this interview was conducted between the affinity project and an anonymous settler in guelph, ontario in june 2008; published august 4, 2008.
Reclamation Info
Friends of Grassy Narrows
No 2010
People's Global Action
Bloc - Ottawa
1. THE SIX NATIONS RECLAMATION
2. THE POTENTIAL FOR SOLIDARITY
6. 2010
personally, i don't place much of a weight on whatever labels, and would rather just do, think, and feel, and have my response to the world come through that rather than a label. i think people would probably call me an anarchist, if there was a label, that would be it. in terms of how i got involved in solidarity with indigenous people, i guess i'm excited by anyone who's taking extraordinary steps to defend themselves and the land. my involvement in solidarity work comes through being inspired by various indigenous communities, like grassy narrows, people from six nations and tyendinaga, and a bunch of people all over turtle island that are doing things we don't often see in non-native communities. i'm inspired by people who are clearly serious and being moved by my personal interactions and relationships with these people. primarily from different land reclamations and blockades, and being inspired by people's commitment and determination. that was what got me into it.
what was your first step into conscious solidarity work?
i guess learning from people and participating in the reclamation at six nations, that was when this became a more prominent focus in my life. a community like six nations is a very large community, and there are a lot of different things going on. you'd be working in the kitchen, or helping out at the medic tent, fixing up different sites or whatever. at first we were on the blockades all night long with piles of flaming tires, hanging out and holding it down, being extra bodies there. as the security precautions developed, non-native people we're invited to take part in the blockades on the perimeter. one of the things i was doing a lot was going undercover to non-native caledonia rallies, and getting a feel for what the vibe was of the crowd, if there were a lot of violent instigators. that was some crazy shit. the stuff going on there was obscene.
imagine a teeming throng of people in front of a stage, with a middle-aged hyper-suburban woman going off about how her kids are afraid to go to school, throwing around hate speech, and crowds of people cheering and waving huge canadian flags. there were the odd people there, and i don't know how they had enough courage, they were other caledonians, and were calling them out as hate-mongerers. they would get surrounded by crowds of people who wanted to beat them up, and those people had to be escorted out quickly by cops. so usually it became us trying to defend them, while at the same time trying to collect information. then there would be the occasional guys with big flags that would be yelling 'storm the site! storm the site!' trying to move the crowd. mobile throngs of intense arguments moving throughout the crowd, people screaming at each other, and fistfights almost breaking out. it was pretty intense.
usually the same instigators?
people have done more intel than i have and found out that there are definitely instigators, some neo-nazis coming from the hamilton area, and they were very interested in the site and wanted to stir the pot as much as they could. there was hanging out by the fire, cooking, and doing fund raising in our communities as well. we would try to get people to come out to the site and become personally involved in something like that.
where did you feel that you were getting direction from as to what to do?
it took a while for them to develop a structure. a lot of people have very different opinions. there were people who would be happy with any militant action, and there are some people who just wanted people to hang out and keep the peace, and just be there in case the cops came in. it felt similar to the solidarity work in palestine and israel, where the presence of a white person is sorely needed just to limit the violence of the israeli army. most of the non-native people there had media of some kind, recording devices and cameras, and a lot of people felt it was beneficial for their own safety. as far as getting direction, well basically, anything you wanted to hear you could go find. (laughing)
so what did people do? obviously people seemed to do the same thing, and how did that come about?
it came about in different ways. i heard stories of people making shields out of plastic garbage bins, pepper spray and improvised weapons. other people did more tangible things, site support. it wasn't that long until the [april 20th] raid died down and it wasn't an intense crisis where anything could happen. then it became a public relations strategy. it was asked for voices of support, demonstrations of support, financial support and media.
what do you think solidarity between anarchists, or i guess people in a broad spectrum of autonomous politics, and indigenous people is and should be? what's your philosophy on that? what's going right with the solidarity experiment that we're sort of engaging in right now across the country, and what's going wrong?
it's tough to stay. it's often hard to tell what the worthwhileness is of public education. there's no tangible measurement for the outcomes, although in some cases the broad-based public support for bob lovelace and the ki6 had actually got them out of jail, i think because their stance and message appealed to the liberal crowd. it was less controversial. sometimes you see things that work. often with a solidarity experiment, as you phrased it, it's tough to know what's working. it's hard to find indicators of that. there's a whole gamut of things happening, lots of public support.
there's people who advocate anti-racist work in non-native communities and say people in indigenous communities can take care of themselves. often when non-native people go to offer support to reclamations, they might push people out of the roles they want to do anyways, and there are problems with that. some people advocate conflict resolution and challenging racism in non-native communities to de-escalate conflicts. that has to be done for sure. but it's hard to know.
i guess personally, what i'm hearing and feeling from myself and others, the stuff that's led to the greatest feeling of mutual empowerment has come from personal relationships in different communities, different smaller groups of friends who befriend others in different liberated territories, whether it's sutikalh or ganienkeh in new york state, tyendinaga, kanehsatake, kahnawake, six nations, and in other places across this country called canada. within the whole activist paradigm, there's really good stuff happening on real levels on real people's terms, and that leads to a much greater sense of our lives being intertwined and a greater willingness to further relinquish the comforts that our identity as canadians has.
you seem to be identifying two different streams. one you're calling an activist stream, and the other i would call some kind of want to move towards an anarchist philosophy, like an ontological anarchism meeting indigenous philosophies. what do you think the anarchist thing is, and what are the differences?
yeah that's a great question. i feel a lot of it comes down to identity. how we identify, who we identify as, and i don't feel like being an activist is quite an identity. you have a certain lifestyle, you chill with certain people, you're on the computer a certain number of hours a day, and there's lots of non-native activists. i don't like the idea of being an activist, but i do like being a person who is reactive, and can't take what's going on very well. i feel like with the identity thing in there--this is wordy--the difference between the activist thing and the anarchist thing; i don't know how to describe it, but i can feel it and think i know people when i see them, who's who.
you said something about relationships being key to it.
yeah, relationships beyond identities and labels. i think the anarchist ethic is more about getting beyond being canadian citizens and that kind of stuff. looking hard at what canada is, a weird fictitious corporate entity that has no basis in the real land we live on, the bioregions and the indigenous people, and nothing that was here prior to colonization had any need for borders. you can look at akwesasne, that forms a part of new york state, ontario and quebec, and the borders thing is so ridiculous when you look into it. the idea of canada as a country coming about through a wholly genocidal process, and it's illegitimate and digusting, and when you look at what is canada and what is canadian you go different ways with it. i identify with my bioregion and my watershed and more with wild nature than i do with the domestication that surrounds us, life in the city.
how is that relationship to land and geography negotiated with respect to indigenous communities trying to reclaim territorial space? how do you feel the discourse of treaties and sovereignty fits in?
i definitely hear from so many different indigenous people that they're totally in favour of awesome people living for free on land without having to pay taxes or whatever, and as long as there's an ethic of care and love and respect for the land we live on, i've heard that being something strongly advocated by all kinds of people. learn who we are as human beings, get back to living in a respectful way that is more in alignment with the needs of the earth that we live on. i've heard that's an alright thing to do as far as the politic goes, being settlers and living for free. at reclamation sites, lots of [allies] are encouraged to live there or live nearby. it can be done appropriately, those possibilities do exist and they're plentiful if it's done respectfully with the people whose land that actually is. it's also the spirits and ancestors who have been buried in the land over the centuries and millenia. there's a lot in this world that does not fit into the scientific paradigm whatsoever, and a lot of people i know really suggest speaking with the place, laying some tobacco down, and letting the place know of your intentions. it's just as important as getting the agreement of the native people around, being in alignment with other forces as well. it's a bit weird to talk about and that's a whole other topic. non-native people aren't really encouraged to talk about this stuff and i won't go into that.
it's also indigenous people and the land, and you kind of have to break with a hegemonic ideological relationship with european modernist scientific rationalism to some extent to be in solidarity.
that's a really good point. what kind of bugs me sometimes is when a lot of non-native urban solidarity activists are totally willing to support indigenous communities, but a lot of us who came from europe are totally bred from school with rational scientific materialistic worldview that comes from these totally fucked up philosophers who were horrible people, whether it's descartes or socrates or plato or aristotle. they shaped this culture so much and their ideas are totally anti-life. we're taught their anthropocentrism, but when you try to break out of it it gets called 'hippy stuff.' for myself, i feel totally inspired by that part of decolonizing our minds and hearts. my conversations with native people at six nations or other elders talk about profound things, things the wildest adventure movies are based upon, as far as the abilities we have as humans. our connections with energies, and spaces, and animal allies, and i've found for myself getting more in touch with the land i live on and geting to know plants and trees i'm continually shown how deep inter-species communication can go and how much more there is to life that completely confuses me at this point in my life. i think it would be a pretty worthy and welcome task for us to investigate how much our schooling leads to us being anthropocentric and overly materialistic in our worldview.
i can think of two different ways you can do it. one is, you can respectfully, tenuously and contingently adopt an indigenous view of the land, and that is a very tricky position that i can see easily lapsing into romanticism and a form of exoticism that is extremely problematic, but can be done in a way that isn't. the other way is that you can respectfully understand that something may be possible that you don't believe in, but it may be just as possible that you do believe in, and there can be a form of solidarity where knowing anything is possible can bridge the divide between what you believe in, which cannot be a rationalism, but can be your own religious values or indigenous values from other places.
i think i do know what you're saying. it's an interesting discussion, something that's often viewed as not as exciting or important given there is more emphasis on more militant stuff--which is totally great--but i think for our personal stuff, and the thing that keeps me and my closest friends going is knowing that our lives are intertwined, and not just doing things because we should or it's just what activists do. i think our deepest drive comes from--i don't really like the word--a more spiritual connection to the land, something that fills our hearts and not just our minds, the adrenaline that makes us deeply greatful to be alive. it's a powerful thing that leads to a strong desire to fight and protect other stuff. connection with the land is so important, it's why no one gives a shit that the cities are expanding and no one's even noticed what we're missing. when you start to know you start to care, when you start to care you might think about doing something. for me, this kind of transformation of thought came about through hanging out with youth and elders and different sites, and just kind of hanging around the fire. not just talking about what's on the radio or on the news, but these issues as well. it's a major part of colonization, anywhere around the world that you look, that there's a severance and destruction of the spiritual connections people have to the land, whether it's been witch burnings or residential schools and the shift to patriarchy that canadians impose. i'm not saying i'm more connected to land. i was reading about someone who was visiting a zapatista community, and they were doing an important prayer ceremony before a major event, and they were in this high school gym and as the elders started doing the prayer the lights above started to swing. as they stopped, the lights stopped. the friend relaying the story asked her indigenous friend next to her if she saw that, and she did and said 'that's why they want to kill us.' that's a great story to think about, with oka, six nations, and gustafsen lake, people talk about how they couldn't have done it without a strong connection to their ancestors who are watching over them and giving them knowledge. i think that's a really interesting direction to go in and i think it would be really cool if more of us started really playing around with that kind of stuff.
what do you think are some of the risks of playing around with that kind of stuff are? do you think about it?
i think romanticizing things; fucking with stuff you don't know the protocol to; thinking you know what you're doing; i mean i don't know about that kind of world, people have their own special prayers for talking with ancestors, all i know is what i pick up from ceremonies and sweats and being on reclamation sites.
when you go to a reclamation site, people want to know what community are you from. do you have an answer to that?
i usually say what i'm involved in, but i don't identify as a member of this or that organization. we've had enough contact over the years to earn the trust and respect to lay the ground for more. so i think it's just based on prior experiences. i'm not into identifying with organizations.
when you were out at caledonia, did you meet people that didn't want you there, and if you didn't, did you hear about people who didn't want you there?
i've heard more in retrospect. certainly not everyone is very friendly. i don't blame them at all, but not everyone is friendly. i wasn't into just hanging around all the time. people would see us coming in with bottled water and food, and talking with people or whatever, but definitely i've heard about native opinions of groups like [the ontario coalition against poverty (ocap)] having the yankee mentality of trying to run the show.
what's yankee mean?
i think not really being gentle and respectful in one's ways.
it's funny, because i think [ocap] thought they were being so in their way of doing things.
yeah and maybe they probably had the support of some people but pushed others the wrong way. i think a lot of people thought they took too much of a role there, and made the space less empowering for the people there.
what do you think the future of the solidarity thing is? what would you hope it to be?
people i know from different territories out west are really into getting out of the cities, and i think they have much more wild out there whereas ontario is heavily colonized and agricultural. i know i feel in strong agreement with the idea that we need to get less reliant on all this industrial infrastructure, whether it's the sewage system in the city, or the network of roads that bring us food, or the farm fields, and that's one way people can be more in solidarity is by being more in touch with the land. some people would call it a more indigenous perspective, i'm not in a place where i feel comfortable using that word, but to what degree can we be in solidarity if we're still eating food grown on stolen land and requiring all this industrial infrastructure and its constant maintenance. i know that people i talked to at six nations are pretty darn excited that we're living off the grid, and see it as a good step. the other direction i hope for, is more people standing up and saying no more, stopping developments in tandem with other indigenous people. that would be great, not just leaving it in the hands of indigenous people. this is indigenous territory we're standing on, but at the same time we have a responsibility to stop this as well. we can't let the responsibility fall on the communities that are the most directly affected and don't always have the material ability to respond. there's lots more direct action going on that we have yet to see to what degree it's successful.
there's some critique of the sixties back-to-the-land mentality that happened, and the bizarre cultures that developed in the sixties that led to their demise and the collapse of most of those projects. also from the monocultural predominately european-protestant mentalities that went into that; how do you feel like what you're talking about is different from that?
that's a great question. i think finding as many ways to make it anti-colonial in nature and in support of indigenous struggles for self-determination. i think we can challenge ourselves and reach out, and there are all kinds of ways that we can do that. i've heard of farms that grow food in support of indigenous resistance movements. i've heard of land projects which give back land to native people; people at sharbot lake were willing to sell their land to the local community for a dollar as long as they didn't open up a strip mine. there's lots of examples of how that can be done to maybe lead to mutual empowerment. these projects are few and far between, but i think people can seek to find ways to not become this insular off-the-grid commune kind of thing. you can have safe houses for people who need to escape the law, as a basis for learning all kinds of things towards different kinds of actions. a place to heal yourself as you launch out into the world, do what you want to do, and come back and recharge. look at rod coronado. he's actually indigenous, but while he was pulling off all kinds of crazy shit, he had his one-room shack in the woods by a river where he went to get his guidance and strength. then he went back out and shut down different labs, and the possibilities are pretty huge towards making something pretty anti-colonial in nature that's land-based.
from a spatial perspective, you can be on the fringe of things. you're not totally gone but you're not totally there either. being able to pass back and forth is really important, both for not having something become isolated and die out, but also in terms of being able to support people who can't get out.
yeah, definitely.
what do you think about people who are fully into regionalism, biocentrism, are against the state and colonialism and capitalism, but like urban living?
i don't mean to say there's anything wrong with that. but it would be cool that if when the shit goes down, these people are clamoring to set back up the sewage treatment plant but are going to be building compost toilets.
do you think it's urbanly possible to do all the same things?
i guess i didn't mean to have such an out-of-the-city slant. i think just inevitably this infrastructure is falling apart all the time, and it would be nice if people weren't fighting to set back up river dams. people lived in large settlements with tens of thousands of people not needing electricity or sewage treatment plants or chlorinated drinking water or destruction of habitat.
did you find that there was a different dynamic between not-white settlers and indigenous people in any of the work you did?
that's a good question. really, my experience went as far as meeting awesome committed people who are clearly not white. i can't really say whether i know what was going on. i think people who i met had an easier time identifying with the struggle against colonialism. that's probably all i can say about that.
did you think there were dynamics between people who were white and not-white within the settler category?
i can't say i picked up enough to really say.
what kind of dynamics between settlers were there along political lines?
some people strongly identify as canadian citizens and believe that the preservation of the canadian state is a good thing, that there's a democracy and these liberal values. there were a lot of people who think that's totally bullshit, and would love to see a turtle island without canada or the united states at all. it would be quite a world. some people get word from the blockades that they're open to any kind of support actions, and they run with it. some people are really against that kind of stuff. there are liberals around in the indigenous movements as well. for the mostpart there was, at least in the community that i live in, a willingness to respect each other, and not a lot of antagonism or conflict that comes about through disagreements over tactics. certainly there are big differences, and a lot of it isn't often talked about enough. there aren't broad discussions of militancy, they just don't happen for obvious security reasons. it was known that things were happening, but it was never addressed in any way other than through personal conversations.
did you interact with union people or marxists?
not really. the one union here is pretty supportive, but i didn't have much interaction with them.
i'm really curious to see what happens with the 2010 olympics too. i think the whole 2010 project, linking the [security and prosperity partnership summit (spp)] and the [group of 8 meeting (g8)] with the olympics is a really interesting form of solidarity, because it includes a strong stance on indigenous sovereignty, but at the same time is intricately connected to forces that are ruining the future for all of us. the massive resource extraction and ramping up of infrastructure has got liberals like the council of canadians really concerned. at the same time, linking these three large events in canada under the same banner is really interesting to see how that will play out. there are different kinds of groups involved, and the international security experts are already writing reports on the growing unmanageable movement of actions against the olympics, and the adoption of shac's tactics. there are also groups that are really into writing letters to the editors and petitions about it, which is really good too. i'm really curious to see where that goes.
do you feel a quebec city vibe about it? how is it different than anti-globalization?
well it's definitely different than quebec city, because the olympics stuff is already being responded to now. no one is waiting for the olympics to come to resist it, and after the olympics come and go, the same problems are still going to be around and people will keep attacking them. i think with more radical indigenous people at the forefront of the anti-2010 movement there's more consideration of ideas like insurgency and stuff like that because of the people who are doing the writing around it. it's not hard to hear well-elucidated thoughts on different tactics. i think it's really different in that regard, and it extends in way more than just the 17-day event, the shit is going down already. if people are as serious as groups out west are saying they are, it will require more than just a quebec city style place-based protest. it would require more guerilla tactics. i'm not saying that i advocate them, i'm saying groups out west are saying they want to shut down the olympics completely. they'll probably be looking to take down highways, or blockade the key access roads, or whatever. i think things are just radicalized in a different way. do you find that too?
i always find when dealing with indigenous militancy it's always difficult to gauge what will or will not happen. i know what i'd like to see happen, but that doesn't mean it will. i'm of the mind that i'm not going to vancouver, i mean that's a waste of money and disgusting. so what are we doing here, you know?
yeah well that's the thing with people connecting 2010 with the g8 and the spp, it's everywhere. corporate executies who are on the [north american competitiveness council] live all across canada. companies that are sponsoring the 2010 olympics live all across canada, and the anarchists have been setting up their own games, like the rbc window smashing, seeing who can smash the most windows of royal bank (laughing). that's one of the sports that's started. i'm not sure who's winning, either ottawa or vancouver. (more laughing) i think people really want to push it beyond a 17 day event, something that can take place all over.