Suicide is colonized and nothing more,
just another dead native on the floor.
Suicide is Genocide
Xhopakelxhit
Tamara Starblanket has been awarded the 2020 Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy for her book Suffer the Little Children: Genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian State. In this book, Tamara makes a legal analysis of genocide, and argues convincingly that, according to international law, Canada has committed and continues to commit genocide against Indigenous Peoples. She demands, as noted in the announcement of the award on the SFU website, that a “comprehensive dialogue on Canada’s history and present be opened recognizing its culpability for the crime of genocide.”
As I contemplate the disturbing idea of a Canadian Genocide, in terms of my own life and times, I am convinced that as human beings have an innate tendency to demonize and destroy each other. When we act this out collectively, against other collectives, this is when the what we mean by ‘genocide’. It seems to me that we are deluded as to our own actions and motivations of the moment. This is what enables us to disregard the sanctity and the inherent worth of others as we pursue our own group interests. Ultimately, given our common human being, this behaviour is self-destructive. In this series of posts, I will reflect on the the relationship between genocide and suicide from the perspective of an immigrant to Canada, who is domiciled in British Columbia.
Updated from a post made in April 2016
While the Canadian media’s indifference to native sensitivities in the context of cultural appropriation is counter to the promised reconciliation between the state and the first nations, this reconciliation may in itself be understood as a Trojan horse when set within a more assertive indigenous analysis. Tamara Starblanket, Co-Chair of the North American Indigenous Peoples Caucus (NAIPC) observes that this apparently benign process of reconciliation is, in fact, cause for concern. It is packaged with the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) which, Starblanket claims, is ultimately aligned with state interests. This is because the UN only recognizes government approved native organizations and, in effect, affirms the state’s claims to the underlying title to native territories. Reconciliation is the new assimilation.
The Koboi Project 
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