MORE ABOUT TRUMP AND THE RADICAL RIGHT

More than once I have called Trump “crazy as a fox.” In trying to make sense of the “fox” part, I went back to Howard Zinn’s, The Peoples’ History of the United States. In chapter 3 he says that at the end of the 17^th century and into the 18th, the very rich were most afraid of an alliance between the poor white servant class, Black slaves and Indians. They drove a wedge through racism and through giving small concessions to small merchants and planters. They found a solution, he says in chapter 3, in racism.

 

“Racism was becoming more and more practical. Edmund Morgan, on the basis of his careful study of slavery in Virginia, sees racism not as ‘natural’ to black-white difference, but something coming out of class scorn, a realistic device for control. ‘If freemen with disappointed hopes should make common cause with slaves of desperate hope, the results might be worse than anything Bacon had done. The answer to the problem, obvious if unspoken and only gradually recognized, was racism, to separate dangerous free whites from dangerous black slaves by a screen of racial contempt.

“There was still another control which became handy as the colonies grew, and which had crucial consequences for the continued rule of the elites throughout American history. Along with the very rich and the very poor, there developed a white middle class of small planters, independent farmers, city artisans, who, given small rewards for joining forces with merchants and planters, would be a solid buffer against black slaves, frontier Indians, and very poor whites.” 

Could it be that Trump is trying to play this card today: playing poor whites and small businessmen against Blacks and Indians in order to keep attention away from the controlling mechanisms of the super-rich?  If so, the only problem is that this isn’t the 18^th century! It may work in certain sectors, for a while. But, ultimately it is doomed. Doomed because the so-called radicalized right is nowhere near capable of carrying the day and the small businessmen, the Blacks and the “Indians” are not nearly as helpless as they were back then. Trump's attempt to divert attention from the super-rich by setting other sectors against each other cannot work for long. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool them all – for long.

FURTHER: The following references are of interest:
Nancy Isenburg, White Trash, 2017
Jean-Claude Revet, "Les leçons d'histoire de Charlottesville,"  Relations, 792 (Septembre-Octobre, 2017), p. 5.  Jean-Claude is chief editor of the revue.
Scott Kine, "My Reflection on a Culture in Crisis,: the Ecumenist, 54, no. 4 (Fall, 2017). This is a book review of J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, 2016. 
 

Canada's History of Cultural Genocide : Is There Hope?

Bent-box - Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Last Sunday friends gathered in a park in Ottawa to discuss their experience of the closing session of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. You will remember that this commission was set up in 2008, travelled all across Canada to gather the witness of survivors of Indian Residential schools. These schools, 160 of them, existed in Canada for over 150 years with the stated objective of destroying their identity as indigenous people.

The question we were asked as we gathered was “What gives you hope?” I offer three items for reflection:

1  1 )      The Idle No More movement has mobilized young Aboriginal people from every indigenous culture. It has, in particular, touched the lives of young Aboriginal people livings in cities, off-reserve. This is the majority of Aboriginal people in Canada, over half a million, the first generation, if you will, not to have attended residential schools since they were born after the last school closed in 1996.  It has been the focus for a recovery of Aboriginal culture among young people. It is a great sign of hope.

2  2)      At this point in our collective history, Christians have a huge challenge to free their religious tradition from the stain of having participated in what the Truth and Reconciliation commission has called cultural genocide. The voice of the Churches has, in some ways, been rendered unacceptable to a portion of society that finds it difficult to discover the underlying gift of religion in the history, structures and dogmas of Catholicism in particular. On the other hand, I have repeatedly seen Aboriginal elders, some Christian and other not, speak publicly of the Creator and engage in prayers and ceremonies of thanksgiving and of healing. From what I can see, the Aboriginal people in Canada are the only ones who can speak publicly of the Creator, of the Path and celebrate their ceremonies without apology. This is, for me, a graced event. God works in mysterious ways that humble and teach us.

3  3)      As I mentioned, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called the story of the residential schools, and indeed of the whole history of the relationship of Aboriginal people with the European settlers since the early 1800s as cultural genocide. Genocide is a strong word. Some recoil in horror at the suggestion; others try to mitigate its implications. For me it is a sign of hope. Because the reconciliation sought by the Commission is rooted in truth and only the truth can set us free. Accepting humbly the truth of genocide can mark a new beginning and an momentous process of healing. When the word genocide was invented in 1944, it was an attempt to give a name to what happened to the Armenians at the beginning of the 20^th century and what happened in Germany in the middle of the same century. The populations implicated in these events had great difficulty accepting the reality. It took generations for Germans to come to term with it. However, in the end, today, I think we can say that the process has helped their societies become more inclusive and humble. (This in spite of the rise of neo-Nazism in Europe in response to immigration.) For me, the accusation of genocide is a call for us to examine the truth, become more humble, open and compassionate. This is a sign of hope.

The Dance

Algonquin traditional dancer

One of the fundamental dimensions of our commitment to justice in the world is that of integrating the various elements of ourselves in that struggle. The practice of Aboriginal people could be helpful here. We begin with a celebration of life and thus a deep engagement with life: all life, all the life around us, all the life that sustains us and of which we are an interdependent part. When Aboriginal people gather there is always dance. Dance is central to the engagement with life.

Dance involves three dimensions.

There is first of all the music that flows through our bodies and touches our heart. Music energizes. It is central to all social struggles and our capacity to engage with music in our struggles and our gatherings is therefore of great importance, as so many social struggles have shown. 

Along with music there are words, usually very poetic words. Words are important; they engage also our minds. They call us to critical thinking, to getting our heads around the complex dynamics at work in society; the words help us name things as they are and to discover what needs to be done.

Most of all we need to integrate our minds and our hearts. There are, in Aboriginal culture, two ways of knowing: that of the mind and that of the heart. We can know with our mind, we can develop analyses. We can know with our heart and let our heart lead us. However, in Aboriginal thinking knowing, whether of the mind or of the heart, does not become an engaging truth until the two, mind and heart, are integrated. From that integration flows a purity and simplicity of mind and heart that is very powerful.

Music has words but eventually we have to dance: to move our feet, to locate ourselves in face of the struggle and to engage our bodies. Without that we have only pious intentions. Ultimately it is the integration of mind, heart and feet that make the dance as it is also the mind, heart and feet that makes us social actors capable of changing society.

There is also a pedagogy to the process of this integration: We begin by standing up, placing our feet beneath us, standing on the ground where the struggle is happening. We stand together and we begin to listen to the music until it touches our heart. If we do not love, we cannot act. If we are not moved in our hearts, we will never dance. Then, as the music beings, we hear the words, we sing the words, we make those words our own. Through the music we begin to feel the power and truth of those words. We allow the music and its words to sink into our bodies until they reach our feet and we begin to move – together. A movement is born.  

Peoples' Social Forum

   Last weekend the first all-Canada social forum took place in Ottawa, capital of Canada. It included the support and presence of a wide variety of labour union, NGO's, local community groups and Aboriginal peoples. About 3000 people participated in the opening march to Parliament Hill on Thursday. Over 500 workshops were presented that day and the following one. They covered every imaginable issue affecting Canadians and/or Canadian solidarity. On the following day (Saturday), more than 20 convergence assemplies took place. These brought together militants from a wide variety of organizations to think together about where a major issue was going. On the final day (Sunday) a general assesmbly was held to hear briefly from each of the assemblies held the previous day and to issue a final statement.
    To my mind, the most important presence at the forum was that of the Aboriginal people and the most important event was their entry and message at the final assembly. It was a very powerful presence that put into context all the various issues that had been discussed during the forum.
    Especially significant was the arrival of the Algonquin grandmothers (coucum) from Parc Laverendrye where clear-cutting is destroying their traditional territory. Ottawa stands on Algonquin unceded traditional Algonquin territory and so their call for solidarity was particularly significant.
Among the major speakers at the forum were Naomi Klein, Ellen Gabriel and Gabriel Nadeau Dubois.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission Vérité et Réconciliation

Expression de réconciliation

(La Commission Vérité et réconciliation a été mise sur pied par les survivants et survivantes des pensionnats amérindiens gérés successivement par différents gouvernements et administrés par diverses confessions religieuses.  Pendant 130 ans on avait explicitement en vue l’extinction de la culture autochtone au Canada et cela, en arrachant de force les enfants à leurs parents et à leur communauté.) 

     Nous sommes ici en tant que membres de différents organismes chrétiens du Québec.

Photos : Gilles Pillette   (Présentation de l'expression)

Nous sommes venus apprendre de l’histoire douloureuse des survivants et survivantes des pensionnats pour jeunes autochtones établis par le gouvernement du Canada, dont la plupart étaient dirigés par certaines de nos Églises. Des violences physiques, psychologiques et culturelles ont été commises dans ces institutions, allant parfois jusqu’à causer la mort d’innocentes victimes. Des représentants et représentantes de ces Églises ont déjà reconnu leur part de responsabilité dans ces différents abus et ont exprimé leur profond regret, en même temps que leur demande de pardon. En tant que membres de ces Églises, nous partageons ces sentiments. Nous portons comme un lourd fardeau éthique et spirituel les blessures que cette histoire a infligées aux personnes et aux relations entre nos peuples. Impuissants à changer le passé, nous sommes venus exprimer notre désir de participer aux démarches de réconciliation qui pourront, espérons-le, permettre de travailler ensemble à bâtir un avenir fondé sur le respect mutuel, la justice et la solidarité.

Représentants des groupes

    Nous sommes reconnaissants à la Commission Vérité et Réconciliation de favoriser un tel rapprochement, dans la confiance et la bonne volonté. Cette démarche demandera des efforts soutenus. Nous reconnaissons que des processus d’assimilation, de dépossession et d’exclusion ont toujours lieu, notamment par le fait des préjugés, de l’indifférence, ou des relents de colonialisme qui teintent encore trop souvent nos rapports avec les communautés des Premières Nations. Nous nous engageons à chercher la guérison de toutes ces formes de violence ou de discrimination, et à les combattre dans chacun de nos milieux sociaux et ecclésiaux.

    Nous remercions nos sœurs et frères autochtones pour la profondeur humaine et spirituelle des témoignages qu’ils nous offrent ici. Nous nous engageons à témoigner dans nos milieux de ce que nous aurons entendu et appris au cours de ces journées historiques.

  

Pastorale sociale de l’Archevêché de Montréal

Pax Christi - Montréal

Carrefour de promotion, ressourcement et formation (CPRF)

Centre d’étude de théologie contextuelle québécoise, Université de Montréal (CETECQ)

Groupe justice et foi des Sœurs de Ste-Croix.

Groupe de théologie contextuelle québécoise

Centre justice et foi

Initiatives et Changement - Québec

Déposition dans le Bentwood Box

Entraide missionnaire

Holy Cross International Justice Office (South Bend, Indiana, USA)

Carrefour d’animation et de participation à un monde ouvert (CAPMO)

Institut N.-D. du Bon-Conseil de Montréal

Docteur Gregory Baum, professeur émérite, Université de McGill

Claude Lacaille, bibliste, Trois-Rivières

Bineta Bas, Bureau international de justice sociale, Congrégation de Notre Dame (CND)

Montréal, avril 2013    

Why Idle No More is Important for Non-Aboriginal People

This is an intervention I made at a teach-in last weekend in Montreal.     

Because it isn’t just an Aboriginal struggle; it is a problem for all those who are Canadian citizens, above all, and the impact is on the Aboriginal peoples.  The roots of the issue lie not in Aboriginal history but in Canadian history!

    In Quebec we tend to see Ottawa as absent and irrelevant. We couldn’t be more wrong! And this is true also of the issues raised by Idle No More. Bil Cé45, the Treaties, the Indian Act, are all Canadian issues, policies and laws created by the Canadian government that affect all Canadians. And, they have great impact on us here in Quebec.

   Some of us are sovereigntists. We should be aware that the struggle for sovereignty is one more nail in the life of Aboriginal people. To achieve sovereignty without having dealt with its impact on Aboriginal people would be to repeat the history -- and we generally don,t know that history or take it into account when we talk about sovereignty. Simply to cut with Ottawa would immediately cut Aboriginal people loose from a whole history that they turn to instinctively for their survival: the history of the proclamation of 1763, the treaties, the Indian Act. Remove all this and they are at the mercy of an entirely new reality without any reference for their survival.

   Canada is quite unique among States: as far as I know it has the strongest history of establishing treatings with First Nations. While this has created lots of problems, it has also established a framework for working the problems through and has been a guarantee that First Nations had a voice in the discussions about their own future. We are not a that has full title to the land north of the 49^th parallel coast to coast. We share every bit of it and have done so since the first settler arrived. None of that land has been ceded. We are a land of many nations who co-habit -- we just forgot about that.

   There’s another thing we forget about: we are an apartheid nation. In fact we are the model, root apartheid nation. Apartheid may be an invention of the Netherlands, of the Boers. But they got the idea from us, with adaptions and refinements. We too, adapted and refined our own version. But the rock bottom point is that we are an apartheid nation. The sooner we recognise it, the better. And our apartheidism is grounded in the Indian Act. It is a perverse interpretation of the two-row wampum that said that each nation would follow its own path, with dignity, respect and reciprocity. We turned it into an path where we took all and told the others to stay out of the way. And at one point, we even decided simply to eliminate them -- we took the route of genocide. We are a country that has applied genocide on our own territory.

    Finally, there is the question of territory.  Perhaps this is the root issue; the one we really need to deal with. It is at the root also of most of the armed conflicts in the world today. The Western world developed a notion of territory that has upturned everything even we believed up until the beginning of the industrial revolution. At the beginning of that revolution, the industrialists wanted workers for their factories. The factories were in the cities, so they had to draw people to the cities. So they closed the commons. They privatized territory in such a way that most people were excluded. Territory became private property. Ownership became exclusive. The settlers, from the beginning of the 18^th century, arrived with this notion. It has run up against our own earlier tradition and that of Aboriginal people ever since.  Up until 1960, Quebec was a very traditional society in which private property, while it existed, did not pose a threat to the well-being of other Quebecois. There was room for all -- well, except for the Aboriginal people who were shoved out of the way.  But the shift to the industrial and urbanized model of society did not really come about until after the 1950’s. Today it has eaten away at the very fabric of who we are. As large corporations create ever grander projects to devoir the environment in search of oil, gas and metal, Quebecois also have found themselves pushed aside.

    Today there is perhaps an opportunity for Aboriginal peoples and Quebec society to examine together their bonds with their shared territory and their concern about what is happening to it. Both regards are, in my view, grounded in a profound love and respect for the gift that this territory is and an enormous will to care for it. Together, based on that shared bond with the territory, we can perhaps together build a different future. But that will happen only if we come to terms with our shared history also.