First Nations of Turtle Island

• Tribe (The Mohawk are traditionally keepers of the Eastern Door)
• First Nations are the original inhabitants of the land which is now Canada or North America and are the first people to have sustained disease, invasion, brutalization, decimation and colonisation from European explorers/settlers.
• First Nations believe that life, values, mother earth, great mystery, traditions, wisdom and culture are gifts from the Creator. One of the most important and most common teachings was that people should live in harmony with the natural world and all it contains.
• In oral stories and legends that Elders passed from one generation to another, First Nations children learned how the world came into being and that we are a part of the whole of creation. The people give thanks to everything in nature, upon which we depend on for survival and development as individuals and as members of our communities. First Nations treated all objects in the environment, whether animate or inanimate, with the utmost respect.
• This deep respect that First Nations cultivated for everything and every process in the natural world was reflected in songs, dances, festivals and ceremonies, the deep reverence has created a culture in alignment with earth and spirit, something we very rarely see in modern day culture, much of which is lost and blinded by the delusion of wealth, success and consumerism, which was brought on through genocide and atrocities of the indigenous peoples, along with taking from and raping the earth of its resources and life force.
• Among the Woodland First Nations, for example, a hunter would talk or sing to a bear before it died, thanking the animal for providing the hunter and his family with much-needed food.
• Modern day America/Canada was built on the blood and genocide of the First Nations People and it was a national policy to wipe out and suffocate the indigenous culture and population through the most inhumane and heinous ways.
• The atrocities, genocides, disease, oppression, racism and classing systems the first nations endure is a remarkable testament to the strength and spirit of its people.
• The list of human rights violations that the ancient ones endure is endless, the after-effects of the attempted extermination, enslavement and genocide by the European colonizers of an entire indigenous culture is still being healed and repaired to this day and has shaped our modern western system that most of the world currently adheres to.
• Native people were oppressed in a variety of ways including lack of immunity to European diseases, destruction of food and accessibility, forbidding native languages and cultural practice, downfall of the matriarchy, land appropriation acts, residential schools and the imposition of Christianity, all of these oppressive tactics deprived generations of Native people from living the ancient culture.
• Much to the disappointment of Europeans, Columbus did not discover America and the fact that there is a National holiday in his name is an absolute disgrace and should be an embarrassment for all Americans who support this, Columbus and his men were the first Europeans to commit horrendous atrocities against American indigenous people, from raping and pillaging to flat out murder and genocide, His goal was to find slaves and gold for the Spanish crown.
• One cannot “discover” what was never lost in the first place, Unlike Christopher Columbus, Native people always knew where they were, right there on Turtle Island. It has been estimated that there were upwards of 120 million Native people living at the time of the arrival of the Europeans who found hundreds of different cultures, richly textured and settled peoples scattered all across the land, most with very complex and sophisticated matriarchal social/political organizations and belief systems (i.e. Pacific Northwest coast). What is sad, is when the Explorers and Voyageurs finally showed up, their names were the ones extolled in all our history books, and not the names of the First Nations people who got them where they wanted to go.
• On May 4, 1493, a declaration was issued by Pope Alexander VI to the king and queen of Spain which established Christian dominion and called for the subjugation of non-Christian peoples (“barbarous nations”) and their lands. “All conquests are justifiable as long as one of their aims is to convert the indigenous peoples of the Americas to Christianity.” Natives were enslaved and brutally treated; it created a surge in Native slavery in both Canada and the United States. It lasted until 1864 in the United States when slavery was abolished by the thirteen amendment.
• Unlike the Christian concept of a single, male God responsible for the creation of the world, Indigenous people, as a general rule, did not believe in a single supreme, autonomous, and external being who was all-powerful and established the conditions under which all living things would live. This idea was imposed after the arrival of the missionaries.
• To believe this was to disbelieve that the secular and supernatural worlds were inter-connected, cohesive spheres of activity in which all living beings played an equal role.
• For many tribes, there was no supreme puppeteer directing everything, each living being had its own gifts and talents. In other words, Indigenous people did not see themselves as superior to the rest of the natural world – everyone was thought of as equal, intelligent, self-directed and able to communicate their gifts and talents for the greater good of the whole.
• Such kinship, respect, dignity, celebration and honour was accorded to all because it was believed everyone came from a common beginning. This is why Indigenous people usually end with the words ‘all my relations’.
• “We must broaden our way of thinking so that it recognizes the world as one human family, We are all children of one blood. It can be no other way, for there is a central source of humanity where all living beings were created.”
• Genocide has since become ‘assimilated’ into the cultural lexicon of modern times and the word now applies to any attempt to destroy another culture. Perhaps, in the case of First Nations, we should have our own word. I propose, ‘Genoassimilationism’. Definition: The absorption of Canada’s First Nations into the dominant Canadian social and economic, political body through the systematic destruction of Indigenous cultures.
• In other words, what happened to First Nations people was not a “monumental act of carelessness”, as some suggest, but a deliberate, systematic goal of Indigenous absorption into the European/western culture through heinous means, that included the horror of residential schools in which rape, murder, starvation, and physical and emotional beatings were commonplace to absolutely destroy the child and any trace of native wisdom and culture they held.
• The schools isolated children from their parents, communities, languages, and traditions.
• These institutions were devised to assimilate, Christianize, and destroy the indigenous culture.
• The reserve system, the Indian Act, and outright subjugation caused violent, severe, and long lasting mental, physical, and cultural damage to Indigenous peoples.
• The role of Elders has become increasingly meaningful in First Nation communities, especially urban communities. Elders are important for their symbolic connection to the past, and for their knowledge of traditional ways, teachings, stories and ceremonies. It is very common for respected Elders to be called upon to help communities with decisions regarding everything from health issues, to community development, to governmental negotiations regarding land use and self-government. In the context of First Nation communities, the term “Elder” can have many meanings. Most commonly, it simply refers to an older person. It can also mean someone who has been sought by their peers for spiritual and cultural leadership and who has knowledge of some aspect of tradition.

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