* * * Please Circulate Widely * * * ______________________________________________________________________________________
A RACIST article was (unsurprisingly) published in this past Saturday’s (OCT 25TH) edition of the Globe and Mail, with regards to the allegedly intrinsic intellectual and cultural inferiority of the Indigenous peoples of the ‘Americas’ prior to their purported enlightenment, of course, by this genocidal hyper-masculine patriarchal ‘civilization’ which has coloured itself white. A response by Zainab Amadahy (Toronto-based Indigenous writer, singer, activist and community worker), has been posted below. Kindly post and circulate widely. As for the original article, it can be found @ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081025.COWENT25/TPStory/TPComment/?query=
Much Respect.
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Dear Editor,
Re: Ms. Wente’s October 25 column ‘What Dick Pound said was really dumb – and also true’.
In closing her article Wente quotes Frances Widdowson as follows, “…to say that aboriginal people were just as sophisticated as the Europeans – that’s just nonsense.” Since it is that quote which sums up the article’s basic message, let’s examine European “sophistication” in Canada:
A policy of genocide practiced openly on Indigenous people; deliberate infection of Indigenous communities with small-pox infested blankets; physical, mental, emotional and spiritual abuse inflicted on CHILDREN in residential schools; the prohibition of women’s participation in the political life of First Nations communities (until 1960) with the establishment of IMPOSED Band Councils (even our “less evolved” ancestors valued the political participation of women); the violation of every treaty ever signed with Indigenous leaders; the extraction of resources such as uranium, oil and platinum in processes that damage the surrounding environment and poison the food chain; the establishment of a resource exploitation economy that even European-descended economists decry as unsustainable and, finally, the establishment of SOPHISTICATED INSTITUTIONS to carry out these crimes.
While I do not suggest that Europeans are the only ethno cultural group capable of stupidity and wrong-doing or that every European-descended person is a white supremist, even someone with a superficial knowledge of Canada’s past would have to conclude that Wente’s article is nothing more than a hate-filled rant that contradicts historical record – even Eurocentric versions.
So, last and not least of these examples of European “sophistication” is that a major Canadian newspaper would publish the white supremacist diatribe that constitutes Wente’s article, or that she would be employed by your publication at all.
Signed,
Zainab Amadahy
