If you feel personally attacked when the Indian Act, the Chief and Council system, the AFN, or other colonial institutions are revealed for the oppressive and genocidal instruments they are, you should learn more about them... ... and about who YOU are. If you dont see a difference, you are not an indigenous leader. You are a canadian leader. Making a difference in the colonial or indigenous world, if the difference adds up to a deeper involvement in and proficiency with the framework of colonization, or facilitating (leading) people further into it is known as neocolonialism which perpetuates and advances the colonial agenda. The colonial agenda translates as land dispossession, social and political oppression, economic oppression of a systemic nature, and genocide of indigenous peoples which is intended to force capitulation and absorption (assimilation) into the echelons of a society that has largely forgotten how oppressed they truly are. I cannot define you, even if you gave me permission to. If you want to call yourself an indigenous leader, or if others want to call you that, so be it. What I can do is define myself and what views I have in the face of a society and culture that spends literally billions of dollars yearly to define and contain me, you, every indigenous person you or I will ever know. Not only us indigenous peoples but every other person which is alive today under a framework designed to manipulate and control every aspect of our lives and even deaths. In so defining for myself what situation we are in today, I appreciate and understand the flexibility and adaptability of people needing to survive. Especially considering the brutality and savagery we have been subjected to for literally centuries. I also know that surviving under ongoing colonial violence ensures the subjugation and domination of our indigenous territories and our inherent lawful access and stewardship of them by colonial violence, real and implied. Since our identities are so closely tied to our territories, how could it be any other way that our identities are subjugated and dominated by the same colonial violence while we survive? How could it be any different that those who profess to be indigenous leaders, who survive and teach others how to survive in the colonial framework of violence which only perpetuates the implied and actual colonial violence without equipping their peoples with the foundational understanding that we are targets of genocide, are not leading indigenous people into the very framework which ensures the continued dispossession of territories and identities and therefore leading them to the colonial agenda. In our case, the canadian agenda, and therefore whom can be seen as canadian leaders rather than indigenous leaders. If what we see as indigenous leadership are leading the charge to deeper entrenchment in the apparatus that displaces, dispossesses, deceives, destroys, poisons and kills us and our territories, then we are lost and leaderless with traitors masquerading as patriots to our indigenous roots. Our leaders, our true indigenous leaders, do not advocate a deeper colonial involvement with an invading society that is known to be genocidal to us through long term observation and with evidence that is irrefutable. Our true indigenous leaders advocate something quite different. They advocate a resistance to the colonial order, which is colonial violence by every means necessary. They advocate a reclamation of indigenous ways which have been tremendously damaged by that colonial violence. They apply their advocacy to the actions of their lives and walk their talk. That is indigenous leadership to me and to many others who are not satisfied with the status quo or the mistaken steps of generations past (and some present!) which attempted to claim and seize colonized ways to improve their people. The origins and roots of this improvement come from ubiquitous white supremacy known as (but not named!) social Darwinism and a collective inferiority complex inserted forcibly through residential schools and subsequent intergenerational trauma along with the continual reiterations of that white supremacy, in public schools which forms the foundations of knowledge of this genocidal and narcissistic society. A society we call canada but could just as easily be called america or any other colonial state across the globe which perpetuates the colonial agenda. No, I cant define you or define for you what an indigenous leader is or is not. I can define for me those things. I can also define what I witness as a prevalent but failing solution to the colonial problem: deeper entrenchment with the system with the idea it will change to better suit indigenous lives. It wont. All it will do is convince you that the vast amounts of energy you spend trying to make it so is well spent instead of a weak rationalization for surviving when we are crossing thresholds that the environment cannot sustain. We must do better than survive in colonial violence and teach our children how to survive in these systems. To quote a leader from back when indigenous peoples were credibly threatening the status quo: I would rather hand over to my children the dignity of the struggle than to sign a deal they cannot live with. - George Manuel Considering the environment has taken such a beating and continues to, I doubt that our children will be able to live with much more destruction of what we all need to survive: Clean air, clean water, clean lands, clean oceans.
Posted on: Sun, 11 May 2014 05:09:13 +0000
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