On Elsipogtog and Indigenous Resistance

True Indigenous resistance power comes from the ability to confront raw colonial power with direct action.

We know that the governments’ agenda is to promote, support and protect corporations at the expense of Indigenous nations and people as well as at the expense of their own people. Knowing this you have to ask “why does the government adamantly insist that Indigenous resistance has to be confined to peaceful and legal protests?” unless they have determined that those strategies keep the movement within the governments sphere of political, economic and legal control. To add to this you must ask the opposite “why does the government aggressively demand that Indigenous resistance cannot use direct actions in the protection of their freedom, their nation and their self-determination despite the fact that Canada uses those ideas as justification for the use of their military force in foreign nations?” The government knows that direct action utilized in decolonization strategies is very effective and wishes to deny Indigenous people a set of tactics that have a hope of being successful.

The government recognizes this dynamic and aggressively seeks to counter it with strategies of “pacification”. The “agent of pacification” is a powerful tool to disempower Indigenous resistance strategies by denying tactics of real effectiveness. The role of the “agent of pacification” is to infiltrate a movement and to oppose, counter, disrupt any measures that may use direct action. This takes the “wind” out of the resistance movement by creating ideological divisions that can get very heated.

We have to be aware of the political, economic, legal and social environments that we exist in and how they contribute or hinder our possible strategies. When we understand these dynamics the big picture as to what the government seeks to do in their strategy becomes so much clearer.

Read More | On #Elsipogtog, Indigenous resistance, and confronting state violence | Sakej Ward