Native People's Caravan 50 years, and other anniversaries

Context on some upcoming events, including Truth and Reconciliation Week

Author

greg macdougall
September 21, 2024

Greetings,

The main content is further down - the 50th anniversary of the Native People’s Caravan is September 30th, and notices of seven other upcoming events with a bit of context added.

But first, about the moon and the beaver.

MOON

There was a slight eclipse with the full moon on Tuesday night.

I didn't have something written to send out at that point but was think maybe to send something. Do you already keep track of what the moon is doing, or do you need reminders?

All three people I mentioned it to when I went out that night to see it, were unaware (they hadn't looked up) but they were happy to learn about it from me and then see it.

INTRO PHOTO

The photo(s) for today is "Beaver tracks on concrete"

That is a turtle nest protectors in the first photo, beside where the beaver came out

I was 30 seconds late from seeing the beaver walk across the concrete between the two bodies of water. But I was able to walk beside them after as they swam along the shore.

THE MAIN CONTENT - INTRO :

Native People' Caravan 50th anniversary

The focus of this newsletter is the event that may not be recognized by many people:

The 50th anniversary of the Native People's Caravan across Canada.

September 30th is of course Orange Shirt Day and National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, but you might not hear about it also being the 50th anniversary of the Native People’s Caravan arrival at Parliament, or even know much about the Caravan at all.

So, read on for more about it…

But first:

(OTHER) EVENTS LISTING

September 21, Saturday (today):

* Youth Powwow, hosted by A7G, at Vincent Massey Park

Note: ten years ago, at an event we hosted leading up to the national People's Social Forum, A7G (Assembly for Seven Generations) was first publicly introduced. A7G's Gabrielle Fayant and myself were the co-MCs for the event. An event recap is posted here, including a link to photos. You can also listen to a current preview interview for the powwow, via CBC radio.

* Annual Ottawa-Gatineau Climate March, hosted by Fridays For Future Ottawa et al

Note: The very big one of these was in 2019, back when it was called the Climate Strike. It was perhaps the biggest protest ever in Ottawa - at least the biggest I've ever heard of. I have a couple short videos from it, including a two photos from up high that demonstrate the massive size. This year they are livestreaming the whole event.

Other upcoming events:

Sept 23-27: Truth and Reconciliation Week
Note: I wrote a piece in 2022 that centred on RBC's role as "Presenting Sponsor" of TRW.

Sept 25: Day of Boycott Indigo Books for supporting Israel military ("#IndigoKillsKids")
Note: A court recently ordered Canadian internet providers to block the boycott website.

Sept 28: Kidical Mass bike ride
Note: We did a special Critical Mass after the above-mentioned 2019 Climate Strike: video

Oct 4: Families of Sisters in Spirit Vigil and Rally
Note: This will be the 20th anniversary of the No More Stolen Sisters report. On the 10th anniversary of the Sisters In Spirit vigils,, I published a collection of the MMIWG media I've made combined with media from MMIWG events I was part of organizing; This media collection includes video interview with Bridget Tolley who led the start of the vigils.

Oct 5: One Year of Genocide / One Year of Resistance - Ottawa
Note: Hind's Hall 2 (song) is now out from Macklemore with special guests: listen. / watch

MAIN CONTENT

And now to the Native People's Caravan.

It began a couple weeks earlier in Vancouver, and travelled towards Ottawa, having events and picking up more people along the way.

Then September 30, 1974 was when the Native People's Caravan arrived onto Parliament Hill, which turned into what some called a riot: but was more simply an attack by police. A serious attack with serious injuries suffered.

I only heard of the Caravan through happenstance, through a couple of conversations where it happened to be mentioned. And I think I heard of the "Native People's Embassy" - the occupation of the old Carbide Mill on Victoria Island, 1 kilometre NW of Parliament, that happened after the September 30th events - first, prior to me knowing about the context of the Caravan itself.

Obviously, I'm not someone who can speak much about these events, but there are some who can - though maybe not too many.

But it is important to honour the anniversary, and keep alive the memory.

Thus, I've put together a collection of some helpful resources I was able to find.

Take a look at the collection I’ve started, here:
https://equitableeducation.ca/2024/native-peoples-caravan-50

I will be adding to it over the next couple of days, but got it published already so I oould share the link here, now.

I do hope there is some public attention brought to this anniversary. Some months ago, I did reach out to a couple people who do media to give them some lead time in case they wanted to do something; before that, I'd also mentioned it to one of the Indigenous education leads at a local school board.

To informally introduce the collection, here are a few words from John Trudell, who was in Ottawa at the time to support the Caravan, in his role as chairman of the American Indian Movement (AIM), and who later was a poet-musician and public speaker.

The short-short version:

"We will not get our liberation if we do not seriously analyze the experiences of our own lifetimes."

The paragraph-length version:

"... but your generation is literally being handed into slavery. The more you chant and rah-rah the freedom word, the further into slavery you're being led, so I'm telling you, it's in your best interest to use your intelligence as clearly and coherently as you can, and don't believe anything, question everything, think about everything. Because we've handed you over, our generation did it because we didn't think things out. We reacted emotionally based on what we believed. We fought a holding battle, so we could hold our own to a certain degree, and we got some gains here and there, see, but that's all that it was. See somewhere in here, someone's got to inject clear thinking . Whatever it is that's going on, it can't be outfought, it's never going to happen. But it can be out-thought. You have something confronted against you that you need to fight, whatever the form, you need to out-think it. See, so this is really about thinking, but we're never encouraged to go that way: we're encouraged to believe and to fight, we're not taught or never encouraged to think. ..."

The extended-excerpt version (this from the United States Social Forum 2010, Detroit):

"And I want to speak to you tonight… whatever all these identities and these things are… i want to speak to you as a human being [...] because I think what technological civilization does – is it, a part of its mining process is to suppress and erase the memory of the human being from us and turn us into citizens, and turn us into race, culture and class, turn us into gender, turn us into all of these other things that they then turn and make divisive.
[...]

I’m a child of the 60’s, I’m old now - but what I remember from the 60’s, what I think is lacking in my generation is, I think my generation we’re not telling the generations behind us the mistakes we made. We’re not telling the generations behind us, hey look, you know it’s almost like an apology for not, I mean our intentions were good, our motivations were good, and all that was good, but it’s almost like we owe an apology to the generation behind us, because we didn’t ... because the beast is bigger than it was when we started out.

So what happened? How did it remain the same, how did it absorb all of our energy? How did it absorb it and grow stronger off of what we were doing? It did it because we .. it absorbed it, and swallowed it, because everything basically everything we did was based upon our good intentions and it was the way that our parents did it or their parents did it and it was the way that they did it and we went through the same motions and we are still going through the same motions and the beast continues to get bigger.

And I find it fundamentally ... to me it’s like we need to really slow down and think because in the 60’s we emotionally reacted to what we believed. We believed this was right, we believed that was right and so they made token concessions and then they absorb. Well, we got civil rights but look, you know, look at this community, look at the economic devastation. Alright, so we got civil rights and so they still all turn around and do what they do."

In the documentary film Trudell, he does explain that AIM etc did rekindle the spirit of Indigenous people. This is not to question that. But the quotes above speak to the ways of doing things and what results occur and being able to think critically about what we do.

The storytelling and keeping alive the stories of what people did, is part of that.