ONLINE CURRENTS VOL3 - Flipbook - Page 29
children that have died or went missing, the devastating extent of what has been deemed a
‘cultural genocide’ 12 is only just being uncovered by official government bodies. The reaction
from these, such as the one from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been in the form of
statements of shock and sadness, yet as RoseAnne Archibald, the national chief of the
Assembly of the First Nations has voiced, ‘Not for us, we've always known.’ 13 The residential
system took indigenous children away from their families over a period of 113 years, within this
time transforming into a re-named system of ‘child welfare’, functioning to the same end.
The last residential school closed in 1997. 14
Fundamentally, disappearances are an ongoing, lived experiences for indigenous
communities. Historically, it was the forced removal of children, them being taken and reeducated through state education or with white families, or secondments, like the one that
took Uc Be’s grandfather away, whereas now the absences are generated by the lure of
capitalism and the cities, and the marketed promise of a “better” (different) life. Therefore the
fragmentation which began 500 years ago continues, communities being hollowed out from
within, for a people who have lived with the certainty of their own extinction their entire lives.
Little surprise then that for many native peoples, there is a strangeness to the climate change
discourse, regarded as a late-in-the-day white-man’s narrative which imposes an already
amply evident discourse for people who are historically connected to land: That resources
are finite and that we are nature and that nature is us.
The Shape of Resistance
As the single antique floor fan continues its repetitive, cooling arc, Uc Be maintains an
unwavering intensity, but also a light joviality, in his gaze and in everything he says.
“We’re not poor,” he says, speaking to a melodic rhythm, a sort of earthy song repeatedly
punctuated with moments of brazen clarity. “Poverty is a designed concept. We don’t pay
rent, we grow our own food, we work in the open air. Poor are those who have been sold an
idea of need and have moved to the city, where they live in apartments, with no open space,
and have to commute daily for an hour in each direction in order to work for a paltry wage,
just to cover their living costs. And there, they become machines in a system, and of course,
being machines, they are forced to forget who they are, and their relationship to the land and
environment. We have no money, but we are not poor. Richness as measured only by money
is a very limited concept.”
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