BILL LEE
October 21, 2020
The brutality, violent bullying and terrorism perpetrated by the Whitestream gangs that have been attacking the property and persons of the Mic Mog lobster Fishermen in Nova Scotia demonstrate, one more time, how colonial advantage is taken as a holy birthright by significant sectors of the Canadian population. The attackers are acting as though the Supreme Court’s decision in favour of the Mic Mog and Maliseet right to fish for a modest living never happenedi. They are attempting to cloak their violence and destruction with the pretense of environmental concern when it is nothing but the usual attempt to maintain their advantage over their Indigenous neighboursii. As well, we can observe this colonial and illegal action (threatening violence, violence itself and arson) for advantage being affirmed, protected and enforced by our national police force. In this we see the long-honoured mission of the force to maintain the right of the colonizer to maintain the traditional position of ascendency, economically, socially, legally and politically over the original people of this land.
Colonialism’s Dirty Business
It is glaringly obvious. If we Whitestream Canadians don’t already understand from history the way colonialism was set up to operate (to transfer resource wealth from Indigenous people to the colonial class) and don’t see the evidence that has been offered up, not just today but for weeks, of it’s doing the dirty business as it was set up to do, then we are abysmally stupid, or so mired in the fetid muck and sludge of our colonial advantage that we have become inured to the vile odour of the rank injustice. In any event to the extent we do not raise our voices against them, we are clearly complicit in the shameful actions that are taking place in Nova Scotia today. How much of the foul smell of this complicity are we going to stomach? Are we simply going to persist in allowing ourselves to act as partners in this sordid dishonest dance? We have been at it for such a very long time. Are we not yet disgusted and tired? Are we not ashamed?
How Long the Pretense?
How long are we going to put up with seeing our fellow citizens brutalized? How long are we going to stand idly by while they are brutalized and denied, not only the rights guaranteed in treaties, but as human beings? How long are we going to pretend that the empty promises delivered by our politicians have any genuine meaning for Indigenous people or for ourselves? How long are we going to accept that the hypocritical apologies of our leaders were and are nothing but anodyne sops to our own miserable consciences? When are we going to admit that the whole notion of reconciliation is nothing but an empty sham; that, in the absence of getting rid of colonialism, what is being asked of Indigenous people is to become reconciled to lives of penury, to be perpetual second class citizens, mendicants depending on the largess of our insincere colonial government charity; to become reconciled to being unequal before the law of the Canadian state; to become reconciled to, third class education, health care and housing? Indigenous people are not so misinformed or naive to buy into the fiction of reconciliation.
Why are we?
Indigenous People Know the Game
No Indigenous people that I know show any naiveté about this pitiful game. They have observed and endured colonial codswallop and bafflegab since before the Canadian state came into existence. They also know what needs to be done. But, while having the understanding, intelligence, pride and will to resist and dismantle colonialism they do not, on their own, have the power to bring down this profoundly unjust system. They need a partner.
The Responsibility of Canadian Citizens
It is really, as we are hearing more and more, not an Indigenous problem. It is a Whitestream problem. The columnist Tiffany Gooch (2020), in discussing the appalling events in Nova Scotia states that: “It is the role of every Canadian to help break these painful generational cycles of abuse inflicted on Indigenous people”. This is a bracingly blunt and clear statement of the situation and our responsibility. So, when are we, the Whitestream dominant majority, going to look at this cruel and shameful system (from which we, the Whitestream colonial class benefit) directly and unflinchingly? When are we going to reclaim our own dignity and join with our Indigenous brothers and sisters to scream “ENOUGH”? When oh when are we going to join with them and undertake the actions that are necessary to dismantle this cruel and pernicious system that so oppresses them and so debases us?
Resources
Fisheries and Oceans Canada (2019). Factsheet: The 1999 Supreme Court of Canada Marshall Decision. https://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/publications/fisheries-peches/marshall-1999-eng.html. Dec. 20.
Gooch, T. (2020). “Nova Scotia violence is an act of terror”. Toronto Star. N7. October 18
i The Supreme Court of Canada’s September 17, 1999 decision in the Donald Marshall case affirmed a treaty right to hunt, fish and gather in pursuit of a ‘moderate livelihood’, arising out of the Peace and Friendship Treaties of 1760 and 1761.The Decision affected 34 Mi’kmaq and Maliseet First Nations in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and the Gaspé region of Quebec.
ii It is a more than a bit rich for non-Indigenous people who use, on average 450 traps per person, to tell Indigenous people who have been using around 50 traps, that they are not being conscious of conservation. Additionally of course, there is the irony that Indigenous people who harvested lobster for thousands of years causing no diminution of the lobster stock being lectured to by the colonizers, whose fishing practices actually have led to the concern about conservation, that they need to cut their takes or stop harvesting lobster altogether.
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