EquitableEducation.ca

PDF versions (for offline reading, use as handouts):

• Four 8.5×11 pages (single- or double-sided printing)
• Two 11×17 pages (double-sided printing then fold)

—-

People are Mad. And they’re doing something about it.

Mental health awareness is gradually gaining ground, and so are radical alternatives to mainstream approaches. Community-based initiatives by and for the so-called crazies amongst us tend to be kept under the radar in Canada, challenging discrimination, providing peer support and advocating for a diversity of perspectives on mental health, its treatment and justice.

Grassroots movements around mental health have a rich and often unacknowledged history, with many activities falling under the relatively recent name of Mad Pride. The movement is also sometimes called the C/S/X movement, which stands for Consumers (of mental health services), Survivors (of the psychiatric system), and eX-patients (who have moved on to live outside the mental health services systems).

Although diverse perspectives exist on diagnoses and labels, Health Canada statistics from a 2002 report categorize Canadians as living, or having lived, with: schizophrenia (one per cent), bipolar (one per cent), major depression (eight per cent) and anxiety disorders (12 per cent).

“We face common barriers, common challenges, common problems with our lives, that aren’t about our individual well-being and some struggles we face because of it, but because of real societal challenges and discrimination that’s put into practice in the way our institutions and societies run,” said Elizabeth*, who is active in the Greater Toronto Area Mad community.

People with “mental health histories” face barriers to employment, housing, obtaining credit, attending school, having, adopting or keeping custody of children, divorce, finding a family physician who will treat medical concerns aside from mental health, and making decisions about one’s own life, said Elizabeth.

The term “mentalism” is used by Mad activists to describe “discrimination against people who have been labelled with mental health concerns or have perceived mental health concerns or previous involvement in mental health systems,” she told The Dominion. “It’s a form of discrimination…and it’s very prevalent, it’s pervasive in our culture, it covers everything we do.”

Some Mad activists relate mentalism to ableism—discrimination against people with disabilities. Others don’t see themselves as disabled or subscribe to the notion that their mental experiences are necessarily illnesses. But discrimination and challenges are widespread, including in progressive circles and activist communities.

Abla Abdelhadi, a Palestinian activist living and organizing in Ottawa, has been surprised by the lack of support for her in dealing with mental health related issues.

“It’s almost like, ‘Get better, and then when you do get better, come back and join us,’ as if struggling through and surviving through having mental health issues—in a capitalist, colonial, racist society—has no room in our struggles, and we don’t often talk about that,” she said.

Abdelhadi says she experienced criminalization, detainment, forcible hospitalization, assault and torture during her first manic episode while visiting the US two years ago. Since then, she has also experienced ableism within the activist community while dealing with trauma and working to fight her charges, fundraise and find support.

“It was like a wake-up call,” said Abdelhadi. “It…made me realize why we need to talk about community interdependence, and why all our movements have to have disability justice intersecting everything we do.”

For many, being able to talk about it, being heard and being supported is huge. Devin Mahnke recently co-founded an Icarus Project group in Calgary and has seen the importance of peer support. The Icarus Project is a “radical mental health support network” with online forums, various resources, and autonomous local groups. Icarus celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.

“It doesn’t seem to carry any sense of authority with it,” he said of peer support. “We’re just a group of peers listening to and helping one another, rather than a top-down organization.”

The group has brought together people who find the system doesn’t work for them, providing a safe space to discuss issues. In this space where they can be better understood and not judged, they also share how they are doing in their own lives. “It sounds really simple, but that’s actually been one of the more profound elements of our meetings because a lot of people don’t ever have a space to do that,” Mahnke told The Dominion.

Key principles of support work include “sharing stories, sharing experiences, sharing things that work for us, and sharing practical ways that people can use to get on with their lives ” said Kevin Healey.

Healey is part of the International Hearing Voices Movement and has run a support group in Toronto for the past two years. Getting to the point of speaking up and speaking out was a long journey for him.

“It took me 40-something years before I could feel confident enough to stand up and say ‘I hear voices’ in a room full of people,” he said. “People don’t talk about it, so you don’t hear people talking about it, so you think you can’t talk about it. We’ve created this vicious cycle and that just creates more shame and more fear, because anybody who hears voices knows exactly what kind of response they’re going to get when they tell somebody.”

Different studies report different rates, but by Healey’s estimate, approximately one in 10 people hear voices at least on occasion. The majority of these people have no contact with the psychiatric system, he adds, and those who do hear disturbing or disruptive voices often have a history of trauma. He notes that medications turn off the voices for a small percentage of people, and might help others feel less overwhelmed, but even then there can be significant negative side effects.

Healey would like to see psychiatric services change; he and the movement he is part of organize to form working relationships between “experts by experience” and “experts by training” to promote and practise a pluralistic, patient-directed approach.

“Really what our approach is about is…what you do when you’re with somebody. Simply, we aim to create safe spaces so that people can come to you and talk about their experiences whether it’s voices or visions or whatever it is,” he said. “We’re all running around trying to find ways to fix people—maybe what we really need to do is sit and listen, more than anything. That’s the basis of our approach, and it’s the basis of so much peer work: just listen.”

He adds that knowing recovery actually happens, and “believing that people will find their way through, that it’s not something they’re stuck in forever,” really helps.

Healey takes opportunities to appear in various media to help more people see that there are other ways of looking at things and finding ways to support people without having “the” answer to it all.

“Part of what we’re trying to do is just to show people that this is a normal human experience a lot of us do get, and a lot of us learn how to deal with it,” he said.

Normalizing or naturalizing—as opposed to pathologizing—a diversity of mental experiences is not necessarily the goal of most mainstream mental health awareness campaigns.

These campaigns “really like talking about ‘signs’ and ‘symptoms’…like stress, or sadness, or suicide [ideation] sometimes, or anxiety related things, and then they often tell you how to refer people to specific resources like mainstream services: GPs [general practitioners], family physicians, psychiatrists, crisis lines, hospital care,” without also mentioning these resources may be problematic, said Alisa*, who is active alongside Elizabeth in the Greater Toronto Area and Hamilton.

She describes mainstream mental health awareness campaigns as a kind of “wellness for all” approach that promotes individualistic coping strategies at the expense of helping people view themselves “as a [Mad] community that has history and culture and a social justice movement.” She’d also like to see awareness geared towards alternative approaches and individuals being able to self-determine treatment options.

Personal stories can be powerful tools to find meaning, re-shape imposed identities, and provide inspiration, but Alisa sees problems with the way personal recovery narratives are often highlighted in awareness campaigns. “Those stories, they never name discrimination, all they talk about is a medical kind of construction around what does suffering look like and a medical construction of understanding of getting better or a cure.”

Elizabeth agrees, adding that the narratives don’t often reflect the reality of people’s lives.

“You’re told to tell these inspiring recovery stories that look like, ‘Bad. Did something. Got better,’” she said, adding that more often, the real “getting better” part is finding ways to move forward despite ongoing challenges. Elizabeth sees the former approach as simplified and patronizing.

“When you think the only thing people can add to the conversation is their personal stories, you’re really missing out on a whole bunch of knowledge and history that an entire community of people has that can make change and make things better,” she said.

This knowledge includes “tips and tools that people learn by being in the systems and how we survive those systems,” said Elizabeth.  “That’s all information that people have as a community that isn’t written up in books or available in journals or in some guide to coping with your mental health.”

Alisa feels that shifting the perspective from “individuals with illness” to Mad people collectively as an “equity seeking group” is something that needs to happen.

“If we can’t see that other people are seeing this as a problem and it’s not just you and that there’s actual infrastructure in place that is causing problems for lots of people, then you can’t change anything. If it’s only focused on the individual, the only thing you can change is yourself and what are your options there?” she said.

It can be a challenge to find groups of C/S/X people, according to Elizabeth, because often the work happens in small community groups. And that work “can look very different from what people expect to see activism [or advocacy work] to look like,” she said.

Celebration is a part of the activism too. “It’s part of self-care for people. And it’s part of being able to get through life—finding the things that you’re proud of,” said Alisa.

Abdelhadi is happy to celebrate her resilience after what she went through, but wants to ensure that not just certain experiences of Madness are centred in the C/S/X movement and that intersections are taken into consideration. “I’m someone who’s experienced police and state violence because I’m a racialized woman, because I am Indigenous Palestinian, so I can’t separate the ableism I experience from the state from the racism I experience,” she said. “For me, it’s really important to maybe start something in Ottawa for other folks who are racialized or colonized who are survivors of state ableist racist violence.”

For Abdelhadi, mental health activism needs to be rooted in a framework that recognizes the interconnection of structures of violence and works to dismantle them, drawing upon the analysis of disability justice writer and organizer Mia Mingus, a queer physically-disabled woman of colour. Better access to mental health resources is important, says Abdelhadi, but so is understanding how ableism is interconnected with racism, colonialism, capitalism and cis-gendered heteropatriarchy.

“One of the things I’ve been learning from a lot of disability justice activists is bringing back the body, or the human being, into our work. I find we often talk about anti-oppression, decolonization, anti-capitalism and how all these oppressions work and how we’re struggling against them, but we don’t often bring back the body or the human being,” said Abdelhadi.

One of the hardest things for her was feeling like she was starting from scratch in Ottawa. Even as a resourceful activist with plenty of experience and connections, figuring out how to deal with lasting trauma while working on her legal case was extremely challenging. Finally building the community she needs to survive, she is also sharing her story publicly.

Raising awareness about Mad communities’ experiences, challenges and initiatives also sets the stage for the transformation of support systems and solidarity.

“Solidarity is not just on this theoretical level; solidarity is solidarity at the community level where we organize—me being in solidarity with you, and figuring out what we all need as a community, the things that we are not getting from the capitalist, racist, colonial, heterosexist cis-gendered state,” said Abdelhadi. “We have to do that work in our own communities. We have to create those spaces where we’re supporting each other as a whole human being, and not only when you can function with these ableist notions of a ‘super activist.’”
 

* At their request, Alisa’s and Elizabeth’s last names have not been included.
 

—-

About the author: Greg Macdougall identifies as Mad and/or diffAbled, lives in Ottawa (unceded Native territory), and is active in community organizing, Indigenous solidarity and media work. His website is www.EquitableEducation.ca

About the editor: Sandra Cuffe helped bring this article down from a draft length of 3500 words to the final polished 2100 word version. She is a member of the Editorial Collective of The Dominion, and has been involved with the Vancouver Media Co-op. Some of her own writing can be found here (VMC) and here (The Dominion).

This article was originally published by The Dominion.

Print versions (for use as handouts):

• Four-page 8.5×11 PDF (single- or double-sided printing)
• Two-page 11×17 PDF (double-sided printing then fold)

 

Interview with the author Greg Macdougall (18min) (mp3 file)
May 14, 2013 on OPIRG-Carleton Roots Radio CKCU 93.1FM (also on SoundCloud):

 

—-
 

RESOURCES:

• National Network of Mental Health: www.nnmh.ca
• Canadian Coalition of Alternative Mental Health Resources: www.ccamhr.ca
• MindFreedom: www.mindfreedom.org
• The Icarus Project: www.theicarusproject.net
• Mad Students Society: www.madstudentsociety.com
• Intervoice – International Community for Hearing Voices: www.intervoiceonline.org
• Leaving Evidence (Mia Mingus): leavingevidence.wordpress.com/
• Madness Radio: www.madnessradio.net
• Crazy Boards: www.crazyboards.org
• Mad In America: www.madinamerica.com
• RecoveryNetwork: Toronto: recoverynetworktoronto.wordpress.com/
• “Justice For Abla” group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/296266780402594

 

 

Simple, deep truths – Algonquin Elder Albert Dumont in discussion with Dalva Lamminmäki, a keeper of Finno-Ugric Shamanism and traditions (25min).

Recorded 27 April 2013 outside of Greely, a southern part of the city of Ottawa.

Dalva Lamminmäki is a healer in the tradition of Finno-Ugric shamanism. She traces her lineage to the ancient practices of the Karelia area of Finland, where she had ancestral ties. She is a teacher with the Center for Finno-Ugric Shamanism, Helsinki.
==== DalvaLamminmaki.wordpress.com

Albert Dumont, “South Wind”, is a Poet, Storyteller, Speaker, and an Algonquin Traditional Teacher. He was born and raised in traditional Algonquin territory (Kitigan Zibi). He has been walking the “Red Road” since commencing his sobriety in 1989. He has published four books of poetry and short stories and one children’s book, written in three languages.
==== www.AlbertDumont.com

– TRIGGER WARNING: some of this content may be emotionally distressing. For support, the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line is available toll-free: 1-866-925-4419 –

 

This past week in Montréal was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada‘s Québec National Event, the fifth of seven such gatherings across the country.

From April 24-27, an estimated 12,000 visitors stopped in to the historic Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel, and some 8000 tuned in online, to engage in the process of learning about this history, what exactly the residential school experience meant for survivors and for the country as a whole, and how we can move forward.

“The important thing that I do want people to understand is that this is not an Aboriginal problem, this is not just for Aboriginal people to address. The issue of the impact of residential schools upon this nation is an issue that the nation as a whole needs to address, and then as a country, as a future nation of this world, we will be in a better situation when Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people have full mutual respect for each other, and that’s what reconciliation is all about,” says Murray Sinclair, Chair of the TRC.

There were a number of different activities over the four days. It began with the lighting of a sacred fire, and there was also a Survivors’ Walk and Procession before the welcome and opening ceremonies.

Survivors share their stories 

There were many different sessions in the schedule, and also various exhibits and displays, but the main focus was on residential school survivors sharing their experiences. There were Commissioner Sharing Panels in the largest room, where survivors shared their experiences with one or more of the three TRC Commissioners and a large audience, as well as slightly smaller Sharing Circles facilitated by the TRC Indian Residential School Survivors Committee members.

NDP MP Romeo Saganash was the highest-profile survivor to share his story at the gathering. He spoke of how he, and all others who attended residential schools, “can never be normal” after the experience. He told of how his brother died in his first year at residential school, and how it took 40 years and his sister working at CBC to be able to locate his grave. He denounced the current government’s approach to handling Aboriginal issues, and gave the commission some recommendations for how this country can move forward positively.

The TRC collected a total of 162 survivor statements during the four days, but, as Sinclair explains, “altogether as Commissioners we’ve probably visited over 500 communities” across the country collecting testimonies. They are done both to preserve a record of history, and to contribute to the final report and recommendations that the TRC process will culminate in.

Canada’s national shame

“Our first recommendation, right from the outset of the Commissioners’ Interim Report, was to undertake a process of ensuring that curriculums in this country, the public schools, teach children properly about who the Aboriginal people are, who they were, what they have contributed to the history of this country in a positive way, and how they have been victimized … and in doing that, we can help Canada as a whole overcome its national shame,” say Sinclair.

The first part of the first day of the gathering was only open to school groups, who had a chance to come and learn more, but also for many of them to share what they had done as participants in the innovative Project of Heart initiative that allows students or other groups to learn about, commemorate and take action on the residential school legacy.

Another educational initiative, The Wampum Project, has been travelling across Québec raising awareness about residential schools and was described by Marcel Petiquay in his testimony. Petiquay shared how he “was taught violence in residential school,” and chose to be violent as a result — one story that illustrated this was how his then-girlfriend bought him a present of perfume, the smell of which reminded him of the abuse he’d received at the school only months earlier, and he proceeded to be violent towards her.

Healing programs are vital 

Petiquay also talked of his alcoholism, having started drinking at the age of 10 after being abused by a priest, and how it has been a very long journey to start the communication, to start the healing. Looking at the bigger picture, he stressed that child protection agencies are still taking away Aboriginal children from their families, and also how disheartening it is that healing programs funding are being cut.

The support that healing programs can offer is vital now and in the future in addressing the legacy of residential schools. There were support workers on hand at the gathering to help survivors in dealing with whatever might come up from hearing the testimonies.

Sheri Lynne Neapetung was in tears on stage as she recounted the effects of being molested at night in the dorm room of her residential school. “I had my life taken from me,” she said. She had seen her mother turn to substance abuse and couldn’t go that route, so she had nothing to turn to when the memories came back. She wasn’t able to take care of herself, let alone her children, and spoke of not being able to leave her house, not being able to shower. She trusted no-one, and felt that people might not believe her if she told them what had happened to her. “I need this out, out of me, because it’s been eating me on the inside,” she said. She spent “so many years crying … crying for my spirit to be whole.”

Self-harm and suicide 

Not everyone is or was ready to share their personal stories of hurt, pain and abuse. In testimony, Debby Flamand talked about how when her alcoholic father first learned that there would be the TRC and the sharing of residential school experiences, he attempted suicide, shooting himself in the head. The bullet went out the other side, leaving him alive but blind. She herself spoke of breaking the taboo in her community of denouncing the culture of domestic violence and the legacy of residential schools; she had also, earlier, lost her sister to suicide.

David Decontie shared his own experiences of around 10 suicide attempts while addicted to alcohol, and then later while sober being too scared to die to attempt it anymore. He said, “I was like a stranger within my own family once I got out of residential school,” and talked about how he didn’t have a sense of belonging or any friends. Communication was a big problem for him, often happening only after having been drinking.

Decontie also lost his language at residential schools, suffering beatings and soap being shoved in his mouth for speaking his Native tongue. He feels it’s really important that gatherings also happen for the young people, for the children of residential school survivors, so they can have their say too, as it has such huge intergenerational effects.

Genocide 

All of these experiences and impacts on individuals, families and communities are part of what was documented as a planned project to “kill the Indian in the child,” says Sinclair. “The forcible annihilation, through removal of children, of one race … is an act of genocide. And I’ve pointed that out to the Canadian population — that the International Convention on Genocide includes a definition that exactly describes what went on in residential schools and why residential schools were created.”

He adds that because Canada has not fully adopted the Convention on Genocide, “officials in Canada cannot be prosecuted for what’s occurred … but people have sometimes misinterpreted it to mean that therefore they have not committed genocide, and that’s not quite accurate.”

Dealing with a legacy of genocide is no easy task. As Sinclair states, “The future will be the only judge of the success of what [the TRC] accomplished.”

 
—-

About the author: Greg Macdougall is a member of IPSMO, Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Movement Ottawa, and is also active in other community organizing, education and media work. His website is www.EquitableEducation.ca

This article was originally published on rabble.ca

Print Version: download/print the two-page PDF version of this article

—-
 

VIDEO – Interview with Murray Sinclair, TRC Chair (Truth & Reconciliation Commission)

Sinclair speaks about the process of the Commission gathering testimonies from residential school survivors, preparing recommendations, and what this history of genocide means for all Canadians. (12min)

 

VIDEO – Interview with Barney Williams Jr, TRC Indian Residential School Survivor Committee Member

Williams talks about his own personal experience in a residential school and the healing process, how it relates to the thousands of other survivors’ experiences, and how that informs the work of the TRC. (31min)

 

A series of seven short videos featuring Albert “South Wind” Dumont. Filmed at Singing Pebble Books on 16 March 2013. (Read Albert’s blog post about the event here).
 

Old Joe – Childhood memory

“Old Joe was born without the ability to speak but still his prayers were heard with great beauty and eloquence.”
 

 

The Accident – Giving thanks is necessary in life

“I was 40 and I was sure my life had come to an end.”
 

 

Creating a Poet – Painful life experiences can have great purpose

“If nothing else, the miseries of my life created poetry.”
 

 

The Apple on the Oak Branch – Childhood memory

“I was a mischievous boy and knew how to play a trick.”
 

 

What is Time? – Philosophy

“Philosophy is wondrous.”
 

 

Carpenter Ants – The land as an ally

“Ants lifted me out of despair.”
 

 

The Little Bird – Learning from the land

“A little bird can teach a man to become strong.”
 

 

Albert “South Wind” Dumont wishes to express his gratitude to Greg Macdougall for his awesome work in the development of these videos.

 

Later this week, undergraduate students at Carleton University will vote to decide the future of OPIRG-Carleton, a social justice organizing centre that has been serving students and the broader Ottawa community for the past 33 years.

A referendum is being held April 3-4, and one of the questions asks whether to discontinue the undergraduate student levy that funds OPIRG ($6.84 per year for full-time undergrads). The collective total of this levy amounts to just over $127,000 per year, close to 85 percent of the overall OPIRG-Carleton annual budget. Without this funding, the future of the organization is in serious doubt.

OPIRG stands for Ontario Public Interest Research Group, and OPIRG-Carleton operates under the provincial OPIRG umbrella organization, along with PIRG’s at 10 other Ontario campuses. PIRGs more broadly started in the early 1970s on U.S. college campuses, based on a model proposed by Ralph Nader, and in the U.S. are also organized at the state level.

OPIRG-Carleton’s long history has included leading the campus fight against South African apartheid, and bringing recycling to Carleton, along with many other campaigns, events, and supporting many self-organized working groups on different issues. There are currently 17 active working groups (listed at the bottom of this link).

The organization is a good example of what Alan Sear terms ‘infrastructure of dissent‘: “the means of analysis, communication, organization and sustenance that nurture the capacity for collective action;” or as Jeff Shantz puts it, ‘infrastructures of resistance‘: “Pre-existing infrastructures, or transfer cultures, are necessary components of popular, participatory and liberatory social re-organization.”

OPIRG-Carleton serves this important function on campus, exposing students to political issues and activism, and allowing for a deepening understanding, commitment and collectivism for those who become involved.

This is all at risk in this coming referendum. The proposal to end the student levy was initially put forward as part of a proposed ‘omnibus’ referendum question which would have ended three different levies and created one new one. The Constitution and Policy committee of CUSA, the Carleton University Students Association, decided to split that separate the question into four different referendum questions, and then voted not to approve the question looking to defund OPIRG. But a majority vote of the full CUSA council overrode that decision, putting the defunding OPIRG question onto the referendum.

OPIRG has already been actively engaged in defending itself through this process. A 1991 contract between CUSA and OPIRG had ensured that both would have to agree on the wording of any future referendum question, and CUSA had not lived up to this, so ended up having to approve a re-worded question at an emergency council meeting and set back the date for the referendum until April. As well, OPIRG successfully fought to ensure more fairness on the electoral board, as the original people who were going to be overseeing the referendum were friends of the initiators of an ‘Opt-Out of OPIRG’ campaign from earlier in the year that was encouraging students to get their OPIRG levy refunded (there is a period at the beginning of each term where students who have paid the levy can come into OPIRG and have it refunded; however, usually only a handful of students decide to withdraw their financial support).

The whole campaign to defund OPIRG is not isolated to Carleton; notably, OPIRG-Kingston lost its undergraduate funding in February of 2012. This past September, an article (‘Defunding the Public Interest’) was published in Briarpatch magazine exploring the strategic Conservative-aligned organizing to attack PIRGs, and looking at how supporters of PIRGs can push back against these attacks. Insight into the anti-PIRG strategy was provided when a leaked recording of a 2009 Ontario Progressive Conservative Campus Association workshop was uploaded to Wikileaks (selected quotes here).

Ryan O’Connor was one of the workshop leaders, and one of his points of advice to these Conservative anti-PIRG campaigners was, “A lot of people aren’t involved in partisan politics, and they don’t know about messaging, they don’t know about get out the vote, they don’t know about things that you guys are exposed to on a regular basis whenever we have to campaign for the legislature or Parliament … take those lessons and apply them on campus.”

Pretty sage advice: if Carleton student voting history is any indication, ‘get out the vote’ is a hugely important strategy, and knowing how to do it could be the key to whether OPIRG-Carleton survives. In last year’s referendum, there were four questions and none of them had more than 850 tallied votes, out of a total undergraduate student population of around 23,000.

Many students are unaware, or simply can’t be bothered. And the folks pushing for OPIRG’s defunding are the same ones who’ve swept the CUSA executive elections for two years in a row.

The ‘Vote No, Save OPIRG’ campaign is working hard to keep a solid space for progressive politics alive at Carleton. They have set up a website, Facebook page, Facebook event, and Twitter account, to try and get as much support as possible from the school’s undergraduate students (the ‘Vote Yes to end OPIRG fees’ campaign also has a website, and a FB page and event). The voting takes place April 3 and 4, and results will be announced on Friday April 5.

—-

Greg Macdougall got his start in collective activism with WPIRG, the Waterloo Public Interest Research Group, in the early 2000s.

—-

UPDATE April 5th:

The Charlatan student newspaper has reported that there were 563 votes for, 1385 votes against, and 14 votes spoiled or rejected for the question seeking to eliminate the OPIRG-Carleton levy. So the result is that the levy will remain, and OPIRG-Carleton will continue to be funded by undergraduate students at Carleton.

 

 

 
Six Cree youth and one guide started out in January from Whapmagoostui in Northern Quebec to walk to Ottawa, a journey of around 1600km. By the time they arrived the number of walkers had grown into the hundreds as people from the various communities on the route joined in. This is footage from March 25th of the final leg of the walk, from Victoria Island to Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and ends with the speech from David Kawapit, one of the original seven walkers.

“Through Unity and Harmony, the quest will revive the voices of our “Anskushiyouch”. Their voices will be heard once more. With their guidance and strength, the Truth to all the sacred teachings will be revived and we will become once more, a powerful United Nations across Turtle Island.”

For more: www.nishiyuujourney.ca

Here is a good framework for reflection upon our work towards decolonization and Indigenous solidarity. They are questions put together by Craig Fortier of York University for his research on the subject.

I recently participated in an interview with him based upon these themes/questions, and asked him if it was already to share this as I thought it would be of value to others who are doing this work and would like to take some time to think / have conversations about these kind of things. He said it was ok. So please feel free to use the following in order to reflect upon the work you do individually and collectively.

Note that Craig is doing interviews with people who are active in such movements in a number of Canadian cities, along with in New York, California and Arizona south of the border. He is also planning to hold roundtable discussions as a follow up to the individual sessions, that can be more broadly open and where he can present some of the perspectives people have shared with him in the interviews.

Here you go:

 

Decolonization & Resurgence:

Anti-Authoritarian Movements and Relationships of Indigenous Solidarity
 

1.      Our Histories, Backgrounds, Locations in Struggle

To get a sense of who and what has shaped you as someone engaged in processes of decolonization.

Potential Questions:

1. How do you identify yourself and how do you situate yourself within radical movements?
2. Can you give me a brief history of how you came to be involved in the radical movements you are currently engaged in?
3. What ideas, experiences, traditions and/or stories underlie the practices that you engage in as a radical and/or the practices of groups, organizations or collectives that you are a part of?

 

2. On Decolonization

To get an understanding of how we collectively define and understand decolonization.

Potential Questions:

1. How do you understand decolonization?  How is decolonization understood within the organization(s)/collective(s) you are a part of?
2. Why is decolonization important in social movement struggles?
3. What are the outcomes we are seeking through decolonization?
4. What line of thinking influences your views on decolonization?
5. Who or what has influenced your understanding of decolonization?

 

3.  Ideas + Desires + Principles  = Practices?

The ideas, desires and principles we share with each other or develop collectively in radical spaces influence what we do, how we do it and who we do it with politically/socially.  This section is trying to grapple a bit with these assumptions because I think it is super important for our movements to get a better sense of why we do the things that we do in struggle.

Potential Questions:

1. Do you have a set of principles that you organize around politically? If so, what are they? Are they personal or collective?
2. What is power for you? How do you understand power being organized?
3. What ideas, moral philosophies, systems of beliefs and/or cultural knowledges influence your actions?
4. What does a just world look like for you? Is it something that you see us achieving or do you envision it more as an ongoing process? Why?
5. How do you respond to criticisms that your way of thinking might be “utopian” or “ideological”?  Or do you see these as potentially positive characteristics?
6. What is the relationship between imagination and struggle in your perspective?

 

4. Historical, Political, Social and Economic Context

To get a sense of how we see local/global histories and other political, social and economic contexts shaping our practices of decolonization and our relationships with indigenous people.

Potential Questions:

1. Can you comment on past social movement struggles and whether or not you saw them as engaging in the process of decolonization as you understand it today?
2. How does decolonization take place within anti-racist and anti-oppressive struggles?
3. What political ideas and frameworks influence your own engagement in the process of decolonization?
4. What effect does the current historical, political and economic (esp neoliberalism) context have on your practices of decolonization?
5. What is the role of the state in the process of decolonization?
6. What do you believe are the relationships between struggles against heteropatriarchy, racism, misogyny, ableism, capitalism and the struggle for decolonization?

 

5. On Relationships + Contradictions

Time to shift gears a bit here and reflect on the difficult decisions we need to make and the contradictions and mistakes and moments of learning that abound in our words and actions while engaging in processes of decolonization.

Potential Questions:

1. Can you talk about the relationships that you’ve had that have helped you think about how to engage in a process of decolonization?
2. How do you understand relationships of settlers, non-indigenous peoples, and Indigenous peoples?
3. Can you talk about experiences in your organizing where you have felt that your group or you as an individual were acting in a manner that maintained colonial relations?
4. What types of relationships do you see as being decolonizing?
5. Can you talk about successes and failures that you’ve been involved with in these same struggles?
6. Are there any models of organizing society differently that you hold as possible examples?

 

6. On Resurgence

Potential Questions:

1. If we talk about pre-figuration – or in other words – the creation of new worlds, new relationships, new ways of being – do you place your engagement in radical practice as being a part of this trajectory? Why or why not?
2. Others have suggested that instead of building something new, are we instead trying to reassert long-standing ways of engaging in relationships that are outside of the capitalist/patriarchical/heterosexist/ableist relationships we have grown up with? What role do you think this plays in your thinking about your actions as a radical? Are the two mutually exclusive?
3. The context of resurgence among Indigenous peoples has some parallels and similarities with the ideas, desires and principles being practiced by a number of non-indigenous radicals within settler states.  I guess this question is two fold, how does this particular concept resonate with you?
4. Can you identify people, texts, writings, books, stories, traditions that have influenced your actions, practices, relationships within our struggles?

 

 

by Clayton Thomas-Muller

 

Decolonization for your Momma

 

History…

Historically, Capitalism has been and is the motive for the Colonial and Imperialist policies that have disempowered and dispossess Indigenous people around the world.  It generally happens in three big phases in this country: Genocide, Removal/Termination, and Assimilation.  Systems of Oppression were used as a means of justification for exploiting people, the earth, and its resources.  You know the rest…

• Colonialism: 
  European Nations exploiting native people and natural resources in order to make European Nations and European people rich.

• Colonization: 
  The process of devaluing and dehumanizing native people in order to justify exploiting them and their homelands.

• Colonial Mind: 
  The mindset the colonizer(s) must create amongst indigenous people in order to enable, force, and trick Indigenous people to allow and or participate in exploiting themselves, other indigenous people, and mother earth. 

 

Systems of Oppression

• Classism/Capitalism:
  The system in which rich people get richer at the expense of poor people

• Racism/White Supremacy-
  The system that gives white people power and privilege at the expense of people of color.

• Sexism/Patriarchy:
  The system that gives men power and privilege at the expense of women.

• Homophobia/Heterosexism: 
  The system that gives heterosexuals power and privilege at the expense of gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, and transgender people.

 

Oppression affects us on three different levels…the 3 I’s…

• Internalized:
  within ourselves when we believe the lies and misconceptions about our own group

• Interpersonal: 
  between people…of the same oppressed group, of different oppressed groups, or of an oppressed group and a non-oppressed group.

• Institutional: 
  by institutions such as governments, schools, prisons, corporations, etc.

 

Brainstorm and Discuss…

• What does the Colonial Mind look like Historically? 
  What sent this cycle into existence?

• What does the Colonial Mind look like today? 
  What is not so clear-cut and overlooked…

• Where does the Colonial Mind exist?

• How does this affect us? 
  Brainstorm affects and their purpose… revisit colonization… dis-empower, dis-possess…

• How can we combat the colonial mind? 
  Brainstorm what is and what we want i.e.:  schools, curriculum…etc.

 

De-colonization: 
The conscious process of unlearning the colonial mind that has been forced on Indigenous people.

• Brainstorm…
• Why it is important…
• How…

 

*Environmental racism is a human rights violation and is a form of discrimination caused by government and private sector policy, practice, action or inaction which intentionally or unintentionally, disproportionately targets and harms the environment, health, biodiversity, local economy, quality of life and security of communities, workers, groups, and individuals based on race, class, color, gender, caste, ethnicity and/or national origin.