This article is a transcription of an address given by Taiaiake Alfred at the Vancouver Public Library on December 7, 2005. It was recorded by the Necessary Voices Society and is available for download at http://www.canadianvoices.org.
My discovery of what colonization really is took a long time in coming. It took a long time because you can’t understand the impact of these powerful forces of disconnection upon our people until you work within this system and try to make change. That’s the reason why this understanding is the sum of my own political experience, my lived experience. But it took a really intense effort over the past ten or twelve years to come to an intellectual understanding of it, and really to find a way to articulate it.
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His Mohawk name means ‘one who comes from the other side.’ A traveller at heart, movement has always been a part of Taiaiake Alfred’s life. Raised in Kahnawá:ke, Que., he now lives on the West Coast and teaches at the University of Victoria. Taiaiake Alfred is an instructor for the Indigenous governance program, and he has written three books on First Nations political structures. For his work in the field of education he has received a National Aboriginal Achievement Award.
As an educator, Taiaiake focuses on Indigenous people’s philosophies and cultures. He offers alternative government system ideas based on the wisdom of ancestors. Students in the Indigenous governance program learn about pre-colonial treaties and current land negotiations. Taiaiake is trying to give Native people a better way to assert their rights.
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