18 Aug 2014
Note: these are my own observations/reactions/musings, not Christian Peacemaker Teams’ official communications. Please also follow Caitlin’s delegation blog, Peace Pigeon, and the official CPT Aboriginal Justice tumblr!
Personal ethnographic note: I am white, a Quaker, of Jewish descent, and from San Francisco, California, Turtle Island.
##Sacred Fire by the Logging Blockade
In our last night in Grassy Narrows First Nation, Judy Da Silva and other friends from Grassy invited us to share a sacred fire with them at the site of the Grassy logging blockade, Canada’s longest continuing Aboriginal blockade site (some pictures from the history of the blockade). The friends that so graciously welcomed us into their sacred fire circle (and the whole blockade site feels to me like a sacred space) included the Grassy Narrows Juniors (Edmond Jack, Dorian Assin, and Ninoondahwah Richard), who sang beautifully around the fire (video).
As soon as I sat down in the circle around the fire, it felt like a worshipful space to me. In fact, it felt like I had immediately been dropped into the deep stillness of a “gathered” Quaker meeting, which is one of central religious experiences through which I enact my personal spiritual life. I was amazed at, given that Anishinaabek culture is new to me, and the friends at the circle are new friends, how comfortable and how deep the shared spiritual feeling was. It was also all the deeper for being informal, and unplanned: just snatches of singing, snatches of chatting and laughter, some smoking and drinking tea, brushing away of mosquitoes, and some times of shared silence.
As the night grew darker, the conversation deepened in its tone, and we began to hear stories from Edmond Jack about his many long-distance walks (or pilgrimages?) for aboriginal human rights, like this 2,000km walk to Toronto. He started doing such walks at age 13. (You can also see what Edmond said about the recent Supreme Court decision here.) Judy came up with the idea of an aboriginal human rights walk by settler/white people, a solidarity walk, to show that we need to combat the racism against aboriginal people so that their voices can be heard by settler communities. She said it’s important that to show people that it’s not just “those Indians” who demonstrate for aboriginal justice. She reminded us that a former CPTer, Matt Schaaf, once said that settler people should take on the job of combatting racism, and free up aboriginal activists to fight for their survival and the health of their land. A walk like this would also be a recognition that colonialism hurts all of us (even though settlers benefit economically, while aboriginal people physically suffer from it), and alienates us all from each other.
(By the way, IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED IN PUTTING TOGETHER SUCH A WALK/MARCH/PILGRIMAGE, PLEASE CONTACT ME, on Twitter: @quakerscientist.)
We all chatted, quietly, reflectively into the firelight about how we could work towards greater justice for aboriginal people. Judy shared some instances of racism with us that she had suffered or witnessed, including a deeply upsetting incident in which a white woman attempted to kidnap a young Anishinaabe girl by walking off with her in public, in daytime, in the middle of a city. It’s hard for me to imagine the profound denying of the personhood of aboriginal people that it would take to do something like that.
She also recounted two incidents where she experienced racism while accompanied by a white/settler ally, and the ally was frozen by shock and unable to respond. We discussed this issue for a while, how our discomfort with conflict and sheer disbelief of overt racism and oppression can cause us to miss those crucial few moments where we could meaningfully intervene to decrease the hurt and violence of an unfolding situation. We talked about strategies for training ourselves to respond better as allies, in the moment, when racism and violence pop up in everyday life. We all agreed that it takes a lot of deliberate practice in real-life situations, and this practice could be importantly augmented by explicit training using role-plays. We are often collectively, culturally in the habit of avoiding conflict (and sometimes paralyzing when it arises), and in the habit of ignoring (or being blind to) overt racism.
It takes careful, regular, sustained effort to overcome these cultural habits and habituate ourselves to placing ourselves in the middle of conflict and violence in order to expose and diffuse it. (We briefly discussed the linked excellent, short article on responding to this challenge by George Lakey.) Perhaps there’s a new role for Christian Peacemaker Teams in places like Kenora, where racism against Anishinaabe people is commonplace, to train white and settler people to get in the habit of intervening in racist or violent situations, as they arise on the street or in daily life. These skills are particularly needed in the frequently conflict-averse (by nature) ally settler community. And a movement of people who, by default, step towards conflict rather than away from it (in nonviolence and with compassion for all parties), could draw more allies to aboriginal human rights by their collective witness, freeing up aboriginal people’s time and energy to fight the other important battles that need to be fought. And of course, these skills can be taken by trained people to any conflict zone, or any other situations of overt prejudice.
Before we left the sacred fire circle, the Grassy Narrows Juniors honored us (and CPT as a whole) with a song, giving us their blessing for our safe and successful travel away from Grassy Narrows.
##Carrying the Message
A few days ago, we met with J.B. Fobister, a trapper, owner of the general store in Grassy Narrows (the only store on the reserve), and a member of the Trappers Council, who were the plaintiffs in the recent Supreme Court case. They had hoped that case would establish Grassy Narrows’ right to prior and informed consent (and so, right to veto) any logging operations on their territory, and to establish that the Crown (i.e. federal Canadian government) has the responsibility of care for First Nations’ land, and would be the negotiating partner with First Nations rather than the Ontario provincial government. Sadly for the people of Grassy Narrows, the case went against them, giving the Ontario provincial government the power to lease rights to First Nations’ land for logging and other activities. (He did note, however, that the case had one positive outcome: it also established Ontario’s responsibility for the social welfare of First Nations residents, which the province had denied and tried to shunt off onto federal authorities in the past.)
We asked him how he thought Christian Peacemaker Teams could best help Grassy Narrows in the struggles, and he answered first by saying that “CPT has been one of their best allies”; we were not expecting such high praise, but it’s very gratifying! JB went on to say that the most important thing we can do right now is to keep bringing people out in delegations to Grassy, and keep publicizing the struggles of the people there against the violation of the land and the constant squeezing of their ability to support themselves and survive. I hope we are able to carry this message effectively, while always putting the efforts of the Anishinaabeg people first. They are the heroes in this story, and as Noam Chomsky is fond of pointing out, aboriginal people all over the world are “on the front lines” in the fight for the survival of our species in the face of environmental destruction.
And to whoever is reading these posts, PLEASE SHARE THESE STORIES! I can only fulfill my responsibility if my settler readers help me, and so fulfill some of theirs, too.
16 Aug 2014
Note: these are my own observations/reactions/musings, not Christian Peacemaker Teams’ official communications. Please also follow Caitlin’s delegation blog, Peace Pigeon, and the official CPT Aboriginal Justice tumblr!
Personal ethnographic note: I am white, Jewish descent, and from San Francisco, California, Turtle Island.
##Pancake Breakfast
raising funds for addiction related groups
alcoholism (genetic) is one of the biggest threats to physical and cultural health.
Yesterday we visited the general store, and spent a good deal of time in conversation with its owner, JB. said the skills of how to live off the land haven’t been taught to the next generation, and a lot of this probably has to do with the effect of alcoholism in destroying relationships and family structures.
JB also showed us a collection of arrowheads and stone tools he found recently on the edge of the lake. Most of them are 6000-12000 years old, showing how long the Anishinaabe people have continuously inhabited the English River area. He said that he’d love to spend a couple hours talking to the hand that made them, and find out what sort of people they were. It’s heart-wrenchingly sad to think that the tradition of living sustainably with and off the wildlife of the area could be broken by the legacy of colonialism, with alcoholism and other addictions being a majorly destructive one, alongside the direct attacks from settler industry and governments.
But the breakfast showed that the community is capable of responding to these challenges in a communal way. The role of local alcoholics in long-term recovery (one cook this morning had been sober 27 years) cannot be underestimated in its power to combat addiction and give hope and direction to others who desparately need to recover. One settler import has also been of utmost importance here: Alcoholics Anonymous.
AA seems to have been integrated fairly seamlessly into reserve life here. In the Grassy Narrows Trapper Center, where two AA meetings a week are chaired and attended by local recovered alcoholics, the textbook of AA (the book entitled “Alcoholics Anonymous”) can be seen sitting openly just under diagrams on how to prepare the wild pelts of muskrat, lynx, mink, beaver, sable, marten, squirrel, and other local animals for trade. The “Serenity Prayer”, a text adopted by many AA members, hangs on the wall close to a pair of snowshoes tied with moose-hide (both are no doubt hung by the same trapper). As the AA program is fundamentally one of spiritual cleansing and renewal, the considerable ambient spiritual resources of Anishinaabe communities also bodes well for a way out of the alcoholic trap that was so unfortunately exported to these shores just a few hundred years ago.
14 Aug 2014
Note: these are my own observations/reactions/musings, not Christian Peacemaker Teams’ official communications. Please also follow Caitlin’s delegation blog, Peace Pigeon, and the official CPT Aboriginal Justice tumblr!
Personal ethnographic note: I am white, Jewish descent, and from San Francisco, California, Turtle Island.
##Fishing
Today is a short post: we went fishing. Two Anishinaabek guides-in-training took our delegation fishing for Walleye in the beautiful English River system, and then treated us to a “shore-lunch”: we sat on a rock, and lit a fire with dried branches, and fried the fish we’d just caught with onions and potatoes. We were asked to go on the fishing trip so that the fishing guides-in-training could practice their routine to take tourists fishing in the future. This program is part of the Grassy Narrows band council’s social services program: they hope to train more young people for jobs as guides, to bring some income to the community. We were also asked to evaluate their performance, as the nearest thing they had to real live tourists.
Grassy Narrows is a place of low employment, but it used to have a lucrative tourist-fishing industry until mercury poisoning of the fish and water supply mostly ended it. Mercury in the English River was a by-product of local paper mills, which incidentally used the timber from clear-cut logging of Grassy Narrows forests; for years the community has labored under this double assault on their physical safety, and at-least-triple assault (i.e. fishing, trapping, employment) on their ability to feed themselves. As milling in the area has decreased, the mercury problem has subsided somewhat, and the community would like to encourage more tourism for fishing in the area.
We sorely hope that this does happen, and pray that plans for an upstream gold-mine do not go through: mercury is used in gold-extraction, and would likely be dumped upstream into the English River system. It’s amazing that people here have survived at all, given the number of forces arrayed against them at every moment. Besides, the English River system is so breathtakingly gorgeous that I’m amazed anyone could treat it with the disrespect it’s been shown for years here. I’d think you’d only have to look at the dense, forest-lined finger lakes and islands, and anyone would be in too much awe to intentionally vomit industrial poison all over it. Oh well.
We were actually surprised that the guides took a whole day for us, and the “shore-lunch” struck us as fairly elaborate. We hadn’t really expected to be treated like tourists. But the following morning, an officer of the band council asked us detailed questions about the experience, including about how good the lunch was and whether we caught enough fish. Apparently this evaluation of the guides skills was serious business, and they had known to be very careful with us. Thus the picture began to come together, particularly after a funny, but poignant moment: one of the other community members heard about the trip and said, “yeah, they’re learning how to please the [white] fishermen. Cook them a good meal and they’ll be happy.”
13 Aug 2014
Note: these are my own observations/reactions/musings, not Christian Peacemaker Teams’ official communications. Please also follow Caitlin’s delegation blog, Peace Pigeon, and the official CPT Aboriginal Justice tumblr!
Personal ethnographic note: I am white, Jewish descent, and from San Francisco, California, Turtle Island.
##(TW) Kenora Sexual Assault Centre
This morning we visited the Kenora Sexual Assault Centre, a nonprofit with a small, dedicated staff who help to counsel women (and sometimes others) who have experienced any type of sexual or domestic abuse. The Centre also helps clients find other services, and supports them in their interactions with medical services, police, and the court system. They are also an explicitly and proudly LGBT-friendly organization, and very welcoming to all trans people who have suffered abuse. (They can be emailed here and found on Twitter here.)
We heard a great deal of information about the work they do, which often focusses on aboriginal communities in the area, many of which suffer high amounts of sexual assault. This includes “fly-in” communities: small, indigenous communities which are only accessible by sea-plane. Rather than recount all the wonderful information they gave us (I’d refer the reader to their website), I’d like to focus on the specific message KSAC asked us to spread to the wider world.
Here are the specific messages they would like shared, and they are all especially directed to men of the world:
- If a woman is drunk, that is not a license for men to help themselves to her.
- Marriage does not equal consent. Women are not available for sexual contact at all times, without clear consent, just because they are married to you.
- “Sexual assault is not a thing”: it is not exactly a specific action that can be defined out of context, but rather a fact about control and power of one person over another in a situation.
- Men need to heal [JCW: from the social disease of patriarchy, and other mental, physical, and spiritual diseases]. Men who perpetrate sexual assault are suffering themselves, and more male healing will help decrease the problem of sexual assault.
##Arrival in Grassy
Shortly after our meeting at KSAC, we drove the 70 miles north to the Grassy Narrows First Nation Reserve. We met with band Council (i.e. government of the reserve) members and current Chief of Grassy Narrows, Roger Fobister Sr.
In an impressive display, Roger gave us an impromptu history of the land-politics of this region, from the original settlement to the present day. The policies of white settlers have consistently squeezed indigenous people into smaller and smaller spheres of cultural and geographical influence, so that settlers and settler governments can gain control over more and more of the land. This attitude was present in the early treaties between Canada and the First Nations, like Treaty 3 in Anishinaabek territory, where Anishinaabe agreed to grant settlers rights of access and use to their lands. The Canadian government interpreted these treaties as signing over permanent ownership and control of land to them.
This interpretation that continues to the present day, as does the policy of taking control of more and more land surrounding First Nations reserves. The ultimate goal seems to be keeping aboriginal people contained (i.e. imprisoned) in the narrow confines of reserves (not their traditional territory, which is much more extensive), or moved out and totally assimilated into white culture. The story can be summarized by these words from Roger: “land-based wealth extraction”. While indigenous people continue a tradition of living off the land and maintaining conditions for trapping, fishing, and fruit/vegetable-gathering, which is definite wealth, white/settler culture tends to be extractivist: it wants to extract portable wealth (equity) which can be monetized and crucially, accumulated (and so can accumulate debt as well); aboriginal-style wealth does not accumulate at all, but it is sustainable with only minor fluctuation over many generations, as long as natural resources are cared for.
Towards the end of the discussion, Roger heatedly began to describe situations of active resistance to clearcut-logging, or the Energy East pipeline, scenarios which may become necessary for Grassy Narrows in the near future. He hopes that they could take a stand without bloodshed. But he fixed us with a strong gaze here, pointing at us with his index finger, and said that when they have to take a stand, “that’s when we expect CPT to watch our backs, and stand in front of us, and protect us against your governments that want to destroy our people”.
12 Aug 2014
Note: these are my own observations/reactions/musings, not Christian Peacemaker Teams’ official communications. Please also follow Caitlin’s delegation blog, Peace Pigeon, and the official CPT Aboriginal Justice tumblr!
Personal ethnographic note: I am white, Jewish descent, and from San Francisco, California, Turtle Island.
##Pipeline Open House
This evening we attended an open house by TransCanada, the corporation building the Energy East pipeline, intended to move dirty oil (bitumen) from the Tar Sands of Alberta eastward. (There are two other planned pipelines as well, one heading west from Alberta, and one heading south into the US, all intended to carry tar sands dirty oil.) Part of the proposed pipeline will pass through Kenora and a great deal of traditional Anishinaabe (Treaty 3) territory, including Grassy Narrows territory. This part of the pipeline is a conversion of pipe originally designed for natural gas, not bitumen.
The passage of dirty oil through their territory is strongly opposed by a large number of Anishinaabe locals. We went to the open house in order to ask about how local indigenous people would be consulted, and whether First Nations would be respected if they chose to reject the passage of dirty oil through their lands. We did that, and then later (in a surprise to ourselves) joined a nonviolent direct action which disrupted the event. Both events ultimately helped some truth to emerge.
Without giving an exhaustive description of the events, here are a few moments of truth. First, we spoke extensively to the “Aboriginal Relations” team. One of them, a member of a First Nation himself, seemed to become less and less comfortable with his words as he went on. He told us that the usual policy is to send information to First Nations and try to engage them in consultation, but if they miss these communications or choose not to respond, they would lose their chance to respond and “silence is consent”. (TW) There was a clear chill in our group at these words, especially in light of our visit tomorrow to the Kenora Sexual Assault Centre.
Another member of the Aboriginal Relations team indicated that the pipeline might be moved if opposed by a First Nation, but told me to speak to an engineer about how possible that would be. I spoke to an engineer called Tammy, who first looked shocked to hear that anyone had told me that the pipeline might be moved, immediately stopping me and asking, “Which one said that?” I declined to give a name. I asked Tammy about three times whether the pipeline could be moved, and she responded bizarrely each time with comments like, “The safety will be monitored regularly. The integrity of the pipeline will be checked and any faulty piece would be replaced.”
I told her repeatedly that I understood about safety, but that I was asking if the route could be altered to accommodate First Nations’ wishes. Getting visibly irritated, she finally replied, “It’s just like the railroad: it’s coming through, and communities will move…when the railroad came, communities formed themselves around it. If they couldn’t, they left.” I was grateful to get some truth from her. I later confirmed with another engineer that the pipeline route, neither conversion nor new build, was likely to be altered significantly. Clearly, there is no intention of respecting the First Nations if they decide to disallow passage of the pipeline through their territory. This reminded me of another comment an Aboriginal Relations person had made: if the First Nations opposed the pipeline, they would require a “process of education”. Though the company and government speaks of “consultation”, I’m increasingly getting the sense that they really mean something more like, “indoctrination”, or perhaps “placation”.
Note, added a few days later: This issue of “consultation” came up a few days later when we were on the Grassy Narrows First Nation reserve, meeting with a leading member of the community, and one of the plaintiffs in the recent Supreme Court case regarding the rights to log Grassy Narrows territory. He said that people often try to avoid “consultation” meetings when they are called, especially by corporations, because companies often claim that whoever was at the meeting is on record as agreeing with their plans. Of course, he added, if you don’t go to the meeting, they’ll also claim that you consented by not going.
##Open to All (as it turns out)
The demonstration, or nonviolent direct action, was led by Anishinaabe veterans of the Grassy Narrows logging blockade, and supported by a number of more settler-dominated environmental and human rights organisations. Rather than give a full account here, I’d like to mention just a few points that affected me most. (A full description of how the open house was disrupted by the action, along with video and pictures can be found here.)
First, the action was women-led (and/or Two Spirit-led) and very non-male-dominated. The most poignant moment of the action is when an 85-year-old woman from Grassy Narrows addressed the open house, saying that she was just trying to preserve some natural resources for her grandchildren. The silence at her remarks was palpable. Interestingly, another of the leaders of the action stated that consultation needed to occur with the women and the elders of the First Nations, “because we are the ones who make these decisions”, presumably not just Chief and Band Council: “Have you asked the women? Ask the women, ask the elders, we’re the ones that make these decisions”
Another interesting point was that two CPT delegates were co-opted into the centre of the protest, so that some white people would be visible to the media: “Go to the front. We need to see you, so it doesn’t look like it’s only us!” Indeed, it is not only you: we are only too happy to stand with you.
Finally, the women leading the protest repeatedly said, “No means no”. What the women demanded stood in stark contrast to TransCanada’s statement, “silence is consent.”
11 Aug 2014
Note: these are my own observations/reactions/musings, not Christian Peacemaker Teams’ official communications. Please also follow Caitlin’s delegation blog, Peace Pigeon, and the official CPT Aboriginal Justice tumblr!
Personal ethnographic note: I am white, Jewish descent, and from San Francisco, California, Turtle Island.
##Bail Court
Our delegation spent a number of hours in bail court this morning, watching a very white, very male-dominated set of court officials set bail conditions for a set of very non-white set of defendants.
A few brief observations: none of the defendants was over 30 years old, and a number were in their mid-/late-teens. 7/8 of the defendants we observed were probably Anishinaabe, with one being either settler or white-passing (all court officials, lawyers, and police were either white/settler or white-passing). More than half of the alleged offenses or bail conditions made reference to alcoholism (and one to the drinking of gasoline, which was a new one on me…and lemme tell you: as a recovered alcoholic and someone who spends a lot of time working in hospitals with alcoholics, it takes a lot to surprise me in this area).
Clearly all of this was old-hat to the judge, court officers, and lawyers. At one point, it became clear that one lawyer had given the wrong name for the mother of a defendant, which was important as the paperwork had to specify that the correct person had custody of the defendant. It’s hard to know what this means, but it did not seem as if the duty solicitor was very involved in the lives of their clients (which is perhaps unsurprising).
3/8 defendants requested and received an interpreter, who translated back and forth between English and Anishinaabe Mowin (aka Ojibwe, an Algonquian language and the primary indigenous language of the area). I was very pleased to see that the court provided an interpreter in these cases without question, though he did seem somewhat overworked: he kept moving between two courtrooms. I also felt it a little odd to see Anishinaabe Mowin treated as a “foreign” language, in some sense, which needed special provision in the current, dominant justice system of this region. As one delegation member said, “English is spoken, but Anishinaabe Mowin is whispered”. I had a moment where this felt just surreal: after all, Anishinaabe Mowin is historically the language of the area, and I tend to feel it polite for newcomers (as all the whites of this area are, comparatively) to accommodate to the established language of an area, and not the other way around. It was a moment where the sheer bizarreness of colonialism, and the persisting colonial mentality, hit me like a ton of logs.
10 Aug 2014
Note: these are my own observations/reactions/musings, not Christian Peacemaker Teams’ official communications. Please also follow Caitlin’s delegation blog, Peace Pigeon, and the official CPT Aboriginal Justice tumblr!
Personal ethnographic note: I am white, Jewish descent, and from San Francisco, California, Turtle Island.
##Church This Morning
Today is a slow day, without a great deal planned. It began with a shower (Yay! First in three days!), for which I have a lot of gratitude to one of the priests for letting us shower in her home.
After enough coffee to kill a small horse, we went to the church services at the church that’s been graciously putting us up, St. Alban’s Cathedral Church in Kenora. Though the service was much higher-churchy than I’m really happy with, there was a lot of good-will in evidence and we felt very welcomed. The Dean even pointed us out as Christian Peacemakers to the congregation, a lovely gesture. I didn’t take communion, though, in keeping with the Quaker testimony against outward sacraments.
One of the readings was the story in Matthew of Jesus and Peter leaving the boat to walk on water. I was struck by the part where Peter begins to worry about the wind and the size of the waves, and then immediately begins to sink. He’s rebuked by Jesus, “You of little faith”.
I’m not sure I took from this story what most people seem to take from it; I don’t feel it has much to do with the divinity of Jesus, for instance. To me, the faith that Peter seemed to be lacking with faith in God in general, or faith in the flow of events in the universe, and faith that he can find his own peaceful place in that flow without fighting events as they arise. Peter finds himself in a strange, new situation, but it’s working for him and clearly a time to simply go with the flow. But instead, he accidentally falls back on his attachment to his rational mind (a definition of “ego”, according to Eckhart Tolle), and tries to analyze the situation and control it with his own resources, tries to sure up his own self-preservation, and to impose his self-will on the situation.
At that point, Peter experiences the paradox of trying to assert his self-will on a situation which has been going fine without his interference: he loses control of it immediately, rather than gaining control. This feels like the major spiritual challenge of my life at the moment: to not “push the stream”, as Richard Rohr says; when I can accept events as they come, and find my most peaceful path in them, applying myself where I am needed, things go well (even if I don’t understand why – I don’t need to!). As soon as I analyze overmuch, and assert my control, I often accidentally disrupt the flow of events in such a way as to cause pain, at least to myself. It’s rather a Buddhist concept, actually: attachment (to rationality, to events, to control) leads to suffering.
Last note: there was only 1 aboriginal (Anishinaabe) person in church this morning, as far as I could tell. I thought there would be more, but that expectation is only based on a vague sense that the Anglican Church in Canada seems to be sensitive to aboriginal concerns, at least in some places. I was told later by our delegation leader that she often used the Anishinaabe word meegwitch (“thanks”) instead of “Amen” as a prayer-response. I like that.
##A Rude Awakening
Later in the day, I took a walk around a corner of the stunning Lake of the Woods. On a hill beside the lake, next to the train tracks, there is a small wooded area where I noticed a policeman riding a four-wheel all-terrain-vehicle over the hill. I turned my head away for a moment towards the lake, but then heard some yelling and looked back at the hill. The policeman was chasing two men out of the wooded area down the hill, and followed them into a road on his ATV. The two men, both of them Anishinaabe, walked over the road (and were yelled at from a passing truck as they did).
They headed in my direction, and as they got close to me, I heard one say to a friend, “But at least they weren’t the real asshole-type”. Because I overheard them, I asked the men what had happened. They told me they were napping under the trees, and the policeman ran them off. I asked if this sort of thing happened often, police harrassing them for no reason, and one man said, “Oh yeah, you have no idea…wait, you’re not from here, are you?!” I said no. “Yeah, police in Kenora are the worst.” While we chatted, one of the other men walked by and said, “well, at least I got a little nap”.
Given how nasty and racist the police incident looked to me, I shudder to think what the “real asshole-type” of police would have done.
09 Aug 2014
Note: these are my own observations/reactions/musings, not CPT’s official communications. Please also follow the CPT Aboriginal Justice tumblr as well!
Personal ethnographic note: I am white, Jewish descent, and from San Francisco, California, Turtle Island.
##Two Lessons Before Breakfast
This morning I walked out of the church in Kenora where we’re sleeping, took a cup of coffee to a park bench, and sat down to do a little reading and a little silent worship. While I was sitting there, a number of likely houseless Anishinaabe men walked by me (I’m guessing about their economic status based on the potentially misleading fact that they seemed to be coming from a homeless shelter next door). I was sitting with bare feet, because it was a warm morning, and one man came towards me, saying “hey man, are you ok? Where are your shoes?!”
I told him they were in the church next door, where I was staying, and that I was just relaxing here. He said, “Oh, I just wanted to make sure you were ok. I thought you didn’t have any shoes.” I was struck by this considerate and loving statement, especially coming from someone who was materially much less well off than myself (Lesson 1). The event that followed did not make me feel that I had adequately returned his love.
I was sitting with a book and an e-reader on the bench next to me, and the Anishinaabe man came to sit down next to me and have a chat for a minute. As he sat down, I instinctively put my hand on the pile next to me and pulled it closer to myself; it was a reflex action, without any thought. He noticed this immediately (which was very observant, as it was a tiny movement of my hand), and said, “oh no, you don’t have to worry about me.” I was more ashamed than I can tell you: after he had shown me kindness, the last thing I wanted to do was anything to insult his integrity. It was highly embarrassing to me that the possessiveness and fear that I’d internalized in early life, due to my own privileged economic background, had emerged by reflex in this uncharitable way (Lesson 2). We chatted for a minute, and then he moved on. I won’t ever forget him, though: this lesson means I have some work to do.
08 Aug 2014
Note: these are my own observations/reactions/musings, not CPT’s official communications. Please also follow the CPT Aboriginal Justice tumblr as well!
Personal ethnographic note: I am white, Jewish descent, and from San Francisco, California.
##Initial Observations
I was suprised to learn that Kenora, which at this time of the summer mostly looks like a touristy holiday town on the beautiful Lake of the Woods, has a significant number of homeless people. I was also surprised, but very pleased, to hear that I’d be dining with some of them tonight. It turns out that the church our delegation is staying in provides a meal on Friday evenings for anyone in the community who needs it. We offered to help in any way we could, and were informed that we could help just by mingling with folks and sharing the meal with them.
The first thing that struck me was that everyone who walked in for the meal seemed to be Anishinabeg (i.e. indigenous, a member of the local First Nation). This is probably unsurprising to anyone who knows this part of the world, but it was surprising for me. As we came into town today, I noticed lots of wealth in the form of large houses by the lake, boats, campers, large cars, etc., and it is now fairly clear that this wealth is more or less white/settler. The considerable problems of poverty in the area are disproportionately a First Nation issue. The people at the meal were also all fairly young; with one exception, the ages ranged from 13 to mid-twenties (in a sample of about 20 people total).
##A Natural Advocate
One young man introduced himself and shared some lovely conversation with me. When I told him I was part of a CPT delegation, he immediately told me that there is a serious shortage of affordable housing for lower income people in this area (“low class”, as he referred to himself). As more and more tourists come to the area, property values go up, and the sizeable, year-round, lower income population (which I gather is mostly Anishinabeg) is squeezed out with nowhere to live that has reasonable rent. He also mentioned that a number of local hotels and buildings have rooms available for somewhat more reasonable rent during the colder months, but raise their prices for the summer tourist rush, and the people who lived there before are pushed out (often onto the street) for the summer.
I accidentally interrupted my friend a couple times, which he did not acknowledge, but kept speaking. I’m starting to gather that it might be more socially acceptable here to wait until someone is entirely finished talking before adding anything of my own, even backchannel-responses. He was very gracious to me, and described his own struggle with housing, finding work, and living with a learning disability very, very eloquently. I’m grateful he was so open and welcoming to me, and took the time.
##Overheard Comments
We sat down to eat at a table with a number of young men who were chatting and joking amongst themselves, and who seemed a little surprised to see me joining them. (They were also very surprised to hear that I’m from California, living in England, and in light of that, choosing to spend my time in Kenora, Ontario this week.)
As I sat down, one of the youths politely warned me, “mind your derogatories”. I’m not sure exactly what this meant, but I took it to mean they were explicitly, but kindly, telling me to avoid making derogatory remarks (regarding their ethnicity? class? both?). A little while later, one of the guys mentioned to another that everyone should be careful to say “please” to the white/settler church members who were serving them the meal. Another joked back at him, saying “yes, say ‘please, Master’ “. I was surprised they said this in front of me; either they just didn’t care, or I was given a bit of a pass for not being a local.
Just an hour into interacting with the public in Kenora, and I’ve already learned a ton (and have many questions and issues to be curious about). Thank God for kind, sharing people, especially if they are teenage and living in difficult circumstances.
06 Aug 2014
##En Route to Grassy Narrows
As I write this post, I’m in transit, travelling to my first experience as part of Christian Peacemaker Teams, as part of an Aboriginal Justice delegation to the Grassy Narrows First Nation. It seems both odd and fitting that part of our journey from the UK to the forests of northwest Ontario is taking place on the anniversary of the US’s destruction of Hiroshima by a nuclear weapon. Funny enough, this particular leg of the journey also takes us through the US, where I’m reminded of some disturbing conversations over the last months regarding the Obama administration’s murder of civilians and suspected militants by drones, and the US’s military reentry into Iraq. (Indeed, these are often defended by people who would identiy as a liberals.)
In my mind at this particular moment, these seemingly disparate issues come together under the topic of the normalisation of violence and oppression. In other words, violence, particularly as a means to prop up economic exploitation, becomes so common and assumed in our society that we become conditioned to it. At a certain point, it becomes hard to even see the violence, let alone resist it.
##Normalcy
Before I say anything more, if you get one thing out of this post, make it this: read John Hersey’s beautiful, thin book, Hiroshima. It contains the self-reported accounts of 6 Hiroshima survivors, 5 Japanese and 1 German, based closely on interviews that Hersey took with them in the year after the war ended. The book is a concise, detailed account of what it felt like to suffer a nuclear attack, and the memories of Hiroshima on that day were fresh in the minds of the survivors at the time they gave their stories to Hersey. It should be required reading in every schoolroom, and yet no one seems to know about it.
If you talk to an American about the decision to drop the atomic bomb, there is a considerable chance you’ll get an immediate response like the following (paraphrased from my own experience): “Well, yes it’s regrettable, but we had to do it or otherwise we would have had to invade. And many more people would have died in an invasion.” Sometimes that last sentence is even amended to the more honest, “more American soldiers would have died”. It’s worth unpacking all of the assumptions that underlie such an answer: that lives can be counted and weighed against each other, that violence is inevitable in the face of conflict, that the Pacific War was justified, and finally (for some people), that the life of a Japanese civilian is not worth as much as that of an American soldier. There’s also a sutble, hidden lack of compassion for soldiers themselves: is it evil to make a single aircrew responsbible for killing an entire city? Soldiers are treated as instruments to be used, without regard for how that damages their souls.
But someone has taught so many of us not to ask these questions, and just assume that the use of violence is justified, as long as we do the grim mathematics of (supposedly) “saving” as many lives as possible. And what is it that justifies the conflict? Again, people learn to justify conflicts with vague notions like “freedom”, or “security”. But when one looks deeper, the source of most violent conlficts in economic in nature.
Autobiographical note: my grandfather, Ellis A. Wallenberg Jr. flew P-47s in the Pacific War, killed people in that war, and died himself when his plane crashed in the Pacific a few months before the war ended. At the age of 22, he left behind my father, unborn in my grandmother’s womb. And I have no trouble admitting that the Pacific War was a nasty war for economic ascendency in much of Asia. Both Japan and the US/UK wanted greater scope to exploit workers and natural resources such as oil and rubber in places like China, Indonesia, and Myanmar, and the US ultimately won the right to be the big capitalist dog in the area. If one reads the negotiations between US Secretary of State Hull and Japanese diplomats prior to the Pacific War, it’s entirely clear that the dispute was over the exploitation of capital in Southeast Asia and China. No one had any illusions on this point, and senior American politicians knew that war was coming. I wish my grandfather hadn’t died for that, and I wish more that he hadn’t killed for it.
But more than just one soldier who happened to be related to me, our societies allowed millions to be burned and poisoned to death with radiation on this day in 1945, and perversely, so many of us go on justifying it. No amount of rationalization is going to make it alright to torture millions of people to death, nor to ask soldiers to do such a thing. Then, having done it once, we went on to do it again in Nagasaki. Nothing will make up for that. As members of militaristic, capitalist societies, we get put to sleep with regard to:
- the horrors of violent conflict, both for soldiers and civilians (and what is a soldier, but a civilian with a weapon who someone orders to murder others?)
- the economic motives for the conflict
- that there are nonviolent alternatives to conflict
And why are we put to sleep? Because such violent conflicts are of economic benefit to the owning classes of our societies, and only of harm to was has become known as “the 99%”. And violence is fairly cheap compared to the profit at stake, particularly since the lives of the 99%, particularly its poorest members, are expendable to the owning classes. So we are taught to ignore most of this, and to trick ourselves into believing that violence is necessary and justified. Note that the idea of an all-volunteer military makes this situation much worse: since no one with enough money to avoid the military will volunteer to be killed, it becomes easy for everyone but the poorest to ignore the deaths of soldiers and foreign civilians.
##Grassy Narrows
This brings us to Grassy Narrows, and the journey I’m actually on at the moment. You can read a detailed account of the Grassy Narrows First Nation’s struggle here, but in short: this group of indigenous people have had their land logged without their consent, their children stolen to residential schools, and their rivers poisened with mercury. As usual, the motive is economic: the exploitation of natural resources and, to some extent, workers in the area. It’s simply a recent series of events that’s a small part of a long history of wresting the land from its original inhabitants. And as has been done since the first Europeans came to North America, exploiting the land is carried out at the same time as systematic extermination of the indigenous people who are in the way, both by erasing their culture and killing them.
Again, as members of the exploiter societies we are put to sleep. The violence is hidden, downplayed, and we are taught to not see these present-day disputes as a piece of a larger pattern of genocide that has been happening for the last few hundred years. The violence is also further hidden by the fact that the perpetrators are private citizens, corporatins, or “police” under orders from a government, rather than a “military”. But And we are put to sleep as native cultures are romanticized, exoticized, made fun of in other ways. Should we refer to a hairstyle as “Mohawk”? Or more sick, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, why does the US name weapons of mass murder after victims of its own genocide, such as the “Apache” helicopter or “tomahawk” missile?
These are just some of the ways that we have gone to sleep and accepted violence and exploitation around us. I often wonder if people felt similarly “Well, that’s just the way things are” in Nazi Germany. (And I strongly suspect they did. I just watched The Book Thief, which is an interesting cinematic treatment of this feeling.)
Well, time to wake up.