"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..”
“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
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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