[009] "I'm Gonna Take My Power Back"
Nov. v4: On the one-sided efforts of the Haudenosaunee to protect our treaty relationships, and "this little boat of the language" that might hold some hope yet.
Hello, Tired Ones,
Another week, another sign of life, another reason that showing up’s still worth it.
In my work as a writer and designer for culture change, I come across important stories about progress that’s actually working for people.
These are stories that refuse the false choice: sweet indulgence, or the bitter pill.
They help us to remember: before there was bureaucratic care, or self-care, there was simply care.
So come on in, sit down. For the next few minutes at least, there’s no rush. It’s a new week, after all.
November's care work: You, showing up through crises
“I place my hope on the water/ in this little boat/ of the language”
Sourcing notes: via Luke Jones on Unsplash.
—
So begins an installation by artist Anique Jordan – a mural like a vertical billboard on Oakwood Ave near Vaughn Rd in Toronto.
It continues:
[…] We
have given hope when we shouldn’t have
any left. We have done it all and right now,
for many of us, there are no words left for
the exhaustion, the fear, the grief, the
hurt. Our mothers have told you they are
scared. We are scared. We are tired,
so tired.We have done enough.
For those who have done enough, we see you. I see you.
A song, for pairing
“Water Memory 1” by Emily A. Sprague, from the album Water Memory (2017).
An ambient artist born and raised in the Catskills of upstate New York invokes her conviction that, “Water is emotionally charged.” She had begun looping music alone, using pedals, a few years prior – after a hit-and-run accident in 2015 almost killed her, and left her with the use of only one hand. Listen to more.
In a beautiful twist of fate, the first song Sprague wrote after her accident would go on to be sampled by Beyonce in her 2019 mega-hit-concert-movie Homecoming – underneath a climactic voice-over by Maya Angelou:
“What I really want to do is be a representative of my race, of the human race,” Angelou says, over Sprague’s light looping pedals and synths. “I know that when I’m finished doing what I’m sent here to do, I will be called home.”
[Sprague’s tweet in response:] “this film / performance is beyond beauty, beyond words. being a part of it in this small way with a piece of music that i made in maybe my most broken state, reaching for feeling and the intention of empathy for the world, is truly the greatest honor of my short life. thank u bey”
Sourcing notes: via Rolling Stone. “They were a small Indie Band in New York. Then Beyonce Made a Request” April 18, 2019.
A healthy idea, to chew on
“#348 Is Canada Ready To Give Land Back?” an interview with reporters Karl Dockstader and Sean Vanderklis. Hosted by Jesse Brown on the Canadaland podcast. November 15, 2020.
On the inaction of the Federal Government regarding the terms of The Haldimand Treaty (1784), and the contemporary efforts of the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) to maintain peace while protecting their land from ongoing, unlawful theft by lower levels of government:
[Note: The episode builds off of previous reporting by Dockstader and Vanderklis surrounding Haudenosaunee land defenders, via their podcast One Dish One Mic:
The Haudenosaunee have been re-occupying their land on a development site that they call 1492 Land Back Lane.
Since a ruling in early October by the Ontario Superior Court, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) have threatened to remove the Haudenosaunee from their land by force, with numerous injuries to Indigenous people on site.
The court’s decision was inconsistent with the Crown’s Treaty obligations, which remain in force under the Canadian Constitution—which is one reason why many community members on all sides are calling for greater federal involvement.]
Karl Dokstader:
We’ve reached out about four times to each office—both the Minister of Indigenous Services, Mark Miller, and the Minister of IC Relations, Carolyn Bennett—and we’ve got a standard reply…—to quote Minister Bennett’s office, “We are actively working with the community and look forward to meeting at the earliest opportunity. Our government has been working with Indigenous communities across the country to build a relationship based on the affirmation of rights, respect, cooperation and partnership.” But those words aren’t followed up by any actions.Sean Vanderklis:
So what we ended up doing, we reached out to Beverley Jacobs, who is the former president of the Natives Women’s Association of Canada… and she took it upon herself to reach out to Carolyn Bennett, at the time the critic of Indigenous Affairs…Beverley Jacobs [on tape]:
[In 2006, during previous land disputes:] There was an opportunity to bring her in – [eds. Carolyn Bennett, then the opposition critic] – and to meet so that she could hear first hand about the responsibilities that we have, and the relationship to the land, and the impacts of colonization, the impacts of the Indian Act, and residential school issues, right? I trusted her. I trusted her to bring her into the community. There isn’t a lot of people that I do that with. […] I actually do believe that she really wanted to learn. So my disappointment with what's happening now, when there's no reaction, no response. That's disappointing to me. Because it was a relationship of respect that I thought was there. And now it's - it's, I feel, very disrespected. Because I took a lot of time to try to educate her.Jesse Brown:
Her sense of disappointment is palpable there. You can hear it just in the way she talks about it… but what would the opposite of that look like? What would Jacobs like to see happen, like concretely… for that matter what do 1492 Land Back Lane protestors want?SV:
I mean, the land defenders clearly want dialogue. This comes on the heels of what happened in the court decision. I'm not even sure that people were so much disappointed with the outcome of the court decision — which they clearly were — but I think a bigger piece of that is they were unheard... When you listen to what Bev Jacobs just said, it's the same thing. She brought Carolyn Bennett into her circle of trust, and now here we are at a time when she really needed her. People have been reaching out saying, "Will you help?" And there's nothing but a standard response that comes out.KD:
We put the question to Bev Jacobs about the Nation to Nation relationship and Indigenous sovereignty. We asked, does this exist in the current context of Canada? ... and this is what she had to say.Beverley Jacobs [on tape]:
I don't think that they respect that Nation to Nation relationship because for them it's about power. And even the courts have said it: if there's a conflict between the rights of Indigenous people and Canadians sovereignty, then Canadian sovereignty is the supreme power. So the history of our treaty relationships are already disrespected and violated. They have to acknowledge that they've benefitted from stealing our land. It's coming to terms with that. And saying, “Okay, yeah, I know my ancestors did that. So how can we restore a healthy relationship? How can we restore the trust?” And to me that's the basic beginnings of reconciliation. They want to talk about reconciliation? That's what it is.You know, I've done a lot of work on principles of a violent relationship. So I've equated the Canadian government as an abuser. Because they've had power and control over our people. And when you're a victim of violence, you wake up and you say, "That's enough of that. It's enough of that power and control. I'm gonna stand up, and I'm gonna take power back. I'm gonna take my power back. And that means my relationship to my land and my people, and my territory, and you, abuser, need to acknowledge that. You need to understand that, and you need to tell me how you're going to restore the harm that you've done. Cause you can apologize all you want, but until I actually see some action that you are making yourself better to not be an abuser anymore, then I know that I can trust you. And I know that you will make things better." So it's their actions that's gonna make a difference.
[…]KD:
Canada can’t honour these agreements. They really can’t. Indigenous People are having to do these things on their own, from government to government to government to government… especially with the silence from the Government, I don’t know what the path forward could be. […]JB:
[…] What you just said seems to be, “There’s no reason to believe based on Canada’s actions that Canada will [honour treaty obligations].” It hasn’t, except when forced to.SV:
The issue I think is that we’re putting Canadian standards of the interpretation of treaties and agreements on Indigenous people... should we follow these treaties to the T, there is no way that Canada could live up to those obligations. From an Indigenous perspective, there may be a path forward that doesn't require the Canadian government to fully live up to those financial obligations. We could work around it. But in order to work around it, and to come up with a possible solution is for us to sit down at a a table and have those conversations. […]We have a Member of Parliament here in Niagara, Chris Bittle, who went on record saying, “What do you want me to do about things that happened while I was in high school?” Well, Chris, you are a Member of Parliament. Your job is to rectify the past mistakes of your government. Indigenous People, we don’t see a Liberal government, we don't see a Conservative government or an NDP government. We see the Government of Canada. And the Government of Canada has entered into these agreements, and the Government of Canada fails to live up to these agreements. And the Government of Canada fails to even have discussions about these agreements.
A good practice, to freeze for later
I’m Gonna Take My Power Back—And You, Abuser, Need to Tell Me How You’re Going To Restore The Harm That You’ve Done.
Indigenous leaders like Beverley Jacobs have been saying for generations that there is a path to peace—but it starts with the Federal Government acting on its constitutional obligations. Peace may begin when the Crown steps in to stop enabling the crossfire of local violence—from the vigilante attacks against Mi’kmaq fisherman in Nova Scotia, to the Court-ordered injunction against the Haudenosaunee. Until then, the Government of Canada is locking everyone in all the Nations of this land into a war of attrition that no one wants. The one common denominator that local residents in Caledonia can agree to with Six Nations community members is that someone needs to step in to resolve the ambiguity that’s perpetuating tensions. Certainly, the state-sanctioned abuse of Indigenous people must stop. And so should the way that regular Canadians are bearing the brunt of their national history, left unacknowledged. When Canada fails to step in, everyone loses—but Indigenous People have lost, and are losing, the most.
Treaties are the legal foundation of Canada, and they govern Indigenous–Crown relations—but they are much more than just legal agreements. Karl Dockstader, the journalist above from One Dish One Mic, points this out elsewhere – like in this interview with the American podcast “Iroquois History and Legends,” hosted by Andrew Cotter:
Karl Dockstader:
Treaties are the law of the land. We named our show One Dish One Mic for a reason. We named it after the One Dish One Spoon agreement. [Editors note: This agreement governs relations in the Greater Toronto Area to this day, from an Indigenous perspective.] […] This isn’t a law like the Criminal Code, where you have to do this or that. It’s more a lesson, a philosophy, about how to interact with the world. It’s a simple fact that if you cut down the last tree in the world, or I cut it down, or if someone else does – it’s a fact that the tree will be gone for everybody. So by understanding that we live in a world of finite resources, then we need to be respectful in the way that we interact with them. That’s a universal code.So sure, you can say, “That’s a 100 year old agreement. Well, that doesn’t apply to me.” You can say that gravity doesn’t apply to me, right? Or breathing oxygen doesn’t apply to me. You can believe whatever you want. But it’s a lesson and a teaching that I think makes us better when we acknowledge it. […]
Andrew Cotter:
Peter Jemison – [Editor’s note: the artist, who is Seneca, and therefore part of the Haundenosaunee confederacy] – whenever people say to him, “The American Government broke the treaty!” He will stop and say, “No, the treaty has been violated many times, but it’s never broken. We uphold our side of the deal. If we say the treaty is broken, then we have no more relationship with the United States.” Peter says, “It’s violated, and we air our grievances, but we’re going to hold fast to our covenant.” It’s not a contract, it’s a perpetual agreement of friendship and mutual co-habitation and co-interdependence.Sourcing notes: via The Iroquois History and Legends Podcast, “Episode 60 – Seven Generations with Karl Dockstader (Oneida)”. June 25, 2020.
Most Canadians, or at least the people in mainstream White Canada that I’m familiar with, have very little concept of what it means to be in a covenant agreement that spans generations. That ignorance does a lot to explain the outright abusive behaviour that we see on a collective level. But I don’t think it’s the type of ignorance that can be fixed with a change to some school curricula, or awareness campaigns – though of course those have some role to play. I think the type of ignorance at play among Canadians is a tunnel-vision of the spirit, one that drives our obsession with individual achievement. That single-mindedness is best understood, I think, in contrast to Karl’s personal story as an Indigenous person. In conversation with Cotter, he describes his “call to consciousness” through the Idle No More movement:
What I really pride myself on is activity in my own community… Everything we do as Indigenous People, I think is evaluated on a community level… Individual success is just not the metric… for who we are as people. At least in the community circles I hang out in. For me, my introduction to community was through a movement called Idle No More… [where] I saw this seismic shift, almost 10 years ago. That was my rebirth into community.
I was just living a regular life, and trying to hold down a good job, and trying to buy a house, and just worrying about the things that most people worry about. And I saw this groundswell of activity in our community, and it really opened my eyes that we need to work together to affect wholesale change. And my whole life mission got flipped upside down from there to now. I realized that my success or failure is tied to the success of everybody else in my community. And there really is no other way.
Sourcing notes: as above.
As a settler so disconnected from my ancestral, land-based cultures and languages in Ireland and England, it’s sometimes hard to imagine what meaningful community connection could look like. But here, too, Karl’s story is a helpful contrast. Because the romantic idea that Indigenous people have easy access to their culture just isn’t the case for most. Many have had to work hard to protect and reclaim the ways that are theirs. Karl’s story is one among many – and there are even elements of it that resonate with my family history in Saint John, NB, over the last five generations. Here’s Karl:
Sean and I realized that… we have carved out this unique identity as urban Indigenous people. I’ve never lived on Oneida of the Thames. I’ve been there, I go there for ceremony, I have friends that live on Oneida, I’m strongly connected… But I’ve never actually lived there… Our people came to Niagara, and Fort Erie, and Buffalo – for a whole bunch of socioeconomic and political reasons. But we came here. And we didn’t quite fit in here, and then we didn’t quite fit in where we’re from, so we’re sort of exiled from two worlds. And we found refuge in each other. And we established our own communities. And so what started out as social clubs branched into this beautiful movement, the Friendship Centre movement, and has now turned into this unique urban Indigenous identity that we have… It’s like everywhere we go, as long as we’re there, then our people are there, and our ways continue there. […]
In the future, I hope that the One Dish One Spoon agreement is still being followed, and people are being mindful of our impact on our Mother the Earth… I hope that we continue our ways of peace into the future. I hope that language flourishes, and that there are pockets of people speaking in full conversations in Oneida, and appreciating how old that language is. And how much there are things in the language that connect us to the land. There will have to be new Oneida words to replace the words that were lost, and I think that’s actually a beautiful opportunity, too, for people to grow.
Sourcing notes: as above.
I’m gonna take my power back.
A poem, to cleanse the palate
“Ceist na Teangan [The Language Issue]” written in Irish by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, from her collection Phaoroh’s Daughter (1990). Translated to English by Paul Muldoon.
It begins:
I place my hope on the water
in this little boat
of the language
On the faith required to buoy a culture, and the daughters of old enemies who might one day care for it:
only to have it borne hither and thither,
not knowing where it might end up;
in the lap, perhaps,
of some Pharaoh’s daughter.
Sourcing notes: via the podcast Poetry Unbound, November 20, 2020.
Something sweet, for the road
And now, a very happy baby—falling over himself to be helpful.
Sourcing notes: via @iguessimamom (via @beigecardigan) on Instagram.
A question, til next time
Last week, I decided to stop sending a second post per week with a discussion question. I’m so grateful to those who piped in to share your ideas and stories, but since the responses wavered, I decided not to risk spamming your inbox. I might try it again down the road on Instagram or elsewhere there’s interest!
In the meantime, please drop me a comment with any requests, suggestions, or questions for your fellow readers.
That's all for this week.
Remember: Drink when you're thirsty, nap when you can.
Kind regards,
Chris Connolly
Manager, Personalized Care
(Acting Director, Standardized Care)
Humane Resources Division
The Dept. of Emotional Labour