#Canada was ALSO founded by the genocide and displacement of MY people

[neechees]

Because it fucking is you idiot. It doesn't even matter whether you think people have "decided" it is, that's what it is??

Israel was only created through the genocide and displacement of Indigenous Palestinians, where they ALSO constantly encourage (specifically White) other people, especially Americans, to go move to Israel, and they keep fucking bulldozing Palestinian homes and land for new Israeli settlements. Which is the definition of a settler colonialism state. It's a state created by coloninialism & genocide of the Indigenous population that also seeks to displace them & replace them with settlers. Why do you think Israel won't let Palestinians return home, even if they lived there before?

[beardedmrbean]

Bangladesh has been taking in fellow Muslims from Myanmar's troubled Rakhine state to the southern coastal district of Cox's Bazar, providing food and shelter since a bloody 2017 army crackdown forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims across the border.

Myanmar's military junta has ruled since a coup in February 2021 ousted the democratically elected Aung San Suu Kyi-led civilian government.

Since then, Myanmar has been rocked by fighting between numerous ethnic rebel groups and the military.

The Arakan Army (AA) rebel group — which is fighting the ruling junta for control of Myanmar's western borderlands — wants more autonomy for the ethnic Rakhine people, a population that is also accused of aiding the military in their expulsion of the Rohingya. 

The AA is the well-armed military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority that seeks autonomy from Myanmar's central government. It has been attacking army outposts in Rakhine state since November 2023. 

Escaping the civil war

Roshid Ahmad, who fled Myanmar's fighting, is grateful for being "one of those who made it out alive."

The 21-year-old Rohingya from Rakhine's Maungdaw township got a boat to Bangladesh with his mother and brother in December 2024.

"Not every Rohingya gets to flee Myanmar in one piece, let alone with their loved ones," he told DW in a video call from a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar.

"The Arakan Army rebels are forcibly taking away Rohingya young men from villages, conscripting and making them fight against the Myanmar Military," Ahmad said.

"Many of the abducted Rohingya have disappeared without any trace."

"Starvation and untreated diseases are killing the Rohingya in Rakhine,” Ahmad claimed, adding that, "I don't believe Rohingya can ever go back."

Last year, both the junta and the AA began forcibly recruiting Rohingya youths, reported Human Rights Watch.

Several Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh recently told DW about how their community had suffered in Myanmar.

Jawad Alom, who fled to Bangladesh in September along with his four brothers and cousins, as well as their families, accused multiple AA rebels of gang raping his sister-in-law.

"The AA men raided our village in Buthidaung, aiming to abduct some Rohingya men. My brother and I slipped out of the village," Alom told DW.

Alom said they returned to their village after the rebels had left, only to find they "had gang-raped at least half a dozen Rohingya women, including my brother's wife."

"When we left our village for Bangladesh, on the way we found scores of bodies floating on roadside ponds," Alom claimed.

"They looked like Rohingya men, apparently executed by AA rebels. They sometimes killed Rohingya who resisted against their attempts of abduction or conscription."  

According to a recent estimate by the Bangladesh government, over 65,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since the end of 2023. Other estimates put the figures as high as 80,000.

'Little hope' of repatriation to Myanmar

Several attempts in the past years to repatriate Rohingya failed, as many community members refuse to return home due to insecurity.

Refugee experts say that although repatriation with dignity and rights would be the ideal option, there is no hope for it in the near future.

Canada-based refugee resettlement expert Mohammad Zaman noted that the military has "remained repressive and carried out a second, or some say, even a third wave of genocide" against the Rohingya people.

"That is no right environment to return to," Zaman told DW.

"Even though the AA controls a large part of northern Rakhine State, displaced people can't trust them due to atrocities committed in the process by the AA. This is an issue as political as it is humanitarian. The resolution wouldn't be easy."

Zaman added that the inaction of the international community in terms of the latest genocide is "deplorable."

Khalilur Rahman, high representative on Rohingya issues for Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh's interim government leader, told DW that his country stands ready to positively consider supporting the efforts of the United Nations system to provide humanitarian and livelihood assistance to the people of Rakhine.

"However, this can be done only if conflict and violence, air strikes and bombings, and widespread violations of the human rights of Rohingyas, in particular, are ended," he said.

"Moreover, aid providers and recipients should have unimpeded access and be free from any violence, displacement, discrimination, intimidation, and harassment."

If these conditions and aid principles are met, said Rahman, it will create enabling circumstances on the ground for "voluntary, safe, and dignified return of the forcibly displaced Rohingyas from Bangladesh to Rakhine."

Denial of Rohingya identity

Rohingya human rights activist Htway Lwin said that besides the varied forms of violence against the Rohingya, the AA also denies their identity as natives of Myanmar.

"While we maintain our dream of returning to our ancestral lands, we cannot accept any repatriation process that would expose us to further harm," Lwin told DW.

"The Bangladesh and [the] international community must ensure that repatriation is not a forced process into continued statelessness, but one based on legal recognition, accountability, and structural protections."

"Without these guarantees, return risks becoming yet another cycle of genocide and dispossession," Lwin concluded.

[mattattack64-blog]

Hey y’all! I would really appreciate it if y’all could help! Here’s my email for e-transfers mathew_garcia11@yahoo.com if you’re feeling extra generous! I’ve been trying so hard to find a job, but it’s been quite tough considering that my queerness sometimes gets me in trouble. I almost got a job at a taco shop, but because I called the manager out for being frantic with customers and employees, he decided to not hire me on. It’s been a hell of a year and I wish people weren’t, so homophobic and Machistas. I’m sorry I have confidence and assertiveness without being aggressive or arrogant. I think we need to make workplaces less of a hostile and docile environment by connecting with queer people and understanding their need for an inclusive work space! Also here’s an essay I wrote for my Sacred Medicines course! It describes what my work entails and will bring to Turtle Island.

Essay about my journey:

The Journey of A Shaman

My Story of Decolonizing on Stolen Lands of the First Peoples of Canada through Accessing Aztec and AfroBlackfoot Ancestry of Indigeneity From Practicing the Art of Medicine:

The History of Turtle Island is filled of stories of genocide affecting Indigenous Peoples communities and cultures. Mine is one of many told in Central America of Conquistadors who bestowed missionaries that would change the villages that relied on local foods and medicines of Mayan, Aztecan, and Incan descent, into a colonial way of being. Instead their peoples and cultures found themselves at the foot of extinction during the 1400s-1900s on Turtle Island, due to settlers' greed for land. The lands were filled with Indigenous nations which were pushed out due to the colonial settlers from France, Spain, and the British. This forced the displacement of African Peoples on Indigenous lands which resulted in some of them escaping slavery during the settlement of Turtle Island and joining tribes such as the Blackfoot peoples. These peoples took up what is now the Rio Grande river to the flourishing valley in Zacateco; the small village my grandmother grew up in. Before the Mexican Civil War between the Indigenous Peoples and Spanish Settlers she learned how to rely on ancestral knowledge of land, food and medicine. She faced challenges that the missionaries introduced when settling establishments for the Spanish Conquistadors, in her village. It resulted in her losing her father and mother through working in horrible conditions in bean, corn, and rice fields put in place by the church's tyrant ways of controlling the Indigenous population through religion and assimilation of their way of living in a colonial society. My grandmother told me stories of soldiers dismantling their connections to Aztec medicines, foods, and Gods by destroying any traces of that civilization through mass burials and mass burnings of artifacts.

The phrase Turtle Island was first introduced to me at the Free Store and Food Bank in the Student Union Building, d where I found a black cloth. Printed on it was a green land mass depiction of the Americas as a Turtle figured island, encompassing all of what is now Settler Governments. This concept opens my mind up to Indigenous self governance and peace as one lands for the sake of protecting them for future generations. Following the ongoing interactions with organizers of the Food Bank, I managed to bring my expertise as a project and outreach coordinator. I organized discussions on where our food came from to spark the movement of individuals respecting our Food Bank as an Activist establishment against capitalism.

I had the opportunity to be part of Dr. Rennee’s course on Sacred Medicines from her INGH 452 online course at The University of Victoria. She has inspired me to look at and create a career in medicine that doesn’t involve the perspectives of Western Medicines for the sake of saving the medicines we lack in our Indigenous communities that suffer from Settler Colonizer diets implemented through legislation. The Canadian and American governments have been accused of depriving Indigenous communities of their lands, food, medicines and right to practice their rituals.

I grew up mostly living with my grandmother who taught me my morals, customs, and values she got from her father and the people from her village in Zacatecas, Mexico. She told me stories of her great grandmother showing her the ways of the lands by cultivating teas, remedies, and foods to bring nourishment. They would run through fields of corn before new crops were introduced that seemed to take away from the Native plants that were for eating and medicine. I immigrated to what is now known as Canada; this colonial power continues to settle on unceded lands of indigneous communities spread out through Turtle Island. It has been a challenge due to the traumatic similarities my people have faced on Turtle Island that resemble the treatment of the Indigenous communities in Canada.

The missionaries in Zacatecas, Mexico displaced my grandmother who was on a journey to midwifery before a soldier boy stole her hand in marriage after the death of her father. This led to Machismo in my family that I continue to navigate through for the sake of changing my family's ongoing struggles with their own health due to displacement of their original foods and ways of protecting the lands. Machismo degraded the Aztec woman by allowing Conquistador ideologies from Settler Societies to make the Aztec Man more powerful than any other member in the family, it forced him to wield his wrath on anyone who didn't follow his manliness of aggression for the sake of protecting his property and family. They colonized our men in order to create a new persona that fit the colonial ideologies of the new Colonial state, for the sake of keeping a patriarchal government that oppresses its women and Indigenous peoples.

The global displacement of brown and black people was brought about by attacking familial and community based societies that relied on tribal relations to the lands before settlement of westernized societies that encompassed our lands with racist doctrines like the Manifest Destiny. When talking about relieving the colonial way of living I have to take the stigma away from my black and brown communities I am tied to, because of my knowledge and expertise in navigating colonial systems for the sake of creating better conditions for their underrepresented communities that are controlled through Colonial Governance of the Majority, Settler European Anglo Saxon Protestant Vigilantes of Turtle Island.

In my work, the aim is to reduce the stigma of mental illness on communities that have ties to Indigenous roots who come from displaced Indigenous cultures due to their unceded lands. European settlement of Turtle Island has created gaps in our understanding of Indigeous Youths’ Mental Health Issues. If we were to destroy these barriers created by our colonial governments we'd be able to see positive change in underrepresented brown and black communities that harness the potential to spark a movement through Ancestral Healing.

Western ways of organizing data based on research for white middle class Canadian families help come up with diagnosis and treatment for anxiety or depression. This has worked for white privileged families that have in turn displaced, stolen, and compromised indigenous lands. Leaving Indigneous Peoples on Turtle Island with the lack of individualized treatment for specific cultural approaches to anxiety and depression that may arise from living in a colonial settler society based on white supremacy doctrines. The way mental health is conceptualized can depend on culture to culture based on the usage of land for healing. My work as a Shaman is to bring the tangible and visible immenseness of research that claims the benefits of Indigenous led rituals that have been hiding in plain sight. I have compiled articles that discuss the Indigenous communities that would benefit from a forum that would help decrease the rising numbers of suicide among Indigenous youth. In The Science of the Sacred: Bridging Global Indigenous Medicine Systems and Modern Scientific Principles Redvers notes that the; Increase of inuit youth suicide is higher than it has ever been for inidgneous youth,” (Redvers, 2019, Pg.142). We must create a new system that doesn't rely on westernized ways of thinking, but instead on traditional knowledge from elders teachings of the lands and their connections to the lands. The gift of healing is one to be assigned to a shaman who can help see a condition through sacred knowledge (Redvers. In The Science of the Sacred: Bridging Global Indigenous Medicine Systems and Modern Scientific Principles, 2019 Pg.144). It's a bit like when a psychologist compiles data to make a diagnosis, but instead of using evidence based data from empirical research, they instead use sacred knowledge from elders and the shamans/healers in their communities. I believe I am on my own journey to become a shaman with a doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology. I want to bring concrete evidence for holistic practices to gain respect for Traditional Indigneous medicines that live and breathe on Turtle Island. Integrating a new stream of medicine would allow for further decolonization of our healthcare system on Turtle Island. Knowledge and wisdom organized from elders, shamans, traditional healers, and story tellers could be used for customizing and improving Indigenous youths’ health. Taking the steps towards creating a stream of medicine based on using the lands for healing through elder storytelling and ceremony practices, must come from my own knowledge of Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Healing can come from storytelling scenarios, schemas, and drawings that help revitalize Indigneous peoples connections they have lost from the lands due to the colonial infrastructures in place today. I have attached an image of a side by side comparison of what I believe the lands want me to be on the right, and on the right is what I have to face when I'm aware of the lies in the colonial settler societies make-believe truths. I drew this when I was going through an intense breakup. I was having to do a lot of soul searching due to my feelings of emptiness after the break up. The love for using drawing to express depressive or anxious episodes has helped me understand my own feelings when I’m no longer able to physically display emotion, which happens a lot of the times when I'm having a depressive episode. I find that Indigenous peoples have faced a lot of hardships with health, therefore in order to ensure that they get the essential healing, we must give back something that they've felt has always been lost, their lands. (I will attach an image of the drawing if requested) description: two faces drawn with colour pencils next to one another, one is covered in leafy natural colors and the other with primary colors. My intention was to depict myself through expression of colors by using them to Demonstrate stresses in my life that I need to deal with.)

Redvers, N. (2019). Chapter 8: The Natural Psychologist. In The Science of the Sacred: Bridging Global Indigenous Medicine Systems and Modern Scientific Principles. North Atlantic Books. Berkeley, CA. (p. 141-162).

[thebailtraul]

Y’all need to come thru! Please share and help me heal some folx!

Here’s my story:

Hey y’all! I would really appreciate it if y’all could help! Here’s my email for e-transfers mathew_garcia11@yahoo.com if you’re feeling extra generous! I’ve been trying so hard to find a job, but it’s been quite tough considering that my queerness sometimes gets me in trouble. I almost got a job at a taco shop, but because I called the manager out for being frantic with customers and employees, he decided to not hire me on. It’s been a hell of a year and I wish people weren’t, so homophobic and Machistas. I’m sorry I have confidence and assertiveness without being aggressive or arrogant. I think we need to make workplaces less of a hostile and docile environment by connecting with queer people and understanding their need for an inclusive work space! Also here’s an essay I wrote for my Sacred Medicines course! It describes what my work entails and will bring to Turtle Island.

Essay about my journey:

The Journey of A Shaman

My Story of Decolonizing on Stolen Lands of the First Peoples of Canada through Accessing Aztec and AfroBlackfoot Ancestry of Indigeneity From Practicing the Art of Medicine:

The History of Turtle Island is filled of stories of genocide affecting Indigenous Peoples communities and cultures. Mine is one of many told in Central America of Conquistadors who bestowed missionaries that would change the villages that relied on local foods and medicines of Mayan, Aztecan, and Incan descent, into a colonial way of being. Instead their peoples and cultures found themselves at the foot of extinction during the 1400s-1900s on Turtle Island, due to settlers' greed for land. The lands were filled with Indigenous nations which were pushed out due to the colonial settlers from France, Spain, and the British. This forced the displacement of African Peoples on Indigenous lands which resulted in some of them escaping slavery during the settlement of Turtle Island and joining tribes such as the Blackfoot peoples. These peoples took up what is now the Rio Grande river to the flourishing valley in Zacateco; the small village my grandmother grew up in. Before the Mexican Civil War between the Indigenous Peoples and Spanish Settlers she learned how to rely on ancestral knowledge of land, food and medicine. She faced challenges that the missionaries introduced when settling establishments for the Spanish Conquistadors, in her village. It resulted in her losing her father and mother through working in horrible conditions in bean, corn, and rice fields put in place by the church's tyrant ways of controlling the Indigenous population through religion and assimilation of their way of living in a colonial society. My grandmother told me stories of soldiers dismantling their connections to Aztec medicines, foods, and Gods by destroying any traces of that civilization through mass burials and mass burnings of artifacts.

The phrase Turtle Island was first introduced to me at the Free Store and Food Bank in the Student Union Building, d where I found a black cloth. Printed on it was a green land mass depiction of the Americas as a Turtle figured island, encompassing all of what is now Settler Governments. This concept opens my mind up to Indigenous self governance and peace as one lands for the sake of protecting them for future generations. Following the ongoing interactions with organizers of the Food Bank, I managed to bring my expertise as a project and outreach coordinator. I organized discussions on where our food came from to spark the movement of individuals respecting our Food Bank as an Activist establishment against capitalism.

I had the opportunity to be part of Dr. Rennee’s course on Sacred Medicines from her INGH 452 online course at The University of Victoria. She has inspired me to look at and create a career in medicine that doesn’t involve the perspectives of Western Medicines for the sake of saving the medicines we lack in our Indigenous communities that suffer from Settler Colonizer diets implemented through legislation. The Canadian and American governments have been accused of depriving Indigenous communities of their lands, food, medicines and right to practice their rituals.

I grew up mostly living with my grandmother who taught me my morals, customs, and values she got from her father and the people from her village in Zacatecas, Mexico. She told me stories of her great grandmother showing her the ways of the lands by cultivating teas, remedies, and foods to bring nourishment. They would run through fields of corn before new crops were introduced that seemed to take away from the Native plants that were for eating and medicine. I immigrated to what is now known as Canada; this colonial power continues to settle on unceded lands of indigneous communities spread out through Turtle Island. It has been a challenge due to the traumatic similarities my people have faced on Turtle Island that resemble the treatment of the Indigenous communities in Canada.

The missionaries in Zacatecas, Mexico displaced my grandmother who was on a journey to midwifery before a soldier boy stole her hand in marriage after the death of her father. This led to Machismo in my family that I continue to navigate through for the sake of changing my family's ongoing struggles with their own health due to displacement of their original foods and ways of protecting the lands. Machismo degraded the Aztec woman by allowing Conquistador ideologies from Settler Societies to make the Aztec Man more powerful than any other member in the family, it forced him to wield his wrath on anyone who didn't follow his manliness of aggression for the sake of protecting his property and family. They colonized our men in order to create a new persona that fit the colonial ideologies of the new Colonial state, for the sake of keeping a patriarchal government that oppresses its women and Indigenous peoples.

The global displacement of brown and black people was brought about by attacking familial and community based societies that relied on tribal relations to the lands before settlement of westernized societies that encompassed our lands with racist doctrines like the Manifest Destiny. When talking about relieving the colonial way of living I have to take the stigma away from my black and brown communities I am tied to, because of my knowledge and expertise in navigating colonial systems for the sake of creating better conditions for their underrepresented communities that are controlled through Colonial Governance of the Majority, Settler European Anglo Saxon Protestant Vigilantes of Turtle Island.

In my work, the aim is to reduce the stigma of mental illness on communities that have ties to Indigenous roots who come from displaced Indigenous cultures due to their unceded lands. European settlement of Turtle Island has created gaps in our understanding of Indigeous Youths’ Mental Health Issues. If we were to destroy these barriers created by our colonial governments we'd be able to see positive change in underrepresented brown and black communities that harness the potential to spark a movement through Ancestral Healing.

Western ways of organizing data based on research for white middle class Canadian families help come up with diagnosis and treatment for anxiety or depression. This has worked for white privileged families that have in turn displaced, stolen, and compromised indigenous lands. Leaving Indigneous Peoples on Turtle Island with the lack of individualized treatment for specific cultural approaches to anxiety and depression that may arise from living in a colonial settler society based on white supremacy doctrines. The way mental health is conceptualized can depend on culture to culture based on the usage of land for healing. My work as a Shaman is to bring the tangible and visible immenseness of research that claims the benefits of Indigenous led rituals that have been hiding in plain sight. I have compiled articles that discuss the Indigenous communities that would benefit from a forum that would help decrease the rising numbers of suicide among Indigenous youth. In The Science of the Sacred: Bridging Global Indigenous Medicine Systems and Modern Scientific Principles Redvers notes that the; Increase of inuit youth suicide is higher than it has ever been for inidgneous youth,” (Redvers, 2019, Pg.142). We must create a new system that doesn't rely on westernized ways of thinking, but instead on traditional knowledge from elders teachings of the lands and their connections to the lands. The gift of healing is one to be assigned to a shaman who can help see a condition through sacred knowledge (Redvers. In The Science of the Sacred: Bridging Global Indigenous Medicine Systems and Modern Scientific Principles, 2019 Pg.144). It's a bit like when a psychologist compiles data to make a diagnosis, but instead of using evidence based data from empirical research, they instead use sacred knowledge from elders and the shamans/healers in their communities. I believe I am on my own journey to become a shaman with a doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology. I want to bring concrete evidence for holistic practices to gain respect for Traditional Indigneous medicines that live and breathe on Turtle Island. Integrating a new stream of medicine would allow for further decolonization of our healthcare system on Turtle Island. Knowledge and wisdom organized from elders, shamans, traditional healers, and story tellers could be used for customizing and improving Indigenous youths’ health. Taking the steps towards creating a stream of medicine based on using the lands for healing through elder storytelling and ceremony practices, must come from my own knowledge of Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Healing can come from storytelling scenarios, schemas, and drawings that help revitalize Indigneous peoples connections they have lost from the lands due to the colonial infrastructures in place today. I have attached an image of a side by side comparison of what I believe the lands want me to be on the right, and on the right is what I have to face when I'm aware of the lies in the colonial settler societies make-believe truths. I drew this when I was going through an intense breakup. I was having to do a lot of soul searching due to my feelings of emptiness after the break up. The love for using drawing to express depressive or anxious episodes has helped me understand my own feelings when I’m no longer able to physically display emotion, which happens a lot of the times when I'm having a depressive episode. I find that Indigenous peoples have faced a lot of hardships with health, therefore in order to ensure that they get the essential healing, we must give back something that they've felt has always been lost, their lands. (I will attach an image of the drawing if requested) description: two faces drawn with colour pencils next to one another, one is covered in leafy natural colors and the other with primary colors. My intention was to depict myself through expression of colors by using them to Demonstrate stresses in my life that I need to deal with.)

Redvers, N. (2019). Chapter 8: The Natural Psychologist. In The Science of the Sacred: Bridging Global Indigenous Medicine Systems and Modern Scientific Principles. North Atlantic Books. Berkeley, CA. (p. 141-162).

[ebenpink]

Canadian Report Calls The Deaths Of Indigenous Women And Girls A Genocide http://bit.ly/2MpNT0H

Global News: ‘This is genocide’: Final MMIWG report says all Canadians have role in ending violence The chief commissioner of the inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) told survivors and families on Monday they have started to rewrite Canadian history. The tragedy, former B.C. judge Marion Buller said, is a direct result of a “persistent and deliberate pattern of systemic racial and gendered human and Indigenous-rights violations and abuses, perpetuated historically and maintained today by the Canadian state, designed to displace Indigenous people from their lands, social structures and governments, and to eradicate their existence as nations, communities, families and individuals.” Read more .... WNU Editor: Canadians do not see themselves complicit in committing genocide against Canada's indigenous people. On the contrary, in my years of being a Canadian citizen (since the 1990s), this country has always been supportive of policies and politicians who are committed to improving the lives of this country's native peoples. I live across the river from the Kahnawake First Nations Reserve, and over the years I have gotten to know many people who live there, and many of them are my friends. I play golf there. Socialize. And even pursued business and educational projects. I have seen first hand the problems on this reservation (and others in Quebec), and more importantly I have seen many who have sacrificed their time and energies to improve the situation. I have seen success stories. I have also seen disasters. The sexual violence that exists in some of these communities, especially on children, is truly horrific .... Open secret: Sexual abuse haunts children in Indigenous communities (CBC). One of my girlfriend's closest friends is an indigenous person who told her that before she fled her Ontario reserve, almost every girl (including her) experienced sexual abuse before they reached the age of 18. This has to stop. Prime Minister Trudeau refused to use the term "genocide" today .... Trudeau avoids calling the violence against Indigenous women a ‘genocide’ (National Post). In my opinion he did the right thing. The mass majority of Canadians want to support policies and initiatives that make sense. Labelling them as complicit in genocide is going to kill the conversation. It will also frankly hurt the Prime Minister's chances of getting re-elected when Canadians go to the polls this October, especially in places like the province of Quebec where the French and native communities have a long history of animosity that goes back centuries. As to the report itself. I think the severe criminal penalties and rules that it wants implemented be adopted for all Canadians instead of just for Canada's indigenous peoples. The report also calls for more police in these communities, but in my experience many of these communities have trouble recruiting people who want to be policemen or policewomen. Crime insome of these reservations is a huge problem, and according to the RCMP almost 70% of all murders of indigenous peoples occur within these communities. Who wants to work in such an environment? Especially in small communities where everyone knows everyone, and crime is an endemic problem. I also believe that we must rethink on what to do with isolated reservations with no jobs (unless you work for the government), resources, or opportunities. Other native communities have also been given land and resources that are valued in the tens of billions of dollars. I believe a strategy should be developed on how to use these resources effectively, and to encourage investment. I understand that many native groups are against development, but a compromise must be found because the status quo is not working. The report's call for a guaranteed income will also not solve the crisis. Throwing money never solves social ills, and in some cases will only perpetuate the misery by creating a dependency on these funds. I have also seen first hand on what happens when government money flows into these communities. Many act responsibly, and many do not. The full report is here.

More News On A Canadian Report That Calls The Murders Of Indigenous Women And Girls A Genocide

Trudeau declines to call deaths of Indigenous women and girls a genocide -- CTV News Canadian inquiry calls deaths of indigenous women 'genocide' -- Reuters Inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women issues final report with sweeping calls for change -- CBC Some of the MMIWG inquiry's farthest-reaching recommendations -- National Post/Canadian Press from War News Updates http://bit.ly/313BBhM via IFTTT

[myessay-xyz-blog]

My Menno-Canadian Place

Ellaina Brown.

STDO-3680 Place and Placelessness

Sarah Ciurysek

     Yi-Fu Tuan says an arbitrary “space” becomes “place” because we “get to know it better and endow it with value” (6). “Place”, he says, “is pause; each pause in movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place”. If place is made through our increased familiarity to a space, then as we choose to become acquainted with people, places, and things, those choices create places. On the other hand, place is inherited; there are parts of ourselves that are handed to us. Through the framework of our given home, ethnicity, worldview and cultural context we become familiar with space: never completely independent of that history.

     I love Tuan’s explanation of space; it has stuck with me. As I place myself in history by identifying my ethnic background and the history of my physical locale, I am, in a sense, pausing in a great space to find place. Through this paper I have re-placed myself as a Mennonite person and in a culture shaped by a “Metis civilization” (John Ralston Saul). 

     I’ve known for most of my life that I am three-quarters Mennonite. However, until this year I never embraced this as my ethnicity. Mennonites, a distinct cultural group that came out of the Anabaptist-Christian movement following the Reformation, have a history of being on the move. Persecution scattered the Menno-sect resulting in my ancestors settling in Prussia. They withstood both persecution and assimilation. A “strong social-system” and “precise cultural identity” were understood as the necessary means for surviving as a minority in a strong Western host-society (Toews 120). They maintained a distinct language and segregated themselves for self-preservation. When they could no longer be promised freedom to practice the distinctiveness that defined their faith, particularly their commitment to non-violence and pacifism, they re-located.

     After Prussian government smelled of assimilation and started to impose limits on their freedoms, they moved to Russia. This was the birthplace of many of my great-great-grandparents, and even some great-grandparents. 

1/8

     After resettling the Mennonites gained momentum and had agricultural success. They were called “colonials” because they successfully took from a new land and created a place as a sovereign group. With wealth came the ability to create their own churches, systems of education, even a business school to be completely self-sufficient and free to students. Although, this would not last as the political climate invariably shifted. 

     In 1870, conscription was mandated. Although Mennonites established a compromise, (“for many…such Legislation reflected the increasing government intolerance”) a new migration began, this time to the Americas (Toews 128). Many stayed until World War I, and as a German and Dutch-speaking minority in a country at war with Germany, they began to feel the pains of a country at war. 

     Mennonites who stayed in Russia through the Bolshevik Revolution endured severe persecution. Those who remained, “were totally demoralized in the wake of the violence, disease, and caprice which characterized their everyday lives” (Toews 136).

     Letters were sent back to the Mennonites of the Americas depicting the loss of identity: “without land, machinery…the farmer had no sense of direction”. Another letter, which particularly struck me, said “we hardly understand ourselves, we hardly recognize ourselves: are we this or is it a bad dream…Life appears empty” (ibid). 

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     I have never been in that place. It may even confuse me. But in terms of placing myself, this history shaped the lives of my grandparents, my parents, and ultimately me as well. Religiously, I was raised in a Mennonite Church. Morally, non-violence was valued. I am part evangelist as the Mennonites: I have a heart to cast vision and bring others alongside that vision. I seek community and I believe hard-work and adaptability are key to prosperity and survival. Do I locate these parts of me in this historic place? This ethnic place? What about the parts of me that have no ties with this people-group? 

     In an interview/conversation with my parents, we spoke about the idea of Mennonite Ethnicity. Neither of them fully identified with that statement, because both they and their parents worked, in part, to break-away from the Mennonite Brethren tradition. Specifically, they sought separation from the strictness and rigidity of rules characteristic of the Mennonite Brethren Denomination (a sectarian group that broke off in Russia in the 1800’s). My grandparents and parents took a more liberal stance then their Mennonite-Brethren Communities, most likely seen to many as conformity to the dominant Anglo-Saxon British-Western culture. Low-German ceased with my Grandparents generation along with the majority of Mennonite cuisine and other such cultural identifiers. What remained was the Anabaptist roots; peace, non-violence and voluntary baptism into a faith-based community. These were the foundations of the Anabaptist beliefs, along with values of hard work, adaptability, and a loyal community (Brown, Linda, and Brown, Darryl. Interview). 

     Although my ethnicity gives me a sense of the place of my personhood, my geographic location, the Prairies, (having lived in numerous cities in Saskatchewan and now Winnipeg, Manitoba) is also significant. The relationship my ancestors, the people of my ethnicity, have had with the land is a significant one in the Canadian story today. 

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     The agricultural skills of the Mennonites were well-known to the British empire, who sought to boost the economy of the newly-established Canadian Nation. Agriculture was a “progressive” and productive use of the land, at least so far as the British were concerned. Mennonites would help the nation prosper agriculturally, which conformed to the Western idea of proper development of civilization (Saul, Chapter 6). In this way, Mennonites were the arm of colonialism, as they were in Prussia and Russia.

     Calvin Redekop's study of the Mennonites found their emigration to Canada was also a displacement of Indigenous Peoples. He notes that “it is concluded by Mennonites, by virtue of their belief system and practice, [that they] did not overtly displace natives, but rather followed another form—‘Co-existence of the groups’ with ‘symbiosis as the normal outcome” (Redekop 1). Because they kept to themselves and valued peace, Mennonites didn’t think they were violating anyone. However, even though the Canadian Government gave them the land, they were not seeing the people they displaced to gain access to this new land. 

     In the Southern Manitoba region, Metis farmers filed claims (ex. Charlie Grant, a well-known helpful and welcoming local settler) to keep their farms and their lands. Histories speak about “Indian/Metis resistance to give up lands” and a “block settlement” of the Mennonites which “may have interfered with the allocation of land which had been given to the native Indian and Metis settlers” (Redekop 76). There were racial stigmas toward Indigenous people groups among Mennonite. Mennonite Author Rudy Wiebe (who himself lived in a Mennonite community in rural Saskatchewan in the mid 20th century) writes with historical criticism and invites his readers to understand the racial stigmatization's present at the time through his book Peace Shall Destroy Many (set in 1944). 

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     The Mennonite people have rationalized their right to Canadian lands as supporting the nation to finish what it started (Redekop 83). This was, nonetheless, seen in 1948 as a violation of the UN’s declaration of Human Rights (article 7 and article 17). 

     The space given to the Mennonites was also a dispossession of others’ place. And those who once lived there were rationalized into invisibility. This has certainly been my experience in the communities I’ve found myself in, and was a blindness that I continue to recognize in myself. Indigenous nations were not something we talked about nor who's histories we were educated in, even though the First Nations are the foundational people of this place. My place-making was made without these Nations even on my radar. This is also part of the place I am from, a place I still need to recognize, in all its complexities. 

     Some Mennonites who I encountered in my twenties fought against attitudes that made Indigenous peoples invisible (the food for colonialism). Groups like the Mennonite Central Committee took peace-building and non-violence very practically in relation to the UN’s declaration of human rights and found themselves beginning to empathize with the assimilation, genocide and violence of the government’s actions. They realized the government at the time was attempting to destroy First Nations culture, perhaps because it was something they recognized in their own Mennonite history. Restorative Justice, a non-retributive model of understanding Justice that is characteristic of a more relational and kin-based worldview, became central to the Mennonite understanding of justice. In Manitoba, MCC supported the Church coalition to support the Northern Flood Committee. Peace work and non-violence started to look more like friendship. 

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     It seems that some Mennonites are starting to recognize their ascension to power, no longer seeing themselves as the most vulnerable group, and, at least in my experience, taking the place of a student. The Mennonites I encountered and read about who exemplified this new form of peace-making see their place differently, and I am learning to see my place along with them.

     Being placed as a Mennonite Canadian gives me a greater sense of understanding. Finding connection with my history and people gives me a sense of home. However, there is another history I can’t ignore if I am to place myself as a Canadian in Manitoba; the history of this land. 

     In “A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada”, John Ralston Saul dedicates a quarter of his book to the idea of a Metis Civilization. He attributes the heart of Canadian identity, all that makes us a unique nation, the underpinning of our culture as a nation, as “Metis”. He says; “When I dig around in the roots of how we imagine ourselves, how we govern, how we live together in communities-how we treat one another…what I find is deeply Aboriginal”. As Canadians we pride ourselves on our ability to be inclusive, to accept immigrants, to be not a melting-pot but a Mosaic; a civilization that expands and adapts to those who come. Where did this idea come from? 

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     When the fur trade began, and contact with the Indigenous people was made, it was unlike any other European colony relationship from the “sixteenth to the ninetieth century” (Saul 10). The host culture welcomed newcomers, not because they were threatened by them, but because the disposition of the Indigenous cultures was that of welcome and sharing. They made friends and helped one-another. We cannot ignore the fact that this trade market was the beginnings of what turned out to be, centuries later, not only a disruption but a harmful colonial force, but from the “seventeenth century on, the Scots from the late seventeenth century…the German religious minorities from the eighteenth century on— all settled here in difficult, isolating circumstances, and made their way, thanks to the First Nations and later the Metis. Their relationships evolved over time, often for the worse. But it was a slow evolution; a matter of centuries. Ways of relating to the other and ways of doing things settled in, became habit, became culture,” (Saul 57). 

     On this land, before colonial power dominated, their was a relationship that made room for the other. A culture that decided to expanded the circle of ones space to include others as we became familiar with newcomers. My people stepped onto something that had already been in motion, a Metis nation. I do not want to appropriate this Metis identity or claim entitlement to it in any way. Blindspots will always be a part of my place, and I need to recognize the vastly distinct context with which we were handed. But I also want to recognize that the birth of a nation out of collaboration and shared interest that was established for centuries is the kind of place that made it possible for the Mennonites to find freedom. Because of a Metis civilization, I feel that my people have come to truly understand peace. The attitude of friendship took root in the nations fabric, even though years of colonialism and government control and blindness of power tried to erase this history from our place. It was resilient. Perhaps there are other reasons to describe our unique response to globalization, but the exchange and widening of the circle, the recognition of kinship in the other, is something I want to continue to familiarize myself with as this space, this treaty land, is where I am placed. 

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Works Cited

Brown, Linda, and Brown, Darryl. Interview by Ellaina Brown. Personal interview. Winnipeg, May 12, 2017.

Hamm, Peter M. Continuity and Change Among Canadian Mennonite Brethren. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006.

Redekop, Calvin. "Mennonite Displacement of Indigenous Peoples: An Historical and Sociological Analysis." Canadian Ethnic Studies = Etudes Ethniques Au Canada 14, no. 2 (1982): 71-90.

Saul, John Ralston. A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada. Penguin Canada, 2009.

Schlichtmann, Hansgeorg. “Ethnic Themes in Geographical Research on Western Canada.” Canadian Ethnic Studies = Etudes Ethniques Au Canada 9 (2): 9.

Toews, John B. 1970. "Russian Mennonites in Canada: Some Background Aspects." Canadian Ethnic Studies = Etudes Ethniques Au Canada 2 (2): 117.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press. 1977.

Wiebe, Rudy. Peace Shall Destroy Many. Vintage Canada, 2001.

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