I had the occasion last Saturday to answer a question from a Settler woman who took to heart my recent posts calling for white settler folk to step up but was struggling to understand how this might look. #LandBack #TruthB4Reconciliation

I started writing to explain my thoughts. It ended up a mini essay. It follows with just some typos fixed up and a little clarification on how our own are aiding Canada in the rights and sovereignty Termination process.

It also became apparent as Canada is sliding into the next wave of COVID-19 that Canada’s politicians and the rest of the world’s politicos are heaving a collective sigh of relief that

Covid-19 will act as a smoke screen for decades of political dithering and grandstanding on climate change.

I came to realize that my comment below about it being end of days applies not to just Indigenous Peoples but to humanity as the crows of colonial greed and ineptitude come home to roost.

My call to settler folk, especially white settler folk is larger and goes beyond #1492LandBackLane or any other Indigenous action.

You may choose to do what you wish in support of the action at #1492.

My challenge is meant to shift the response to the #IndigenousGenocide to two separate fronts.

Our people are always glad to have settler ally supporters as a buffer and behind us to support us. That approach hasn't and isn't working. Some Indians get arrested and a few white people get arrested, get conditional releases and the colonization rolls on without missing a beat

Nothing will change and we will be rubbed out in a very short time by the collaboration of our own with Canada's racist government.

These are the end of days for our People. The paradigm must shift. In 5 years there will hardly be any of us left who have not "signed" through Indian Act councils, Termination agreements that surrender our rights and ultimately our land.

Yes, many bands are coerced through continuous abject poverty, But, surrender they will. We can say coerced surrenders don’t count but try proving that when we don't have access to international courts.

The Onondaga 15 have worked for 23 years to be heard there and are maybe getting a shot after all this time.

Four hundred Indian Act chiefs and councils are currently at one of the Termination tables that place them within the confines of Canadian sovereignty and, ultimately, as a fourth level of Canadian government.

A second front is needed in this struggle. A front that is white, and operating in concert with Indigenous resistance goals but not dependent on Indigenous People taking the lead. We are too few and as I say that old Indian/ally strategy is simply not working.

White settler allies need to be committed to a better Canada. One free of racism and one free from the policies, legislation, and objectives of colonization.

It is true that silence in the face of the evidence that Canada is actively seeking the destruction of free and independent Indigenous Peoples, is being complicit with the processes of #Genocide.

This is the real challenge for white settler Canada. Do you choose to be silently complicit or do you confront your own governments, leaders, and organizations on a national scale demanding the violence of apartheid and genocide end?

Look at it this way. You settler folk can organize funding drives that raise billions for flood victims in Bangladesh, funding to save poisonous tree frogs in the Amazon, vaccination programs to wipe out smallpox in third world countries.

Why can't the same grassroots to corporate movement take place to stop the extermination of sovereign Indigenous People within Canada?

It's not glamorous like tossing an outhouse off a bridge or a water walk but it is the what needs to happen.
Canadians need to get organized and channel all the knowledge they hold and fully leverage the privilege they hold to face down their/YOUR leaders and corporations.

Let them know you will not tolerate what they are doing.

People like @RussDiabo have documented all the proof that it is happening for you. That part is done. Now is the time to take it. Organize around it. And put pressure on government.

I think those who say actions must be centric on Indigenous actions are both right and wrong. When you walk with Indigenous People, and come into our space we must be centric. This is where they are right.

Where they are wrong is this is not the only avenue to create change. There is a legitimate and essential argument that settler not tolerate a government creating and executing policies of extinction on your behalf.

The governments of Canada are yours not ours. We have neither the necessary majority as in South Africa to end the apartheid and the genocide nor the energy to do our own battles plus your work to change your government policies and structure.

Using the excuse of democracy as a reason not to upset and confront your governments is complicity. How can a country be a democracy and be actively committing acts of #Genocide? It can't happen unless the citizens support a genocidal state.

This is what I mean by saying it is your fight.
#LandBack