By Daniel R. Meister When it comes to periodizing the history of federal policy of multiculturalism in Canada, existing models have loosely associated changes in policy with the changing of the governments.[1] But a closer examination of the earliest decades of the policy’s existence suggests that the Cabinet ministers responsible for the policy were more responsible for its evolution than the… Read more »
Poilievre’s allegory to Robin Hood was not, after all, a quaint diversion from matters of real political substance. His speech sets a dangerous precedent for shifting public discourse toward the mystical, exclusionary community of “the folk,” and that it is a threat against which we should all be vigilant.
By Roberta Lexier For early twentieth-century Marxists, fascism was, explains Alberto Toscano in his 2023 book, Late Fascism, “intimately linked to the prerequisites of capitalist domination.” “The instrument of the big bourgeoisie,” Robert O. Paxton suggests in The Anatomy of Fascism, its purpose: “for fighting the proletariat when the legal means available to the state proved insufficient to subdue them.” “At times… Read more »
Shannon Stettner[1] The space outside abortion clinics is complicated. Much of it is public and there are important discussions about the uses of public space, the right to protest, and the “ownership” of such spaces.[2] In Canada, many legal injunctions or safe access zones (theoretically) prevent protestors from occupying the area directly in front of clinics because clinics are also… Read more »
Daniel R. Meister In the first part of an article I published with Active History in February 2024, I contested the authenticity of a quote frequently attributed to Pierre Elliott Trudeau. The quote in question: “We’ll keep them in the ghetto as long as they want” with regard to First Nations in Canada. However, while in search of a different quote recently,… Read more »
By Samir Shaheen-Hussain The “thrifty gene” has a decades-long history that can be traced back to James V. Neel, an American physician-scientist, considered by many in his field as the “father of modern human genetics” [90]. Neel expounded his hypothesis in 1962 by proposing that such a gene would have emerged in hunter-gatherer societies as an adaptive response to a… Read more »
The kinds of assimilatory activities run by the YWCA, and other volunteer associations, were about providing material and ideological support for the Residential School and Indian Hospital system in Canada. The goal was to assimilate Indigenous patients and youth to European-Canadian life outside of Indian Hospitals and Residential Schools, including potential places of employment. We see this in a January 1964 report that reads “The girls from the Upgrading Class and the University girls somehow got into a chat session. It was wonderful to see the young ones who are just starting out gain encouragement and hope from just watching and talking with the ones who have obviously ‘made it’.”[12] The measure of Indigenous Peoples’ “making it” became assimilation through integration requiring the removal and disconnection of Indigenous Peoples from their culture, communities, and land. As in the Habkirk and Ferguson blog, our research implicates the everyday work of service organizations and their volunteers in supporting the colonial project. Where there were shortfalls of money or goods, we see women’s philanthropic work filling gaps. Knowing these histories and acknowledging these connections is integral to enacting Reconciliation because the “burden of truth-telling should not be placed on the shoulders of survivors. Reconciliation requires institutions, governments, and individuals to live up to their own responsibilities and complete and fulfill the TRC’s 94 calls to action. We must all learn the true history of Residential Schools, listen to Survivors and take a stand against those who would deny, distort and minimalize this history.”
Tuck and Yang’s Decolonization is not a metaphor provides an interesting touchpoint to identify a pattern of “settler moves to innocence.” What does this mean, and what is the pattern? As Indigenous peoples are literally removed from the land and disposed of its resources such as hunting and fishing, but also access to natural resource revenue, they are also figuratively removed and replaced with appropriated words, such as Sakaw. This is an instance that Tuck describes as “settler nativism” where setters attempt to “deflect” their identity by appropriating, in this instance, Indigenous words to be used as place names. There are many instances of this in Canada – itself a place name rooted in an Iroquoian language
This pattern is rooted in colonial and patriarchal power. The settler claims control the land through displacement and replacement of Indigenous peoples. In this specific instance, the Papaschase First Nation who occupied Reserve 136. Settlers, such as those on the Names Advisory Committee and City Council, then use Indigenous words (i.e. Sakaw) as place names to assuage feelings of guilt. This “move to innocence” allows for a feeling of moral resolution without addressing the ongoing colonial structures that led to the theft of land in the first place.
To date what has become painfully clear is that the responsibility and burden of truth telling has fallen largely on Indigenous Peoples, communities, and Nations. Survivors have been forced to continue to fight the church and state in court to have their records released and their experiences validated. We only have to consider the infamous St. Anne’s Residential School, where Survivors are in a legal battle for their records. According to Veldon Coburn, the continued failure of Indigenous and Northern Affairs[3] to release these illustrates,
There is no difference between the suppression of the truth and denial of the truth. Both tactics – whether deployed to advance reconciliation or resist it – subordinate Indigenous Peoples and their truth of Residential Schools and the integral part this system of cultural genocide played in colonialism.
John Price This is the second post in a two-part series based on a recently published article in the International Journal, “Resisting Palestine’s Partition: Elizabeth MacCallum, the Arab World and UN Resolution 181(II).”Part One is available here. The balance of evidence does suggest that Canada contributed more than any other country, including the USA, to the establishment of Israel. As… Read more »
