Aambe: where books collide

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Remarks from a New Year’s Eve rally for Palestine in Niagara Falls, these remarks are edited and built upon but accurately reflect the things I said. On December 30, 2023 US President Joseph Biden bypassed Congress, again, to send another $147 million in arms to Israel. He bypassed Congress earlier in December to send 4,000 rounds of tank shells.

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Many years ago the pastor of a church I went to invited us to write letters to the church. He was preaching from Revelation and there are a that Jesus sends to the churches so he invited us to think about what Jesus would write to this church. I didn’t respond, but the letter I immediately thought of was the letter to the church at Laodecia. It is the only one of the letters that doesn’t have anything complementary to say and it includes this banger: “I know your works.

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Indigenous is an analytic, not an identity. I think about that comment made by Troy Storfjell (Sámi) almost every day because when I first read it on the site formerly known as Twitter my brain exploded. It’s a few years now that my work has reckoned with global Indigeneity, the recognition that it was Indigenous Africans who were colonized and then transported across the middle passage. That Europe itself contains peoples like the Sámi and the Basque.

I have what to me is an uncomfortable question to ask, as it relates to how I think about those who live on the land some call Palestine. I know many who are descendants of New France and other French colonists who consider themselves to be victims of British Colonialism.

These remarks were given at a panel at Brock University on November 27th. They are not edited but do include an addition about Indigenous people in prison. I’ll return to Fanon next week. Aniin, boozhoo. Wabanan Anongokwe ndishnakaaz. Adik n’dodem. Obishkokaang n’doonjba. Ojibwe Anishinabekwe n’daw. As a social worker I am trained to review history and develop strategies.

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I often see people saying that they want to uplift marginalized voices and it sounds nice. It sounds like something people should be doing, but as Zora Neale Hurston has said, not all skinfolk are kinfolk. Fanon would agree, in chapter 3 he continues his detailing of the ways that Indigenous leadership fails the people and what those who would lead our movements should be doing.