“Blunder Down Under (The Sonnet)
Humans be human, alive and aware,
not tokens of ancestral blunder.
Awake, arise and right the wrongs,
whether in the west or down under.
We gotta fight on the beaches,
We gotta fight on human grounds.
This time we gotta fight as human,
not as puppets to colonial clowns.
Fight as brave lions for sacred inclusivity,
not for saffronication as domesticated cows.
Fight for justice, rejuvenated by reason,
not for prejudice, decreed by apeman vows.”
Source: World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets
“Every world has its uncle sam,
the most backward of all nations.
Empires erected on plunder and ruin,
are the picture of degeneration.”
Source: World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets
“For this reason I tell you: When you pray and ask for something, believe that you have received it, and you will be given whatever you ask for.”
Source: Holy Bible: New International Version
“There is room on this land for all of us and there must also be, after centuries of struggle, room for justice for Indigenous peoples. That is all we ask. And we will settle for nothing less.”
Source: Unsettling Canada: A National Wake-Up Call
“They want this resource for themselves. They're blaming us for the low salmon runs. But we're not the ones overfishing. We've always caught what we needed. Some years are better than others, but we respect the cycle. We did not create this mess. You see over there? They are allowed to catch more than us because the government said they could. And further out, in the ocean, they can catch even more.”
“• Should we reclaim an Indigenous language in a natural Indigenous setting, to replicate the original ambience of heritage, culture, laws, and lores?
• Should we reclaim an Indigenous language in a modern building that has Indigenous characteristics such as Aboriginal colours and shapes?
• Should we reclaim an Aboriginal language in a western governmental
building—to give an empowering signal that the tribe has full support of contemporary mainstream society?”
Source: Revivalistics : From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond
“A glance through recent newspaper headlines (see, for example,Globe and Mail, August 17, 1995: A2; Vancouver Sun,August 16, 1995: A1) indicates that not much has changed since 1995. Overfishing and depleted stocks have increased tension among the users, and one group in particular, a relatively powerless group holding only 3 percent of the salmon quota, has been particularly targeted by the commercial interests—the aboriginal fishers. The rationale for doing so may be to shirk responsibility for years of overfishing, greed, poor management and bungling DFO officials. It is much easier and convenient to
blame a group that has already been effectively blamed in the past and stereotyped as plunderers. Perhaps the proper word to describe the calculated attacks on the aboriginal fishery is racism, pure and simple.”
Source: Aboriginal Fishing Rights: Laws, Courts, Politics
“Happens more than we want to know. There are Indian kids, just like your brother, heck just like me, all over this Valley. Fostered out, adopted out, working their fingers to the bone--heck, many of them not being properly fed so they are nothing but muscle and bone to begin with, thinking that if they just do good enough, maybe, just maybe, someday they will actually belong.
Mostly what I see is once they've been used up--in some cases broken beyond repair--they're thrown away like all the battered farm equipment you see sitting in the back of farmyards, back by the windbreak."
- Cash Blackbear in Girl Gone Missing”
Source: Girl Gone Missing
“One cannot have an honest discussion about the potential of nuclear power without fully acknowledging the ravages of the Hanford project. This would be tantamount to debating the future of our dying oceans without bringing up the topic of climate change.”
Source: Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America
“Settlers and migrants and the forcibly displanted get worried when Native people start talking about Land Back. What about their house? Where will they go? Unable to imagine any scenario other than what settler colonialism unleased on us, people assume that Land Back means evictions, relocations, and eliminations. In some cases, that might be appropriate... And although we are often, and I think reasonably, looking for change in ownership, at its core, Land Back means profoundly changing our relationship with land.”
Source: Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future