(July 2, 1950 - November 11, 2021)
Sto:lo Author, Poet, Instructor [University of Toronto - INS] and Traditional Teacher First Nations House
"Above all it is connected to the continuous attempt by Canada and Canadians to marginalize us from inside our nations. To say feminism is foreign suggests we do not belong in the centre of feminist politics. We do. The foregoing statements are lame attempts to cosign us to a place on the edges of our nations, just outside the fort – an attempt to segregate and oppress us.
Even when we were confined to spaces outside the fort, we were never on capitalism’s margin. Our wealth is the engine that keeps Canadian settlers privileged. Their failure to share what they have stolen makes us look as though we are on the margins, but without our wealth, Europeans would become the impoverished souls who arrived here four centuries ago. Colonialism is the centre of the capitalist economy. It is the foundations of capitalist imperialism, and we will no be marginalized inside our nations.
The beatings Indigenous people at Standing Rock continuously received over the pipeline under Obama’s leadership show how central the natural-resource wealth of our lands is to the larger society. Tar sands and Kinder Morgan are the Canadian equivalent.
Excerpt from "Marginalization and Reactionary Politics" in My Conversations with Canadians(Book Thug, 2017).
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