Whew there’s a lot going going on in this tweet. Let’s parse out the language here:

“Evolving”. That’s a big word. It implies two things: that Indigenous people are less evolved, and that people on plant-based diets are more evolved. https://twitter.com/vegantherobot/status/1290346765456232448

Have you ever heard of The White Man’s Burden? Here’s the definition from http://dictionary.com . A contemporary version of this phenomenon is evident in this tweet, where vegans feel the need to help us “evolve” according to their (colonizer) agendas. Sound familiar?

Another glaring absence in both the traditional description of The White Man’s Burden and the version in the above quoted tweet is the complete lack of agency of the Indigenous “subjects”—

Colonizers (both white and NBPOC, albeit to different degrees and in different ways) and their gaze infantilize us and dehumanize us. They are paternalistic and overbearing and feel a sense of stewardship over us.

This paternalism completely ignores the 14,000+ year relationship we have had with the land for *at least* 29 times longer than they’ve even been here or known it existed. What’s the technical term for the phenomenon of thinking you somehow know better than us? Caucasity.

Back to that word “evolving” and how it implies we as Indigenous peoples are unevolved. This is nothing new for us, as illustrated by these examples. Implying we are unevolved is a 500 year old tradition of racism, eugenics, and justification for cultural and complete genocide.

These sorts of vegans employ the exact same rhetoric colonizers have been weaponizing against us for centuries, and whether it’s directed toward us as a people or our methods of sustaining ourselves, the result is the same.

Let’s take a look at the things that are ACTUALLY suppressing Indigenous people regarding food sovereignty:

-demonization&criminalization of seal hunting, preventing Inuit from harvesting food and materials for themselves and their communities (see @Alethea_Aggiuq’s Angry Inuk)

-forcing Indigenous peoples into the colonizer system of capitalism, which forces Indigenous peoples to exchange goods for money to buy food transported from who knows where rather than harvesting it themselves

-capitalism and demonization of seal hunting working in tandem, forcing Inuit to use money to BUY food, while simultaneously eliminating their only method of acquiring money (harvesting) through suppression of international seal and animal goods market (Fuck PETA)

-Price of seal and whale products is hugely diminished due to propaganda campaigns, while the cost of food and basic needs skyrockets due to inflated costs of transporting goods to the Arctic, causing widespread poverty, malnutrition, physical and mental illness

-hunters (who feed their whole community) can’t afford to purchase materials to hunt due to poverty and high costs, can’t justify hunt bc seal and whale products are rock bottom, community can’t access nutrient-rich country foods, can only afford imported processed foods

-epidemics in malnutrition, diabetes, heart disease, mental illness, suicide. Health costs skyrocket. Minimal access to healthcare in Arctic circle, patients often need to be flown south to a city at additional enormous cost and being separated from their families and communities

(Side note: flight costs from Toronto to the kkkanadian Arctic circle are higher than flight costs from Toronto to South Africa.)

-Rural and remote Indigenous peoples get asked by colonizers, “why don’t you just move?” thus we are displaced to the kkkanadian diaspora, often urban, told we can’t access and can’t expect Indian Act federal aid if we’re off reserve

-when we do move we are unable to: visit our communities due to widespread and inter-generational poverty, maintain cultural connections to our communities, learn and pass on our languages, participate in ceremony, pass on traditional knowledge; thus:

-Across the Americas, Indigenous people are consistently the most destitute peoples and we are severely lacking in access to food and resources. The Navajo Nation, as big as Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire combined, has a total of only 13 grocery stores.

-when we can access food from grocery stores, the products are transported and imported, harvested almost entirely by our Indigenous and Black relatives, who make pennies on the hour, are often displaced as migrant workers, and have almost no rights as labourers. (See @j4mw)

-Indigenous farmers and peasants are being priced out of the market and losing their land because of monstrosities like Monsanto with their monocrops and infrastructure, although small ag is multiple times more calorically productive than monocrops

-monocrops and industrial ag lead to dead zones, desertification, reduced biodiversity, proliferation of disease, eutrophication (Nitrogen and Phosphorous overloaded waterways suffocating all life), erosion, nutrient depletion, depletion of natural aquifers/freshwater sources

-industrial ag pushes out small (often Indigenous) farmers, leaving them landless and in poverty, unable to support themselves or their communities, forcing them to submit to capitalism, loss of independence

-industrial ag is also a leading cause of deforestation, the main contributor to climate change, main destroyer of biodiversity, displacing Indigenous peoples (and often assassinating non-compliant Indigenous people), destroying the rainforest AKA the lungs of the Earth

SO, IN CONCLUSION. We were thriving before your colonizer asses showed up. You genocided us and forced us into capitalism. We are destitute now and unable to practice our traditions, including foodways. Industrial ag is crushing us. The climate is going to shit. You do the math.

If you learned anything from this please tip me, I’m a queer nonbinary vegetarian Indigenous anarchist with a degree in environmental management lol http://PayPal.me/BeadsAgainstFascism