Gerald Taiaiake Alfred

Movement in the right direction from our Anishnaabe brothers and sisters… I could not have said this better myself!, so I won’t. - Taiaiake.

WHITEFISH RIVER FIRST NATION, ON, June 25 - Chiefs of the 42 member communities of the Anishinabek Nation have launched a campaign to eliminate the inappropriate use of the term “aboriginal”.

During the annual Grand Council Assembly in this Manitoulin Island community, Chiefs endorsed a resolution that characterized the word as “another means of assimilation through the displacement of our First Nation-specific inherent and treaty rights.”

“It’s actually offensive to hear that term used in reference to First Nations citizens,” said Grand Council Chief John Beaucage. “Our Chiefs are giving us direction to inform government agencies, NGOs, educators and media organizations that they should discontinue using inappropriate terminology when they are referring to the Anishinabek. We respect the cultures and traditions of our Metis and Inuit brothers and sisters, but their issues are different from ours.”

The resolution notes that “there are no aboriginal bands, aboriginal reserves, or aboriginal chiefs” and that the reference to “aboriginal rights” referred to in Section 35 of the Constitution Act of Canada “was never meant to assimilate First Nations, Metis and Inuit into a homogeneous group.”

Chief Patrick Madahbee of Aundeck Omni Kaning said: “Referring to ourselves as Anishinabek is the natural thing to do because that is who we are. We are not Indians, natives, or aboriginal. We are, always have been and always will be Anishinabek.”

Beaucage said that the resolution’s goal of encouraging the use of respectful terminology could lead to changes in organizational names.

“We have lived with The Indian Act since 1876, but the legislation’s provisions are as archaic as its name - and we hope it won’t be around for too much longer.” Beaucage said the resolution could result in re-naming the Anishinabek Nation’s corporate arm, which has been known as the Union of Ontario Indians since 1949. “Those terms were acceptable then, but today we recognize them as confusing and inappropriate.”

The Anishinabek Nation incorporated the Union of Ontario Indians as its secretariat in 1949. The UOI is a political advocate for 42 member First Nations across Ontario. The Union of Ontario Indians is the oldest political organization in Ontario and can trace its roots back to the Confederacy of Three Fires, which existed long before European contact.

For further information: http://www.anishinabek.ca/uoi

 Alex Paterson: Gord Hill, in Upping the Anti (http://uppingtheanti.org/node/3014), mentions in a brush off way that you and Wasase are associated with the university and seems to imply that class divisions in the Indigenous movement matter in your legitimacy. I was hoping you could comment on this.

Taiaiake: If I’m correct, and I believe I am because this is the only quote from Gord Hill in that journal, you’re referring to this response Hill gave to the question of his relationship to the “Wasáse” group, as it was referred to by the interviewer:

I’m not involved with them. My understanding is that they’re more of a university student-oriented group. They have an annual gathering over in Victoria, which is where Taiaiake Alfred (a University of Victoria professor who wrote a book called Wasasé upon which this movement is built) is based. I myself don’t have much interaction with them, and I’m critical of some of their analysis and strategy for change, such as their reliance on Gandhi. We communicate with each other, and I’m aware of what their positions are on things. On the AFN Day of Action they came out and were critical of what they called the AFN’s half-hearted steps and its militant posturing.

Hill’s response to the question seems fair and accurate to me. At the time, there was a group calling itself “Wasáse” and we did meet here in Victoria. Most of the people involved were educated and my book was a reference point because it summarizes and analyzes various strategies of Indigenous resistance. And Gord Hill did not have any involvement with the group.

But “The Wasáse Movement” was just a short-lived attempt to build a political organization that we chose to abandon because we saw this kind of effort as premature in the social-cultural environment in our communities. We did not believe that such a radical idea as confronting the government with contention had the potential to attract significant numbers of people - beyond a small circle of activists - in a movement without us and others first engaging in the work of reculturing, educating and decolonizing people’s minds.

I don’t see how you can say from his answer here that this is a “brush off” or that he is questioning my legitimacy. I also do not see any implication of class divisions in his comment. I think that you are reading your own views into what Hill said.

Alex Paterson: I was wondering whether you would clarify and dispute Gord Hill’s accusations and perception of you as an anti-warrior and clarify and give truth to why the WestCoast Warrior Society as a whole is disparaged by some in the NYM. I was hoping you could further comment on the question of the utility of revolutionary violence vs. Gandhi, that Hill mentions.

Taiaiake: In most people’s understanding, the term “warrior” refers to someone who engages in battle and who fights for a cause. I try to expand that notion in my book, but I think it’s fair to say that this is the basic idea of what a warrior is across cultures. Given this, Gord Hill’s accusations (assuming you are conveying them accurately here) are meaningless and even laughable. It would be a bizarre upside-down world in which the man who carried arms for two causes and his own nation was an anti-warrior, especially if a man who has never done anything more militant than draw a cartoon was being put forward as his “warrior” opposite. But it’s also hard to take anything serious coming from 40 year-olds who still call themselves a “youth” movement. I don’t know why they disparage other Native activists, you’ll have to ask them that question. All I know is that Gord Hill, despite claiming to understand my work, has never emailed me, never came to talk to me, and always deferred on conversing with me whenever I have encountered him in person.

My comment on Hill’s valorization of “the utility of revolutionary violence” versus Gandhian nonviolence? What’s there to comment on: it’s all rhetoric? Gord Hill and the NYM have never done anything revolutionary or violent to demonstrate that they are anything but posturing protest radicals; I don’t see stealing an Olympic flag as very revolutionary or violent.

Alex Paterson: I see in much of your writing a way of talking about settler society only in relation to a state, this is more obvious before Wasáse. I think it seems to leave invisible the need for the state relationship to be destroyed by settlers for settlers. Do you think this would make it easier for an authentic decolonization in these territories? How do you think an anarchist-Indigenist movement would or could relate respectfully to a state which occupies former Indigenous territories?

Taiaiake:  My writing responds to the realities we face as Indigenous people. The fact is that as collectivities and individuals our relationship is primarily with the state and its various institutions. When you and the other Settler anarchists are a bit closer to your goal of destroying the state, I’ll start thinking and writing about that future. For now, my responsibility is to think through the real problems facing our people, and these all have to do with the coercive assimilation of the state and of the collective greed and ignorance of North American society on the whole. As for anarcha-indigenism as a movement, and such a movement’s relationship to other groups, your question has been thought through and answered in detail already in a publication I co-edited: http://www.newsocialist.org/index.php?id=981