For a moment there, I was worried they were cutting off Fort MacMurray;
Ontario Provincial Police shut down Canada’s busiest highway early Friday morning west of Kingston due to native protesters in the area, who had earlier blockaded a section of secondary highway and a stretch of nearby railway track on the eve of the National Day of Action.
Friday morning, the Ontario Provincial Police closed Highway 401 both ways between Napanee and Belleville and were diverting traffic north onto Hwy 7 due to native protesters “being in the direct area, for safety reasons,” said Sergeant Kristine Rae of the Smith Falls detachment.
Mark my words – the moment is approaching when a bandana prowling these police protected barricades will end up in the crosshairs of someone’s high powered rifle.
And right after that, Dalton McGuinty will blame Americans.
h/t.
Update: At the BBC, forum comments that go horribly wrong.
Related: Speaking of stereotyping and double standards – note the photograph chosen to illustrate this post. Bigot, heal thyself.
Astonishingly, Dawg responds with this: “I’d say some folks do a pretty good job of stereotyping themselves.”
Stereotype? When I see a cowboy hat, I think “cattle industry”.
In Dawg’s “progressive” world, cowboy hat means “racist”. Because, as we all know, western rural culture is synonymous with intolerance.
Canuckistanian, the indian schools were a dismal attempt to try to bring the aboriginals into the main stream of society. Though this attempt, fraught with all kinds of abuse, lasted a few hundred years it still was a considerable and extensive effort to force cultural change and it failed to achieve its goals.
We are still left with a fast growing population of natives on reserves that still wants to retain its old tribal hunter/gather ways. As ET and others have posted, whether its Africa, the Middle East or Australia, these cultures can not be maintained anymore. In each and every case pouring money and liberal thinking into these tribes leads to dependency and the same destructive social chaos that Howard in Australia is trying to fix. All the problems you outlined exist because of these policies. Every tax dollar Canada produces could be spent on these reserves and nothing would change. This change can only be done by the natives themselves. The successful bands are making this change and moving forward, not sliding backward.
These reserves, many inaccessible and on marginal land far from roads and communications, can not be sustained. The natives don’t care to maintain the water treatment plants and through neglect the homes deteriorate because they don’t have to, the government will fix it. Their school attendance hovers around the 60% mark. The reserves and the Department of Indian affairs, which is like a UN boondoogle, must be dismantled. A cash settlement with each Indian made and that is the end of it. IMHO there is no other choice.
Alas, A’dam, I explictily disagree with your perscription. I don’t think that any references to the so-called notion of race belong in our statutes. A hundred years ago women couldn’t vote, yet we struck that notion from our statutes.
No non-volitional group, as you put it, should enjoy special status, as you put it, in our society. Either we as individual human beings are equal upon principle, or we are not, and if we are not, then they are either greater or less than we. Who would say such a thing about any individual just because they are a non-volitional member of a so-called race? Why are Indians required, under your scheme, to express Native self determination? Shouldn’t they be allowed and required, just like the rest of us, to express individual self determination? If they then want to join some sort of Indian cultural club, well, that’s certainly allowed under clause 2(c) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Consider this Usage Note from the American Heritage dictionary entry on race:
“The notion of race is nearly as problematic from a scientific point of view as it is from a social one. European physical anthropologists of the 17th and 18th centuries proposed various systems of racial classifications based on such observable characteristics as skin color, hair type, body proportions, and skull measurements, essentially codifying the perceived differences among broad geographic populations of humans. The traditional terms for these populations—Caucasoid (or Caucasian), Mongoloid, Negroid, and in some systems Australoid—are now controversial in both technical and nontechnical usage, and in some cases they may well be considered offensive. (Caucasian does retain a certain currency in American English, but it is used almost exclusively to mean “white” or “European” rather than “belonging to the Caucasian race,” a group that includes a variety of peoples generally categorized as nonwhite.)
“The biological aspect of race is described today not in observable physical features but rather in such genetic characteristics as blood groups and metabolic processes, and the groupings indicated by these factors seldom coincide very neatly with those put forward by earlier physical anthropologists. Citing this and other points—such as the fact that a person who is considered black in one society might be nonblack in another—many cultural anthropologists now consider race to be more a social or mental construct than an objective biological fact.”
Now, consider this speech given by Abraham Lincoln on July 10, 1858…
“Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow. What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden.
“That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will — whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro.
“I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it! [Voices — me” “no one,” &c.] If it is not true let us tear it out! [cries of “no, no,”] let us stick to it then, [cheers] let us stand firmly by it then. [Applause.]”
So that’s it, A’dam. If you think that Indians aren’t equal upon principle to the rest of us, if you think that they should not be subject to the same participations, rewards, and punishments that our society confers on all our other citizens, then I ask you two questions: (1) is it because they are greater than us or because they are less than us, and (2) how dare you treat Indians and non-Indians like that?
The problem with the “civil disobedience” argument advanced by A’dam is that the protesters aren’t engaging in civil disobedience, which would ordinarily be defined as the _peaceable_ resistance to a given government’s commands or a specific law. Using an armed band to interfere with a provincial highway and rail transport very obviously falls into the category of “direct action,” and the implied threat of force that stems from openly carrying weapons brings it perilously close to armed insurrection. They need to lose the guns.
ET: They were taking all travellers of those roads hostage.
A laughable statement. Those travelers had other roads and other routes available to them. They were demonstrably not hostages.
That is racist – as vitrivius correctly point out – and you simply don’t understand this…Native self-determination – what rubbish. What a racist statement. They are human beings – and your insistence on defining them as a ‘race’ or collective – doesn’t help.
Does that mean that the Assembly of First Nations also doesn’t understand that they’re also being “racist” (against themselves?) when they seek self-governance (which I, and many others, equate with self-determination)? Because that’s what they’re ultimately seeking. And that transfer of power (as opposed to money) is the only long-term, self-sustaining solution to this issue.
Of course, it’s a solution that neither the political establishment nor, apparently, folks here (and to be fair, most of the Canadian public at present) have to date been willing to concede. The only difference is that while the Government of Canada attempts to offer Native groups money (in lieu of real power of self-determination), you are unwilling to offer them even that.
David Hand, how do you reconcile this statement…
the indian schools were a dismal attempt to try to bring the aboriginals into the main stream of society
…with this one…
As ET and others have posted, whether its Africa, the Middle East or Australia, these cultures can not be maintained anymore?
Both the residential schools and your latter statement are predicated on an assumption that the Aboriginal way of life was (is) inferior to, and now archaic in light of, the Western model.
Vitruvius: (1) is it because they are greater than us or because they are less than us?
Not greater nor lesser, but distinct nevertheless, for unique and exceptional historical reasons.
(2) how dare you treat Indians and non-Indians like that?
I dare because the AFN, and many other groups whom the AFN considers as her supporters, allies, and partners, dares.
mcgrimm: They need to lose the guns.
This is true.
“Both the residential schools and your latter statement are predicated on an assumption that the Aboriginal way of life was (is) inferior to, and now archaic in light of, the Western model.”
It is. Not a value judgement. Just a statement of fact, demonstrated by the fact that it no longer exists.
No, A’dam, Indians are not distinct, qua citizenry, they are no more or less unique than any other non-volitional taxonomization, for normal and unexceptional historical reasons.
Yes, A’dam, I do think that the Assembly of First Nations doesn’t understand that they’re being racist against themselves when they seek mandatory non-volitional collectivism over their claimed taxonomical labelling scheme. We are not labels; we are real live individual human beings.
Stop telling us who to be, A’dam. Let each live as each, subject to their strengths and weaknesses, with appropriate altruistic charatable considerations amongst all. Be not, A’dam, a totalitarian authoritarian who would dictate to we the people a classist taxonomy we must obey.
The road to utopia is paved with tombstones.
The detour around that disaster is called minarchist meritocracy.
“I dare because the AFN, and many other groups whom the AFN considers as her supporters, allies, and partners, dares.”
So, how’s that been working for them?
adam – you may laugh, but if a traveller is forced to use a different route – whether shorter or longer, familiar or unfamiliear, is not the point by someone blocking a PUBLIC road – that’s taking those people hostage to your agenda. It is using them to make the gov’t do something. That’s hostage-taking – using people to make someone else do something.
You are, as usual, adam, slithering out of answering. I – and vitruvius has said it far, far better than I – was pointing out that your definition of natives as a collective was denying each individual native their human identity as an individual. You see them only as a collective – and see their activity only as a collective, eg, Native ‘self-determination’ – which suggests some kind of separate species.
The fact that the Assembly of First Nations talks in this mode doesn’t justify it. Self-governance? You think it means the same as ‘self-determination’? No – self-determination, again, suggests an a priori genetic Causal Force, specific to that ‘race’ that must be ‘expressed’. Nonsense.
As for self-governance – since I am advocating the end of the reserve system, with its rejection of private ownership of property and business, then – self-governance of that territory doesn’t apply.
No, transference of power won’t do it. You need MONEY, adam. And the reserves are set up so that they can’t MAKE MONEY. OK?
You don’t understand that a communist commune – where no-one is allowed to own property or goods, won’t function in the modern industrial society. The native band populations are too large – and industrialism functions by individual innovation and hard work.
You can sit in your chief’s chair, and have all the power you want. But, without an ECONOMY, adam, your words are hollow and empty. So, adam, how are you going to enable the economy on reserves? Hmmm?
Vitruvius:
Please do not re-write history so selectively. Lincoln also said this:
I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people …
In any case, it’s simply disingenuous to racialize a group of people and then complain about the need for “colour-blindness” when they assume the identity that has been imposed upon them.
adam – you are living in a romantic Noble Savage utopian world – and obviously have no understanding of basic economics and social organization.
The native people are NOT a distinct ‘race’ or ‘people’. They are, like us, human beings. Individuals. Treating them as if they were a unique species is racism; you, adam, are racist.
You don’t understand that their original economic mode IS inferior to the current socioeconomic mode. Do you know why? Because it can’t sustain a population larger than a few hundred; indeed, the optimum size of a H&G band is about 30.
So, the ‘aboriginal way of life’ is both inferior to, and archaic to, the modern way. Understand this – there is NO WAY that a native band can, now, live in ‘the old way’. Their population size is too large; their land base is too small – H&G require massive land bases – and they are settled. You can’t live in a house and live ‘the old way’ economically. Adam – you simply don’t understand the difference between the two modes; you are thinking in the romantic, naive notion of The Noble Savage.
Move out of that – and start to think pragmatically. Ask – how many people can X-economic system sustain? What is the lifestyle of such an economy? Is private ownership a requirement? etc.
Oh – and why should they live the way they lived 1,000 years ago? Why should they live this way – rather than being part of the modern world – industrial engineers, physicists, doctors and so on? Why shouldn’t they live in the modern world?
Do you think that their ‘self-determination’ is to live The Old Way again? Why? It’s impossible now. Do you expect us to go back to the horse and buggy days – or chariots – or, or, or?
Again – a collectivist mode of economic and social life is impossible in the modern economy. Why do you insist on a people living that way?
Re-write history? Good heavens, it was just a famous quote in support of my argument, which was about racism, not Lincoln. Relax, Dawg. Sit.
Traditional Indian culture was neolithic. It had no wheel. It had no metals. I don’t think that modern Indians should be denied those subsequent developments.
This might be a good time for folks to review these two articles about Chief and Chief Executive Officer Clarance Louie of the Osoyous tradition, who like Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Chris Rock, and Bill Cosby, understands that one stands on one’s accomplishments, not on the handouts (well intentioned though they may be) one receives in the name of some aggreviance.
tinyurl.com/hn474 – Indian Time Doesn’t Cut It, Globe & Mail
Ah, apparently the second link I was going to post is no longer available, so perhaps, Kate, if you will pardon me, because it is directly relevent and not otherwise available, here is the original article:
Ruffling Feathers
by Andrew Findlay
B C Business Magazine
June 2006
In a small boardroom on the second floor of the Metropolitan Hotel on Howe Street, Clarence Louie, the maverick chief of the Osoyoos Indian Band, is doing what he is often asked to do these days. That is, talk to First Nations bands about how to evolve from a culture of dependence into a bastion of independence and entrepreneurship.
“I won’t go to a meeting these days unless it has to do with creating jobs and making money,” Louie announces bluntly to a small gathering of band councillors and administrators from the Saulteau First Nation near Moberly Lake in northern B.C. “I spend my time on economic development and I don’t care what you say; everything costs money. Even our traditional ceremonies cost money.”
It’s the first and last time you’ll hear this renowned (No. 40 on Maclean’s 2003 Watch List of Canadians) First Nations business leader utter the word “tradition” during his PowerPoint presentation, but you’ll quickly lose count of the number of references to “economic development.” In his neat blazer, pressed black trousers and wire-rimmed glasses, he could be mistaken for a Fraser Institute pundit. Before an audience, Louie is a formidable and brazen speaker who isn’t afraid to push buttons. In private, he is serious, intense and straightforward, with a penetrating gaze and an extremely quick mind.
He’s been accused by his own kind of sacrificing traditional First Nations culture and values at the altar of capitalism, yet under his leadership his band built the beautiful Nk’Mip Desert and First Nations Heritage Centre which does just that – promotes aboriginal culture. Nobody – First Nations or otherwise – is immune to his critical gaze. In one breath he’ll dismiss the federal department of Indian affairs as an inept bureaucracy that has perpetuated a First Nations welfare state. In the next, he’ll chide fellow aboriginals who claim to be following the “red road” (adhering to traditional values and spirituality) while collecting a social assistance cheque.
Truth is, the 46-year-old’s pro-business views are grounded in a belief that the only way forward for First Nations is to break the cycle of poverty and dependence on government handouts – that have plagued his people since the Indian Act became law in 1876 – through self-sufficiency and economic development. His track record as chief of the 420-strong Osoyoos Indian Band, now in his 22nd year, has garnered attention around Canada and abroad. The accolades are nice, and Louie’s got the financial cred to back it.
The Osoyoos Indian Band Development Corp. currently owns nine businesses, with annual revenues topping $13 million, including the award-winning Nk’Mip Cellars, the first First Nations-owned winery in the world. Every Christmas, 12 per cent of profits are distributed to band members. In 2005, more than 1,000 First Nations and non-First Nations were employed by OIB businesses and joint ventures. That same year, OIB Holdings generated nearly $2 million in lease payments from non-First Nations companies such as Calgary-based Bellstar Hotels & Resorts, which is putting the finishing touches on a four-star property – Spirit Ridge Vineyard Resort and Spa – on the shores of Lake Osoyoos.
Not too shabby for a band that has fewer members than your average urban high school has students.
“Anyone who has been in town for more than five minutes knows about him,” says CJ Rhodes, president of the Osoyoos Chamber of Commerce.
Brett Sweezy is the Sandpoint, Idaho-based president of Winter Recreation, ULC, the parent company of Mount Baldy Ski Corp. When the outfit purchased the small ski resort east of Osoyoos in 2005, Sweezy and his partners approached the Osoyoos Indian Band on whose traditional lands they were planning to build an 8,000-bed resort. After tough negotiations, Sweezy and company signed a precedent-setting agreement that gives OIB a 2.5-per-cent interest in Winter Recreation ULC, a share of revenues from real-estate development, reduced lift tickets and job opportunities for band members at the resort, as well as assurances that archeological sites and traditional land use would be respected. In exchange, the American company acquires a comfortable level of certainty that the band will support its resort plans, wisely sidestepping the thorny aboriginal land title conflicts that have deep-sixed other ventures in the past.
“I give the OIB a lot of credit because there is a lot of pressure from other First Nations not to sell out,” Sweezy says over the phone from Sandpoint about the agreement he hammered out with Louie. “In our meetings with Chief Louie, there wasn’t a lot of open banter. He’s not afraid to point fingers and put issues on the table. He’s a politician and he’s always aware of how things will play out with his council.”
On several occasions Sweezy has had the unenviable task of following Louie on the speakers’ list at various conferences and meetings. “I’ll only speak before him now; otherwise nobody will listen,” Sweezy says with a chuckle, giving a nod to Louie’s prowess at the podium.
In an article published by the online journal Indian Country Today, Ed Romanowski, CEO of Bellstar Hotels & Resorts, says outside investment on Osoyoos band property is attractive because Louie and the OIB have demonstrated that “their word is their deed.”
The OIB’s economic profile has been “an inspiration for many bands,” but it’s not necessarily a model that can be applied across the board, says Stewart Phillip, chief of the Penticton Indian Band and current president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs. “Some bands simply don’t have the same economic opportunities.”
Certainly, the OIB is blessed by its proximity to a relatively vibrant business environment in the south Okanagan, and it doesn’t fault other First Nations for focusing on the treaty process to gain a share of resource revenue from the province. However, he’s convinced the principles of self-sufficiency are sound.
But the doorway to change hasn’t always swung open easily for Louie. It’s taken a lot of debate, disagreement and frank self-reflection among a people Louie says are too often fixated on looking to right past wrongs and sticking Band-Aids on nagging social issues such as alcoholism, drug abuse and family strife. “I like dealing in reality,” he says. “I’m not saying that everybody agrees with me. A lot of elders still hold up the British flag and talk about promises made a hundred years ago. Personally, I don’t have any faith in the Queen.”
Louie was born in Oliver in 1960 and at the age of 18, he enrolled in Native American studies at the University of Saskatchewan, eventually completing his degree in Lethbridge. In 1984, at age 24, he was recruited to run for chief of the Osoyoos band. He won his first campaign and hasn’t looked back since. When he first took over the council reins he walked into a stereotypically dysfunctional band preoccupied with running Department of Indian Affairs (since renamed Indian and Northern Affairs) social programs and crippled by rampant nepotism, acrimonious band politics and social problems. The single band-owned business, a vineyard started in 1968, limped along year after year accumulating losses. Not surprisingly, he says, collectively his band was a symptom of a system the government instituted – one of welfare dependence and shoehorning bands onto marginal lands at the expense of job creation and economic development. But, he concedes, aboriginal leaders are also to blame, too eager to become the servants of federal programs instead of real advocates for change. “Any time we can kick DIA out of our business, we do it,” he says.
Today Louie’s vision is still a work in progress, but the streamlined corporate environment at the OIB is a far cry from the dysfunctional place he walked into two decades ago. It’s no picnic working under Louie’s watch. Some of his HR concepts don’t exactly mesh with supposedly enlightened business models, where every day is a casual Friday. It’s not unusual to see small banners with slogans like, “If your life sucks, it means you suck,” or “A real warrior supports himself and others,” tacked to the walls of the band office. His council recently decided to install clocks at the band council and OIBDC offices to curtail truancy, and strict rules guard against the kind of nepotism that is common on Indian reserves where sisters supervise brothers and the chief hires his wife to do the books. Surprisingly, there’s not a single member of a First Nation on the OIBDC’s board of directors because, Louie says, business isn’t about race – it’s about expertise. “There’s a group of natives that feels entitled, and that needs to be changed to a culture of performance,” he says. “You don’t hand over the keys to a multi-million-dollar business to someone who hasn’t earned it. That’s a recipe for bankruptcy.”
It’s time for Louie to wrap up his PowerPoint. He has a plane to catch back to the Okanagan. These days he doesn’t get too misty-eyed over First Nations spirituality and traditions. In his briefcase, along with his books on First Nations history and politics, he has a set of custom door handles for his kids’ Hummer that he picked up at a Vancouver car dealer. (As he’s fond of saying, there’s no culture in poverty.)
“Our people have the worst social statistics in Canada and our leaders have allowed this to go on for 100 years. I’ve never bought that stuff about natives being non-competitive. Throwing the best potlatch required accumulating a certain amount of wealth,” he says as he snaps his briefcase closed.
Clearly, Chief Louie didn’t get to where he is today by mincing words.
ET said:
“The time for empathy is also over. The time for pragmatic action is here.”
call me crazy, but i don’t think those two things are mutually exclusive ;-). i wholeheartedly agree that it is long past time for pragmatic action. nevertheless, i question if we will, as a society, be able to change the status quo by implementing pragmatic solutions without having empathy for the plight of first nations peoples. i suppose you could be correct nonetheless, as the frustration building in canadian society may also provide the necessary impetus to begin implementing pragmatic solutions. regards.
Traditional Indian culture was neolithic. It had no wheel. It had no metals.
And it (of course, there is no “it” but a variety of different cultures) had bigger, cleaner, more hygienic cities than Europe did at the same time (Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco). Not to mention being the source for the “checks and balances” notion in the American Constitution.
It did have metals, btw. Just not steel. Too bad.
testing, testing…does this sucka work?
keeps eating some of my posts???
let me try this one more time…see if this works.
ET said:
“canuckistanian – stop using the ‘sociopathic’ and ‘depths of depravity’ adjectives – which don’t apply here”
sociopathic (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sociopathic):
1) “of or relating to a sociopathic personality disorder
2) sociopath – One who is affected with a personality disorder marked by antisocial behavior.”
depravity (http://www.wordreference.com/definition/depravity):
“1) a degenerate act or practice
2) moral perversion; impairment of virtue and moral principles;”
having checked the dictionary definitions of the terms you took exception to, i can confidently state that the abovementioned racist comments were:
a) an example of antisocial behaviour
b) a clear example of a degenerate act
whether this was:
a) due to an “abnormal personality disorder” is debatable
and
b) due to the “impairment of virtue and moral principles” is also debatable.
nevertheless, i do stand by my previous choice of words. regards.
canuckistanian: “this in and of itself is defined as genocide under the UN convention”
This “lo the poor Indian crap” is the root of a huge percentage of their problems with “whitey” and with each other.
My perspective on residential schools is a bit different from most for two reasons:
1) In the bad old days, I worked in the bush with several natives who had attended the school at Fort Resolution. Far from being traumatized by their experience, they sometimes reminisced about it, in the same terms as anyone of any colour who had attended a church-run boarding school. Having attended one myself (I came from an isolated rural area where there were no schools) I could relate to their anecdotes.
2) I know for a fact that plenty of northern native families voluntarily sent their kids to the residentials because they realized that education – even if it was only basic literacy, was necessary in the modern world. These literate kids grew up to encourage their offspring to become better educated and so on, through the generations, so that we now have Indian lawyers and politicians beating whitey at his own game. Genocide? Bullshit!!! The schools were a door into the 20th century.
Some of the wiser 19th century elders actually pleaded with the government for schools to be established on their reservations, and some of those schools morphed into residential schools.
At that time? Are you interested in the present and the future, Dawg, or are you mired in the past?
A’dam,self-governance does not equate self-determination when the bands still depend on tax dollars for thier livelihood. Self-government means to the bands that they get the tax dollars but do not have to explain where the monies are spent. Most members are against this concept. That invariably will lead to more corruption. I am all for handing over money for education as long as the parents will make thier children attend. That is not happening,mom and dad(maybe),are waiting for the land claim jackpot to be handed over and heap disdain on “whitey’s school”.The reserves have a housing crisis but do you ever hear Fontaine et al tell the young women to practice responsible family planning?It is very difficult to give a hand-out or a hand-up when your fingers are being bitten.
Zog:
i certainly wouldn’t dispute your anecdotes, nor would i characterize my own view as “This ‘lo the poor Indian crap'”. hopefully, once kate gets around to moderating my previous posts wherein i outline the UN definition of genocide, you will have a better understanding of my perspective. regards.
That’s dishonest, Vittie. You were the one referring to that “neolithic” nonsense.
canuck, you kept trying to post multiple links in the same comment, and that’s a sure spam filter git-me sign.
kate,
thanks for the heads up. i posted the websites addresses from where i got some info (not sure how to link something). you think if i take out the links it will get-thru the spam filter.
You’re in no position to accuse others of dishonesty, Dawg.
ET said:
“I believe the last residential school was closed in 1986. Whatever the faults of residential schools, and they were completely wrong – they can’t be defined as ‘genocide’.”
according to the Government of Canada:
“the last federally-run residential school in Canada closed in 1996.”
according to the United Nations Convention on Genocide:
“Article 2
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
as you will note, “(c)” and “(e)” are the residential schools program. the residential schools were intended to destroy the culture of the first peoples of canada, and sought to achieve this end through “transferring children of the group to another group”. regards.
ET said:
“I believe the last residential school was closed in 1986. Whatever the faults of residential schools, and they were completely wrong – they can’t be defined as ‘genocide’.”
(1) according to the Government of Canada:
“the last federally-run residential school in Canada closed in 1996.”
(2) according to the United Nations Convention on Genocide:
“Article 2
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
as you will note, “(c)” and “(e)” are the residential schools program. the residential schools were intended to destroy the culture of the first peoples of canada, and sought to achieve this end through “transferring children of the group to another group”. regards.
You’re in no position to accuse others of dishonesty, Dawg.
Put up or shut up, Kate. I don’t do dishonesty.
You cherry pick your quotes, too. You sure enough caught the one where I called the Mohawk Warriors a bunch of drunks. I’ve called them worse. You missed the part in the same comment where I said most Indians have as much use for the Mohawk Warriors as I do. They are a gang criminals, nothing more.
Your morally superior tone is ironic given your intellectual dishonesty. I am not a racist sir, and shame upon you for saying otherwise.
Posted by: The Phantom at June 29, 2007 3:42 PM
So, if a native is racist against other natives, and you take it as credibility for your racism, then I am a white canadian saying “plenty of white canadians (or white whatever) are racist bigots with no respect for minority rights, or willingness to to be reasoned with – just a bunch of hate peddling fascists”. So, do your rules of logic still apply in the reverse situation, that is, the native-north-american (as in N.A.) canadians can now claim ‘even white people say they are bigots and oppressors’?
Or is it only applicable when your adversaries sell out their own?
ET said:
“canuckistanian – stop using the ‘sociopathic’ and ‘depths of depravity’ adjectives – which don’t apply here”
sociopathic:
1) “of or relating to a sociopathic personality disorder
2) sociopath – One who is affected with a personality disorder marked by antisocial behavior.”
depravity:
“1) a degenerate act or practice
2) moral perversion; impairment of virtue and moral principles;”
having checked the dictionary definitions of the terms you took exception to, i can confidently state that the abovementioned racist comments were:
a) an example of antisocial behaviour
b) a clear example of a degenerate act
whether this was:
a) due to an “abnormal personality disorder” is debatable
and
b) due to the “impairment of virtue and moral principles” is also debatable.
nevertheless, i do stand by my previous choice of words. regards.
Ah. I’d missed this:
Speaking of stereotyping and double standards – note the photograph chosen to illustrate this post. Bigot, heal thyself.
I’d say some folks do a pretty good job of stereotyping themselves.
oops, posted that one twice…although, in my defence, i did try to stop the second one once i realized that i messed up the “copy and paste”. thanks for the advice kate…i’ll know in the future not to put the internet address in with the quotes…lest your spam filter mistakenly conclude that i am turning your “forum into a repository for off-topic link dumps”. regards.
And some bloggers have the ethics to link their source quotes. So, go do it. Every comment here is linkable.
Dr Dawg,
“I’d say some folks do a pretty good job of stereotyping themselves.”
So was I really banned for being silly as you claim or because I pissed you off for hilighting your double standards. It seems others are noticing including your friends.
So much for the “coherence” of your principles.
No hard feelings though. I did expect it. It’s just part of what you believe and it gets harder every day to hide the truth from yourself.
And some bloggers have the ethics to link their source quotes. So, go do it. Every comment here is linkable.
What on earth are you claiming–that I made those quotes up? Out with it, now. Every one of them appeared over here at SDA, although you had the good grace to remove a few. Down the memory hole?
For the record:
A’dam picked up most of them, and found a couple more ripe ones:
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/006565.html#c176425
Dr. Dawg,
Antonia Zerbisias said on your blog :
“But I would beat the shit out of anybody who did either.”
referring to a parent who spanked a child.
Do you disown this? Does this mean you condone violence because it was on your blog?
Dr.Dawg : ” … It did have metals, btw. Just not steel.”
I have never seen any reference that indicated that any of the natives in Canada even entered the bronze age – do you have a source?
Kate:
You’re out of control. What’s with this?
Stereotype? When I see a cowboy hat, I think “cattle industry”.
In Dawg’s “progressive” world, cowboy hat means “racist”. Because, as we all know, western rural culture is synonymous with intolerance.
It was the guns, Kate, the guns. I don’t give a damn about their headgear. Seems to me the folks in the picture waving their guns around looked a lot like the folks in your blog who wanted to shoot the “red niggers.” (At least you had the decency to lose that last one.)
You seem a tad defensive today, Kate. Ashamed of some of the company you keep?
Thanks vitruvius for the excellent outline of a native chief Louie, who is rejecting the Old Way and realizes that natives must move into the modern economic world.
dawg – no, you are confusing socieconomic forms. The NA natives did NOT have metals; they were either hunting/gathering, or, in the US plains, pastoral nomadic, or, in the East, horticultural. No metals.
You are confusing the irrigation societies, which were city states – which were two-class, and had massive populations to supply the work force, of Central America with the smaller populations of N. America, Africa and Australia – which most certainly were not irrigation city-states. Oh- and they collapsed; they couldn’t adapt to foreign groups.
canuckistanian- that section c states ‘physical destruction’. You are ignoring that variable. The residential schools most certainly were not intended to bring about the physical destruction of the natives. Don’t change the adjective from physical to cultural.
And your section e doesn’t apply. It was indeed forcibly transfering the children, during the school term, – but not to another group. To a school. They went home in the summer.
So, no, I reject your attempt to call Canada’s treatment of the natives an action of genocide.
I also reject your use of the terms sociopathic and depravity. Again. They don’t apply to this situation.
Dr. Dawg
“In any case, it’s simply disingenuous to racialize a group of people and then complain about the need for “colour-blindness” when they assume the identity that has been imposed upon them. ”
You used this same phrase almost word for word at Daimnation. I asked you then to explain it because I can’t see who here or there has done any racializing.
If anything, you are racializing your critiques by preemptively lumping them into this category of racializers that are not allowed to offer up a remedy due to their ancestral affiliation…ie. racial history.
Ural: I’m afraid I wandered pretty far afield–I was thinking of Montezuma’s mines.
Dr. Dawg:
Whoa, whoa. The source for the “checks and balances” aspect of the US constitution was not uhm, Tenochtitlan, but a piece called the “Two Treatises on Government” by a Scots guy named John Locke. It refers to a system of “guards and fences,” and was part of the curriculum of Thomas Jefferson while he studied at the College of William and Mary. Furthermore, as much as one might like to idolize Atec civilization, it was based on a system of forced labor expropriation whose brutality was surpassed only by the worst forms of chattel slavery. I’m not even going to bother talking about the human sacrifice stuff.
My point in mentioning this is three-fold. First, while native cultures are both intriguing and vibrant, it is completely senseless to idealize them — and this has been going on in European thought since the essais of Michel de Montaigne; second, that all native cultures on the American continents were and continue to be technologically, economically and culturally inferior to their European counterparts, at least as far as a simple Benthamite ‘greatest happiness’ calculation determines; and while the way of life of some Canadian native groups might be laudable for its property-in-collectivity peace-with-nature aspects, it is impossible to recreate this lifestyle currently and natives themselves don’t want to live it.
I hasten to add that there is no deterministic relationship between ‘culture’ and ‘race.’ Pointing this out seems asinine, but the rise of the progressive utopia makes it necessary to underline the obvious in order to limit the baying of the hounds.
I was referring to the Great Law of Peace. Benjamin Franklin, who had some familiarity with the Haudenasaunee, took the idea from that. My source is Ronald Wright, “Stolen Continents.” If you know anything about the Great Law, it jibes much better with the system of checks and balances in the US Constitution than does Locke’s “guards and fences.”
Oh, and the S and Central American native civilizations did have metalwork, they just didn’t use the technology for much other than crafting ceremonial items.
Holding a gun is the secret “spot the racist” clue?
Like the ones carried by police?
Hunters?
Soldiers?
Olympic competitors?
Or cattlemen after coyotes?
If that’s the case, then I challenge you to replace the picture with one of a Jamaican gang member.
Or Mohawk warrior.
Andrew at 3:47 PM, thank you. And thank you for your civility. A certain notthinkin doesn’t seem to strong in that department.
It’s supposed to be racist to treat people differently based on their race, yet somehow being treated differently seems to be the only political agenda of the entire native community.
Leftist hypocrisy knows no bounds.
This issue has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with the virulent socialism native culture is infested with…
It seems that many people here are getting hung up on “racism”.Most angry comments about the natives are based on the fact that they are living off our work and always demanding more while taking little responsibility for thier own situation. That is not racism,that is common sense,but there will always be people who when faced with an untenable position fall back on the old chestnut.The natives want money for schools,but will not send thier children to school.They want more housing,but allow thier children to breed indiscriminately with no thought to future support. They complain about poverty,but in Alberta’s booming economy the unemployment rate on reserves hovers near 75%.They complain about sexual abuse,but they are the abusers.They want prosperity,but will not work to achieve it.They complain about water quality,but will not maintain thier filtration plants. I am tired of the “woe is me” saga,but that does not make me a racist,because colour is not the issue,content of character is the issue.
Holding a gun is the secret “spot the racist” clue?
Kate, stop floundering. You’re embarrassing yourself.
I noted that some folks do a good job of stereotyping themselves. Here’s the source of the photo:
http://phs.parkhill.k12.mo.us/Users/07jaynesr/rednecks/past.html
A little self-deprecation? Maybe. But the images speak for themselves. And they jibe perfectly, as you know full well, with the “shoot the red niggers” crowd you attracted this morning.
Incidentally–no more complaints about my sources of the quotes at my place? Find ’em all?