Saturday 5 May 2018

Capitalism, Colonialism and Resistance in Canada

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"The Other Side of the Ledger: An Indian View of the Hudson's Bay Company", National Film Board of Canada, 1972

Gerald Horne, "200th Anniversary of the Birth of Karl Marx and a Revolution in Understanding History", May 5 2018

"That cheap Indian land was essential to the financing of the development of Toronto has also never been part of Toronto’s origin story. With virtually no surplus agricultural production and little trade, and England unwilling to supply funds for public works (unless the cost could be justified by immediate military need), the Upper Canadian economy was incapable of financing the enormous expense of building much-needed canals and roads. The colonies of British North America, like those of the American states, were set up to derive much of their revenue and political stability through surveying Indian lands and selling land titles to speculators it favoured, thus generating revenue and securing the loyalty of powerful people, who would reap their own profits as they sold the land to settlers. The entire economy of Upper Canada was thus premised on fundamental inequality between its Indigenous and non-Indigenous inhabitants."

Victoria Freeman, ‘Toronto Has No History'!: Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism and Historical Memory in Canada's Largest City’

“Although we [Indigenous people] have been denied the major benefits of industrialism, we were the original source of the labor that created the wealth of this country and thus contributed to the development of the existing colonial system.”

Howard Adams, Prison of Grass

“The history of the Metis of Western Canada is really the history of their attempts to defend their constitutional rights against the encroachment of nascent monopoly capital. It is incorrect to place them as bewildered victims who did not know how to protect themselves against the vicious features which marked the penetration of the white man into the Western prairies.
We are on much firmer ground when we refer to the glorious tradition of the Metis in fighting for a democratic opening in the West than in representing them as an utterly primitive people incapable of protecting themselves. After all, they fought for a long time and fought very well, first against the Hudson’s Bay Company in the old days and then in the two North West rebellions...What has happened, of course, is that they were crushed and the present misery is the result of that shameful episode of the forward march of capitalism on the prairies...the picture of the Metis as a sort of savage people has been deliberately presented by the conquerors in order to falsify issues and attempt to present some kind of justification for the treacherous way in which these original pioneers were treated..”

Submission of the Metis Association of Alberta to the Ewing Commission, 1935, quoted in Dobbin, One-and-a-Half Men

“After the trials that followed this conquest, eight Indians were judicially murdered, and 20 were given jail sentences of from two to 20 years. Big Bear and Poundmaker were sentenced to three years each...The eight men who sacrificed themselves at the end of the rope were the champions of freedom and democracy. They were incomparable heroes, as shown by their last moments: ‘They marched to the place of execution with a firm step, imitating the funeral march of the soldiers who accompanied them. We went to the scaffold with them, where one told me, “Father, we are anxious to die singing. I pray you to allow us to sing in our style.” Whilst the ropes were being placed around their necks they sang together. Having observed in the middle of the crowd some relations and friends, they shouted farewell, advising them to forgive their enemies.’” 

Howard Adams, Prison of Grass

“By hanging Riel, Ottawa silenced revolutionary and separatist ideas in the Northwest for many years. On 16 November 1885, Riel was murdered on the colonizer’s scaffold in full view of curious spectators. It was violence, raw and naked, but the message was clear--the Ottawa regime was now in full command. This highly publicized judicial murder was to serve as a vivid reminder of what happens to patriotic citizens who attempt to establish their own democratic government in colony.” 

Howard Adams, Prison of Grass

“This image of the grateful Indian was an essential ingredient in the myth of national identity which was taking shape in Canada around the turn of the century. The image allowed Canadians to nurture a sense of themselves as a just people, unlike the Americans south of the border who were waging a war of extermination against their Indian population. Canadians believed that they treated their Natives justly. They negotiated treaties before they occupied the land. They fed the Indians when they were starving and shared with them the great principles of British justice. The story of the Mounted Police had a powerful influence on the way Canadians felt themselves to be distinct from, and superior to, the United States…” 

Daniel Francis, The Imaginary Indian
 

'Almost as soon as the [FLQ] manifesto was broadcast, groups and individuals began expressing support for its objectives, although almost all denounced the group's violent methods...On call-in radio stations, many called in to announce their support for the objectives of the manifesto and to denounce the established order...Active support for the FLQ began taking shape on Montreal's university campuses, and on 15 October, 1,000 social sciences and humanities students at the Université de Montréal voted to go on strike until the jailed FLQ members were released. At the newly instituted UQAM, an assembly of eight hundred students voted to support the FLQ and to begin a strike to put pressure on the government to negotiate seriously with the FLQ. A group of students also took over the office of the rector of the university and transformed it into a centre of operations, and an assembly of sixty to seventy-five professors announced its support for the objectives of the FLQ manifesto and decided to begin a strike of its own. The administration, not sure how to respond, suspended courses. In the province's CEGEP system and high schools, thousands of students began walking out on strike. Leftist figures such as Pierre Vallières, Michel Chartrand, Robert Lemieux, and Charles Gagnon addressed the assemblies.
A major rally had been planned at the sports centre of the Université de Montréal , but the university authorities refused to allow it to take place. Paul Sauvé arena in east Montreal was quickly found as an alternative venue. The curling rink had been rented out to the FRAP, which allowed the assembly to take place once its own event had finished. It was not until late in the evening that the assembly began with a reading of the FLQ manifesto. Once the reading had finished, the 3,000 people who had been waiting for two hours crammed into the curling arena broke into applause.

Sean Mills, 'The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal'

‘What does it mean to live in an occupied country? The soldiers stand by public buildings with rifles and machine guns at the ready; army personnel carriers cross-cross the city; now and then a convoy of twenty or more vehicles rumbles to an army base; helicopters hover over the city. But the soldiers seem awkward, ill-at-ease...how many speak the language of the Québécois? Their baggy battledress contrasts with the menace of their automatic rifles; they look so awkward standing there on the bustling downtown streets. Why are they here? Who are they protecting? "They’ve come to protect us from the FLQ," I hear. Is that why scores are arrested who have publicly opposed the FLQ and its methods, who obviously have nothing to do with it? Is that why police announce today that they are considering banning the pro-union weekly Québec-Presse for advocating "passive resistance" to the war measures act? Is that why the Université du Québec was closed down today? And why political meetings were banned in campuses across the city?...The press says that life goes on as usual, that a general calm prevails. Every day we phone our friends, our comrades; to see who has disappeared since yesterday. Every night we wait for the knock at the door—at 5 a.m.—the knock of police terror resounding across the province. From the pattern of arrests—scores in jail who have opposed the FLQ and its methods and had no contact with them—it seems that we’re all "criminals" in the eyes of the police, all of us who have advocated the liberation of Québec…’

Jean Martin, ‘An eyewitness report: Montreal under Occupation’

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