KANAHUS MANUEL IN PARIS, October 14^th 2017 En français
Also published on Censored News

Kanahus Manuel was one of the speakers during the Annual Day of Solidarity organized by CSIA-nitassinan, an organization for Solidarity with Indians of the Americas, on October 14th. I recorded and transcribed her speech, hope I did not make too many mistakes. I also chose the title, from her words, but I am the only responsible person for that choice.

Christine Prat

“I am from so-called ‘British Colombia, Canada’. But I want to make it clear that we don’t call it Canada. It’s an illegal, dirty, evil, invading country. We have been fighting Canada for the past 150 years: this year Canada is actually celebrating its 150^th birthday. When that invasion first happened, they started making ‘land agreements’, really illegal treaties, from the east coast to the west. But once they reached the Rocky Mountains, west of that, no treaties were made. So, our lands still remain unsurrendered and unceded territories.

Our territory is located in what is now called the south-central interior of B.C. It is approximately 180,000 square kilometers, the size of the UK. What Canada has done in this process of colonization has not been good. The impacts: like my brother said, we had the schools, the Indian residential schools, that did the same things, taking the children away from their homes and forcing them into these Church run schools, to strip the language from our people. In some of these schools, the priests and nuns raped 90% of the children. The sexual trauma on those children – my grandparents and so on – has had intergenerational impact that even affects the generation that have not gone. I am myself, as the first generation in my family, out of the residential schools’ system. I am a mother of 4, and I gave birth to all of my children outside of the system, I refused to go to the doctors or hospitals to give birth, and I refused to register my children with the Canadian government. My oldest son is now 15 years old. And I cross international borders with them, I cross into the U.S., into Mexico, I brought them to Zapatista gatherings. So, anyone who thinks that you need a white man’s I.D. as an Indigenous person to travel… I am just trying to prove to everybody that we do not need the white man’s system to exist.

In the beginning of time, our people say that the Old Ones sent the Coyote, the chief Coyote, down to create our world. He created the world to what we have today, the salmon, the glaciers, the mountains, our lakes, night and day, the seasons, the way we conduct ourselves and our Nation. These are our laws that we follow. They come from the stories of the Coyote. From the ways of decision making to consensus among our Nations. We have markers throughout our traditional territories that show those agreements that we originally had, with our responsibilities. For example, the way that we are continuing to look after our salmon, one of our most important food sources. Our responsibility is to continue to look after the salmon, and in turn, the salmon will give us his life so that we can continue to eat, and we give back to the salmon and the salmon gives to us. Those agreements go for every living thing in our territories. From the very first drop of water as it melts of the glaciers, as it flows and touches everything, the roots, the mushrooms… Everything down into our mountains, all the way down to our rivers, is sacred.

Five of the major rivers, in so-called ‘British Columbia’, are forming our territory. When we go to the glaciers, it’s so loud that you have to scream, because there is so much water. I don’t know if you can see that little picture, but you could see it’s blue, ant it’s all the water, not even all the water, which is marked out on this map of our territory, it’s how much water we have.

Another very harsh reality and impact of colonization, is the Reservation system and the Indian Act system. When the government came to force our people off our national territories, to a little 0.2 % on Indian Reserves. What Canada did was to force all of us Indigenous people to 0.2% of our traditional land base, while Canada became wealthy out of the other 99.8%. It became a super power and a wealthy country, out of blood and bones, sweat and tears of our people. At the same time, they were forming the Indian Reserves, they invented this. They call it the Indian and Northern Affairs of Canada, we call it INAC, which is invented by government to really control the Native people. They receive federal funding, and in the past, it was an Indian agent that came around to every Reserve to make sure that they weren’t starving to death. They had housing that was very inadequate, people were still starving, people did not have housing.

We see that colonization, through the displacement off our lands, created dependency on a colonial government, and when our people stand up against this oppression and fight back, we are criminalized and repressed. From 1927 to 1951, it was illegal for Native people to even talk about the land issue, (if I had been here, they would have arrested me and put me in jail, if I had been even here, like right now, and talking about our land issue), it was illegal to hire lawyers to deal with that unsettled land issue. But our people continue to resist and fight back.

Through poor housing and through our children being taken, apprehended, all the women started to organize. They occupied Indian agents’ offices and forced them out of our communities. And it was since then that Canada made up dirty little tricks on how to continue to colonize our people, by reinventing elected systems that would be imposed on the Indian Reserves, where they would elect a Chief and Council. But this is not our traditional governance structure. Just to make it clear, if you ever travel to Canada and you hear that someone is a chief or a counsel for an Indian band, they are still agents of the state. Unless they are the traditional hereditary chiefs, or matriarch chiefs. It has to be really clarified where the lineage is coming from.

We had different uprisings in our territory, that ended up being the last armed standoff in Canada, in 1995, with the Gustafsen Lake standoff. This was over land, about title to a territory. And it was there that 18 of us, Secwepemc, stood there at a sacred Sundance area, and when asked to leave, just said “No, who owns that land?” And they ended up being surrounded by 550 RCMP officers that deployed. They set up landmines, they deployed armored personal carriers, and, at one point, during the end of the standoff, in one day they shot off in excess of 70,000 rounds on my people. One of our most respected elders ended up doing 6 years in jail for his action there. He is one of our war heroes. He just recently passed away, a year-and-half ago. If he was here, he would be at my side right now.

In 2001, our people stood up against a massive ski resort development. We had around 100 arrests, of Native youth and mainly of elders and women. This was an area that was really important to our people, the high open area where we hunt all of our moose.

Both of these had major repercussions. Every time our people stood up, the police would raid their homes, arrest our people, charge them with bogus charges and hold us without bail.

In 2014, we had one of the world’s largest mine tailings disaster happen in our territory. The tailings impoundment area broke and dumped billions of gallons of toxic mining waste and heavy metals, and processing chemicals, into our lake, which is the deepest fjord lake in the world. We took many actions, we set up a ceremonial fire, right there, at the entrance of the site, a couple of days after the disaster. We maintained presence there, we monitored everything and took interviews, from all the workers that were whistle blowers there, at the company, from all the local hunters and people who came to join together for a ceremony over water and to figure out whatever to do about that massive disaster that just still was flowing, and they had no way of stopping it. We call this area (by a name) that refers to the breaking of a woman’s water when she gives birth. Because it is an area where the salmons return to lay their eggs and the salmon breeding ground.

Currently, we are battling a 518 kilometers pipeline, proposed to go through our territory, called the Trans Mountain Kinder Morgan pipeline. And right now, what we are dealing with is Canada’s trick. They are still trying to trick us, give us little trinkets for lands, and one of the ways is forming that illegal process called the ‘B.C. Treaty Process’, which is a modern-day treaty, no, not a treaty, it’s a modern-day extinguishment process, because it’s not even a treaty with the federal government or the Crown. It’s actually a treaty just with the provincial government, so it’s not a binding international treaty, it’s very illegal, in the sense that they are asking Native people to freely sign this document for extinguishment, to relinquish all our titles to our lands, and they would grant back Natives a piece of land that any Canadian can rent or buy.

What Canada is doing right now… People around the world need to take notice that Trudeau and the Trudeau government, Justin Trudeau, is not a friend to us, Indigenous people. His father has really tarnished their name, and his father Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who groomed his son to be a slimy bastard like himself, Justin Trudeau’s father thus, was one of my grandfather’s enemies, and he was really pushing to exterminate us, Indigenous people. Through that 1969 White Paper policy. So, when Justin Trudeau got in as Prime Minister, we already knew we were up for another battle, another fight, facing up with the Trudeau family. Right now, they are trying to buy out this leadership, these INAC chiefs and councils, by giving them millions of dollars, to form our “traditional” government structure, which is enraging our people at this time. We, as Secwepemc People, we still maintain our traditional government and our decision making, and that we are the rightful title holders in our own territory. And when we say ‘no’ to those destructive projects in our land, we demand respect. You may hear words, as my brother here said [Yanuwana Tapoka], about reconciliation, Canada really loves to use that word, ‘reconciliation’, but one thing we always say is that there will never be reconciliation without our land – 100% of our land – back, and our control.”