BY PEGI EYERS
Unsettling America: Decolonization in Theory & Practice
"Ancestors" original art by Pegi Eyers
When our Ancestors arrived on the shores of Turtle Island, they brought their cultural beliefs and social mores with them. They were looking for a “fresh start,” but instead of taking their cues from the indigenous civilizations already thriving in the “new world” they replicated the familiar lifeways of home. Honoring natural law and living in balance with Earth Community had been outdated concepts for centuries, in the European lands from which they sprang. During the era of launching nation-states in the Americas, all over the world People of the Earth were still respecting nature and finding the sacred in wild places. Yet our Ancestors were part of a social organization based on hierarchy and control, and they went on to repeat the colonial pattern.
As we fast forward to the present, in my work as a social justice activist I am often asked if things could have been different in the beginning, in our “first contact” interactions with First Nations. But I honestly don’t think we can just imagine a kinder, more benevolent Settler Society into being! Driven by notions to fulfill some great “Manifest Destiny” on “Terra Nullius” (lands proclaimed empty by religious decree), the mad scrabble to build Empire and grab the “goodies” like land, resources, title and prestige were the priorities of the day. Our Ancestors were busy re-creating themselves into something grand, and other than trading partners and wilderness guides, First Nations had no place in that rosy picture.
And yet, as the settlement of what was to become “Canada” progressed, miracles were happening. As a Scottish family with a newborn baby wound their way through southern Ontario in 1832 by coach and Durham boat, their craft capsized in the waters known today as “The Narrows” at Lake Couchiching. The tiny baby was my third great-grandmother Eliza Emily Bailey, and she was rescued from the channel and brought safely to shore by a kind member of the Chippewa (Ojibway) Nation. As part of an immigrant wave that engulfed a pristine wilderness, the flourishing of my Ancestors has given me the haunting legacy of her miraculous rescue, and my deep roots in the Ontario landscape. Seven generations later, I am astonished at how Eliza’s story transcends ordinary ethnoautobiography, and am overcome by a set of questions tangled up with destiny, kindness, reciprocity, retribution, ancestral memory and structural inequality. ......read more
As we fast forward to the present, in my work as a social justice activist I am often asked if things could have been different in the beginning, in our “first contact” interactions with First Nations. But I honestly don’t think we can just imagine a kinder, more benevolent Settler Society into being! Driven by notions to fulfill some great “Manifest Destiny” on “Terra Nullius” (lands proclaimed empty by religious decree), the mad scrabble to build Empire and grab the “goodies” like land, resources, title and prestige were the priorities of the day. Our Ancestors were busy re-creating themselves into something grand, and other than trading partners and wilderness guides, First Nations had no place in that rosy picture.
And yet, as the settlement of what was to become “Canada” progressed, miracles were happening. As a Scottish family with a newborn baby wound their way through southern Ontario in 1832 by coach and Durham boat, their craft capsized in the waters known today as “The Narrows” at Lake Couchiching. The tiny baby was my third great-grandmother Eliza Emily Bailey, and she was rescued from the channel and brought safely to shore by a kind member of the Chippewa (Ojibway) Nation. As part of an immigrant wave that engulfed a pristine wilderness, the flourishing of my Ancestors has given me the haunting legacy of her miraculous rescue, and my deep roots in the Ontario landscape. Seven generations later, I am astonished at how Eliza’s story transcends ordinary ethnoautobiography, and am overcome by a set of questions tangled up with destiny, kindness, reciprocity, retribution, ancestral memory and structural inequality. ......read more
 |  Eliza Emily Bailey |
Unsettling America is an emerging decentralized network of autonomous groups and individuals dedicated to mental and territorial decolonization throughout Turtle Island and the “Americas.”
https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com
From Colonial Rescue to Cultural Genocide was published in Unsettling America on March 7, 2018.
https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com
From Colonial Rescue to Cultural Genocide was published in Unsettling America on March 7, 2018.
