In recent days,
Paul MacCartney said, and to my surprise:
"It is time to smoke the Peace Pipe between Nations
and forget the terrible times in the past."
He said this during an growing uprising of criticism due to the
upcoming concert of his on the Plains of Abraham, (where French LOST to the British),
to celebrate, or try to celebrate the 4ooth year Quebec City festivities...
Well, writing this is therapy for me, and I hope some of you out there are with me on this,
but I do not agree at all with his statement, and this has been the
'500-year cop-out' that has been used to 'turn the page'... 'move on'... 'get over it!'
(I love that last one! That one doesn't even piss me off any more... I just laugh!)
This saying, and so many others like it, are just like saying:
"We don't care about the past cause we weren't here and we ain't going to pay
for what happened before we came along!"
The Truth is, it would hurt far too much and would spank us far too hard
on our little heinies... We simply have no idea.
No matter what we did now, we would NEVER be able to 'pay up'...
Today, as any day, yesterday or one hundred years ago,
a crime is a crime and should always stand punishable
no matter when the crime is discovered!
This is far too easy to say, now that the damage has been done,
and we should just simply look the other way. How convenient.
Crimes are they not 'puinishable by law?
Wait, now... but not FOR the law, right?
THEY could - and still can -
remain criminals at large,
no better than the
German War Criminals...
Okay. So here I go, and I go and rip off my neighbour of practically all he owns of value.
In this case, the word VALUE will be defined as: His car, his skidoo, his wonderful barbeque,
sit-down-lawn-mower, anyways, you get the picture...
Way back then, the word VALUE was defined as: Culture, Language, Spirituality and Tradition!!
What now happens to me, after commiting this CRIME, is that all hell breaks loose,
the RCMP come and visit me and we all know what comes next.
Well, well, well... The RCMP were not even around back when we were committing all these heinous crimes
to another Culture whose home WE overthrew and raped and destroyed...
Go look it up! Don't believe me, for heaven's sake!
There is so much information out there,
someday the hard hand of RACISM and CORRUPTION
will break.
time out.
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Re: No way, Paul MacCartney!... Sorry!
Sat, July 19, 2008 - 4:05 AMYes, they call it ethnic cleansing now. They made deals and arrangements with each Native group to access the land and once acquired they abandoned the agreements and the Native People.The exploitation, usury, and intentional destruction of culture through removal of children from families, remains a wound ,deep in the marrow of our soul as a people. But we shouldn't be surprised it is almost a refrain we hear about the past, " I wasn't alive then", "It was so long ago", I haven't been advantaged", whether it is referring to slavery, or the genocide of indigenous peoples.
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Re: No way, Paul MacCartney!... Sorry!
Sat, July 19, 2008 - 9:31 PMTypical British (colonialist) response, eenit? -
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Re: No way, Paul MacCartney!... Sorry!
Sun, July 20, 2008 - 3:51 PMIt's as bad as that developer in the Sacred Lands film that says concerning Native Americans and their sacred lands, "they lost, get over it." It just shows the ignorance that people have. -
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Re: No way, Paul MacCartney!... Sorry!
Wed, October 1, 2008 - 4:51 AMLet's be constructive. How about we say that doing something positive NOW is a way of expressing regret for the bad things that happened in the "PAST". Nobody likes to admit mistakes. Take another example from another culture. Lots of people in China and Korea are angry with the Japanese government because it refuses to accept full responsibility for atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China and Korea during the 1930s and 1940s. That wasn't 500 years ago, it was 50-60 years ago, and some of the victims are still alive. Most Japanese can't handle the idea that their army experimented with biological weapons in China, including dropping plague-infested birds out of planes that caused epidemics that killed tens of thousands of people, that they were terribly cruel, including using tied-up Chinese prisoners as targets for bayonet practice, that they took Korean women as prisoners and made them serve in brothels as "comfort women" for military officers, where they were abused and raped every day, and many more horrible things. So, it's not surprising that white people in North America are embarrassed about what their ancestors did to black people and indigenous people, or that British people, like Paul McCartney are so keen to move on and forget the past, to forget all of the opium wars and invasions and rapings and killings and decimations of entire countries and their cultures. Let's just move on and all be friends. OK, let's do that, but how about you show some genuineness, Sir Paul, and get your goddamn multi-million dollar wallet out and maybe cut a few checks for some people who TODAY are suffering the consequences of what happened in the PAST. Maybe then I'll believe that you're not just trying to forget your guilt and embarrassment, but really want to create a better FUTURE for everybody. -
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PS
Thu, October 2, 2008 - 4:37 AMMy last post maybe sounded like more of an angry tirade than it was meant to be. My main point was that words are cheap and that saying that you regret past events -- or worse, not even bothering to do so -- while being the beneficiary of past injustices, directly or indirectly, is relatively painless and easy. What is much, much harder to do is to contribute towards making a real difference as to how the victims of past injustices, or their inheritors, are experiencing the present. It is that attempt to change the present, to make the people of today feel as though they count, and that their current struggles matter, that builds up a true community. History is full of bad meetings between people of different cultures. That is simply the reality of what happened. What counts today, I think, is that people feel that they have all moved forward, and they can't do that if they are locked into roles of "winners" and 'losers" determined completely by events that happened in the past. Naturally, some people don't care. They think the "losers" deserved to be exploited in the past and their descendants deserve to be exploited today. But most people aren't like that. Most people would like to think of themselves as decent people who live in a civilized society. It won't happen by accident. It requires an effort. -
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Re: PS
Thu, October 2, 2008 - 6:10 AMMore than moving forward is required. All of us Indigenous and non-native alike, need to contribute to the celebration of diversity. The last thing that we need is melting pot ideology. Showing that we take notice of the 'other' with respect is where we begin.
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