive conundrum created by race and racism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christi van der Westhuizen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Avoiding trite moralisations, Professor Southall uses empirical research to shed light on white South Africans’ adjustment to democracy.Christi van der Westhuizen, Associate Professor, Centre for the Advancement of Non-Racialism and Democracy (CANRAD), Nelson Mandela UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1793432022-04-21T17:50:04Z2022-04-21T17:50:04ZDiamond mines in the Northwest Territories are not a girl’s best friend<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456413/original/file-20220405-18-8poh5l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C1985%2C1613&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman examines a diamond she is in the process of cutting and polishing in Yellowknife, N.W.T. in a photo from 2003.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> (CP PHOTO/Bob Weber)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Almost three years ago, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) released its <a href="https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/">final report</a> and among its findings, the report identified resource extraction as a site of gender violence. </p>
<p>The relationship between extraction and gender violence has been observed in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2021.1979798">extractive sites around the globe</a>. And in Canada, this <a href="https://www.uap.ualberta.ca/titles/903-9781772123678-keetsahnak-our-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-sisters">gender violence</a> is shaped by extraction and <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/stolen-lives-indigenous-peoples-canada-and-indian-residential-schools/historical-background/dispossession-destruction-and-reserves">settler colonial dispossession of Indigenous lands</a> and livelihoods.</p>
<p>What is it about extractive projects that creates the conditions for gender violence? </p>
<p>In <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487540845/refracted-economies/"><em>Refracted Economies: Diamond Mining and Social Reproduction in the North</em></a>, I analyze the gender impact of Canadian diamond mines. As a settler researcher who grew up in southern Canada, I partnered with the <a href="https://www.nativewomensnwt.com/">Native Women’s Association of the Northwest Territories</a> and spoke with Dene, Métis, Inuit and non-Indigenous northern women about their experiences with the mines.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mining-push-continues-despite-water-crisis-in-neskantaga-first-nation-and-ontarios-ring-of-fire-150522">Mining push continues despite water crisis in Neskantaga First Nation and Ontario’s Ring of Fire</a>
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<p>In Canada, the first diamond mine opened in the Northwest Territories on Dene land in 1998. Since then, three other diamond mines have opened there, and Canada has become the <a href="https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-mining/minerals-metals-facts/diamond-facts/20513">third largest diamond producer</a> in the world. </p>
<p>The Canadian diamond industry was established amid <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0035853042000249979">international concerns</a> around conflict — or blood — diamonds. Canada’s diamond industry lauds itself as an <a href="https://doi.org/10.3167/fcl.2017.790107">ethical alternative</a> to diamonds from elsewhere, but these gems are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01012.x">mined on Dene land</a> and, in restructuring the lands and livelihoods of northern communities, the diamond industry brings with it a new, and newly gendered, colonial violence.</p>
<h2>A pillar of settler development</h2>
<p>Resource extraction has long been a pillar of <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/red-skin-white-masks">settler</a> <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781442664357/northern-communities-working-together%22%22">development</a> in northern Canada. </p>
<p>Regionally, diamond mines were established on the heels of the longstanding gold industry, and they have reproduced some dynamics of past settler extractive projects. But the diamond mines have also brought with them new characteristics with unique gender impacts. </p>
<p>Unlike mining towns that sprouted up throughout the north in the 20th century, diamond mines are organized through a fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) structure. This means that workers fly in for prolonged mining shifts, and fly out for their time off.</p>
<p>FIFO, or DIDO (drive-in/drive-out), has become the preferred <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00049182.2013.817037">extractive model</a> in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2016.02.009">Canada and elsewhere</a>. By making long-distance commutes part of everyday operations, the FIFO/DIDO model is an intensified expression of the home/work divide, where <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/144477">home is gendered as feminine space and work as masculine space</a>.</p>
<p>For many women workers I spoke to, the separation of work from home meant that work in the diamond mines was not accessible. This was because workers live away from home for extended periods of time, and weren’t able to care for kin and community. </p>
<p>This “caring divide” exacerbates existing tendencies for hypermasculine <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20459158">mining cultures</a>, or what the MMIWG report calls “<a href="https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/">man camps</a>.”</p>
<p>Women who had worked at the diamond mines shared stories of intense visibility. These experiences ranged from a general feeling of greater scrutiny from other workers, to overt sexual harassment. While the women I interviewed held a variety of positions at the camps, it was women who worked in housekeeping and positions at a lower pay scale with higher degrees of precarity who described the most explicit and pervasive experiences with gendered discrimination and violence.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A diamond mine pit with winding roads surrounded by water" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456411/original/file-20220405-22-pku0v0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456411/original/file-20220405-22-pku0v0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456411/original/file-20220405-22-pku0v0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456411/original/file-20220405-22-pku0v0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456411/original/file-20220405-22-pku0v0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456411/original/file-20220405-22-pku0v0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456411/original/file-20220405-22-pku0v0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lac de Gras surrounds the Diavik mine pit about 300 km northeast of Yellowknife, N.W.T. in a photo from 2003.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Heavy care burdens</h2>
<p>The FIFO structure has led to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1554555">intensified pressure</a> on people, usually women, at home. While mine workers and their families spoke about the financial benefits of mine employment, many female spouses likened the experience of having a spouse at camp to single parenting. </p>
<p>One Dene woman I interviewed said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I feel like I live in a community where families are fragmented on purpose. We choose to remove half of the caregivers half of the time. How can this not have a significant impact on raising a family or being in a marriage?” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>These heavy care burdens are coupled with new financial inequality within households, with mine workers often bringing in significantly higher wages than other family members. </p>
<p>The women I spoke with shared concerns that inequalities in both <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1425287">caring labours</a> and finances were shaping conditions for interpersonal violence, and making it more difficult for women to leave violent situations.</p>
<p>When women shared their stories of the diamond mines, they did not express the impact as an isolated or unique phenomenon. Instead, I heard stories that wove the experiences of the diamond mines into ongoing processes of settler colonialism, including the <a href="https://nctr.ca/records/reports/">intergenerational trauma of residential schools</a>.</p>
<p>Diamonds carry with them <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.00996.x">heavy imagery</a> of romance and commitment, symbolizing a love that is, as diamond company De Beers puts it, “forever.” </p>
<p>However, while a century of marketing has made diamond rings a symbol of heteronormative happy endings, when I spoke with northern women about their experience with the diamond mines, I heard a different story. </p>
<p>As one research participant said, “Diamonds are said to be a girl’s best friend. I’m not sure which girls they are because it’s certainly not anyone in here.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179343/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Hall is a research partner with We Will Not Be Banned From Our Land (Dedats'eetsaa: Tlicho Research and Training Institute). She receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>While marketing has made diamond rings a symbol of heteronormative happy endings, women from the Northwest Territories tell a different story about their experiences with the diamond mines.Rebecca Hall, Assistant Professor, Global Development Studies, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1769752022-03-14T12:21:20Z2022-03-14T12:21:20ZSettler colonialism helps explain current events in Xinjiang and Ukraine – and the history of Australia and US, too<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450748/original/file-20220308-23-65clzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Demonstration for the rights of the Uyghurs in Berlin, 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Demonstration_for_the_rights_of_the_Uyghurs_in_Berlin_2020-01-19_09.jpg">Leonhard Lenz, Wikimedia Commons </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Global flashpoints, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Chinese actions in Xinjiang, share a common background: a previous history of invasion and occupation. </p>
<p>The northwestern region of Xinjiang, for example, became an autonomous region under <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Xinjiang-Chinas-Muslim-Borderland/Starr/p/book/9780765613189">Chinese rule in 1955</a>. Officially known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, this mainly Turkic, Muslim area is viewed by the Chinese as a <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2018.1534801">possible threat</a> to China’s security and territorial integrity. </p>
<p>The government in Beijing <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24364952">encouraged mass migration</a> of Han Chinese into Xinjiang, which fomented resentment among the local Uyghur people. After clashes in 2009 that caused more than 200 deaths and a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/25/islamist-china-tiananmen-beijing-attack">2013 terrorist attack</a> in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese cracked down with aggressive policing and <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-researched-uighur-society-in-china-for-8-years-and-watched-how-technology-opened-new-opportunities-then-became-a-trap-119615">extreme surveillance</a>. Hundreds of thousands of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/24/hrw-china-targets-uighurs-with-more-prosecutions-prison-terms">Uyghurs have been jailed</a>, more than 1 million detained in “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037">reeducation camps</a>,” and China has been accused of <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/is-china-committing-genocide-against-the-uyghurs-180979490/">genocide</a>. </p>
<p>These tactics of invasion and occupation can also be seen in the way 250,000 Russians moved to Crimea after it was <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/03/17/crimea-six-years-after-illegal-annexation/">annexed in 2014</a>.</p>
<p>Academics sometimes refer to these tactics as “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03086534.2013.768099">settler colonialism</a>.” As a strategy of subjugation, it has many historical precedents and it provides an important lens for understanding geopolitics in various parts of today’s world. </p>
<h2>Two types of empire</h2>
<p>History is studded with empires. Broadly speaking, there are two types. </p>
<p>British rule in India exemplifies an empire of control, where imperialists extract wealth and resources without large-scale emigration from the colonizing country. The importation of the wealth of India, especially its textiles, was an essential requirement of Britain’s <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2598220">Industrial Revolution</a>.</p>
<p>There are also empires of settlement that occupy colonial territories by moving in large numbers of settlers. Across the world, especially in the lightly settled open grasslands of Australia and the Americas, the original inhabitants were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/18380743.2013.771761">displaced and marginalized</a> as their homeland was taken by treaty, sale, guile and theft. </p>
<p>The process often involved brute force or ethnic cleansing as land was seized and handed over to immigrants. In Australia, the British justified colonization by declaring the continent “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=4Lp_zzaVl7gC&oi=fnd&pg=PA121&dq=+land+rights+Australia&ots=n8SHLeMQ02&sig=enu8gL4dgOqpB5UDyrFKXi_I1to#v=onepage&q=land%20rights%20Australia&f=false">terra nullius</a>” – that is, empty and uninhabited. </p>
<p>Settler colonies were used to safeguard the edges of empires. A <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/705117">policy used by the Qing dynasty</a> (1644-1912) that moved ethnic Chinese settlers into recently captured territory is still used today in <a href="https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/23624/9789048544905.pdf?sequence=1#page=518">Tibet</a> and <a href="https://www.manchesterhive.com/view/9781526153128/9781526153128.00007.xml">Xinjiang</a>. Both imperial Russia and the former Soviet Union encouraged citizens to settle border regions, so today at least <a href="https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:44413/">20% of the population of Ukraine</a> is ethnic Russian. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="people dressed in winter coats carry their belongings through the snow, with a destroyed bridge in the background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Civilians continue to flee from Irpin because of ongoing Russian attacks in Irpin, Ukraine on March 8, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/civilians-continue-to-flee-from-irpin-due-to-ongoing-news-photo/1239025598">Emin Sansar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Settler colonialism</h2>
<p>Many settler empires rose in the 18th and 19th centuries and continued well into the 20th century. In Africa, for example, settler societies were established by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2018.1429868">the British in Kenya</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2018.1429868">the French in Algeria</a> and the Dutch in <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315544816-25">South Africa</a>.</p>
<p>The colonists who moved in, often in large numbers, were typically white Europeans who took control over the land, lives and economy of Indigenous peoples. There were exceptions, though. In <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=KiglDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA215&dq=settler+colonialism+Liberia&ots=FC-bOo_rLT&sig=wKbbbTg5R0gNm6u_cMxtqNJMIc8#v=onepage&q=settler%20colonialism%20Liberia&f=false">Liberia</a>, Black Americans settled in the land of Black Africans; in <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=4gxmDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=settler+colonialism+israel&ots=9cEJ4hYVFP&sig=REiAPCcCH-XhlnziblfvwjlVgtc#v=onepage&q=settler%20colonialism%20israel&f=false">Israel</a>, mainly Jewish immigrants took over the land of Arab populations; and in <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/gr2p/13/1/article-p9_9.xml">China</a>, the majority Han people moved into non-Han areas.</p>
<p>My research into the interactions between <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=DQvhwDsXDVsC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=John+Rennie+Short+cartographic+encounters&ots=SP3tSTaJHY&sig=rlsFbXCwPg2ZGIR3pmhCHUuBR9w#v=onepage&q=John%20Rennie%20Short%20cartographic%20encounters&f=false">Indigenous people and European settlers in North America</a> and resistance to cultural integration by an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2011.583576">Indigenous art movement in central Australia</a> has offered me a different way to view history. Looking at the past through a lens of settler colonialism substantially changes how we view histories of many countries, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429433733">Australia</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40388468">Canada</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0242-8_71-1">New Zealand</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=6P00EAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=settler+colonialism+South+Africa&ots=w7hs3O2qQU&sig=2BOHtgf2j-tWBfNnrL4VxXpYtp8#v=onepage&q=settler%20colonialism%20South%20Africa&f=false">South Africa</a> and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132515613166">U.S</a>. </p>
<h2>Today’s issues, viewed through a colonial lens</h2>
<p>Most settler societies are steeped in a prejudiced history in which racial categories define who has power. One strategy has been to make full citizenship available only to settlers and their offspring. Some of the more extreme examples include racialized rule in South Africa that created brutal apartheid and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872819870585">traumatized generations</a> of aboriginal Australians. </p>
<p>There is also a long history of child abuse, with Indigenous children taken from their homes to be assimilated into settler society. Emerging evidence of these practices, including those experienced by <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/12/14/1064081667/canada-pledges-40-billion-abuses-indigenous-children">Indigenous children in Canada’s residential schools</a>, is helping to rewrite the history books from the Indigenous – rather than just from the settler – perspective.</p>
<p>By restricting immigration, some countries – including Australia, Canada and the U.S., among others – have tried to maintain their racial or ethnic identities and their power. Many of these <a href="http://www.beacon.org/Not-A-Nation-of-Immigrants-P1641.aspx">policies</a> were weakened only in recent years.</p>
<p>[<em>More than 150,000 readers get one of The Conversation’s informative newsletters.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150K">Join the list today</a>.]</p>
<p>But in acts of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2011.583576">amazing resilience</a>, Indigenous societies have resisted cultural assimilation, political marginalization and economic insecurity. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Horse-drawn carriages are scattered across a deep and flat landscape in a black and white photograph." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Settlers raced into what was then known as ‘Indian Territory’ as the sound of a gunshot opened the area to white settlement on Sept. 16, 1893. The land rush marked the early beginnings of the state of Oklahoma.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/OklahomaLandRush/268e07ac3a86436eaa8c0c49839bc258/photo?Query=American%20Indians&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=7118&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/A.A. Forbes</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Land is a key issue, as Indigenous groups continue to pursue land claims and resist land grabs. From ongoing <a href="https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1076&context=poli_honors">Mapuche claims</a> in Chile to aboriginal Australians’ <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=4Lp_zzaVl7gC&oi=fnd&pg=PA121&dq=+land+rights+Australia&ots=n8SHLeMQ02&sig=enu8gL4dgOqpB5UDyrFKXi_I1to#v=onepage&q=land%20rights%20Australia&f=false">successful campaign</a> to overturn the legality of “terra nullius,” land seized by settlers is being disputed. </p>
<p>New facts and greater awareness of the racist nature of settler societies are challenging the triumphalist view of progress. New information is providing a darker understanding of the impact of settler colonialism on Indigenous peoples, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240">ethnic genocide</a> and the devastating impacts of the loss of both land and cultural identity.</p>
<p>This isn’t just history. Unequal, brutal treatment of settlers and indigenous peoples continues in today’s settler societies, not least of all in Xinjiang and in Ukraine.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176975/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Rennie Short does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Is history really a triumphant march of progress? It depends on your point of view.John Rennie Short, Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1769722022-02-15T17:06:27Z2022-02-15T17:06:27ZWhy defacing the Terry Fox statue touched a nerve with so many Canadians<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446382/original/file-20220214-137087-skzp5i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C108%2C5536%2C5344&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A statue of Terry Fox at Parliament Hill was decorated with a Canadian flag, protest sign and hat when protesters participating in a cross-country convoy against measures to curb the spread of COVID-19. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 175px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/why-defacing-the-terry-fox-statue-touched-a-nerve-with-so-many-canadians" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>One of the first things that happened when the so-called “freedom convoy” arrived in Ottawa was that <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/terry-fox-statue-convoy-1.6333867">anti-vaccine mandate protesters defaced a statue of Terry Fox near Parliament Hill</a>. The statue was draped in Canadian flags and had a sign that read “Mandate Freedom” wedged under its arm.</p>
<p>There was an immediate backlash on social media at the sight of a Canadian icon being used in such a political and polarizing way. People immediately took to Twitter to denounce the move.</p>
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<p>Canadians coming to the defence of Terry Fox’s legacy is not surprising. He <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/3511306/top-10-most-influential-canadians/">regularly ranks</a> as one of the greatest Canadians. Furthermore, the irony of connecting an anti-vaccine movement with a man who ran more than 5,000 kilometres in support of medical research was not lost on most people. </p>
<p>But Canadians vehemently defending a statue <em>is</em> surprising. I have been interested in statue removals since 2018, when Halifax officials responded to a white supremacy demonstration by removing a contentious statue of the city’s founder, Edward Cornwallis. Now, my PhD studies at Dalhousie University focus on understanding why we have such complicated, controversial relationships with statues. During this time, there have been far more statues condemned than endorsed. </p>
<p>Those who disparaged the removal of statues claimed this was a slippery slope. Soon, all statues would be dispensable. Regardless of intentions, the Freedom Convoy protesters inadvertently proved them dead wrong.</p>
<h2>A long, storied history</h2>
<p>Statue defacing and removal is an evocative method of protest, especially when used by marginalized people challenging systemic discrimination. While the tactic predates the murder of George Floyd and the rise of Black Live Matter, the movement <a href="https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/monuments-black-lives-matter-guide-1202690845/">heavily utilized statue defacing</a> to confront Confederate iconography, white supremacy, and ongoing racial discrimination. </p>
<p>Similar protests were carried out globally. The responses from officials were wide ranging, from <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-sir-john-a-macdonald-statue-removed-1.6048245">removal</a>, to <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2021/07/27/tennessee-nathan-bedford-forrest-bust-museum-exhibit-opens-public/5374219001/">re-interpretation</a>, to leaving or <a href="https://www.rte.ie/news/regional/2020/1215/1184552-shelbourne-hotel-statues/#:%7E:text=Four%20statues%20that%20were%20temporarily,being%20mistakenly%20identified%20as%20slaves.">reinstalling statues</a>. The strategy <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/church-vandalism-toppled-statues-on-a-canada-day-of-celebration-and-protest-1.5494294">spread to other movements</a>, in particular Indigenous rights and anti-colonization movements. </p>
<p>Last summer, over 1,000 bodies of Indigenous children were <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8458351/canada-residential-schools-unmarked-graves-indigenous-impact/">found in unmarked graves</a> at former Indian Residential Schools across Canada. Graves of this nature have been found dating back to the 1990s and confirmed what Indigenous people have known for decades.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/when-good-intentions-dont-matter-the-indian-residential-school-system-165045">When 'good intentions' don't matter: The Indian Residential School system</a>
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<p>Vandalizing statues that commemorated architects of settler-colonialism in Canada became a regular symbol of resistance. Statues of <a href="https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/sir-john-a-macdonald-statue-toppled-during-rally-in-hamilton-1.5547380">John A. Macdonald</a>, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/statue-of-egerton-ryerson-brought-down-1.6055676">Egerton Ryerson</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-monuments-buildings-legacy-1.4248680">Hector-Louis Langevin</a>, a proponent of the residential school system, were among the targets. Statues were painted red, covered in graffiti, toppled, and even decapitated. </p>
<p><a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7918584/residential-schools-canada-racist-monuments-macdonald-statue/">Sheila North, former Grand Chief of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, told <em>Global News</em></a>: “These things (monuments) are perpetuating the racism and perpetuating the hatred towards Indigenous people without even realizing.”</p>
<h2>Easily debunked arguments</h2>
<p>In general, proponents for keeping the statues consistently present two arguments. The first is that the removal of a statue is the equivalent of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/08/23/the-removal-of-statues-in-canada-reflects-a-will-to-erase-history/">erasing history</a>.</p>
<p>This argument does not hold much water for researchers of commemoration and heritage. More often than not, statues do a pretty poor job of interpreting and educating about the past. That’s because statues are not history; they are heritage. History is the analytical observation of the past. Heritage is the emotional, somewhat nostalgic desire to represent the past in the present.</p>
<p>Removing a statue does not erase our knowledge of the person or event being commemorated. Instead, it declares that we no longer want to commemorate this part of our past as a reflection of our present values.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Participants in a running race run by the statue of Terry Fox that is across the street from the Canadian Parliament Buildings." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446405/original/file-20220215-25314-1so7ok6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446405/original/file-20220215-25314-1so7ok6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446405/original/file-20220215-25314-1so7ok6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446405/original/file-20220215-25314-1so7ok6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446405/original/file-20220215-25314-1so7ok6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446405/original/file-20220215-25314-1so7ok6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446405/original/file-20220215-25314-1so7ok6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">This image from 2015 gives a view of the Terry Fox statue in more peaceful times.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second argument proponents of statues tout — and the one that brings us back to the Terry Fox memorial — is that this is a <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/347589-trump-on-removing-confederate-statues-theyre-trying-to-take-away-our">slippery slope</a>. As statue removals increase, some believe there will be no statues left. </p>
<p>In the age of social media and cancel culture, the argument goes, anything can cause outrage. We are walking on eggshells to ensure we do not say anything to offend. Furthermore, we should not evaluate people of the past by modern standards: they were only acting in accordance with the period. So, while John A. Macdonald may have done some bad things to Indigenous Peoples, if we take down his statue, it will open the door to any statue being torn down for the slightest offence. </p>
<h2>An opportunity for new heroes</h2>
<p>What happened to the Terry Fox statue silenced the slippery slope argument. When those opposed to vaccine measures adorned the Terry Fox memorial as part of their so-called freedom campaign, people quickly saw through the demonstration. </p>
<p>Despite all the calls for statue removals over the last two years, the public still finds value in heritage and sought to protect a memorial which continues to represent their values.</p>
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<p>After Terry Fox succumbed to cancer in 1981, then Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/timeline/terry-fox">addressed the nation</a>: “It occurs very rarely in the life of a nation, that the courageous spirit of one person unites all people.” </p>
<p>In a country that has long claimed to promote diversity over homogeneity, unifying national heroes are hard to come by. And as we are increasingly confronted with the mistakes and horrors of our national past and present, the national heroes we do have must be reassessed and scrutinized carefully. </p>
<p>But, the removal of their statues do not symbolize the death of history or the loss of heroes. Rather, it is an opportunity for new, inspiring figures to be brought to the forefront.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176972/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Grace McNutt received funding from SSHRC in 2018 and presently from Dalhousie University and Nova Scotia Government.</span></em></p>When the “freedom convoy” used the Terry Fox statue as part of their demonstration, people were outraged. It showed the public still finds value in protecting a memorial that represents their values.Grace McNutt, PhD Candidate in History, Dalhousie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1752122022-02-10T15:39:02Z2022-02-10T15:39:02ZTrudeau should have withdrawn Canada from the 2022 Beijing Olympics after reports of Chinese residential schools<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443595/original/file-20220131-23-11bdif3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5751%2C3819&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tibetans use the Olympic Rings as a prop as they hold a street protest against the 2022 Winter Olympics in Dharmsala, India on Feb. 3, 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 175px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/trudeau-should-have-withdrawn-canada-from-the-2022-beijing-olympics-after-reports-of-chinese-residential-schools" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Last June, Canada’s delegation to the United Nations was part of an international effort calling for UN inspectors to have <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/china-canada-un-calls-investigation-crimes-indigenous-uyghurs-1.6075025">free and unfettered access to China’s Xinjiang region</a> to assess reports of human rights violations against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims. </p>
<p>Chinese UN representative Jiang Duan promptly <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/china-canada-un-calls-investigation-crimes-indigenous-uyghurs-1.6075025">fired back</a>, noting that Canada “robbed Indigenous people of the land, killed them and eradicated their culture.” </p>
<p>The truth is, the Chinese government is taking a page out of Canada’s cultural genocide handbook in Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia — extinguishing multiple cultures within their borders. </p>
<p>With the 2022 Beijing Olympics underway, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-diplomatic-boycott-winter-olympic-games-1.6277773">refusal to support a full boycott</a> of the Games is perplexing. </p>
<h2>Ongoing colonialism</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0097700421995135">Settler colonialism</a> is a specific kind of colonization where settlers seek to not only displace Indigenous people, but <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/stolen-lives-indigenous-peoples-canada-and-indian-residential-schools/chapter-3/killing-indian-child">replace them entirely</a>. </p>
<p>In Canada, this has <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/oka-crisis">included armed assault</a>, <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-reserves">geographical displacement</a> and the eradication of Indigenous culture and fragmentation of families (as was done through <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools">the residential school system</a> and the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/features/the-sixties-scoop-explained">60s scoop</a>). </p>
<p>China has used settler colonialism to destroy Uyghur and Tibetan cultures, moving large numbers of Han settlers <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv28x2b9h.13">into Xinjiang</a> <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26921467?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">and Tibet</a>. </p>
<p>International affairs scholar <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/our-authors/roberts-sean-r">Sean R. Roberts</a> and anthropologist <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1326761032000176122">Uradyn Bulag</a> have labelled Chinese efforts in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia as settler colonialism.</p>
<p>As international relations scholar <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2018.1534801">Dibyesh Anand</a> explains: “The basic premise behind development in contemporary China is not the empowerment of these peoples but their disempowerment, by making them dependent on the state, by destroying their traditional ways of being, and by taking away their dignity, ultimately through state violence.”</p>
<p>And Anand isn’t alone. Academics are pointing to ongoing settler colonialism along China’s borders. Identifying China as an imperial state, anthropologist <a href="https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463728713/frontier-tibet">Carol McGranahan</a> argues that the regime’s settler colonialism has inflicted “dispossession and domination, including the loss of state sovereignty.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman wearing a head covering reaches out with a metal scoop into a bag of dried herbs" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443570/original/file-20220131-117572-1kwgbea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443570/original/file-20220131-117572-1kwgbea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443570/original/file-20220131-117572-1kwgbea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443570/original/file-20220131-117572-1kwgbea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443570/original/file-20220131-117572-1kwgbea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443570/original/file-20220131-117572-1kwgbea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443570/original/file-20220131-117572-1kwgbea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Uyghur woman who fled China for Turkey works in her shop in Istanbul.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Canada, the Indian Residential School system <a href="https://theconversation.com/not-in-the-past-colonialism-is-rooted-in-the-present-157395">and colonialism are often framed as in the past</a> — but the last <a href="https://www2.uregina.ca/education/saskindianresidentialschools/gordons-indian-residential-school/">school closed less than 30 years ago</a>, and colonialism is still ongoing.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/1529106060525">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> published <a href="https://irsi.ubc.ca/sites/default/files/inline-files/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf">its final report in 2015</a> detailing the horrific atrocities that occurred at Indian Residential Schools and its ongoing impact on communities. </p>
<p>The report also included <a href="https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/british-columbians-our-governments/indigenous-people/aboriginal-peoples-documents/calls_to_action_english2.pdf">94 calls to action</a> that must be completed as steps toward reconciliation — in six years however, <a href="https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform-single/beyond-94">only 13 calls have been completed</a>. </p>
<p>Summer 2021 was a period of reckoning for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jun/27/canada-must-reveal-undiscovered-truths-of-residential-schools-to-heal">many Canadians as they faced the horrific truths</a> dredged up by unmarked graves at former Indian Residential Schools. And Canadians are still reckoning with the country’s acts of genocide as more <a href="https://bc.ctvnews.ca/potential-remains-found-in-93-spots-at-b-c-residential-school-but-some-children-will-be-unaccounted-for-even-after-investigation-1.5753439">unmarked graves continue to be found</a>. </p>
<p>We’ve now begun to face the realities of whats been happening in our own country, but we must maintain that same expectation in our relationships abroad.</p>
<h2>Concerning parallels</h2>
<p>For hundreds of thousands of children in China, being taken away from their homes and placed in boarding schools is a grim reality. </p>
<p>A recent report by the <a href="https://tibetaction.net/campaigns/colonialboardingschools/">Tibet Action Institute</a> estimates that the Chinese government is forcing three out of four Tibetan students into boarding schools and separating up to 900,000 children from their families. </p>
<p>The goal, explains the Tibet Action Institute, is to “eliminate Tibetan identity and supplant it with a Chinese nationalist identity in order to neutralize any resistance to Chinese Communist Party rule.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People standing in a line wearing blue masks with red hands painted across the mouth area" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443571/original/file-20220131-27-15cauw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443571/original/file-20220131-27-15cauw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443571/original/file-20220131-27-15cauw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443571/original/file-20220131-27-15cauw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443571/original/file-20220131-27-15cauw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443571/original/file-20220131-27-15cauw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443571/original/file-20220131-27-15cauw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Student activists wearing masks with the colours of the pro-independence East Turkistan flag protest outside the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia in January 2022 to demand the cancellation of the Beijing Olympics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia, traditional language education is being eradicated. In Xinjiang in particular, more than <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4438757/china-uighur-muslim-interment-camps-xinjiang/">a million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims</a> are forced into political “re-education camps,” used for “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2018.1507997">coercive social re-engineering</a>” compatible with the government’s aim to promote a universal Chinese culture within its borders. </p>
<p>Many children of detainees are sent to state-run institutions where they are “<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691234496/the-war-on-the-uyghurs">raised ostensibly as Han children in a Chinese-language environment with Han child rearing methods adopted by the state as standard</a>.” </p>
<p>Should we — as Canadians — be shocked? That’s partly how settler colonialism works: domination has its regional differences, but the broader patterns are mostly the same.</p>
<h2>The prime minister hasn’t learned</h2>
<p>It seems Trudeau hasn’t learned as much as he should have from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Because here we are, with a prime minister who refuses to take a political stance against what is happening in China. </p>
<p>His approach, which borders on disinterest, diminishes <a href="https://theconversation.com/amid-more-shocking-residential-schools-discoveries-non-indigenous-people-must-take-action-161965">the efforts made by Canadians to address their own country’s wrongs</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/2022-winter-olympics-will-help-beijing-sportwash-its-human-rights-record-154911">2022 Winter Olympics will help Beijing 'sportwash' its human rights record</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Following Chinese UN representative Jiang Duan’s condemnation of Canada’s human rights record at the UN, <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-trudeau-challenges-china-to-publicly-probe-its-mistreatment-of-uyghurs/">Trudeau asked</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“In Canada, we had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Where is China’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission?” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Although Trudeau did appear to see the parallels between China and Canada, and Canada’s quest for truth and reconciliation, he still stopped short of withdrawing the nation from the 2022 Beijing Olympics. </p>
<p>The Olympics will undoubtedly draw attention away from the Chinese government’s genocidal policies, permitting the authoritarian regime “<a href="https://theconversation.com/2022-winter-olympics-will-help-beijing-sportwash-its-human-rights-record-154911">to sportwash</a>” its reputation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175212/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The similarities between ongoing settler-colonialism in China and the history of settler-colonialism in Canada are frighteningly similar.MacIntosh Ross, Assistant Professor, Kinesiology, Western UniversityJanice Forsyth, Associate Professor, Sociology & Director, Indigenous Studies, Western UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1751362022-01-26T14:56:04Z2022-01-26T14:56:04ZWe are facing a settler colonial crisis, not an Indigenous identity crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441346/original/file-20220118-16047-18mdd0c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=130%2C0%2C2372%2C1061&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Johnny Depp played Tonto in The Lone Ranger (2013). Depp has claimed some Native American heritage in the past. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Disney)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 175px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/we-are-facing-a-settler-colonial-crisis--not-an-indigenous-identity-crisis" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>It wasn’t until very recently that I heard the term <a href="https://www.thewhig.com/2016/08/23/students-to-explore-indigeneity">“re-indigenization” used in academic spaces</a>. </p>
<p>I’m familiar with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423917001032">Indigenous resurgence</a> and how it’s connected to the restoration and reparation happening within Indigenous communities — work that often focuses on healing intergenerational divides <a href="https://bc.ctvnews.ca/i-ben-miljure-am-an-indigenous-man-kamloops-tragedy-a-moment-of-truth-for-ctv-news-journalist-1.5465241">caused by Indian Residential Schools</a> <a href="https://apihtawikosisan.com/2012/04/the-stolen-generations/">and the 60s Scoop</a> — but this idea of “re-indigenization” was different. </p>
<p>It appeared to justify the idea that any person who discovers they have a “root Indigenous ancestor” from anywhere between 150 to 400 years ago must claim an Indigenous identity and proudly take up spaces deemed to require Indigenous perspectives and voices. </p>
<p>Part of this process appeared to involve attaching and embedding oneself, not within the particular Indigenous community or Nation where their long-ago “Indigenous” ancestor hailed from, but within internal institutional Indigenous communities or organizations that fronted as “Indigenous communities” for the purpose of institutional or “urban” legitimacy.</p>
<p>This is a problem.</p>
<p>As a citizen of the Anishinaabeg Nation and community member of Nezaadiikaang (Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation), I am the Queen’s National Scholar in Indigenous Studies and an associate professor at Queen’s University, Ontario. I have been in academia for a decade now, and previously worked in various capacities serving Indigenous communities. My first full-time job after undergrad was in the political office of former Grand Chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation Stan Beardy. </p>
<p>Given that my own family members have continuously held political appointments, I have been listening to Anishinaabeg articulate concepts of self-determination, nationhood and sovereignty for many years. </p>
<h2>Indigeneity through self-indigenization</h2>
<p>I want to address the inherent problems with indigeneity through self-indigenization or re-indigenization. </p>
<p>There is a connection between self-indigenization based on ancestry, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2021.1885571">settler colonial violence</a> that is conveniently <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/queens-university-anonymous-report-indigenous-allegations-1.6063274">being ignored in our public institutions</a>. </p>
<p>“Mining” the archive for <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/the180/least-important-election-the-case-to-stop-changing-the-clocks-and-the-problem-of-dna-as-proof-of-culture-1.3834912/sorry-that-dna-test-doesn-t-make-you-indigenous-1.3835210">biological trace(s) of “nativeness”</a> follows the same settler colonial, possessive and extractivist logic of mining Indigenous lands. </p>
<p>Both Indigenous lands and identities are positioned as resources that people are entitled to claim and own. Dakota scholar Kim Tall Bear has shown us how this practice is <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429440229-40/identity-poor-substitute-relating-kim-tallbear">linked to Eurocentric concepts of “identity”</a> that privilege individualism and inherited property. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A picture of a 23andMe DNA test kit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441189/original/file-20220117-20992-cwn8bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441189/original/file-20220117-20992-cwn8bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441189/original/file-20220117-20992-cwn8bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441189/original/file-20220117-20992-cwn8bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441189/original/file-20220117-20992-cwn8bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441189/original/file-20220117-20992-cwn8bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441189/original/file-20220117-20992-cwn8bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">That DNA test doesn’t make you Indigenous.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Within <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/colonial-lives-of-property">settler colonial concepts of property rights</a>, identity becomes something that can be claimed, owned and put to use. It is interesting to see many of my colleagues publicly reject <a href="https://www.macleans.ca/society/environment/the-indigenous-grandmothers-who-stopped-a-pipeline/">extractivist pursuits like pipelines</a> while remaining silent or uncertain about similar tactics <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/carrie-bourassa-indefinite-leave-indigenous-1.6233247">employed against Indigenous personhood</a>.</p>
<h2>The rush to “indigenize”</h2>
<p>While it is widely acknowledged that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/aiq.2001.0030">Indigenous identity can be complicated</a> given the decades of <a href="https://theconversation.com/not-in-the-past-colonialism-is-rooted-in-the-present-157395">ongoing colonialism</a>, the move to conflate ancestry with indigeneity is an entirely different issue that is <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/queens-university-open-letter-faculty-indigenous-ancestry-1.6065656">on the rise in universities and other public institutions</a>.</p>
<p>The issue is that in their rush to “indigenize,” universities have created the conditions whereby someone who has mined the genealogical archives can access a position reserved for an Indigenous person, displacing those of us who are connected to and claimed by a living community/Nation of people. </p>
<p>This phenomenon undermines the inherent sovereignty of Indigenous Nations who <a href="https://theconversation.com/fraudulent-claims-of-indigeneity-indigenous-nations-are-the-identity-experts-171470">have the right to determine who does and does not belong</a> to their communities.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/stolen-identities-what-does-it-mean-to-be-indigenous-podcast-ep-8-166248">Stolen identities: What does it mean to be Indigenous? Podcast EP 8</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>When Indigenous folks push back against self-indigenization or re-indigenization, they receive considerable backlash that in many ways distracts from the key issues at hand. </p>
<p>We are often accused of being caught up <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/02/09/583987261/so-what-exactly-is-blood-quantum">in divisive blood quantum requirements</a>. The irony, of course, is that I have yet to hear any Indigenous critic of the extractivist logic even mention “Indian status” or “blood quantum” in their arguments. </p>
<p>The only ones who seem obsessed with “native blood” are those whose entire claim to indigeneity is based on them locating someone in their genetic or ancestral history. </p>
<p>I recently heard arguments that self-indigenization is a moral, ethical and traditional process that brings us out of the colonial shackles of the Indian Act. But erasing or ignoring the reality of the Indian Act, and of Indigenous survival in the face of it, does not magically bring about decolonization. </p>
<p>Indigenous Peoples settled that argument when they rejected <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-white-paper-1969">Pierre Trudeau’s infamous White Paper</a> more than 50 years ago.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Archive photo: A woman carries her baby on her back, she's in the forest with another woman and two children." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441192/original/file-20220117-23-jk1chm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441192/original/file-20220117-23-jk1chm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441192/original/file-20220117-23-jk1chm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441192/original/file-20220117-23-jk1chm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441192/original/file-20220117-23-jk1chm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441192/original/file-20220117-23-jk1chm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441192/original/file-20220117-23-jk1chm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Indigenous Nations have always maintained their citizenship orders. They have always retained the right to determine who does and does not belong.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/49483789437/">(R. D. Davidson. Department of Mines and Technical Surveys/Library and Archives Canada, PA-020304)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Re-casting oneself as Indigenous</h2>
<p>The problem with re-inventing oneself as “Indigenous” is based on the same logic of possession and fantasies of entitlement that rationalized settler possession of Indigenous lands. </p>
<p>Embracing your “Indigenous roots,” re-casting oneself as Indigenous and thinking that this is the best way to account for your history or to help Indigenous Peoples is not supporting <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1177180121994681">Indigenous sovereignties</a> or the movement toward <a href="https://doi.org/10.7577/njcie.3518">decolonial futures</a>. </p>
<p>In her new book, <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520303188/red-scare"><em>Red Scare: The State’s Indigenous Terrorist</em></a>, Lenape scholar Joanne Barker uses the term “kinless Indian” to describe how individuals whose initial claim to indigeneity stems from a false, tenuous or distant ancestor, and how this claiming absolves the notion that they have any benefit from or complicity with the dispossession of, and violence against, Indigenous Peoples.</p>
<p>Drawing on the work of <a href="https://ualberta.academia.edu/AdamGaudry">Métis scholar Adam Gaudry</a>, Barker clearly articulates how this process of individual or collective Indigenous “re-invention” undermines Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty, as it reflects this idea that Indigenous communities and their respective governance systems did not survive colonization.</p>
<p>It is very clear that we are not facing an Indigenous identity crisis in public institutions. Indigenous Nations have always maintained their citizenship orders. They have always retained the right to determine who does and does not belong. We know who we are. </p>
<p>What we are facing has been, and continues to be, a settler colonial crisis, which under its current guise, seeks to replace us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175136/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Celeste Pedri-Spade does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Indigenous Nations have always maintained their citizenship orders. They have always retained the right to determine who does and does not belong. We know who we are.Celeste Pedri-Spade, Associate Professor & QNS in Indigenous Studies, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1662252021-09-06T12:04:36Z2021-09-06T12:04:36ZFederal election: Canada’s next government should shift from reconciliation to decolonization and Indigenous self-determination<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418723/original/file-20210831-21-13y1b0y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C0%2C5054%2C3332&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh speaks with members of the local indigenous community during a campaign stop in Ladysmith, B.C. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The federal government released the <a href="https://mmiwg2splus-nationalactionplan.ca/"><em>2021 National Action Plan: Ending Violence Against Indigenous Women, Girls, And 2SLGBTQQIA+ People</em></a> on June 3, 2021. The plan came two years after the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) released its final report, <a href="https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/"><em>Reclaiming Power and Place</em></a>.</p>
<p>The plan’s release was somewhat rocky, coming days after the Native Women’s Association of Canada <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/nwac-mmiwg-action-plan-1.6047671">called the process of developing the plan</a> “toxic and dysfunctional.” Concerns were also consistently raised about how slow the process was.</p>
<p>Even though <a href="https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Calls_for_Justice.pdf">the MMIWG final report’s first Call for Justice</a> was that the government must develop an action plan within one year, the federal government didn’t do it. In that time it only <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1607208114360/1607208136120">put together a core working group</a>. And while the <em>2021 National Action Plan</em> outlined steps, it was only accompanied <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1617731561423/1617731691291">by the federal pathway</a> — an aspirational document that doesn’t include more concrete funding - and implementation plans are seemingly still underway. </p>
<p>Instead of this problem being an unlucky one-off, the development of the <em>2021 National Action Plan</em> points to a long-term trend in policy and engagement with Indigenous people. Namely that governments slow down implementing even the most basic or straightforward policy. As we begin to dig through the platforms of each major party in advance of the Sept. 20 election, we should also demand accountability for how quickly (or slowly) they are willing to move.</p>
<h2>A slow approach to reconciliation</h2>
<p>Humanities and environment scholar Rob Nixon has <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2jbsgw">used the concept of “slow violence” to describe how deadly harms can accumulate</a> and have their impacts felt over years or decades rather than all at once. </p>
<p>Nixon used the idea to describe the lethal danger of environmental degradation, but it is also important to consider slow violence in relation to settler colonialism. Not only do the harms of settler colonialism accumulate over lifetimes and generations, but the slow pace of change offers its own type of settler violence.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="man sits in front of different coloured water" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418728/original/file-20210831-25-1df6sy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418728/original/file-20210831-25-1df6sy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418728/original/file-20210831-25-1df6sy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418728/original/file-20210831-25-1df6sy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418728/original/file-20210831-25-1df6sy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418728/original/file-20210831-25-1df6sy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418728/original/file-20210831-25-1df6sy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In an archive photo from 2016, Potlotek First Nation Chief Wilbert Marshall speaks at a community meeting to address Potlotek’s concerns over drinking water in St. Peters, N.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Steve Wadden</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The issue of <a href="https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bb4aafad052643f0bf5080ce50895207">unsafe drinking water</a> in many Indigenous communities is a prime example of slow violence. Despite committing to ending all long-term boil water advisories on First Nations reserves <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-justin-trudeau-first-nations-boil-water-advisories-1.3258058">within five years</a>, last December <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/indigenous-services-minister-drinking-water-target-1.5824614">the Liberal government admitted</a> that it is years from meeting its target. Since taking office in November 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has lifted 109 advisories. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1620925418298/1620925434679">As of Sept. 6</a>, 51 advisories remain in place. Indigenous Services Canada remains <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-new-website-term-drinking-water-advisories-1.5943388">publicly committed</a> to ending all long-term advisories, but offers no specific timeline. This is a policy failure by the government, emblematic of the type of slow violence Nixon describes. </p>
<p>The effects of unsafe drinking water accumulate over years, and intersect with other failures such as <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session22/AHRC2250Add.1_English.PDF">inadequate nutritional support</a>, and the underfunding of <a href="https://policyoptions.irpp.org/fr/magazines/octobre-2016/the-long-history-of-discrimination-against-first-nations-children/">Indigenous child welfare</a> and <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/02/09/no-movement-on-controversial-first-nations-education-plan.html">education</a>, producing the health crises we see in Indigenous communities. </p>
<p>Each of these issues are ones that this, and previous governments, have promised and <a href="http://nationnews.ca/health/how-nutrition-north-increased-poverty-driven-hunger-in-the-north/">implemented policy</a> to fix, but remain unresolved. This is because of the Canadian government’s structural need for <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/stolen-lives-indigenous-peoples-canada-and-indian-residential-schools/historical-background/dispossession-destruction-and-reserves">Indigenous dispossession</a> — the stripping of land, natural resources and rights. </p>
<p>Government power and authority exist because of stolen land and ongoing denials of Indigenous Peoples’ self-determination. Regardless of how often Trudeau calls for “<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/ns-prof-trudeau-sunny-ways-1.3280693">sunny ways</a>” or <a href="https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/statements/2020/12/15/statement-prime-minister-fifth-anniversary-final-report-truth-and">claims progress on reconciliation</a>, these long-term issues continue to be avoided and put on the backburner.</p>
<h2>Not only a Liberal failure</h2>
<p>These long-term issues should remind us that this is not only a Liberal failure. We entered this election campaign on the heels of widespread public grief <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/kamloops-residential-school-findings-1.6084185">over the findings of unmarked graves at former Indian Residential Schools</a>.</p>
<p>It is amid this backdrop that we finally see federal parties stepping up and promising to fulfil their responsibilities on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) <a href="https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/british-columbians-our-governments/indigenous-people/aboriginal-peoples-documents/calls_to_action_english2.pdf">Call to Action 75</a> by funding the searches for more children. </p>
<p>Making this promise now overlooks the way residential schools not only were supported by various governments, but that each party has had a role in shaping the Indigenous child welfare system using the same logics and intentions. </p>
<p>As political scientist <a href="https://theconversation.com/canada-guilty-of-forging-crisis-in-indigenous-foster-care-90808">David MacDonald writes</a>, “Politics is about power — who has it, who doesn’t and what it enables people to do.” For too long the power Canadian governments have wielded has been focused on ensuring slow violence against Indigenous nations continue, while also slowing change.</p>
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<img alt="Woman sits with fist in the air, wearing orange t-shirt, holding teddy bear, surrounded by hundreds of little shoes" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418727/original/file-20210831-27-jrgjj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418727/original/file-20210831-27-jrgjj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418727/original/file-20210831-27-jrgjj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418727/original/file-20210831-27-jrgjj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418727/original/file-20210831-27-jrgjj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418727/original/file-20210831-27-jrgjj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418727/original/file-20210831-27-jrgjj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A kindergarten teacher from Arctic Bay now living in Ottawa, protests on Parliament Hill at a ‘Cancel Canada Day’ rally in response to the findings of unmarked Indigenous graves at residential schools.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle</span></span>
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<h2>We need Indigenous self-determination</h2>
<p>So far, little attention has been paid to Indigenous issues this federal election — with the exception of NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh — <a href="https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/trudeau-promises-action-but-provides-few-details-after-existence-of-mass-grave-in-kamloops-confirmed/">aside from promises to fund further studies into unmarked graves</a>. These are important, but <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-why-arent-we-talking-about-indigenous-children-during-this-election/">as <em>Globe and Mail</em> columnist Tanya Talaga notes</a>, this isn’t nearly enough.</p>
<p>Since the TRC’s final report came out, the past six years have shown us what promises have amounted to: <a href="https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform-single/beyond-94?&cta=1">13 of 94 completed Calls to Action</a>. As political scientist Matthew Wildcat has made clear, <a href="https://ualbertalaw.typepad.com/faculty/2018/01/an-interview-with-matthew-wildcat.html">there is a healthy skepticism</a> of “reconciliation” among many Indigenous people across Canada. The glacial pace of meaningful change by politicians contributes to this.</p>
<p>This election, perhaps we should look past reconciliation as a measure of seriousness of federal leaders. In its place, we should hold our leaders to the <a href="https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/a-brief-definition-of-decolonization-and-indigenization">standard of decolonization</a> and implementation of <a href="https://www.ictinc.ca/indian-act-vs-self-determination">Indigenous self-determination</a>. This will require fundamentally re-thinking Canada’s system of laws and policies — it won’t be something that takes place overnight. Continuing our current slow approach to responding to crises is only compounding them.</p>
<p>The passage of the <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html">UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</a> is a (again, belated) <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-road-to-reconciliation-starts-with-the-un-declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples-122305">strong first step</a> since, when properly implemented, it rejects <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7964247/canada-undrip-passes/">settler colonial logics</a> while recognizing and affirming Indigenous Peoples’ existing self-determination and authority. </p>
<p>As you evaluate the various parties’ platforms and positions, think about which are proposing to give power to Indigenous Peoples and their governments. That is the step forward we need to speed up the glacial pace.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166225/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liam Midzain-Gobin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This federal election, think about which parties are proposing to give power to Indigenous Peoples and their governments.Liam Midzain-Gobin, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Brock UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1642172021-07-22T18:20:19Z2021-07-22T18:20:19ZIn the wake of Indian Residential School findings, how can we cheer for Canada at the Olympics?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412870/original/file-20210723-19-nhxjqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C3544%2C2344&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Team Canada flag-bearers Miranda Ayim and Nathan Hirayama carry the Canadian flag at the opening ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympics. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Olympics offer Canadians an opportunity to experience a collective sense of national unity and pride. But in the wake of discoveries of <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-saskatchewan-first-nation-discovers-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-at/">thousands of unmarked graves</a> at former Indian Residential Schools across the country, this year’s Olympics will feel undeniably different for many Canadians. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/amid-more-shocking-residential-schools-discoveries-non-indigenous-people-must-take-action-161965">Amid more shocking residential schools discoveries, non-Indigenous people must take action</a>
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<p>Canadians will watch the Tokyo Games on television less than a month after <a href="https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/shame-on-canada-thousands-attend-cancel-canada-day-rally-on-parliament-hill-1.5493234">many participated</a> in “Cancel Canada Day” rallies and protesters tore down statues of colonial figures in <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/renewed-calls-to-cancel-canada-day-in-wake-of-residential-school-gravesite-discovery-1.5459568">Toronto</a>, <a href="https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/victoria-statue-of-captain-cook-pulled-down-thrown-into-harbour-1.5494067">Victoria</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57693683">Winnipeg.</a> </p>
<p>In the wake of all this, settlers such as myself must ask ourselves: How can we cheer for our country after all that’s been happening? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Headless statue lying on the ground covered in protest signs and red paint" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411106/original/file-20210713-15-1unwywy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411106/original/file-20210713-15-1unwywy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411106/original/file-20210713-15-1unwywy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411106/original/file-20210713-15-1unwywy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411106/original/file-20210713-15-1unwywy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411106/original/file-20210713-15-1unwywy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411106/original/file-20210713-15-1unwywy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A statue of Queen Victoria in Winnipeg was overturned and vandalized on Canada Day during demonstrations concerning Indigenous children who died at residential schools.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Kelly Geraldine Malone)</span></span>
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<p>Audiences should use the Tokyo Games to confront the <a href="https://theconversation.com/not-in-the-past-colonialism-is-rooted-in-the-present-157395">history and persistence of colonialism in Canada</a>. Expressions of patriotism in Canada cannot be neatly separated from <a href="https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/society/article/download/34003/26078/">ongoing colonization and systemic racism</a>, except through feats of mental gymnastics.</p>
<p>Let’s leave the gymnastics to the athletes competing in Tokyo and, instead, pay attention to the displays of settler colonialism that will happen during the Games.</p>
<p>My research investigates how Canadian-hosted sporting events, like the Olympics, shape national identity. I am currently writing a book, <em>Commodifying the Nation: Sport, Commercialism and Settler Colonialism in Canada</em>. In it, I argue that settlers often avoid recognizing uncomfortable truths about the nation when they express their patriotism. These truths include the mistreatment and assimilation of Indigenous children in residential schools. </p>
<h2>Reminders of settler colonialism</h2>
<p>There is a tendency to focus on large, highly visible objects that represent Canada’s colonial identity, like the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/egerton-ryerson-statue-caledonia-land-back-lane-1.6059513">recently toppled statue of Egerton Ryerson</a>, who played a major role in the establishment of the residential school system in Canada. But this identity is also recalled in the various ways settler Canadians express their pride at international sporting events. </p>
<p>One reminder of colonialism will be embodied — literally — by Canadian athletes at the Games who will be wearing outfits designed by the <a href="https://olympic.ca/2020/08/10/team-canada-and-hudsons-bay-unveil-tokyo-2020-kit-2/">Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC)</a>, which has been the Canadian Olympic team’s <a href="http://www.hbcheritage.ca/history/social-history/hbc-and-sports">official outfitter</a> since 2013.</p>
<p>Besides Team Canada’s outfits being created by the company, its iconic “point blanket” logo featuring coloured stripes appears on the outfits, along with national symbols like the maple leaf.</p>
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<img alt="Waist-up shot of two women wearing red zip-up jackets with CANADA spelled across the front." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411107/original/file-20210713-25-1yatwbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411107/original/file-20210713-25-1yatwbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411107/original/file-20210713-25-1yatwbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411107/original/file-20210713-25-1yatwbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411107/original/file-20210713-25-1yatwbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411107/original/file-20210713-25-1yatwbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411107/original/file-20210713-25-1yatwbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Gymnast Ellie Black, left, and Brooklyn Moors wear their official Olympic jackets during an event presenting the Canadian Olympic Artistic Gymnastics team for the Tokyo 2020 games.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes)</span></span>
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<p>HBC’s logo calls attention to its historical contributions to settler nation-building practices in Canada. Created by royal charter in 1670, King Charles II of England <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/history/EPCONTENTSE1EP6CH1PA5LE.html">gave HBC the authority</a> to trade and negotiate treaties with Indigenous groups and to defend territory from them.</p>
<p>Employees exchanged point blankets for beaver pelts supplied by Indigenous peoples, making them important items of the early fur trade. By conflating Team Canada’s outfits with HBC merchandise, this creates an association between the company and patriotic sentiments. It also contributes to the erasure of the nation’s history of colonialism. </p>
<p>Activists drew attention to this history in 2010 when Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympics. They argued that Canadians who wore the HBC-produced Team Canada red and white mittens had “<a href="https://web.resist.ca/%7Etarsandsfreebc/downloads/hbc.pdf">blood on their hands</a>” and were “wearing Canada’s history of colonialism.” </p>
<p>The ubiquity of HBC-branded Olympic clothing can productively draw attention to the history activists called on audiences to recognize back in 2010. </p>
<h2>The present day</h2>
<p>It would be a mistake to think that only the past is being obscured in collective displays of patriotism. </p>
<p>The reality that settler colonialism persists in Canada is too easily disavowed in celebratory representations of the nation. Disavowal is a particular type of forgetting. It involves knowing facts but failing to recognize the full significance or meaning of such facts. </p>
<p>When we disavow the injustices occurring around us, we fail to stop them from continuing. The example of anti-Olympic activists who protested the 2010 Games is once again instructive. They made it impossible to completely disavow the fact that the Games were being held on unceded Indigenous territory that is not governed by treaty. </p>
<p>Presently, we must not forget that the Canadian government and institutions continue to engage in practices that disadvantage Indigenous peoples and infringe upon their rights, such as the federal government’s <a href="https://fncaringsociety.com/about-us">chronic under-funding of Indigenous child and family services</a> that’s led to an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/08/canada-indigenous-children-deaths-residential-schools">over-representation of Indigenous children</a> in the child welfare system and the <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-its-all-too-common-for-indigenous-patients-to-face-racism-and-neglect/">sytemic racism</a> present in Canada’s health-care system. </p>
<h2>What to do while cheering on Team Canada</h2>
<p>I am not calling for settlers to wallow in guilt. Now is not the time to focus on how settlers feel. It is instead time to confront the reality of the consequences of residential schools and the <a href="https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/sixties_scoop/">‘60s Scoop.</a> </p>
<p>Land dispossession and systemic racism continue to exist and the historic mistreatment of Indigenous peoples is still ongoing.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-many-canadians-dont-seem-to-care-about-the-lasting-effects-of-residential-schools-161968">Why many Canadians don’t seem to care about the lasting effects of residential schools</a>
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<p>Canadians should start by holding our governments and institutions accountable, and encourage the implementation of the <a href="http://trc.ca/assets/pdf/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf">Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action</a>. </p>
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<img alt="Michael Linklater stands for a photograph at a outdoor basketball court near his home in Saskatoon." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411375/original/file-20210715-21-835uvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411375/original/file-20210715-21-835uvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411375/original/file-20210715-21-835uvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411375/original/file-20210715-21-835uvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411375/original/file-20210715-21-835uvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411375/original/file-20210715-21-835uvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411375/original/file-20210715-21-835uvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">No self-identified Indigenous athletes will be competing for Canada at the Tokyo Olympics. For years, Nehiyaw (Cree) athlete Michael Linklater of Saskatoon was one of the country’s top 3x3 basketball players. While 3x3 basketball is making its Olympic debut in Tokyo, Canada failed to qualify. Linklater will be a basketball analyst for CBC’s Olympic coverage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Liam Richards</span></span>
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<p>Calls 87-91 include telling the national story of Indigenous athletes and supporting Indigenous athletes’ development. </p>
<p>As settlers tune in to watch Canadian athletes compete in Tokyo this summer, they can seek out stories about Indigenous athleticism and leadership in sport because they won’t find any on their screens. No self-identified Indigenous athlete is <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/sports/indigenous-athletes-barriers-olympics-1.6061509">competing for Canada this year</a>.</p>
<p>As you wear your red and white and cheer for Canada from the comfort of your home, remember the history this patriotism was built on — and the ongoing colonialism that helps solidify it.</p>
<p><em>If you are an Indian Residential School survivor, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164217/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Estee Fresco does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How can settler-Canadians cheer for their country at the Tokyo Olympics after the recent discoveries of hundreds of unmarked graves of children who attended Indian Residential Schools?Estee Fresco, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1614292021-05-31T05:23:56Z2021-05-31T05:23:56ZHow Black Lives Matter is changing the conversation on Palestine<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403511/original/file-20210531-13-1tov05d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=943%2C62%2C4967%2C3925&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jose Luis Magana/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When videos of George Floyd’s killing in the US went viral last year, something world-changing happened: a movement fighting against structural injustice became internationally visible.</p>
<p>While statistics in <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793">America</a> and <a href="https://caepr.cass.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/2021/4/WP_140_Anthony_et_al_2021.pdf">Australia</a> have long shown disproportionate numbers of Black deaths in police custody, too often these numbers have been <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/8/13/17938226/police-shootings-killings-law-legal-standard-garner-graham-connor">obscured</a> through institutional counter-claims. </p>
<p>But on May 25, 2020, nine minutes and 29 seconds of footage transformed the rules about what makes news news. Floyd’s killing convinced journalists that a story can tackle the root causes of a violent action, and doing so is crucial to understanding the broader framework of violence in which such actions occur.</p>
<p>Those few minutes made it impossible for others to re-write the history of Floyd’s death: his murder as a product of systemic violence was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52969905">unambiguous</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pain-of-police-killings-ripples-outward-to-traumatize-black-people-and-communities-across-us-159624">Pain of police killings ripples outward to traumatize Black people and communities across US</a>
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<p>When #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) began, it insisted on a conversation that reached into America’s racist past to explain atrocities in the present. </p>
<p>Its power lies in this deeper engagement with systemic issues, amplified through the capacity of social media to reach wider audiences. One example is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/us/confederate-statues-photos.html">citizen support for actions defacing public statues</a> of slave traders and colonisers, which have been recognised as symbols of exclusionary and violent national cultures.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403520/original/file-20210531-21-4j97f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403520/original/file-20210531-21-4j97f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403520/original/file-20210531-21-4j97f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403520/original/file-20210531-21-4j97f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403520/original/file-20210531-21-4j97f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403520/original/file-20210531-21-4j97f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403520/original/file-20210531-21-4j97f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters marked the first anniversary of Floyd’s killing last week.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sarah Reingewirtz/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>BLM highlights Palestinian rights</h2>
<p>Now, the tenets of BLM are amplifying the struggles of Palestinians and making them more visible and understandable to a global audience. </p>
<p>Just as BLM is forcing a reckoning with systemic racism, there is new attention being paid to the origins of the Palestinians’ struggles: <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/05/black-lives-matter-israel-palestine.html?fbclid=IwAR3dkrPT-LvytUNYljTgoHMYBd0_j0gRfqddLKVoWAp1HXPFsrhG_DSNlXE">settler-colonialism, asymmetric power relations and racial discrimination</a>. </p>
<p>This is central to explaining why public opinion and the media’s reporting on Palestine have shifted profoundly in recent weeks.</p>
<p>This shift can be seen with the #SaveSheikhJarrah campaign on social media, which aimed to bring greater attention to the attempted expulsions of Palestinians from their homes in a neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah.</p>
<p>The campaign created new awareness of the context behind these actions, in part triggered by a widely shared video on social media depicting a Jewish settler telling a Palestinian resident, “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/4/if-i-dont-steal-your-home-someone-else-will-jewish-settler-says">If I don’t steal your home someone else will steal it</a>”. </p>
<p>This repudiates Israel’s insistence the broader conflict between Israel and the Palestinians be relegated to the past. <a href="https://arena.org.au/missing-a-nakba-in-2021-is-unforgiveable/">The context around the expulsions</a> has become inseparable from the violence itself, making history central to the present crisis.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-palestinian-violence-why-east-jerusalem-has-become-a-flashpoint-in-a-decades-old-conflict-160697">Israel-Palestinian violence: why East Jerusalem has become a flashpoint in a decades-old conflict</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This new style of messaging has also elevated the voices of people like writer Mohammed El-Kurd, one of the spokespeople for the campaign, who has appeared on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJP2Kr78vfg">major American news outlets</a> describing the issue in terms of settler-colonialism and apartheid. After interviews on CNN and MSBNC, he was <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2021/5/13/mohammed_el_kurd_sheikh_jarrah_jerusalem">detained</a> by Israeli security forces. </p>
<p>El-Kurd previously told his story in the 2012 documentary about Sheikh Jarrah, <a href="https://justvision.org/myneighbourhood">My Neighbourhood</a>, at the age of 11. His articulate explanations and poise in interviews have resonated with audiences, bringing new clarity to millions about the situation Palestinians face. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1398842650552270848"}"></div></p>
<h2>Recognition of Palestinian Struggle</h2>
<p>Through all of this, Israel’s claim of self-defence to explain its actions in Gaza is being challenged by a wider recognition of the government’s <a href="https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/27551">violations of international law</a>. </p>
<p>Just as BLM has garnered increasing public support beyond the African American community in the past year, a broader alliance of prominent voices is rallying behind the Palestinian cause, as well.</p>
<p>The Black Lives Movement itself has <a href="https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/1394289672101064704">tweeted its support</a> for “Palestinian liberation” and ending settler colonialism in all forms. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1394289672101064704"}"></div></p>
<p>And Palestinians are finding support from a wide spectrum of <a href="https://twitter.com/senwarren/status/1391040880165879812?lang=en">political figures</a>, <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/celebrities-show-solidarity-with-palestine/2247224">celebrities</a>, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/kyrie-irving-israel-palestine/">athletes</a> and other prominent individuals, wising up to the <a href="https://meanjin.com.au/blog/the-great-palestinian-silence/">contradiction of progressive politics that exclude Palestine</a>.</p>
<p>The alt-rock band Garbage, who <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/culture/garbage-skewers-bds-in-israel-show-we-believe-in-intelligent-debate-464338">rejected calls to cancel shows in Israel in 2016</a>, have now used Instagram to support the Palestinians. Another band, Rage Against the Machine, has <a href="https://www.pedestrian.tv/entertainment/rage-against-the-machine-free-palestine/">dismissed criticism from some fans</a> to express its solidarity with Palestinians. </p>
<p>Many prominent figures have avoided wading into politics in the past because they can face a backlash when they do and don’t speak out on issues. But there’s a greater willingness among some to be more vocal on these issues now, a choice that parallels the <a href="https://www.ihrb.org/focus-areas/non-discrimination/commentary-black-lives-matter-a-moral-moment">ethical questions raised by BLM</a>.</p>
<p>In a recent Instagram Live post with El-Kurd, actor and model Indya Moore, for instance, talked about the <a href="https://www.them.us/story/indya-moore-using-platform-uplift-palestinian-voices">importance of solidarity</a> between African Americans, Palestinians and Indigenous peoples in their mutual struggles against settler-colonialism and systemic racism. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/tv/CO0X8Fcna7S/?igshid=19vb9egm1muqq","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>In the UK, soccer players from <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/english-soccer/manchester-united-players-hold-up-palestine-flag-at-old-trafford-1.4569181">Manchester United</a> and <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/leicester-city-soccer-players-raise-palestinian-flag-after-uk-cup-victory/">Leicester City</a> displayed Palestinian flags on the field after matches and [faced not disciplinary action but applause].</p>
<p>This is striking because not long ago, athletes were <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/8/15/17619122/kaepernick-trump-nfl-protests-2018">threatened with punishments</a> for taking political stands such as kneeling during the national anthem before football games in the US. BLM has changed this — it allowed those with a public platform to <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/kyrie-irving-israel-palestine/">advocate on behalf of others</a> without fear of recriminations.</p>
<h2>After the ceasefire</h2>
<p>The latest ceasefire between Israel and Hamas seems to be holding. But there is a growing recognition ceasefires and calm are not the end of the story in a situation that has dragged on for decades.</p>
<p>The calls for change are continuing. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said after the ceasefire it’s time for the “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/21/world-reaction-to-the-israel-hamas-ceasefire-in-gaza">root causes</a>” of the conflict to be addressed. And <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/may/21/thousands-expected-to-join-protests-across-australia-over-gaza-attacks-as-death-toll-rises">Palestinian solidarity rallies</a> have seen <a href="https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/pro-palestinian-rally-washington-seeks-end-us-aid-israel">huge turnouts</a> since the ceasefire went into effect.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-the-palestinian-minority-takes-to-the-streets-israel-is-having-its-own-black-lives-matter-moment-160958">As the Palestinian minority takes to the streets, Israel is having its own Black Lives Matter moment</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>All these changes owe a debt to the impact BLM has had on public understanding, combined with the success of First Nations people’s “nothing about us without us” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/03/nothing-about-us-without-us-thats-why-we-need-indigenous-owned-media">campaign on representation</a>. This has forced the issue in Australia, highlighting the systemic bias of media coverage that ignores Palestinian voices.</p>
<p>However, change will not only require the sustained efforts by Palestinian people themselves, but also through the <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=29556">deep-rooted solidarity</a> they have forged with other marginalised communities. That work continues.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161429/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Micaela Sahhar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Just as BLM is forcing a reckoning with systemic racism, there is new attention being paid to the origins of the Palestinians’ struggles.Micaela Sahhar, Lecturer, History of Ideas, Trinity College, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1610972021-05-26T20:10:10Z2021-05-26T20:10:10ZHow early Australian settlers drew maps to erase Indigenous people and push ideas of colonial superiority<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402798/original/file-20210526-21-1oebc2q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=82%2C112%2C4910%2C3308&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-231258061">National Library of Australia: 31258061</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The new Netflix series Shadow and Bone opens with cartographer Alina Starkov crammed into the back of a rumbling wagon, sketching a war-torn landscape. A flashback to her childhood in an orphanage shows her looking at a map of a conflict zone. </p>
<p>A guardian tells her, “keep a pencil in your hand, or else someone will put a rifle in it instead”. The cartographers of this fictional world are crucial to the military, just as they are in the real world. But there is also a sense that cartographers played a peaceful role in the army.</p>
<p>In reality, the role of surveyors and cartographers throughout history was often far from peaceful. It was their initial explorations that paved the way for destructive waves of colonising armies and civilians.</p>
<p>At each stage of mapping an area, clues are preserved about the priorities and prejudices of the person wielding the pencil, and those instructing them. Today, researchers can spot these clues and draw out the contextual history of the time.</p>
<h2>Exploring the land</h2>
<p>Maps made it easier for the government back home to imagine the territory of a new colony, to claim to “know” and thus own it. Therefore, surveying expeditions into unknown lands were prioritised.</p>
<p>Some expeditions were huge, such as Lewis and Clark’s crossing of the United States. Others were small, such as <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/meehan-james-2443">James Meehan’s</a> treks around the Derwent River in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) between October 1803 and March 1804.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402265/original/file-20210524-23-1eyk8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Page of handwritten text" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402265/original/file-20210524-23-1eyk8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402265/original/file-20210524-23-1eyk8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402265/original/file-20210524-23-1eyk8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402265/original/file-20210524-23-1eyk8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402265/original/file-20210524-23-1eyk8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402265/original/file-20210524-23-1eyk8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402265/original/file-20210524-23-1eyk8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A page from Meehan’s journal of his explorations around Pittwater (near today’s Hobart Airport).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasmanian Archives: LSD355/1/1</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meehan kept a daily log of measurements and happenings as he explored. Like many, he occasionally included sketches, probably trying to ward off boredom during the long evenings at camp.</p>
<p>We know through journal records that Meehan met some palawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal) people along the different routes, once firing on a group when he felt threatened.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/thirteen-years-after-sorry-too-many-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-children-are-still-being-removed-from-their-homes-159360">Thirteen years after 'Sorry', too many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are still being removed from their homes</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Focused on sought-after utilities</h2>
<p>Meehan’s observations were then produced for their first external audience - the colonial government. It’s here we start to see the colony’s priorities. </p>
<p>Many of the map labels highlight the quality of the land in terms of potential for expansion and European-style agriculture. Meehan’s map of the Hobart area emphasises whether the land encountered was hilly or flat, covered with vegetation, or cleared pasture.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402264/original/file-20210524-23-74aw61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="rough looking map showing Derwent River and surrounding terrain" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402264/original/file-20210524-23-74aw61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402264/original/file-20210524-23-74aw61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402264/original/file-20210524-23-74aw61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402264/original/file-20210524-23-74aw61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402264/original/file-20210524-23-74aw61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402264/original/file-20210524-23-74aw61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402264/original/file-20210524-23-74aw61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Plan of the Settlement at the River Derwent. Map by James Meehan, 1804.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasmanian Archives: AF396/1/206</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the time Meehan drafted his “Plan of the Settlement at the River Derwent”, pictured above, the Europeans had moved from their initial camp at Risdon Cove to today’s site of Hobart. The Risdon settlement was <a href="https://gsp.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/200409420.pdf">considered a failure</a> as the fresh water ran out and soldiers threatened mutiny, so Meehan omitted any reference to it beyond a small name label.</p>
<p>More importantly, he excluded any reference to any Indigenous people, despite having encountered them on more than one occasion. </p>
<p>Meehan was playing his part in cultivating the narrative of Van Diemen’s Land as a successful colony on an “empty” island that had been (supposedly) waiting for the Europeans to arrive. This was the same as the <a href="https://australianstogether.org.au/discover/australian-history/mabo-native-title/"><em>terra nullius</em></a> narrative perpetuated by the British government regarding the mainland.</p>
<h2>Propaganda in map form</h2>
<p>Sometimes the map would be destined for wider circulation and would be refined with simple decorative features such as a key, north arrow, coloured inks and detailed illustrations of ships or gardens. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402286/original/file-20210524-21-1hmm3ya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402286/original/file-20210524-21-1hmm3ya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402286/original/file-20210524-21-1hmm3ya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=213&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402286/original/file-20210524-21-1hmm3ya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=213&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402286/original/file-20210524-21-1hmm3ya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=213&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402286/original/file-20210524-21-1hmm3ya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402286/original/file-20210524-21-1hmm3ya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402286/original/file-20210524-21-1hmm3ya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Route from the US city of Albany to the Fort Osswego (New York State), c.1750s. Note the ship in the harbour, and the list of distances in the bottom right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress Geography and Map Division: ar108000z</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Within these more attractive maps, hidden clues became even more nuanced.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402780/original/file-20210526-17-8i8ito.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of land grants in Van Diemen's Land" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402780/original/file-20210526-17-8i8ito.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402780/original/file-20210526-17-8i8ito.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=659&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402780/original/file-20210526-17-8i8ito.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=659&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402780/original/file-20210526-17-8i8ito.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=659&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402780/original/file-20210526-17-8i8ito.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402780/original/file-20210526-17-8i8ito.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402780/original/file-20210526-17-8i8ito.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This well-worn map of an area in central Tasmania shows updated landholder names and a conversation between members of the Survey Office about the map’s origins (bottom left).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasmanian Archives: AF396/1/951</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Aspirational elements were introduced, giving the viewer a sense of what the cartographer, landholder or government perceived as a desirable landscape. Phrases such as “unexplored country” would be used, or an area of blank space sparked the imagination with some promise of undiscovered wealth.</p>
<p>Both sketch maps and their more refined siblings were used by the ruling powers as working maps to track their increasing expansion over the land. By reading the scribbled annotations carefully, stories of changing land ownership, population growth and acts of violence become apparent.</p>
<h2>Republishing and distribution</h2>
<p>Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, geographers, engravers and others combined data from maps and reports to print single sheets and atlases they could sell at a range of prices.</p>
<p>These maps transported the reading public to remote locations and made them sound educated at the dinner table. Accuracy was not required for this, so mistakes were copied from one chart to another, and outdated information often circulated for decades.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402299/original/file-20210524-13-6eqlwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of Van Diemen's Land/Tasmania. Macquarie Harbour on the west coast is enormous." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402299/original/file-20210524-13-6eqlwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402299/original/file-20210524-13-6eqlwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402299/original/file-20210524-13-6eqlwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402299/original/file-20210524-13-6eqlwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402299/original/file-20210524-13-6eqlwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402299/original/file-20210524-13-6eqlwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402299/original/file-20210524-13-6eqlwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Macquarie Harbour on the west coast on this map of Van Diemen’s Land is shown about three times the size of the real harbour. Where this error originated is unknown, but it is found on at least one other map of the same time, suggesting it was based on a dodgy report of the colony. Map by Sidney Hall, 1828.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Libraries Tasmania: 746063</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, explorers’ maps and reports sometimes included references to First Nations peoples or their significant sites. Abel Tasman observed the presence of palawa people in southern Tasmania. A century later, explorers in America named “<a href="https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/s/r23w20">native guides</a>” in recognition of their invaluable assistance during cross-country expeditions.</p>
<p>But by the end of the 18th century, changing attitudes towards First Nations peoples started to see references to them disappear from maps of European colonies around the globe.</p>
<p>In 1804, Meehan omitted all mention of Tasmania’s palawa people from his Derwent River map. This is a reflection of emerging ideas of colonial superiority. The Europeans were increasingly reluctant to admit to needing help from Indigenous people, or even to admit there were other people already living on the lands. </p>
<p>So the next time you find yourself in front of a historic map, make sure you ask what details have been included, which have been excluded and — most importantly — why? </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-mapped-the-super-highways-the-first-australians-used-to-cross-the-ancient-land-154263">We mapped the 'super-highways' the First Australians used to cross the ancient land</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Imogen Wegman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In many cases, colonial maps would portray conquered land as having been ‘empty’ and available when settlers arrived — even if it wasn’t.Imogen Wegman, Lecturer in Humanities, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.