Sunday, December 23, 2012

"Settler Canadians"

Note to the #idlenomore uprising: "Settler Canadian" is a well-intended but divisive and couterproductive term. Some of you are engaging in arguments about who is more authentic as an Indigenous person and who is "allowed" to participate in the movement. This does three things. First, it  reproduces the mechanisms of colonialism by othering, by constructing boundaries and in-groups. Second, these divisions are what the Harper government will look to exploit when it moves to stop the movement. Third, if the movement is successful in the short-term, these divisions will very likely spoil it in the long term because it lays the foundations for factionalism. The history of decolonising societies is rife with examples.

Just saying.

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