The Great Unlearning
"Miss Europe" by Kent Monkman
From the start, Newcomers to this continent have thought of the Original Peoples
as a problem – The Indian Problem.
Our problematic presence is deeply embedded in the collective settler consciousness
and the ancient attitude is a constant and consistent trope in literature and academics.
You also know that we are failures when it comes to adapting to the natural reality
of the development of a modern society, don’t you?
Lately though, some people have started to question The Indian Problem’s place
at the core of the country’s identity and agenda. I think of this as the silver lining to climate change;
not everyone is convinced that progress is good anymore,
and some are even starting to question the whole idea of Western culture and capitalism.
There is suspicion about as to whether or not countries like Canada and the US
represent the apex of human civilization, and how there may have been some terrible trade-offs
and problems with the way that these societies have been constructed.
One of the emerging realizations that comes from thinking through history in a different way
and thinking through the problems that are besetting our communities
is that people all across the land are beginning to recognize that there is some form of responsibility
for transforming the governing institutions and the fundamental relationships in the society.
In a sense, people are starting to realize the effects of industrial contamination on people’s lives everywhere,
and of climate change. Soon people will come to understand that America doesn’t have an Indian Problem,
it has a Colonizer Problem, and that it may be that the way to a better future is not necessarily focusing effort
on redefining and removing Indigenous people from the land so that corporations can exploit its “resources”
for the settler population’s enrichment. They are starting to see that the country’s roots
as a colonizing enterprise has created a pattern and structure to the relationships
between all peoples and between people and the land in this country
that is ultimately destructive to everyone and everything involved.
The Colonizer Problem is the fact that Canada (and the US) is built on the assumption
of a perpetual re-colonization of people and land that allows settler society to enjoy the privileges
and the prosperity that are the inheritance of conquest. So what is the fundamental problem
of justice and injustice in the West? Seen from this angle, it’s certainly not that we have failed to keep up.
It’s not even a problem of social justice demanding a rights and recognition discourse to elevate us
to the same status of material wellbeing as the mainstream of society. Social justice is a conception
and objective is not enough, because if we just focus on that we’re looking at just the symptoms,
if we’re not looking at the fundamental problem, which is the dispossession, the continual occupation,
the separation of people from their homelands and the fundamental essence of who they are,
we have a massive engine generating social, cultural and physic discord;
and not only among the perceived victims but among the imagined beneficiaries of dispossession too.
The engine is hot and humming and producing social discord, health harms,
and environmental destruction at a never before seen pace.
There is a basic connection between the dispossession and abuse of Indigenous peoples
and the structure and effective functioning of the North American economy. From where we stand today,
in the middle of a Colonizer Problem, fixing the economy, addressing climate change,
and respecting the earth all require the achievement of a just relationship with the nations
of (Ab)original Peoples and manifest respect for the worldview at the base of their cultures.
Tinkering with or reforming existing institutions and relationships are useless.
What we need is a fundamental shift away from a conquest mentality to a frame of mind
that places human beings in real and lasting relationships with each other and the natural environment.
This is a psychic change is a ways away for people in the mainstream, though there are some early adopters beginning to engage and the ideational reframing of relationships in this country and for whom
an Indigenous environmental ethic offers an alternative way of thinking and being on the land.
But what is the Indigenous environmental ethic?
It’s all about the land, for us.
In the Mohawk language you say, Konnoronkwa Iekeni’stenha ohontsa,
“I Love my Mother the Earth”.
Being Indigenous means having that kind of intimate relationship with the Earth,
that sense of deep relationship and responsibility to the Earth; it means living that relationship,
having that connection, fulfilling your responsibility, taking the loving sustenance,
taking the sacred knowledge and giving back, loving, and protecting your Mother.
This is why colonization, which is predicated on the denial of our ability
to live out the ethic of universal relation and responsibility, is so destructive and demoralizing. Disconnection from the land is more than just an economic deprivation.
Disconnection from the land is more than just the political injustice of territorial alienation.
Disconnected from the land, we cannot be Indigenous.
To be Indigenous you have to live out the (Ab)original Instructions
and honor your basic responsibilities to your family, to yourself,
to other people, and to the other nations of trees, of animals and fish and insects and the waters and winds…
all of which speak to existing in a peaceful, good way as a human being in this land.
Living out this environmental ethic is essential for freedom, health, happiness and justice
to be realized in the life of an Indigenous person.
What about reconciliation, some may ask – aren’t we in a new era of respect for (Ab)original Peoples?
The Prime Minister did stand up in the House of Commons and read an apology to the victims
of residential school abuses. It was a great mistake, it was entirely unacceptable, it was wrong for us
to take those children from their families and to allow them to be abused in schools by the people
who ran those schools, we should never have allowed those children to be abused, he said.
But this was not the start of a true reconciliation.
In turning the page on history by admitting what happened in those schools,
the Prime Minister did not talk about the the multi-generational effects of that phase of history.
Is the harm of residential school that a grandmother suffered abuse
and was not allowed to speak her language and grew up despising her Indianness after that
and moved to Brooklyn and called herself Irish? (this is a true story from my family)
Is that the harm? Of course it is.
But you would have to have a very narrow perspective to argue that there’s also not harm
as a result of residential school from the grandchild not speaking Mohawk,
in fact that the grandchild lives in Brooklyn and not in Kahnawake where the grandmother was born
and where her ancestors were born. What was the real intent of residential schools?
The intent of residential schools was to break the connection of Native people to their land.
They were put in place to remove children from their families and their cultures
so that next generation would not know the land, would not be present on the land,
and so they would not have the ability to take in the knowledge and the language
to be able to defend that land, politically, culturally and physically
from the intentions of the people who wanted to come and use that land.
That was the intent of residential school. After residential schools,
there was barely anyone left to defend the land spiritually and physically.
So reconciliation is actually recolonization
because it is all about consolidating the territorial gains of previous generations of settler crimes,
and it has nothing to do with transformation or even change.
I think the proper targets are the powerful institutions of the government on one hand and our own peoples.
We need to define for ourselves what this movement is,
and this movement should be a movement back to the land.
I’m not meaning to seem like a complete romantic here who’s a total dreamer saying,
back to the land in terms of "let’s all turn away from the city and go live out on to the territory."
That’s not even possible unfortunately in most of our territories,
because of the destruction that’s occurred to the environment, the genocide of animals and so forth.
What I’m talking about is that we need to recover the ability to have a relationship with our land
that can sustain us spiritually, culturally and economically
in partnership with the society that came here and promised to do that from the beginning.
Taiaiake Alfred (edits by SM)
Crimethinc.
What Is Crimethink?
Crimethink is everything that evades control: the daydream in the classroom,
the renegade breaking ranks, the spray-painted walls that continue to speak even under martial law. It is the persistent sense that things could be otherwise,
that there is nothing natural or inevitable about the prevailing social order.
In a world optimized for administration, everything that cannot be classified
or displayed on a screen is crimethink. It is the spirit of rebellion
without which freedom is literally unthinkable.
What Is CrimethInc.?
CrimethInc. is a rebel alliance — a secret society pledged to the propagation
of crimethink. It is a think tank producing inflammatory ideas and action,
a sphinx posing questions fatal to the superstitions of our age.
CrimethInc. is a banner for anonymous collective action.
It is not a membership organization, but a mouthpiece for longings
that extend throughout the population at large. Anyone can be CrimethInc.
— it could be your next-door neighbor or the person sitting beside you on the bus.
You and your friends already constitute an affinity group,
the organizational model best suited to guerrilla tactics,
ready to go into action against all the forces that threaten your freedom.
CrimethInc. is an international network of aspiring revolutionaries
extending from Kansas to Kuala Lumpur.
For over twenty years, we have published news, analysis, books, journals,
posters, videos, podcasts, and a wide range of other resources — all copyright free,
produced and distributed by volunteer labor,
without reliance on external funding or market trends.
We also coordinate speaking tours, debates, and various other public events.
Though we rarely seek public recognition for our efforts,
everything we do is informed by our participation in social movements.
CrimethInc. is a desperate venture.
As this society lurches ever closer to annihilation,
we are staking everything on the possibility
that we could kick open the escape hatch to another future.
Rather than competing for social capital or selling ourselves
to the highest bidder, we have thrown ourselves completely
into the struggle for a better world.
We invite you to do the same.
General Inquiries
Email:
hello@crimethinc.com
Twitter:
@crimethinc
Crimethink is everything that evades control: the daydream in the classroom,
the renegade breaking ranks, the spray-painted walls that continue to speak even under martial law. It is the persistent sense that things could be otherwise,
that there is nothing natural or inevitable about the prevailing social order.
In a world optimized for administration, everything that cannot be classified
or displayed on a screen is crimethink. It is the spirit of rebellion
without which freedom is literally unthinkable.
What Is CrimethInc.?
CrimethInc. is a rebel alliance — a secret society pledged to the propagation
of crimethink. It is a think tank producing inflammatory ideas and action,
a sphinx posing questions fatal to the superstitions of our age.
CrimethInc. is a banner for anonymous collective action.
It is not a membership organization, but a mouthpiece for longings
that extend throughout the population at large. Anyone can be CrimethInc.
— it could be your next-door neighbor or the person sitting beside you on the bus.
You and your friends already constitute an affinity group,
the organizational model best suited to guerrilla tactics,
ready to go into action against all the forces that threaten your freedom.
CrimethInc. is an international network of aspiring revolutionaries
extending from Kansas to Kuala Lumpur.
For over twenty years, we have published news, analysis, books, journals,
posters, videos, podcasts, and a wide range of other resources — all copyright free,
produced and distributed by volunteer labor,
without reliance on external funding or market trends.
We also coordinate speaking tours, debates, and various other public events.
Though we rarely seek public recognition for our efforts,
everything we do is informed by our participation in social movements.
CrimethInc. is a desperate venture.
As this society lurches ever closer to annihilation,
we are staking everything on the possibility
that we could kick open the escape hatch to another future.
Rather than competing for social capital or selling ourselves
to the highest bidder, we have thrown ourselves completely
into the struggle for a better world.
We invite you to do the same.
General Inquiries
Email:
hello@crimethinc.com
Twitter:
@crimethinc
The beehive collective
The Beehive Design Collective is a wildly motivated, all-volunteer, activist arts collective dedicated to “cross-pollinating the grassroots” by creating collaborative, anti-copyright images for use as anticolonial educational and organizing tools. We work as word-to-image translators of complex global stories, shared with us through conversations with affected communities.
After playing a show together in 2007, anarchist activists Testament aka Darius Mirshahi
& Illogik aka Cee La Alma joined forces to create TEST THEIR LOGIK.
Since then, Testament and Illogik have been blazing through all across Turtle Island,
from protests, to indigenous education & resistance with the beehive collective tours,
festivals & numerous hip-hop shows & non-profit venues inciting dissidence in crowds.
Their shared commitment and drive has led to a blazing debut album,
which was only briefly slowed by their arrests during the G20 in Toronto.
These arrests were the result of their music video; 'Crash the Meeting',
which went viral online and was picked up by national media in Canada and the US.
The two were charged with indictable conspiracy and counseling charges
and given bail conditions of non association, effectively putting their ability
to perform or otherwise collaborate together on hiatus for five months.
After having all their charges stayed and conditions dropped, they've reunited and are touring,
recording, and launching a brand new album of revolutionary fire.
Illogik & his soulmate marley are also collaborating
on a new album with antony of egypt soon to be released.
Inspiring diverse groups of people to empower themselves and their communities,
TEST THEIR LOGIK is calling on all to join the cause of revolution
and liberation from oppression across the world.
We're the ones we've been waiting for.
& Illogik aka Cee La Alma joined forces to create TEST THEIR LOGIK.
Since then, Testament and Illogik have been blazing through all across Turtle Island,
from protests, to indigenous education & resistance with the beehive collective tours,
festivals & numerous hip-hop shows & non-profit venues inciting dissidence in crowds.
Their shared commitment and drive has led to a blazing debut album,
which was only briefly slowed by their arrests during the G20 in Toronto.
These arrests were the result of their music video; 'Crash the Meeting',
which went viral online and was picked up by national media in Canada and the US.
The two were charged with indictable conspiracy and counseling charges
and given bail conditions of non association, effectively putting their ability
to perform or otherwise collaborate together on hiatus for five months.
After having all their charges stayed and conditions dropped, they've reunited and are touring,
recording, and launching a brand new album of revolutionary fire.
Illogik & his soulmate marley are also collaborating
on a new album with antony of egypt soon to be released.
Inspiring diverse groups of people to empower themselves and their communities,
TEST THEIR LOGIK is calling on all to join the cause of revolution
and liberation from oppression across the world.
We're the ones we've been waiting for.
