General Politics Discussion

[ijmorlan]

Well, I'm Indigenous. I don't really need anyone telling me whether or not I should whine about Canada. From my point of view it's an occupied land and you're all occupiers. Fortunately I'm not that black and white, although whether Canada should exist the way it does is questionable. I could say you should just hand the keys back to us and go home, but that's not how it works.

I was born here.

My parents were born here.

My grandparents were born here.

My great-grandparents were born here.

I am home.

(none of this is to imply that people with more recent immigrants in their ancestry, including actual immigrants, are less “home” than I am; the point is that I am not an occupier in any meaningful sense that doesn’t apply to almost everybody)

We all have to learn how to live together here. Talking about some people being occupiers is not helpful. “Who owns Poland?” I like to ask, rhetorically, picking it as an example of a land that I understand has been invaded and fought over many times.

Almost nothing “should” be the way it is; everything is the way it is because of a long historical process that involved many injustices along the way. Everyone is a descendant of a rapist and a rape victim. Everyone has, ancestrally, benefited from and been subject to theft, violence, and probably every other crime.

That’s not just not how it works, it’s not how it could possibly work.