CPTnet
7 May 2005
KENORA / ANISHNAABE NATION: Un-Making Racism
by Lisa Martens
Life: Indigenous people of the Anishnaabe Nation hunt, fish and trap in and
around Trout Lake. They pray. They raise their kids, have arguments,
battles and celebrations, fulfill sacred commitments and develop special
relationships with the land.
**
Racism: People with light skin come from another land to Anishinaabe
territories. They make a Treaty with the Anishnaabe, but then they take
land instead of sharing it. They take hundreds and thousands of trees away,
and dig deep into the Earth for minerals.
The colonizers pray, love each other, laugh, cry and fulfill religious
commitments. They also use alcohol, lies, industry and sheer force to
separate Anishnaabe people from the land.
A moment of Un-Making Racism: Settlers (police officers, a museum employee,
CPT workers and others) join with Anishnaabe people (teachers, hunters,
speakers and others) for an Un-doing Racism Workshop.* They are near Trout
Lake. Together they watch a documentary in which a man named Victor Lewis
yells:
"North America was a RED continent....You are standing on RED ground! And
that's what it means to be White - to say that you're standing on your own
ground and standing on someone else's and then mystifying the whole process
so it seems like you're not doing that."
**
Racism: Settlers pour enourmous amounts of concrete into a river near trout
lake, build turbines and attach wires. The dam floods Anishnaabe homes and
disrupts their travel routes on the water.
A Moment of Un-Making Racism: Anishnaabe people and Settlers at an Un-Doing
Racism Workshop read and analyze an opinion article from a newspaper
published near Trout Lake. The article is by a man who wants his settler
government to generate more hydroelectricity. He writes
"I cannot imagine that the band [group of Indigenous people] would want to
hamper economic activity which will have no additional effect...on First
Nations."
The people at the Workshop brainstorm a long list of responses including: -
Writing to Settler governments. - Talking with the article's writer about
colonization. - Organizing a town meeting about hydroelectricity and racism.
**
Racism: Settlers fly small airplanes to Anishnaabe communities, kidnap
children and take them to White Government and Church-run schools. They
separate the Anishnaabe children from the love of their families, from their
prayers, songs, ways of life and special relationships with the land. The
schools function until the 1980's.
A Moment of Un-Making Racism:
After an Un-Doing Racism workshop, another Anishnaabe woman explains to a
Settler why Anishnaabe children were not taken to schools closer by:
"Because then the families would move to live near their children. Teachers
didn't want that."
Settlers talk about the ways they are responsible for colonization and then
one of them reads the following quote from Hugh Vasquez:
"Its their [White people's] responsibility to go educate their White
brothers and sisters... I expect them to eliminate racism...."
*CPT members at the Kenora / Asubpeeschooseewagong project are involved with
work in other communities including the town of Red Lake, Ontario, near
Trout Lake; a four-hour drive North-East of Kenora. CPT members work with
communtiy members, at the invitation of the Four Directions Committee, to
facilitate Un-doing Racism Workshops. The most recent workshop was on 30
April 2005. There are plans to continue the work even after the closing of
the Kenora Project
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