Indigenous
Where are you from
I'm doing a non-credit course at UBC called Humanities 101. It's opened my eyes to issues around First Nations culture. My perspective is changing.
Also I'm reading The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow. They propose that our Eurocentric view of humanity is, as Ringo once sang, "Not quite right".
For instance, it turns out that the enlightenment ideas like freedom and human rights and equality came in large part from the "indians" of North America.
The term "indian" is obsolete now. In polite company we say indigenous people or First Nations. But none of the terms really catches the variety and depth of the First Nations cultures. Here in Canada we deal with the legacy of neglect of First Nations communities. Unmarked graves for kids who died in the notorious residential schools are still being discovered.
Three tribes occupied the land of Vancouver; Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh. They are still here. One of my classmates was from Haida Gwaii and he didn't think of himself as indigenous to Vancouver.
That made me think a bit. I never thought of myself as indigenous. I'm Canadian. But in fact I was born on the East coast. The culture there is quite different from the culture here. So maybe it makes sense to say that I'm indigenous to New Brunswick.
It occurs to me that the term "indigenous" is a bit of a put-down because it blends the wide variety of indigeonous cultures into one pot. It's like talking about "white men" without seeing the difference between French, English, and German (say) cultures.
I think that the term indigenous carries an implication of primitiveness. Civilized people could move in on the territory of indigenous people because they were superior. Hundreds of years ago the Americas were considered by the Church to be uninhabited. The indigenous people were seen as so inferior that they didn't count as people.
My inclination has always been globalist. I tend to think of humanity as one. I'm dismayed that that vision seems to be impractical In fact it may be pernicious. The only way to achieve it is for one culture to dominate the world. But that doesn't seem to be the way people work.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.