Today I renounce my Canadian identity. I can no longer be part of this illusion called Canada that calls itself a nation when really it’s just an extraction point for large financial interests to suck both the land and the people completely dry, both here and around the world. This whole process of creating “nations” began as a sordid affair, and I can only hope that it will not end sordidly (Canada, USA, all “nations” of Africa, etc. etc. etc.). I, for one, am done. I completely reject the illusion of the whole place and all the things it masquerades as possessing. I reject my Canadian identity.
I have no land or unifying ethnic identity. Therefore, I declare myself an expatista. This term is a combination of the word “expatriate” and “Zapatista”. The word expatriate refers here to the act of renunciation of allegiance, a right which was protected in the US Expatriation Act of 1868. In the preamble of this document it says:
“the right of expatriation is a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'”
The word zapatista comes from a movement originating in Chiapas, Mexico where the indigenous population worked to liberate themselves and their land. The purpose of the zapatista movement is not to seize power on behalf of the people, rather it is to create a space in which people can define their own power. The movement encourages everyone to “be a Zapatista, wherever you are”. I find the Zapatista movement inspirational as an “intercontinental network of those who resist”. This movement is alive and vibrant throughout the world among many indigenous groups.
The problem is I’m not indigenous to anywhere. I am the by-product of a brutal colonial endeavor, the genotypic expressions of old African slave blood and underclass European immigrant farmer blood. My ancestors were not born of this place, they were brought here to work the stolen land, through slavery and out of ignorant desperation. I was born of this atrocity.
As a “Canadian” I have no land. I have only a corporate consumer culture. I live from month to month, and winters are cold at my house. I have a student loan the size of a small mortgage which I will never be capable of paying off - I am a slave to my debt, as are most of my fellow underclass. My identity is made up of bits and fragments of a corporate culture that told me who I was and what I was supposed to be. The affordable food that is made available to me by my government is often laden with chemicals and genetically modified ingredients, and it is difficult and even illegal to consume the things I’d like to eat that are good for me, like organic foods, raw milk, and local meat. As a Canadian, everything I am shown, instructed to do, read, or consume has economic growth as it’s premise, and is designed to keep me alienated and fearful.
I am accustomed to being controlled and dominated by this system called Canada, and the other colonial by-products (also known as human resources) that serve this life-sucking master . My foods, my medicine, my education, my options, my parenting, my choices, everything has been controlled. My fifteen year old son was killed as a result of this executive control, a control that is ruthlessly unaccountable and dangerously unseen. I find that being Canadian is in complete contravention of my “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. I am being forced to live in a system that actively undermines human consciousness, not just mine, but everyone’s around me. This is done in the name of economic interest. The lunacy of this concept is illustrated in this quote from Adam Smith, the founding father of our current economic, political, and “national” system:
“The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; and on the contrary, those which have the greatest value of exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce anything; scarce anything can be had in exchange for it.”
This is not life, liberty or happiness. We live in an age and a place of suppression and oppression, where fear breeds hatred and the system that undermines our consciousness, destroys us and our planet, requires our blind cooperation to keep it alive. Our survival is linked to our debts, and our debts are our slavery, it is what binds us to this oppressive system. We are bound to this death trap in countless ways. It will take ingenuity, courage, and cooperation to extricate ourselves...
Adam Smith wrote the book on capitalism: “The Wealth of Nations”. This sort of literature is usually beyond the scope of our perceived interests, but it is we the underclass that feature in this text. There are volumes written about us and our role in this system, in a nation like “Canada”. It is made infinitely clear that a “free man” is nothing more than a slave in a system of ownership, and express measures are taken by the ownership class to ensure this lifelong slavery and the slavery to follow in the generations to come. He writes:
“The wear and tear of a slave, it has been said, is at the expense of his master; but that of a free servant is at his own expense. The wear and tear of the latter, however is, in reality, as much at the expense of his master as that of the former. The wages paid to journeymen and servants of every kind must be such as may enable them, one with another, to continue the race of of journeymen and servants, according as the increasing, diminishing, or stationary demand of the society may happen to require. But though the wear and tear of a free servant be equally at the expense of his master, in generally costs him much less than that of a slave. The fund destined for replacing or repairing, if I may say so, the wear and tear of the slave is commonly managed by the negligent master or careless overseer. That destined for performing the same office with regard to the free man, is managed by the freeman himself...
“A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and a race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation”
Like the Zapatistas, what I seek, “"What we seek, what we need and want is that all those people without a party and organization make agreements about what they want and do not want and become organized in order to achieve it (preferably through civil and peaceful means), not to take power, but to exercise it. I know you will say this is utopian and unorthodox, but this is the way of the Zapatistas. Too bad.”
I stand as an expatista in solidarity with the Idle No More movement, in opposition to the government’s recent omnibus bills that threaten the lives of every person within this landmass termed “Canada”. We are one. Even the ruling economic class defines us all as a race unto ourselves. There is no authority. We are all the authority. I can no longer tolerate a government, a system that “cuts red tape” for quick and effective financial growth in resource and development sectors at the cost of priceless habitats the land over. I can no longer tolerate a government that regulates the safety of my “food and drugs” when the things they permit will kill people but the things that we can do for our own health are illegal (honeybees, raw milk, local meat co-ops, etc). I can no longer tolerate a system that enslaves people through debt, which they accumulate to survive. We are taught to accept our slavery and not even question the existence of our “freedom”. These brutal colonial forces and ideologies work to enslave the working class of every nation, whether they are indigenous or not. We are made blind to our condition through the promotion of “individualism”, and are taught to compete with one another, to hate one another, and our hate deepens our confusion. There is confusion in our families, in our communities, across the globe. This is an extractive system that was brought to this land with brutality, and this brutality against the land and the people (both indigenous and others who live here) continues mercilessly and ever-rapidly each day. I cannot identify with this. I cannot support this. And I won’t.
I believe that we as diverse and competent people have our own answers to these very real and globally urgent problems. The futility of working within the system has proven itself time and again, and it was built to prevent such influence from those who have no real economic stake. We are seen as a race, an underclass resource to be managed - ALL of us who must work to live. From a human perspective this is disgusting. This is where we can find our unity.
There can be no dollar value placed on the sacred nature of the planet’s life systems and we must stand up as people and not allow governments or “nations” to let their primacy on profit take us all to our demise. Our consciousness, both collectively and individually is being actively undermined in all areas of our life. Not only are the lands and waters being brutalized by economic interests, but our ideas, our desires, our children, our humanity - they are all being co-opted and brutalized in this suicidal notion of economy reigning supreme.
I will continue to blog in the following weeks about many issues that I have brought up in this most recent post. In the meantime, if you’ve read this and it interests you, read some of my older posts? I would encourage everyone to examine our lives and look at areas where our consciousness has been undermined by a system, by a law, by something outside of our own authority. I have some ideas on how I can reclaim some of my own autonomy and function as a responsible and active human being, both alone and within my community, and I’ll write more about that too. We need to think of creative and constructive ways to extricate ourselves from this death trap, and we also need to start breaking down the many barriers that have prevented us from working with each other in the past.
As a last note, I would like to offer my deepest gratitude to the founding members of the Idle No More movement, and to all of the other peoples of the land that have heard this call and have answered. Myself, I was hoping a 2012 disaster would neutralize the imminent threat, but it’s now apparent I’m going to have to do something about it, we all are. Let’s have some dialogue!
Idle No More!
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