The #case against #Idle_No_More cofounder #Sylvia_McAdam and her brother Kurtis was dismissed in yet another costly, stressful and unnecessary #legal process that pitted the assertion of #indigenous #land rights against #settler #state intransigence.
Today is world water day, although if you are aware of the #water crisis facing many First Nations and Indigenous communities it might feel more like another Settler #greed day.
...the path to #Decolonization begins through an awareness of residential schools - the vehicles of what is widely acknowledged now as an attempted cultural genocide of first peoples by the Canadian state.
Using the proper name – I’ve only just learned the name Comiaken (#Qw_umiyiqun), which was a Cowichan winter village – turns out to be a good step away from Eurocentric history. It got me dipping into local artists, survey maps, place names info, all sorts of random stuff.
The apology reminds us that those who control the narrative have the power to change the world for everyone in it. By framing Pîhtokahanapiwiyin as a violent, treasonous villain, early settler's helped to enshrine fear and hatred of the Indigenous people of the area.
Since the Govt of Canada keeps forcing first nations to spend their meager financial resources on lengthy cases in settler #courts fought on settler terms that simply prove all over again what we already know - we live on stolen land, even by our own settler legal reckoning - one