Skip to main content

“INDIGENOUS PEOPLE SHOULD JUST GET OVER IT AND GET ON WITH LIFE”

                                                                    
                                                                    William Okemow1 

                                                                      August 15, 2018 


I think the serious teaching of Indigenous history should be implemented in the school curriculums all across Canada. The true story, not what the colonial white man decides to write. It is an essential part of the history of the country and it is missing. - Claudine Sampson2 


Whenever I hear the phrase “Indigenous people should just get over it and get on with life" from people from of other ethnic backgrounds, primarily people whose ancestors came from Europe, I often have a kind of reflex action to believe "yeah it’s true", that it’s something that happened in the past, something neither my parents or yours had control over. But there is another reaction I am having these days. Let me ask you, how would you feel about being put, often by force of one kind or another, on a small piece of land where nothing, or nothing much, can grow, near a river or lake you can't fish in because its be polluted by careless oil spills by some faceless company. Also, how would you feel about having underfunding for your education and a general lack of resources in your community? How about being faced with racism as a daily occurrence? But still, yes, logically Indigenous people maybe should just get over it and move on with life. 

We have been nearly wiped out from the land that you so proudly occupy. There are traditions, stories and teachings I, and my brothers and sisters, might never learn. Trauma and hurt are being passed down from generation to generation. Take the residential school, they were not as good as people were made to believe at the time. As a matter a fact they were very hurtful. Many families lost their children, nieces and nephews. Children lost their language and connections. Is that really something you would just get over and move on with? The last residential school only closed down not so long ago, in 1996. Many indigenous women go missing on a yearly basis, without officials really looking for them in a serious way. They are often regarded and labelled as just another “run away", just another indigenous woman who does not want to be found. It could be, unusually is, a sister, a mother, or someone’s daughter. It seems so easy to tell another ethnic group to get over it and move on with life when you haven’t experienced it yourself. 

But one last time, "Why don't we", you might ask, "get over it?" (But I hope that you would be asking yourself too). Well, there were promises made to the Indigenous people of this land.
They are called treaties, promises for good education, good health care and safe places to live in exchange for the loss of our lands. These promises have not been kept, not even close. So, Indigenous people live in a country where they are often forgotten about, the country only ever responds when the rest of the world sees Canada forgetting its responsibility to its own Indigenous nations. Of the examples given to you so far, is this something, honestly, you would just get over and move on with?

They are called treaties, promises for good education, good health care and safe places to live in exchange for the loss of our lands. These promises have not been kept, not even close. So, Indigenous people live in a country where they are often forgotten about, the country only ever responds when the rest of the world sees Canada forgetting its responsibility to its own Indigenous nations. Of the examples given to you so far, is this something, honestly, you would just get over and move on with?



____________________________________________

1 William Okemow is a student in the Anishnawbe Health Centre Toronto - George Brown Community Health Worker Training Program and is a member of the Cree Nation.

 2 Claudine Sampson is a student in the Anishnawbe Health Centre Toronto - George Brown Community Health Worker Training Program and is a member of the Six Nations




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HOW THE COVID PANDEMIC HAS CHANGED PANHANDLING by Jim Ward

Panhandling, i.e., begging for small change on the street, has been under considerable threat since the coming of Covid. Of course, the practice has been under threat before whenever the good burgers of some city find that the poor have resorted to “inconveniencing” the public and they feel the “moral” need to criminalize it. But Covid is causing different constraints. In these times very few people carry cash with them. In fact, many retailers will not accept cash, since it may well be ‘dirty money’. The term panhandling had its origins, so I’m told, during an economic depression in the United States in the late 19th century. That depression hit the panhandle area of northern Texas particularly hard and it caused many workers to head to New York City, where the ‘Buddy can you spare a dime?’ request was given birth. The practitioners of this art became known as the panhandlers. Back in the early 1970s I conducted studies of panhandling approaches in six North American cities, one of th...
Post a Comment
Read more

THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET: THE FATAL ERROR OF INDIVIDUALISM by Bill Lee

  I suspect I am not alone in remembering that I was taught in high school English class that Shakespeare’s great tragedy, Hamlet, was about a man who simply could not make up his mind to take action and get vengeance for the murder of his father. The lesson that Shakespeare was laying down for us, we were told, was that Hamlet dithered, was indecisive, and that his failure to act decisively led to his own downfall and the death of others. But that was, and is, a superficial reading of the play. I had the opportunity while at university in Houston, of studying under, and knowing, a very perceptive English professor and my mentor, who helped his students understand the real tragedy. It is one that has never left me and a teaching that I urge all of us to think about. What we learned in that English class was that the real tragedy of Hamlet was more social and political than personal. It was not simply that he was indecisive but that, more importantly, he refused to acknowledge and u...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bleak Times for Trump’s USA? by Bill Lee

“If we don’t put a stake into the heart of this administration, there  may not be an election in 2028.” Gavin Newsom, Governor of California The news from the US of A about the wild and weird pronouncements and actions of the abhorrent individual sitting in the most powerful seat in the land, DJ Trump, is bleak. There is his destructive mania for imposing tariffs on every nation in the world: his corrupt attempt to block public knowledge of the truth of the sordid matter of the Epstein files; his racist hatred of Brown and Black people and his inhumane policy of arresting them willy nilly and illegally deporting many; his war on the hard won rights of women and other minorities; his ignoring of court orders (he owns a more or less corrupt Supreme Court); his impossible and unhinged comments on wanting Canada to become the 51st state of the USA; and his increasingly wacky and garbled speech, are only the most recent concerns. But probably the most dangerous of his right-wing campaig...
Post a Comment
Read more