Today is Sorry Day in so-called Australia. "Sorry" does not refer to apologies. It's based on Indigenous practices of Sorry Business; a collective process in times of grief & loss.
It's a day of remembrance for the 10000s of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander children forcibly removed from their families: the Stolen Generations. Taken between late 1800s to early 1980s, the children were placed in church-run institutions or (later) put up for adoption without parental consent.
Up until the late 1950s, the children were trained for domestic servitude and unpaid labouring and sent to white businesses and households. The abuse and neglect in the institutions and elsewhere was rampant. Many died in these places; not everyone who survived found their families; and most have passed away without seeing any justice.
Every Indigenous family has one or more members that were part of the Stolen Generations. And the trauma of this particular act of genocide is intergenerational.
Sorry Day was one of the recommendations of a royal commission - the Bringing them home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. Which was tabled with the Australian
Parliament on 26 May 1997.
Another recommendation was a national apology, and that occurred on 13 February. Otherwise, very few of the 54 recommendations have been actioned.
In more recent years, in addition to commemorating the Stolen Generations and advocating for their rights, this day is also for fighting for the rights of Indigenous children who are being taken away in record numbers.
Today, I think of my family members who were stolen by the government, and forced into servitude as children. Fuck the government, churches and others who participated in this race-based cruelty; who used Aboriginal blood, sweat and tears to build a white nation on stolen Blak land. Yes, Sorry Day is also a day of anger.
One of the reasons for the invisibility of #AntiAsianRacism is inextricably connected to #ModelMinorityMyth. The myth focuses on #stereotypes of #Asians as hard-working, independent, intelligent & economically prosperous.
Stereotypes hide many issues & disappears the realities of working-class #AsianWomen’s lives.
The Selk’nams are also organizing to prevent the commercialization of their image & combat the ignorant view of them as an extinct tribe of Indigenous people with painted bodies.
Members of the #Heiltsuk Nation in #BellaBella are calling for immediate suspension & removal of an #RCMP officer stationed in the remote coastal community for reportedly making #racist comments on social media.
One screenshot shows the officer posing in front of the Union Jack in #colonial regalia with the comment, “Now, whats to be done about these pesky #natives stirring up trouble in the colonies…?”
The project, announced two years ago, will see the six-storey, 60,000-square-metre downtown building turned into an #Indigenous hub of housing, social services, government offices & cultural space.
She said there is “nothing #Indigenous about the RCMP.”
“They can hire Indigenous people but it doesn’t change their many #HumanRights violations and their continued role in #MMIWG. #RibbonSkirts are #sacred & not to be associated with #genocide,” she said, adding whoever thought of the idea should be fired.
The Nation’s chief says there's big plans for all the art & #artifacts once the Nation #repatriates all of their #cultural pieces from #RoyalBCMuseum & other #museums from around the world that have Snuneymuxw artifacts.
The previous barriers to land ownership were a holdover from when #Canada considered #Indigenous people and governments to be wards of the government, according to Braker. Before the 1960s, governments required #FirstNations to get the approval of #IndianAgents before buying land.
Even after the practice was abolished, #BritishColumbia had its own #legislation preventing First Nations from holding property.
'The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) is proud to announce the launch of the National Indian Boarding School Digital Archive (NIBSDA), the first-ever digital archives database on Indian Boarding Schools. NIBSDA is a groundbreaking project aimed at preserving and bringing to light the history of the U.S. Indian Boarding School era.'
1924: an #Indigenous man hunts a deer on treaty-reserved land. Gets criminally convicted.
The ruling said tribal nations are not sovereign or independent, "the Indians being mere occupants of the land.”
The hunter died decades ago. The family member who continued his case died in 2007. But a tribal attorney kept pushing to get the unjust, demeaning conviction reversed.
On Thursday, nearly a century later, the #Washington state Supreme Court admitted it was wrong.
As extractive “wildcrafting” has become popular, supposedly treaty-protected #Indigenous access to ancestral gathering sites has diminished, says Michelle Week (Sinixt, Arrow Lakes), who runs x̌ast sq̓it, an Indigenous foods farm near #Portland#Oregon.
“You have the privilege to go out and gather these things without fear of harassment, but my community, who’s native to this place, we just don’t have that luxury.”
Alexa Numkena-Anderson (Hopi, Cree, Yakama, and Skokomish), a chef who’s trained in French cooking techniques and recently opened the pop-up #Indigenous restaurant Javelina in #Portland, said public ignorance of Indigenous foods affects her financial model.
“People are willing to pay exorbitant prices for French food,” she said, “but people know nothing about Indigenous foods. So they will gripe about the prices that I have, even if they are reasonable.”
But sharing #Indigenous foods with the non-Native public can be hazardous. For one thing, there's the risk that non-Natives will commercialize, overharvest, "wildcraft" and "forage" the foods to death.
There are health hazards, too. Camas, for instance, is easily mistaken for ☠️ death camas 💀 and guess what happens when you eat death camas?
That's why Briece Edwards, manager of the historic preservation office at the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, says learning about #Indigenous first foods requires responsibility and relationships.
Caring for camas means caring for a whole ecosystem, including the deer and elk that paw the ground to loosen the bulbs, the white oaks that shade camas patches and attract deer with their acorns, and of course the camas flowers themselves, which benefit from Native gathering techniques.
please help Evel! xen is #Indigenous, #trans, #disabled, exhausted, and has a family to support. xen is fundraising for their monthly bills and housing. anything helps!
According to the study, “The apparent absence of pottery in Australia, as noted by early and more recent European observers… both reflected and was used to support, racist social evolutionary hierarchies characterizing Aboriginal societies as lacking cultural complexity.”
In an area just 90 x 90 cm, archaeologists found 82 pottery shards that are 2,950 to 1,815 years old.
New Caledonia: Kanak revolt confronts French state and settler militias - Freedom News (freedomnews.org.uk)
The revolt started a week ago in the south Pacific territory, after a series of disputed independence referenda.