Decolonization Is for Everyone | Nikki Sanchez | TEDxSFU

P Ali qualitynet seek Nia toka Nicola halika Sanchez hood knee my appeal Thank You Scotland I'm so happy to be with all of you here today what a special thing to come together to learn thank you so much to than a handy family for their beautiful welcome toward their territories because I'm speaking to you about decolonization today I couldn't begin without once again recognizing that not only are we on the territories of this beautiful family but we're also on the Musqueam cyber tooth and Squamish nation's territory and although that's become a really common thing to acknowledge in Canada that you're on someone else's territory what often goes unsaid is that those are unser and 'red and occupied territories so some of us might be here today as guests and some of us have found our way here in other ways but ultimately we're on someone else's territory and so I really invite you to think about what that means as we discus explore this idea of decolonization and as a decolonial educator I get to have a lot of really interesting conversations with people often really difficult conversations but to my surprise one of the most difficult conversations I have one of the most difficult questions that I ask is if people can name the territories and nation on whose lands their grandmothers were born and for a lot of settler Canadians this is a really difficult question to answer and it's also one that brings up a lot of pain and that's where I want to start this conversation today is around this notion of colonization in relation to historical amnesia because although it's become a common theme in Canada we talk about intergenerational trauma for indigenous people one thing that's not talked about is the intergenerational trauma that also had to happen for settler people to be complicit in such a violent history and in order for us to know where we want to go together we need to know where we are and for us to know that we need to know where we've been so I'm just going to speak briefly about the history of colonization in Canada but I really want to emphasize this is a global phenomenon there's not a single corner of the world that colonization hasn't been enacted upon so whether you're a settler Canadian whether you're a visitor whether you're a newly landed immigrant this applies to you and if you want to learn more about your own particular history just go home and google colonization and your nation and you'll see a long and violent history but for today's purposes we're just going to talk about colonisation in Canada and so one of the most common things that people are really aware of in terms of our colonial legacy in Canada is that of residential schools however what's often left out of that conversation is the fact that those residential schools were in effect for over 150 years that the last residential school did not close until 1996 that the mortality rate and those residential schools was often around 50% that the Canadian government intentionally used the subjects of those schools to test the impacts of starvation on human bodies as well as the impacts of electric chairs the creation of the RCMP was in fact to remove children from their homes in order to bring them to these schools as well as to police indigenous people to remain on the lands that were designated to them as a reserve lands in their own home territories and finally this legacy resulted in the kidnapping of over a hundred and fifty thousand children and that's just the children themselves that were removed and that's not even talking about all of the generations that were implicated because of the horrible abuse that went on in these schools so the other forms that colonization took in this country were that of biological warfare intentional systematic biological warfare ninety percent of some of the first nations in British Columbia were wiped out at a time when a vaccine for smallpox was available and and well used among settler Canadians this is I think one of the most powerful pictures that depicts the history of colonization in this country another strategy that was used to clear people from the land and forced people into submission into capitalism into living on reserves was the intentional extinction of keystone species like the Buffalo in the prairies but this happened in the north with sled dogs it happened in the East Coast with different fisheries and so this strategy of extinction to force people into submission is part of our colonial history in Canada so this means that if you're more than a 1st generation Canadian this is historical bystander trauma that your parents and grandparents have lived through and that in fact also lives in you and I really want to dispel this myth today that decolonization is the work of indigenous people whether you have ancestors that were colonizers or colonized we are all colonized people and so this work of decolonization has really work that we need to come together to do with one another equally accepting our roles our locations our privileges and ways in which we can start to move towards a future that looks like healing that looks like justice that looks like dismantling systems of oppression so I'd be very happy if I could say that this historic colonization is where it ends but unfortunately that's not the case today colonisation in Canada looks like the fact that we're here occupying someone else's territory well there's never been treaties made or honoured at least on these territories it looks like over 4,000 missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in this country a number that keeps on rising despite government promises of an inquiry or an intervention it looks like common practices such as the operation apprehension of indigenous babies when they're born by child and family services if their families are deemed unfit by the state it looks like over 200 First Nations who live without access to clean drinking water and other forms of infrastructure that almost every other Canadian feels entitled to and finally it looks like the ongoing poisoning and removal of indigenous people from their traditional lands and territories for resource extraction processes like the tar sands and like when we're all probably very familiar with right here the trans mountain pipeline I've worked with a lot of settler people who really want to do something about this but they don't know where to begin and they feel paralyzed with guilt and shame about this truly ugly history that we've all found ourselves in and so if I could just leave you with one message today it would be this this history is not your fault but it absolutely is your responsibility what happened what has been done is not your fault but where we find ourselves here together whether we're indigenous people whether we're settler people whether we're somewhere in between this is work that we need to pick up we need to have the courage to look at our past we need to have the courage to look at where we are now and we need to work together to figure out how we can collectively heal moving forward I think it's really important to make the distinction between indigenous Asian and decolonization as Nigel mentioned I had the incredible privilege of working on the vice land documentary series rise and in that role I got to work with indigenous communities and every continent of the world and I want to give a shout out to all the indigenous people on earth because the work of indigenous Asian the work of linguistic revitalization the work of ceremony the work of land based practice the work of land based defense indigenous people are holding it down and that is work for indigenous people to do that is not work for anyone else to pick up and start to appropriate and call their own however decolonization is work that belongs to all of us decolonization we are never going to go back and erase that past it has already been done but what we can do is we can start to put spokes in wheels of oppression of movements that create our our social systems of inherent inequity and to be totally honest if you wanted to just be motivated to do this for selfish reasons that would be good enough we're looking at a state of global climate catastrophe we're looking at mass migrations because when people can no longer inhibit their homelands and these are all ramifications of a colonial and capitalist world view that eradicated a balance a sense of reciprocity a sense of spiritual connection to our homelands and so if we continue forward without acknowledging the indigenous people on whose lands and territories we live we're headed for certain certain disaster one of the biggest gifts I've ever been given my life is the gift of my own prophecy the Mayan prophecy which speaks about this time particularly on earth and it teaches us that this is the time for the first time in all of human history that our consciousness have come to a level of evolution where we can actually see from one another's eyes the way that it's explained is that the eyes of the serpent can see through the eyes of the eagle and so the eyes of the north and the eyes of the cells can actually see through one another's eyes and begin to work together and understand each other's worldviews and the secondary part of that prophecy is that absolutely every person who came to be alive on earth at this time came for a specific reason and came with specific gifts that are needed to do this work that we have laid out in front of us and I really believe that and that's why I really want each of you to pick up this work of decolonization as your own because we need you whether we like it or not colonization is a messy and shameful history that connects us all here we are all in this room together so what do we do moving forward when people ask me what can I do to colonize I give them a caveat and I tell them well that's not going to be a one answer it's not going to be a one-day fix however I can give you a few first steps because if you do your work then we can come back together and collectively do the real work that needs to be done so if you want to go home today and start to enact your journey of decolonization you can figure out how to answer that first question I said to you where do your people come from how did you get here learn whose land you live on and what has been done to them in order for you to occupy their lands address the oppressive systems and history that enable you to occupy the territory you do now find out how you benefit from this history and activate one strategy where and you can use your village to dismantle that and share this knowledge share this conversation with your barista with your babysitter with your tinder date I don't care but I want you to have these conversations and I promise you when you start to have these conversations of looking at a longer now of asking the history of people your world will suddenly become a lot more interesting and so will your identity finally what's it all for why should we do this well because decolonization looks like living without paralyzing guilt and shame about who you are and the social identity you've inherited decolonization looks like giving up social and economic power and privilege that directly disempowers appropriates and invisible eyes as others do colonization looks like smashing the patriarchy [Laughter] decolonization looks like doing the work to find out who you are where you came from and committing to build communities that work together to collectively create a more sustainable and equitable future and finally decolonization looks like celebrating who we are and connecting with the unique knowledge with the unique knowledge that we each bring to this time and that we need to solve the problems that are laid out in front of us so it's really easy to think about our future ancestors because we have such beautiful little ones in the room good reminder thank you so much for opening this space today but I really invite you to look back and think about your grandmothers that I asked you about and take a moment to look forward and ask yourself what you can do in your lifetime what you can do today and in your work and with your passions and with your gifts to start to dismantle a history that none of us should be proud of so that maybe we can offer our an inheritance for our future and ancestors for not only a planet that's livable but a social system and community that's equitable and just plus commodity thank you so much [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 85,428

Rating: 4.6805873 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Global Issues, Activism, Conservation, Culture, Global issues, Human Rights, Inequality, Reform, Social Justice

Id: QP9x1NnCWNY

Length: 13min 19sec (799 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 12 2019