Starting right now, whenever you see a goose call it a Mohawk Goose, or maybe a Cayuga Goose — anything but a Canadian Goose. These geese are much older than that.
Keeping things in perspective, the Mohawk are celebrating 100,000 years here in this general area; it’s quite a big anniversary. Canada moved in for a little visit only 150 years ago but they suddenly started calling our geese, their geese. Not cool Canada! Maybe we should start a cheesy hashtag like #notyourgeese or something.
It’s bad enough they spread lies saying that all our land is officially theirs (99 per cent of Canada is either unceded or under indigenous land claim, according to author Adrian Jacobs) but claiming our animals like that is just throwing salt in the gaping wounds.
They are not even “our” animals per se; it’s just that before 1492 they belonged to no one. They weren’t “indigenous” animals or anything other than living creatures, wild and free. The oral tradition of the Haudenosaunee groups them into the two legged or four legged and the water creatures.
It would be a major worldview shift for most, but for the last 99,850 years or so we thought of these creatures not as animals but more like sentient beings that we are related to. Basic science agrees, we are all made of stardust.
The dominant Christian worldview enforces the Gregorian calendar, but why can’t we decolonize by simply using the Mayan calendar? It’s the year 13.0.4.8.14 really. This same Eurocentric worldview sees land and creatures as untapped natural resources that must be “subdued” בשַׁכּ (Gen. 1:28).
Stokely Carmichael said that all Abrahamic religions are rightly African religions. So for 2,000 years the Roman Crusaders and their minions have been pretty busy misappropriating religions and conquering the earth. I guess these poor geese are just another casualty in the wars of global dominion.
