por FAYIZ KHAN 2 anos atrás
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So when the government proposed the James Bay Treaty which they said was a "fair agreement," the Indigenous elders signed away.
However as it would turn out, this treaty was not "fair" at all, as it gave acres of Indigenous land to the government and offered little in return.
To me, this demosntrated how historically despite what they say, the government has not protected the Indigenous peoples, and instead has routinrly manipulated them.
I can relate this to an event that happened in India.
Back in the 1950s when agriculture was a thriving industry, similar to what happened with the James Bay Treaty, the government tricked farmers unions into signing the rights to their land away, with minimal compensation in return.
There are many FNMI voices I examined and listened to before coming up with this conclusion. Looking back in the course, I believe that there is a lot of evidence that supports my claim.
For example, in the video "Canada 15000," Inuk film maker Arnaquq-Baril complains about western ideas and how in the past, Canada was a poorly managed country.
However, the final message that she reiterates, is that despite all this, "Inuit elders are Canadians first, and Indigenous second," demonstrating how Arnaquq-Baril still loves this country.
Another example is when Isaac Murdoch stated that, "even though my people have suffered, I would certainly risk my life to protect this country."
Finally, in the past, present, and future unit, I watched a documentary which followed an Indigenous military battalion that fought during World War II. This illustrates how even though the Indigenous community had a grudge against the British, they still fought by our side to protect our country from American invaders.
Ultimately, these videos taught me that the Indigenous people are critical of the government's actions because they're spiritually connected to the outdoors and want to preserve the environment.
At the end of the day, they view themselves and Canadians and desrve basic human rights such as homes and clean drinking water just like the rest of us.
Although it mostly comes off as a fun, fictional tale about a boy with supernatural powers, Robinson finds great ways to represent the struggles of the Indigenous community.
Having lived in urban cities for almost my entire life, going in, I had no idea how people on First Nation reserves lived.
However, through Robinson's descriptions, I quickly began to empathize with the main character's struggles as well as realize that compared to the Indigenous youth, I have certainly lived a very sheltered and easy life.
For example, Robinson's novel, which is based on her real world experiences, describes how Jared, the main character, had both his parents become unemployed because there were no job opportunities for Indigenous people (Robinson 19).
Reading that was a horrifying experience because I never knew that Indigenous families suffered financial inequities because of a lack of employment.
I could never imagine being a child around my age, and being forced to get a job and make money, in order to support your family make end's meet.
This led me to learn to become very greatful for my comfortable life situation, where my only responsibility is to maintain good grades, as my parents take care of the finances.
This resonated with me because of how I realized that the poor financial standing of Indigenous families probably influences the educational opportunities of their children.
For example, since Jared is busy worrying about rent and doing odd-jobs, he doesn't have the time or energy to also focus on school (Robinson 25).
Because of these unfortunate circumstance, Jared will likely not get into a good university, which will then disallow him from getting a well-paying job.
This means that unfortunately, Indigenous people like Jared are essentially trapped living in poverty forever.
Another idea I learned from this novel, was how even though the government always talks about providing compensation to the Indigenous peoples, they rarely keep their promises.
For example, when oil companies set up pipelines and buildings on Indigenous soil, which is in clear violation of UNDRIP, the government failed to do anything (Robinson 135).
The government, which was handed bribes under the guise of "charitable donations" by oil companies, refused to force the energy companies to move, and allowed for pipelines to be constructed without the consent of the Indigenous government.
This illustrates that instead of acting in everyone's best interests and reaffirming the rights of the Indigenous peoples, the government instead focuses on immediate financial gains.
The government not acting on this issue reminded me of the news sources assignment, where I learned that the government was intentionally allowing First Nations to drink toxic water because it was too "expensive to fix."
Hearing those words from the government was shocking to me, because it illustrated how the government was worried more about the economy, than it was about saving lives.
If a toxic water situation were to have happened in Ottawa, I am confident that the government would have resolved it without using the excuse that it's "too expensive."
But since this is happening to Indigenous people, the government doesn't seem to care at all.
It is awful how the government views the Indigenous community as second class citizens and are constantly "stomping over their rights," (Robinson 135).
Ultimately, the Indigenous peoples started the Idle No More Protests, and finally forced the government to cancel the pipeline.
However, I find is disgraceful that the Indigenous peoples had to take matters into their own hands before the government was forced to intervene.
I can connect this to the Indigenous families I read about in the "Cultivating Relationships and Building Community" unit.
In assignments such as "Beautiful Words," I discovered that similar to Jared, famililes like that of Norma Caldwell are trapped in a cycle of poverty.
Since Caldwell's family was subject to financial inequality, with colonisers stealing their land and property, they had to commit petty theft to have enough money for food.
Finally, since Caldwell's children also suffered a lack of education due to their circumstances, they also must continue to commit petty theft, and will never receive higher education.
This traps them and their descendants in poverty for life.
This reminds me of my economics class where we learned about a possible solution applied in foreign countries, which helps families escape this exact loop.
In Germany for example, the government has special funds for impoverisheved families so that their children can afford post-secondary education.
And in Norway, college is completely free!
This allows for lower income families to become more financially stable.
Although these solutions may not apply to countries such as Canada, it is definitely worth considering them.
For example, as I mentioned in my July 26 reading reflection, "people protesting the construction of pipelines on Indigenous land, was not given much coverage by the CBC, because it went against the government's wishes."
This is why diversity and representation are incredibly important as they allow the public to explore various points of view on key issues.
In my opinion, to maintain a stable democracy, people must always try to remain open-minded and explore new ideas. After all, being closed minded is what leads to stereotyping and misrepresenting the Indigenous community.
For example, if everyone were to become closed-minded and be apathetic towards the feelings of others, cultural appropriation would continue!
The importance of independent and alternative media sources cannot be overstated, because it allows for the broadcaster to say whatever they want, without the risk of being removed off air.
For example, since the film "Understanding Perspectives," was an independent film, the government had no influence on the content. This allowed for Indigenous perspectives that were not previously discussed on legacy media outlets such as the CBC, to finally be heard. For example, until watching the film, I didn't realize that the James Bay Treaty was not mutually beneficial as it heavily favoured the government.
I can also connect this to Waubgeshig Rice, a podcaster who I learned about in the media codes assignment. described how he lost public funding for his podcast, because his views didn't align with the government.
I believe that this is a clear example of censorship and should never happen.
Since the government is Canada has the ability to promote certain voices on their network, over others, it makes the job of independent filmakers like Murdoch even more important because his viewers know that his form of media will provide information that networks like CBC won't cover.
Aside from Murdoch, I am also reminded of alternative media sources such as TikTok.
Nowadays, there are Indigenous influencers with millions of followers who now get to share their opinion with the younger generation in ways they simply couldn't before. This allows them to further represent their culture and provide unique perspectives.
For example, on TikTok I saw #CancelCanadaday was trending, because many Indigenous influencers shared the tragedies they and their famillies faced at the hands of the government.
This provided the general public new information and perspectives they may have been previously unaware of since the CBC would obviously not want that covered.
Through the invention of the internet, mainstream media is losing its pull and can no longer control the narrative around certain issues.
I obviously understand that whoever told me that was wrong, but it's important to note that I would have continued to maintain this ignorant perspective, if I hadn't taken this course and developed critical thinking abilities.
I believe that the reason why these people perceived for the Indiegnous peoples to be "savages," because of their cultural differences, which I view as highly unfair.
Just because someone chooses to live their life differently than yours, doesn't mean that you should punish them.
I can connect this idea to the story of my great-grandfather.
My great-grandfather was a muslim, but lived in a hindu town deep in India. As the hindus perceived my great-grandfather as different, they felt that they were superior to him and ended up steailing his property.
We can apply the same concept to Indigenous history using Louis Riel as an example.
Riel, a Métis soldier, was also killed by the Canadian government in 1885 because he wouldn’t allow them to seize control of his homeland forcibly. Unfortunately, Riel too was killed by the government for “treason."
In this scenario the white colonialist members of the government, felt superiour to Riel and his Metis community, and felt that they were allowed to steal Metis territory.
This is similar to how the hindus believed they had the right to take my great-grandfather's property.
As I stated in my film review, "A common stereotype against Indigenous people is that they are inferior to the rest of us because of how they look, dress and practice their culture, which is heavily based on nature. I believe this is the mentality the government of Canada had towards Riel and the soldiers in the 1950s. After all, I am confident that if colonizers inhabited Métis land, the government would never have attempted to unlawfully seize territory because they would have viewed these white colonizers as their equals."
This ideology of viewing other races and cultures as inferior has to end because it only leads to unnecessary violence. I believe that by listening to FNMI voices from the past like Riel, we can learn to change our ways and rectify our wrongs.
I can tie the idea of learning from our past mistakes to what Isaac Murdoch and Jesse Thislte stated earlier: "You cannot change the past, but you can learn from it and change your future."
"By failing to analyze and understand the Indigenous peoples from the past, our country is bound to repeat its terrible action of taking land that does not belong to us. The only way forward is to learn to appreciate and respect different cultures and to listen to FNMI voices, to break these negative stereotypes down."
Common stereotypes like the one I stated earlier are being constantly broken down by FNMI voices, and I am only now beginning to realize it!
The final stereotype that resonated with me, was brought to my attention by Eden Robinon, in her novel Son of a Trickster.
Robinson brought up the idea that contrary to western norms, in the Indigenous culture, the concept of gender is entirely fluid.
This was interesting to here, because it was a concept I was unfamiliar with.
However, I made sense of it by connecting it to what I had learned from a presentation about two-spirit people at school.
In that presentation, I learned that in the Indigenous community, often there are people who fulfill a traditional third-gender ceremonial and social role in their cultures.
Furthermore, Robinson in Son of a Trickster, is very critical of breaking down gender roles.
For example, many of the female characters in the novel refuse to abide by their traditional roles of cooking and cleaning (Robinson 82).
I believe that through this, Robinson is attempting to demonstrate how people should live their lives the way they want to instead of following societal expectations.
Robinson carries out her critiques of abiding by traditional gender roles mainly through the character Sarah.
Robinson describes Sarah as "a gender-fluid person who is not afraid to speak up."
I believe that she did this intentionally to further challenge western ideas of gender identity, and represent the way Indigenous people look at gender.
In my opinion, as I previously stated in the July 26 reading log, I believe that Robinson is a bit too harsh on the concept of traditional gender roles.
I am of the opinion that whether people choose to abide by traditional gender roles or not is completely their choice.
Either way we shoudn't judge their lifestyle.
So even though I mildly disagree with Robinson, I am in favour of her encouraging others of expressing themselves freely.
I can connect this to Robinson's own experiences of ignoring what others taught and following her passion of becoming a writer.
For example, Albert Dumont explained that the reason the Indigenous peoples love the outdoors is not because they're "savages," but instead due to the historical connection their ancestors have with the land.
Furthermore, on his podcast Storykeepers, Waubgeshig Rice explained how Indigenous peoples aren't bad communicators, but instead convey their messages differently than colonisers like I do.
I found this to be surprising at first, because I realized how ignorant I was for failing to realize that there were different ways of communicating, that were most likely not taught in western schools!
For example, we tend to communicate orally with others, while according to Rice, may Indigenous people use hand symbols and elements of nature to communicate.
Aside from her literary work, I became a fan of her personality and ideas after doing my podcast on her for the diverse voices and Indigenous Influencers unit.
I came to respect Robinson for persevering through her stressful childhood and how she has made it her life mission to increase awareness for Indigenous issues.
For example, Robinson grew up in an extremely poor family, so all her family members wanted for her to get a well paying job in a STEM field.
However, Robinson instead chose to follow her passion, and became a writer instead.
The first couple of years as a writer were tough for Robinson, and she made no money.
In fact, she had to resort to becoming a napkin ironer to make end's meet.
Suddenly one day, one of Robinson's novels became a best-seller and it propelled her to national fame. From then on her mission has been to "spread awareness and advocate for problems such as the lack of affordable housing in Indigenous communities."
I view Robinson as a role model, because of how she chose to ignore everyone else and followed her passions.
Furthermore, I have a tremondous amount of respect for Robinson because of how she has dedicated her life to such an altruistic goal of raising awareness for her community.
When I'm older, I aspire to follow in Robinson's footsteps and raise awareness for Islamic issues such as the inequity issues muslims face in India.
Personally, I aspire to become a psychologist one day as it has always been my dream job. However, everyone in my family wants me to become a computer scientist.
Hopefully, I, like Robinson, can one day muster up the courage to pursue my love for psychology and ignore what others think.
This reminds me of how everyone in my father's family wanted him to become an engineer, but he followed his dreams and became a computer scientist.
By far, Murdoch is my favourite out of all the great FNMI voices I've listened to.
The first idea of his that truly resonated with me, was the differences he cited between cultural appreciation vs cultural appropriation.
Murdoch argued that in western society, people tend to steal pieces from certain cultures without knowing the stories and the meaning behind them.
This leads to people misrepresenting the Indigenous culture.
As Murdoch put it in the video "Indigenous Arts Protocols,"The western world lacks reciprocity. They take from the Indigenous but don't give much back."
This greatly resonated with me because of my negative experiences with cultural appropriation.
In school for culture day, many non-Indians were wearing tradional Indian clothing.
At first, I was happy to see this becuase I thought many people were appreciating my culture.
However, I quickly realized that they were completely misrepresenting it and were instead making racist jokes and reinforcing negative stereotypes which ended up hurting my feelings.
I'm sure that Indigenous people go through similar experiences concerning cultural appropriation which is unacceptable.
I wouldn't want anyone's culture to be misrepresented, so I completely agree with Murdoch.
Murdoch also directed the film "Understanding Treaties," which I explored in the past, present, and future assignment.
The key message in that film was how it's important to learn from our mistakes and keep going forward.
This is another message I agree with.
This also reminds me of a quote by FNMI voice Jesse Thistle who stated: "You cannot change the past, but you can learn from it and change your future."
I can relate to this quote to my personal life as well.
When I was younger and living in Pakistan, our family didn't have a lot of money. So to encourage me to pursue an education, my father would say an idiom in urdu which roughly translates to, " your life situation should never influence your personal goals."
Having this slogan told to me so many times as a child is what motivates me till this day. I believe that Indigenous children should share this mentality as well if they want to escape the inequality that they are unfairly burdened with.
I believe that this is a great message to tell future generations of Indigenous people.
Even though ythey are coming from a place of inequality, Indigenous children should keep their heads up and do the best they can to secure a good education and a well paying job.
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