EXPLORING INDIGENOUS RESURGENCE

Taiaiake Alfred guides us through the importance of the revitalisation of Canada's First Nations culture

- Taiaiake Alfred

What forms has the dispossession of First Nations in North America taken throughout history?

The relationship between the Original People of this continent and the newcomers has been shaped from the start by Europeans' and later Euroamericans' insatiable greed for our land, and their unceasing efforts to gain possession of our resources and to erase us politically. We have always been an obstacle to European ambitions and demonised in colonial mythology. Our peoples' struggle has been to maintain ourselves, to survive the violence and legal machinations of the White Man in our homelands.

The first stage of this history was defined by treaty-making on a nation-to-nation basis, which was a necessity on the part of Europeans because of our numerical superiority. But as soon as the impacts of epidemics of disease took their toll on our people, and reduced our numbers drastically, North American history became a story of broken promises, naked aggression, legal fiction and forced acculturation with the aim of eliminating First Nations as obstacles to the expansion of Empire.

The forms of dispossession included disregard and legal reinterpretation of treaty commitments, outlawing of First Nations' rights, governmental supports for outright theft by White settlers, physical removals of communities and nations and later, forced removal of generations of First Nations children from their families and communities and placement in so-called residential schools run by churches with the intent of deculturing them and assimilating them into mainstream society.

In what ways have First Nations historically resisted land and cultural dispossession?