Attacks on Mi’kmaq fishing industry expose Canadian racism

Are Canadians outraged right now? Are Canadians watching targeted attacks on indigenous people with glee or with remorse?

Currently the Mi’kmaq people are fighting from their boats over fishing rights. In the stolen territory now called Nova Scotia, the Mi’kmaq are defending their inherent and treaty right to fish without their partners – the federal crown.

When the camera pans to Minister of Crown relations, Carolyn Bennett, she is busy posting her latest coup – a termination agreement with a twenty-year expiry date for Lake Babine First Nation. If anyone knows the tainted federal history and their treatment of First Nation Indigenous people, the Nisga’a people should be echoing in their thoughts.

Canada has been built on a lie. It is that simple. The people who lived in this continent for millennia did not destroy their lands and waters in less than 500 years. No, this was the so-called “progress” inflicted by Europeans fleeing religious persecution, fleeing aristocratic rule and fleeing their bleak and brutish existence.

The original people of this land have been welcoming and patient. They have continued to share land and resources and their original trust dollars to build a country that treats them with ridicule and hate. Canadians cannot fathom that their government would be so tyrannical. No. This only happens outside of Canada, and it is why Canada sends aid to countries dealing with despots.

Wake up Canada. Your country is built on genocide and tyranny.

Canadians then wring their hands, pooh-poohing this development saying, “Yes, yes but that is all historical, it was not MY doing”. Wrong. It is happening now. It is happening at the eastern door with Mi’kmaq fisherman fighting against non-First Nation boats who are willfully damaging lobster traps, firing flare guns and setting up lines of barrier boats to stop the Mi’kmaq from exercising a right that their people have always practiced.

It is happening in the court systems. It is happening in the verdicts when a young man can be killed by “misfire” at close range with his attacker exonerated. It is happening when a native woman can be killed after being hit with a trailer hitch and her attacker’s crime is downgraded to manslaughter. It is happening in the land fights where the RCMP or other policing agencies can move quickly to aid industry or non-native municipalities ignoring the century’s old wrongs in land dealings.

When Canada is faced with truths, the standard phrase begins with a contrite Prime Minister furrowing his brow, stating that things have not been done well in the past, but in this era of reconciliation, the concerns of the Indigenous are paramount. What does this mean?

It means that Justin Trudeau missed his calling as an actor. Those that cannot do, teach. Since Trudeau is no longer teaching drama, it follows that his acting is academy award worthy.

Trudeau’s lies started in 2015 as he stated there was no relationship more important for Canada then the one with Indigenous people. Fast forward five years, and Trudeau is still trying to report that “progress” is being made for Canada’s “indigenous people”. For one thing, Canada takes “ownership” of the Indigenous people as though they really own Indians like some drugstore novelty Indian displays.

Trudeau is happy to boast the financial budgets in the billions so that all Canadians can see that money is being expended to right the historical wrongs. Canadians don’t see that Trudeau’s split of the Department of Indian Affairs into Crown relations and Indigenous services has doubled the bureaucracy so the dollars posted are actually keeping Canadians afloat with jobs in meting out poverty of the Indigenous people.

In the announcements that First Nations are receiving land and dollars, Canadians do not understand that these figures are projections, in part based on these remote reserves creating viable own source revenue to complete Canada’s great termination experiment. If these reserves are without infrastructure – roads and institutions and capacity in their membership, how will this fantasy reconciliation be achieved? Is there some Minister of Wizardry that brings the 500-year old Indigenous relationship equal to the Canadian living index in twenty years or less?

Canada needs the raw truth. First Nation Indigenous people were thrown onto the worst agricultural lands or placed in remote areas so that they would die quickly and out of the way. This was not even fast enough for the Canadian government. Canada’s genocidal fail-safe plan was to remove Indigenous First Nations further if they required the land for “the greater good”.

Canada also used their judicial arm to pass laws that limited First Nations inherent or treaty rights with complicated tests to disguise corporate favoritism again using the terminology of “the greater good”.

Some Canadians are finally seeing that the greater good that First Nations are stewarding means the greater good for all global people – not just the corporate fat cats who buy their way to monopolies by contributing to political parties keeping the sham of Canadian democracy afloat.

The First Nation Indigenous people are the original stewards of the land, waters and life of this continent. They have come through centuries of genocide and remain to remind the newcomers that all people have to live within limits. The original people believed that to live a good life meant to live with peace and in harmony with all life.

Look at the world. The greenhouse gases that have heated up the world are making the planet dryer and more susceptible to fires. The glaciers are melting and the oceans are rising. This reality is happening around all global people. Is it not time to listen to the voice of the Indigenous people?

The Mi’kmaq are not only harvesting lobster or fish to have a “moderate existence”, they are also harvesting to give away and to have ceremonial feasts in their communities. These traditions and prayers are the connection that the Mi’kmaq maintain to respect the land and waters that feed their people, and all people.

The question is not an economic question of who gets more. The question is can the original people maintain the relationship so that all will survive?

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