Willie Dunn - I Pity the Country
“Informed by a similarly restrictive temporal frame, the 2008 “apology” focuses exclusively on the tragedy of residential schools, the last of which officially closed its doors in 1996. There is no recognition of a colonial past or present, nor is there any mention of the much broader system of land dispossession, political domination, and cultural genocide of which the residential school system formed only a part. Harper’s apology is thus able, like Gathering Strength before it, to comfortably frame reconciliation in terms of overcoming a “sad chapter” in our shared history. “Forgiveness” and “reconciliation” are posited as a fundamental step in transcending the painful “legacy” that has hampered our collective efforts to “move on”; they are necessary to “begin anew” so that Indigenous peoples can start to build “new partnerships” together with non-Indigenous peoples on what is now unapologetically declared to be “our land.” Glen Coulthard, 'Red Skin, White Masks,' 124.
Inadequacy of ‘cultural genocide’ concept: “My reason for not favouring the term is that it confuses definition with degree. Moreover, though this objection holds in its own right (or so I think), the practical hazards that can ensue once an abstract concept like “cultural genocide” falls into the wrong hands are legion. In particular, in an elementary category error, “either/or” can be substituted for “both/and,” from which genocide emerges as either biological (read “the real thing”) or cultural—and thus, it follows, not real. In practice, it should go without saying that the imposition on a people of the procedures and techniques that are generally glossed as “cultural genocide” is certainly going to have a direct impact on that people’s capacity to stay alive (even apart from their qualitative immiseration while they do so). At the height of the Dawes-era assimilation programme, for instance...Indian numbers hit the lowest level they would ever register. Even in contemporary, post-Native Title Australia, Aboriginal life expectancy clings to a level some 25% below that enjoyed by mainstream society, with infant mortality rates that are even worse. What species of sophistry does it take to separate a quarter “part” of the life of a group from the history of their elimination?” Patrick Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’
Willie Dunn - The Ballad of Crowfoot
Friday June 29, 2018: Israeli Regime forces yet again
opened fire upon peaceful demonstrators in Gaza yesterday, killing two and
injuring more than 420. The two killed, were 13 yr old Yasser Abu
Naja and Mohammed Al-Hamayda (24 yrs old). The thirteen year old
child, Yasser Abu Naja, was executed by an Israeli Sniper who targeted him with
an explosive bullet. The head wound inflicted upon the child, killed him
instantly. Reports from Gaza’s Health Ministry, indicate that
journalists and medics were amongst the injured. More than 420 Palestinians
were injured yesterday, including a man from al-Bureij camp (East Gaza), who
was shot in the neck and remains in critical condition.
I (once again) want to say a few words on barbaric detention of
migrant children by American authorities, something which only recently made
the news when it was revealed that children were being forcibly separated from
their parents by immigration agents before being detained enmasse in what amount
to concentration camps for children.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave his usual lukewarm criticism
of the Donald Trump Administration and said something to the effect that “this
is not the way we do things in Canada”.
Well, he’s lying. In recent years
Canada has detained hundreds of migrant children from the Middle East, West
Africa, Central America and the Caribbean.
In February 2017 the "Invisible Citizens: Canadian Children in
Immigration Detention," study produced by the International Human Rights
Program at the University of Toronto's faculty of law revealed that there were
48 children being detained at the Toronto Immigration Holding Centre alone at
that time, including infants and toddlers.
Putting migrant children behind bars is not just an American phenomenon,
regardless of what Justin Trudeau says otherwise. Canada does not have clean hands and, very
notably, continues to classify the United States as a “safe country” for
refugees, which it most certainly is not.
Manu Chao - Clandestino
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