2020-10-17, Kyriarchist Violence Escalates in

Here’s a photo y’all may have seen in your history books, but maybe not. It comes up a lot in materials covering the relationship between Kyriarchists colonizing Turtle Island and the Lakota:

This is a photograph taken in 1892. It shows pile of buffalo skulls, demonstrating a “successful” buffalo hunt, by colonizer standards. You see, their goal wasn’t to provide food for their communities, but to remove my people’s food supply. It was a mechanism of colonial genocide, that just happened to use the extinction of another species.

The lack of respect for life pictured here is stunning: complex negotiations and a wealth of materials went into accomplishing these buffalo massacres. It didn’t take an individual hunter disregarding life for this to happen, but an entire culture oriented and focused around killing.

Now, it’s 2020. As y’all may have heard, tensions have been rising between Mi’kmaq peoples and colonists occupying what they call Nova Scotia, for years and now rapidly over the past few weeks, accelerating even more in the past week.

What you’re looking at above is a photograph posted by @junnygirldecolonized, a Mi’kmqaq person over on Instagram. In their words:

This is what the commercial fishermen did with the live Lobster they seized from Mi’kmaq fishermen.

They dropped it off at the DFO office. They claim this is about “conservation” if they cared about conservation, they wouldn’t be wasting thousands of pounds of live lobster. This is the most ruthless, disgusting, disgraceful act towards the great creation of life I’ve ever seen.

I can’t help but see the similarities between these two events. Once again, as colonial ways of living pressure them into feeling a scarcity of resources. Once again, they expend tremendous effort to target and weaken convenient Others, even if it legitimately depletes scarce resources. Anything to keep the blood cult moving.

I know most of us, in some way, are aligned with the kyriarchal settler-state. It’s our fault this has happened. It’s our dependency on settler-colonialism that ultimately provides the casus belli for these aggressions. I trust we’re all forming plans and taking steps to remove that dependency.

One key in good planning is awareness. Events like these are contemporary colonialism, and it is important those who wish to maintain meaningful de- or anti-colonial actions stay aware of these events. In that spirit, I’d like to suggest some means of learning more: - @junnygirldecolonized@Instagram.com and @alexa.metallic@Instagram.com are on-the-ground organizers sharing their experiences - Ku'ku'kwes News is an online news journal put together by the Mi’kmaq - Pam Palmater is a Mi’kmaq lawyer covering events from that perspective - Dorene Bernard is a Mi’kmaq elder who is active on social media

If you have any suggestions for further reading, or would simply like to share your thoughts and prayers, please reply to this email: I’ll (anonymously) compile responses to share in a possible follow-up.