Emma Battell Lowman - Settler: Identity and Colonialism in 21st Century Canada

as long as the sun shines upon the earth

as long as the water still flows

as long as the grass grows at a certain time each year

Forever

as long as Mother Earth is still in motion

still in motion, still in motion

Its hard work to maintain the middle row

one line makes I separating sides

they navigate a boat down a similar river

we paddle a canoe packing values

never touching, forever separate

maintaining the course

step by step laws of RESPECT

intended to protect sacred relationships

Words from good minds

Guswenta, Two Row Wampum

not treaty like it was told but a non-apology

canoe and Boat Ever Flowing Large Water River

buoyancy beyond democracy

boundaries not borders

the law was not authored in an angry house

of disputes but rather inspired from witness

to cause and effect of free will resulting in greed

and corruption and un-lawful things

Protection of our relationship to our mother

not better than the other but something necessary

to exercise caution

Careful!

Steady!

Carry on.

Your side

Our side

Maintaining the middle

is most difficult

I is for Indian Affairs

I is for Indigenous

I is for Imperialism

I is for Identity

I is for Iroquois/Haudenosaunee

I is for Incident

I is for Initiation

A league of nations

corresponding by beads on a belt

and anyone thinking beads to be insignificant

should try getting them back from a museum

Crime Minister/Prime Minister

simultaneous colonization and decolonization

relational trade quasi-kin two sides kept equal

This is Womens work

Those mountains didnt build themselves

Forever

As long as the sun shines upon the earth

As long as the water still flows

As long as the grass grows at a certain time each year

Forever

as long as Mother Earth is still in motion

still in motion, still in motion

Its about balance and focus

its about commitment and loyalty

hard things, put in place

speaking the language of agreement

being included from a distance

peace and respect and prosperity

Do NOT Cross that Line

we said

DO NOT CROSS THAT LINE

Disruption results in consequences

remember Kanenhstaton Caladonia

remember Gustafen Lake

remember Ipperwash

remember Oka

rememeber Alcatraz and Eagle Bay

remember Wounded Knee

everyday is remembrance day

everyday

Ongwehonwe Original

a national fabric forming

blessing and protecting

something spiritual

not material but a difficult journey

staying the course better or worse

leaving nothing to debate

constitutional consensus overflowing with intelligence

Peacemaker would be proud

Forever

As long as the sun shines upon the earth

as long as the water still flows

as long as the grass grows at a certain time each year

Forever

as long as Mother Earth is still in motion

still in motion, still in motion

Forever

Janet is a Mohawk/Tuscarora writer from the Six Nations band in southern Ontario. She was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and has been living on the traditional lands of the Coast Salish people (Victoria, British Columbia) since 1994. Janet works in the genres of poetry, spoken word performance poetry, video poetry and recorded poetry with music and script writing. Janet has four published poetry collections to date: Splitting the Heart (Ekstasis Editions, 2007), Red Erotic (Ojistah Publishing 2010), Unearthed (Leaf Press 2011), and her newest collection, Peace in Duress, released with Talonbooks in September 2014. Her poetry CD s Firewater (2009), Got Your Back (2012), and 6 Directions (2013) all received nominations for Best Spoken Word Recording at the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, the Aboriginal Peoples Choice Music Awards and the Native American Music Awards. You can hear Janet on the radio as she hosts Native Waves Radio on CFUV FM and Tribal Clefs on CBC Radio One FM in Victoria B.C. Her radio documentaries Bring Your Drum (exploring fifty years of indigenous protest music) and Resonating Reconciliation won Best Radio at the imagineNATIVE Film and Media festival in 2011 and 2013 respectively. Ikkwenyes, or Dare to Do, is the name of the collective Mohawk poet Alex Jacobs and Janet created in 2011. Ikkwenyes won the Canada Council for the Arts Collaborative Exchange award 2012 and a Loft Literary Prize in 2013. Janet joined talents with Mohawk media artist Jackson Twobears in the Blood Collective, winners of a National Screen Institutes Aboriginal Documentary Residency for their media project NDN s on the Airwaves 2015.

The words we use to name ourselves are important. How we conceive of ourselves collectively is a part of wider, more complicated discussions about who is included and who is excluded from our society. In Canada, we like to think of ourselves as having a fairly inclusive society; we pride ourselves on being open and accepting of difference. We talk about being polite and respectful and peace loving. And we lie by omission, because we do not talk about our country being built on the attempted destruction of many other nations. We do not talk about the questionable legal and political basis of our country, our history of profiting from invasion and dispossession. Canadian, a notoriously hard-to-pin-down concept, may not have a clear definition, but for some it refers to an invasive people, a nation that violently displaces others for its own wants and desires, a state that breaks treaties and uses police and starvation to clear the land. We need a name that can help us see ourselves for who we are, not just who we claim to be. For that we need a term that shifts the frame of reference away from our nation, our claimed territory, and onto our relationships with systems of power, land, and the peoples on whose territory our country exists.

As round-dance protests, teach-ins, and marches under the banner of Idle No More and the fast of Chief Theresa Spence galvanized activist communities across Canada in the winter of 201213, it became apparent that something had changed. As we watched internet broadcasts of teach-ins and speeches at rallies, and as friends and family sent questions about the ongoing protests, we heard more and more people using the term settler to refer to non-indigenous peoples, communities, states, and governments. Some were Indigenous people, referring to settler states or would-be settler allies; others were Canadians claiming the term as an identifier, baggage and all. Often, there were debates over the term. Some claimed the term was racist. Others rejected it as divisive. Some argued about whether settler was the right word, and turned to dictionary definitions for confirmation or clarification. However, this debated and debatable term, until then all but unknown and unused in Canada outside of a small circle of academics and activists, stuck.

Settler. This word voices relationships to structures and processes in Canada today, to the histories of our peoples on this land, to Indigenous peoples, and to our own day-to-day choices and actions. Settler. This word turns us toward uncomfortable realisations, difficult subjects, and potential complicity in systems of dispossession and violence.