pickExcellent overview of Indigenous political & economic struggles over land rights. Sometimes while listening to this audiobook I would feel so frustrated about the way successive Canadian governments continue to ignore treaty agreements, Supreme Court judgements & our own constitution that I would either pace the floor or take a break. Narrator Darrell Dennis is Secwepemc, as is author Arthur Manuel; I appreciate hearing correct pronunciation.
The first obstacle in defining our new one-to-one relationship with Canada will be the very heavy debt from the seizure and economic exploitation of our lands for 150 years since Confederation. This debt is enormous. I suspect that one of the main reasons that the Canadian government refuses to acknowledge our Section 35 rights is that it would leave it open to paying a percentage of the astronomical wealth that has been taken out of our lands.
[On the 10 years spent drafting the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples]: Even referring to us as “Indigenous Peoples” was a battle with the [United Nations member] states‘ representatives, who wanted us referred to as Indigenous populations. That term would have kept us outside of the UN‘s basic rights covenants, which offers protections to all of the world‘s “peoples.”
Went out of town for the day. #audiobook journey
pickAn excellent personal narrative, interwoven with a lot of info about policies and structures, both Canadian and global, and how they have impacted Indigenous people in Canada. Manuel starts in the 60s, sometimes with some flashbacks, using his own story as an activist to explain complex colonial policies and structures and creative acts of resistance.Lots that I knew snippets about hang together more clearly now.
#Nonfiction2021 #NativeAuthor
Indigenous peoples need to understand that the fundamental issue is our land, and the natural wealth that it produces. Our biggest strength is in the economic uncertainty that our legal, constitutional, and political actions create for the status quo. Canada and the provinces have gotten used to the colonial privilege of having the final say on resource development in our Aboriginal and treaty territories. This must be changed.
The Hague conference started out well with a majority appearing to hold fast to the principle of prior and informed consent of Indigenous peoples. This stance was not purely altruistic. The world had taken note that while Indigenous territories take up one third of the Earth‘s surface, they contain two thirds of the planet‘s biodiversity. Removing Indigenous consent would open the door to Wild West industrial development.
For both the Canadians and the Americans, the trees were simply a commodity to be extracted. For our people, the forest included the salmon streams, the cultural sites, and the hunting and gathering sites. We supported ecologically culturally sustainable logging, but not the sort of destructive logging that continues to be carried out in our forests. I was not going to allow our proprietary interest in the forests to be reduced to cents per foot.
The hardest part of being chief is confronting the real destitution among community members. I was most shaken by those people who were asking for mercy from a really uncaring and unfeeling society. And there is nothing you could do. You could blame them for not doing enough to help themselves, but you know that they are not going to get anywhere unless there‘s a major change in our society.
pickA beautiful collection of poetry highlighting Indigenous issues in Alberta. Containing themes such as identity, family and grief, Belcourt weaves a somewhat autobiographical account of his life. If you like prose form poetry you will definitely like this book. As this is a collection of poetry, Belcourt switches between first person and third person limited narration depending on the pronoun use in his poem.
