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Idle No More movement urged to remain grassroots ahead of January 11 protests
Stephen Harper meeting not the end of Idle No More, local organizer says
Gord Hill (holding the Mohawk warrior flag during a 2010 Olympic protest) says the Idle No More movement needs to stay grassroots to succeed.
Stephen Hui
Although Prime Minister Stephen Harper is preparing to meet with a delegation of First Nations chiefs on Friday (January 11), a long-time indigenous activist says this should not be viewed as a success for the Idle No More movement.
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Indeed, Gord Hill told the Georgia Straight the high-level meeting actually represents the co-optation of the grassroots indigenous-sovereignty movement by band chiefs and councils that owe their power to the paternalistic Indian Act. According to the 44-year-old Kwakwaka’wakw author of The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, the Canadian government has historically used these “elites” to suppress efforts by First Nations people to fight colonialism and oppression.
“I wouldn’t even focus on January 11,” Hill said by phone from his East Vancouver home. “That’s something that the colonial regime and its collaborators are doing, so I wouldn’t even focus on that. People need to focus on the long-term strategy and methods of organizing.”
Hill calls himself a “critical supporter” of the Idle No More movement, which was started in October by four women in Saskatchewan, has rallied around hunger-striking Attawapiskat chief Theresa Spence, and has seen thousands take to the streets inside and outside the country. Although he hasn’t yet joined the ranks of Idle No More protesters, Hill is considering participating in the “global day of action” set to coincide with Harper’s meeting on Friday.
Meanwhile, Khelsilem Rivers, a Skwxwú7mesh community organizer, is helping coordinate January 11 protests in Canada and internationally. The 23-year-old activist previously helped stage Idle No More flash mobs at the Vancouver Convention Centre, Waterfront Station, and Park Royal.
On Friday, Rivers will attend an Idle No More rally at Vancouver City Hall (453 West 12th Avenue) at 1 p.m., which will be preceded by a march from the Native Education College (285 East 5th Avenue) starting at noon. There will be a flash mob at Robson and Burrard streets at 5:30 p.m.
Rivers stressed that Harper’s meeting won’t mark the end of Idle No More but the beginning of the “unprecedented” movement’s next phase. According to him, Idle No More has brought many indigenous and nonindigenous people together to discuss and take action on common issues, including the erosion of aboriginal rights and environmental protections by the Conservatives’ Bill C-45. Such conversations can help clear up misunderstandings among many Canadians about the role and history of First Nations in Canada, Rivers told the Straight.
“They see us as another ethnic minority with special rights, so they talk about it in terms of equality,” Rivers said by phone from his home on West Vancouver’s Capilano reserve. “What they fail to understand is that there’s a long history of legal and constitutional reasons for why indigenous people are considered nations and why we identify as nations.”
Skwxwú7mesh community organizer Khelsilem Rivers is helping coordinate the January 11 protests.
Stephen Hui
Judith Sayers, a former chief of the Hupacasath First Nation in Port Alberni, describes herself as “just a part of the movement”. The UVic visiting national-aboriginal-economic-development chair told the Straight the federal government must stop “ignoring” its constitutional duty to consult First Nations, whose people are now rising up to save what’s left of their lands and resources. And she cautioned that without unity between the grassroots and the chiefs, Idle No More will fail.
“I am excited that people are engaging, that I can see the common community person standing up and saying, ‘I’m opposed to Bill C-45 because blah, blah, blah,’ ” Sayers, 56, said by phone from the UVic campus. “How long has it been since I’ve been able to see that in our communities? People are standing up; they’re wanting to get engaged; and they want to talk about systems of government other than the Indian Act.”
For his part, Hill sees the Idle No More flash mobs, round dances, and blockades that have occurred as “really positive steps” because they’ve mobilized many previously “idle” indigenous people. But the activist argues that if the movement is to gain substantial concessions from the government, it needs to learn from social movements in Latin America that are capable of “paralyzing the economy” of their countries. So he’s critical of the founders and some organizers of Idle No More for opposing any actions that fall outside of peaceful protest.
“This is disarming the people,” Hill said. “It’s imposing pacifism on them, and it’s dampening their warrior spirit—their fighting spirit—which we need in a resistance movement.”
The Idle No More movement has planned a “global day of action” for January 11.
J11Action
Jarrett Martineau, a 35-year-old PhD student in indigenous governance at UVic, helped create the j11action.com website to promote Friday’s day of action. Although the member of the Frog Lake First Nation in Alberta believes that no one should tell people “this is the only way to protest,” he maintains that peaceful civil disobedience can be and has been effective.
Indian Act chiefs have a “relationship” with the movement, Martineau told the Straight. But he argues that First Nations need to reestablish their traditional forms of governance. Fortunately, many youth involved in Idle No More are “in it for the long haul”, according to Martineau.
“We’re trying to point the focus away from what’s ultimately an administrative, photo-op meeting—that’s going to be the thing with Harper—towards the bigger movement,” Martineau said by phone from Victoria. “I think that’s partly, for us, why we think it’s going to be a historic day, because it marks a transition in terms of the people’s movement really taking ownership of the movement itself, independent of elected leadership.”
Idle No More is an opportunity - its not a threat. It is not and should just not be seen as just a native thing. I hope all people, especially young people pick up their Iphones and head down to the Idle No More marches to participate in what could be the beginnings of true nation building and meaningful relations. #IdleNoMore!
It is my current conclusion that the First Nations have not benefited from policies meant to give them a different way of life than Canadians not governed by the Indian Act.
I myself have a concern that accords and treaties signed many years ago, while probably well intentioned at the time, are archaic and have only a tangential connection to 21st Century realities, the primary of which is that we now consider it weird if not disgusting to assign differential treatment about legal rights and freedom of residence on the basis of race alone.
To give perspective, we as a society do not adhere to 18th century precepts about any other area of their then-current expertise, such as engineering or medicine or homosexual marriage or global warming. We use today's standards.
No, I recognize that the courts recognize that the treaties are still legally valid in whatever extent; what I am saying is that the First Nations have no obligation that I can see to want to uphold them. Just as the football team can decline an award of down that would take away the yardage gained on the play, they could opt out of them as well.
The trend in human rights legislation is always to the benefit of the individual, not the group. Identity politics are always dangerous and what's the real advantage of doing it on this tribal basis, which had historical validity at first contact but now, centuries later, is absurd given the generations of intermarriage, dispersal, and the radical shifts in culture of the so call invading nation(s) as well.
Treaty rights cause cognitive dissonance. Let's deal with it.
Occupy is no more because it never understood leadership in a democracy. Occupy thought that churning was the same as movement.
Occupy disappeared because, in Vancouver, it degenerated into a tent slum featuring drug overdoses, endless whining, and utter indecision.
Idle No More will fall apart for the same reasons if it does not learn from the blunders and chaos of Occupy. Taking advice from the glib 'activists' of Vancouver will doom INM to the same fizzled outcome.
I'm glad to see that you've dropped your usual practice of ad hominem attacks against named individuals whom you hold responsible for standing in the way of "progress" in the DTES.
Your lashing out at the so-called Black Bloc and the wholly manufactured "anarchists" (yes, the same fictional bomb tossers blamed by the police and our mayor as being responsible for the Stanley Cup riot), however, only betrays your preferred media sources.
Do you listen to the radio station that ran with the manufactured and unattributed story about the hordes of rats running amok throughout the Occupy encampment and endangering the law-abiding, non-rat-loving citizens of Vancouver?
Or maybe you get your nightly news fix from the TV station that actually invented that story? You know, the one whose assignment editor's son ran the simultaneous election campaign for Suzanne Anton against Gregor Robertson? The same Suzanne Anton who immediately played up the rats as a major campaign issue and (non)photo op?
"..one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.."
Laws have been passed by our senate that were hidden in 450 page documents concerning our budget. I'm Idle No MORE!!!!!
If you keep it, then you can work on it with the other person, to make it better.
But if you're like the Canadian government, which continues to dishonour the deal (called a Treaty), nobody can trust you.
That was the beginning of the destruction. Not to ring an OLD tune but the destruction of people of "US" began when we believed we were being GIFTED land, land that THEY had no right to give or take. Then they TOOK away rights, rights that we let them have, OUR children, OUR heritage, OUR future. DESTROYED
Now the continued destruction of EARTH! We have all watched movies, HOLLYWOOD'S version of the final days of Earth, where the aliens come and take over all the natural resources until there is NOTHING left! We are those aliens take, Take, TAKING, until there will be NOTHING left. These "insignificant", foretellings of what will happen. The LARGE earthquakes in the path of the VERY DESTRUCTIVE "oil" pipelines will run, oh that can only wipe out a small part of Earth! Come ON! open your eyes, NO amount of $$$ will bring back NATURE!!! Throw $$$ at it all you want, SHE Mother Earth will not be bought!
Hope this makes sense.
Many people are newcomers who left the shores of their forfathers in search of a better life. Which is understandable....most Native people don't judge because of this......Most can relate and sympothize.
But your forfathers made agreements......they made CONTRACTS.......the WONDERFULL NEW LIFE that their descendants enjoy today had to be payed for.......and STILL needs to be payed for.
It's like someone buying you a brand new $250K Ferrari and telling you that all you have to do is keep insurance on it to keep it......
Make the insurance payment for Pete's sake!........Be happy with the AWESOME deal you were so fortunate enough to recieve! It's nothing..........peanuts in comparisson to what FAIR compensation would actually be!
Violating the equality even with the best possible intentions in mind would always create a problem with the unexpected, bad or opposite results!
Give more rights to a minority or a majority for whatever reason and everybody is in trouble. The history of mankind has proven this point countless times over the thousands of years.
Historically, no matter how heinous or humane and/or grand (in case of Native People privileges in Canada) were the objectives behind giving more rights to one group of people, the results have always been the same. A conflict. And Canada is not an exception!
Prolonging the inequality in Canada could mean only one thing, an intentional widening and deepening of the conflict with
predictably devastating results of an unpredictable scale.
Full, complete and absolute equality is the only answer to the problem!
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