commentary
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Sitting with David Segerts in
his tastefully decorated suite is a rare treat of experiencing an orderly lifestyle
for he has impeccable manners and a lifetime of memories to share. About the
same time as Uranium City, Saskatchewan, was becoming a city (of 5,000 souls)
David Segerts was born in 1960 and grew up to see the place there turn into a
ghost town. His hometown basically shutdown in 1982, but David was ready to
move on then anyway.
"I am a Dene/Cree, but I
generally say I am Dene because I look almost exactly like my father," and
he shows a picture that proves it. David is the spitting image of his Dene
father. "I dropped out of school when I was in grade 8," and went
back for adult upgrading by the age of 25 at Alberta Vocational Centre in
Calgary.
He said AVC was a good learning
experience although the facility lacked a First Nation student organization, so
he helped put one together. "We held dances, fundraisers, and hosted a
room that the school donated," which became a gathering place for all
nations and a useful foot in the door for First Nation students.
A short time later David
Segerts began to study the tactics known as lateral violence, which are used in
oppression and especially systemic racism. It is this lateral violence that
explains the extraordinary incarceration rates and recidivism in crime of the
First Nation people of Canada. Nearly 50 percent of the prisoners in Canada
either male or female are First Nation or Aboriginal people.
For these kinds of disparities
to exist in a segment of society the problems have to run very deep indeed.
"Lateral violence goes on in every First Nation organization and starts
with arguments like, 'My family is better than theirs,'" he said. Lateral
violence is an important tool used by the purveyors of oppression or systemic
racism.
It is important, "to get
us fighting amongst each other. We are actually born into it, however,"
because the system is designed that way, "Public awareness is the only way
to address it," said Segerts. "The methods of lateral violence
include, backstabbing, gossip, infighting, shaming, humiliating, damaging comments,
belittling, and sometimes violent behaviour."
Other terms for what is
happening to First Nations in Canada include auto-genocide and horizontal
violence, he said. These terms are applied mostly to the members of oppressed
groups in society, he explained, "I didn't really understand lateral
violence until I was about 30 years of age. I rarely discussed it until I did
the research first," said Segerts. "It is designed to prevent efforts
to heal the effects of oppression."
Lateral violence teaches people
to disrespect and deny the rights of an oppressed group, to destroy the values
and beliefs. Practitioners will engage in infighting, faulting finding, and
scapegoating, raising the stakes of competition via jealousy and envy. The
attacks are made upon those who already possess low self esteem and the attacks
lower a person's self worth.
Ultimately the goal is to make
the victim take the blame for the continuous putdowns, "This is the nature
of oppression," said Segerts. It is a denial of their self and humanity.
"They think they have become objects unworthy of respect. They fail from the inability to recognize
themselves as a human being. They become convinced that the oppressor owns
them, and often the oppressor does own them including through financial
dependencies upon welfare and personal dependencies upon drugs or alcohol.
“When my son was 11 years old I
brought him to Vancouver to live with me, and after a few short weeks, he told
me, ‘Dad, I didn’t realize that Indians didn’t drink. I didn’t realize the
Indian men work.’” It was another stunning learning experience about lateral
violence for David the father who has never spent time languishing on welfare
programs but knows on reserves and in some urban communities it can become a
long-running generational trap.
“People who feel dependent
suffer a lack of personal power. When they lose power they will see their
cultural identity eliminated and be unable to stop it,” he said. Many times the
First Nations in Canada have been known to hide their own beliefs or adopt the beliefs
of an oppressing society. “They were dislocated from the land, and suffered
breakdown of family structure during the Residential School years. Indigenous
people were removed from families at age four in some cases, only to be
afflicted with physical, mental, sexual, and social abuses.”
His own mother had a safety pin
jammed through her tongue by nuns at one such school, then was made to sit
facing a corner in a classroom for speaking her Cree language. “There were many
children killed by torture,” he rightly asserts, “Families were disrupted by
one child being raised in a Catholic school and another being raised in a
United Church run school. In fact the Residential School system was a highly
specialized form of lateral violence.”
The lateral violence design for
First Nations people results in a distrust of First Nation leaders by their own
people. “It results in a distrust of those who might emerge to help. Rising
stars are severely restricted or punished. Leaders who make any difference are
fired and persecuted. Incompetent leaders are recruited and promoted by the
oppressors. Dividing and conquering is the main process used by the
oppressors.”
Segerts intends to write a book
with a biographical story line. He was later trained as a technical engineer at
BCIT and NAIT, then, while living in Vancouver, he entered the film industry,
first as an actor, then as a producer and director. Today he is employed on a
youth employment initiative that operates in Canada for First Nations. Remember
the name, because the book will be a heckuva a good read.
A discourse by Kat Norris sent by email to friend David
Segerts, back in Sep ’07 when the Indigenous Rights declaration at the UN
failed to carry the support of Canada, and Kat’s reply to David and others said
spread it around, so here it is, from Kat Norris Coast Salish
Indigenous Action
Wow! What a landslide vote for
Indigenous people. I'm still of the standing, in part, that we as the
indigenous people of this soil, now called Canada, do not recognize the
'Canadian' government, nor do we recognize the man-created borders, as well as
the jurisdictions of the various departments of justice, Unfortunately we are
living in a land ruled by such oppression, we needed international support and
input. Even then Canada would not liberate nor vote for our collective human
rights.
Canadian leaders, were seeking to broker
a higher return for their irrevocably bigoted, colonialist stance, to once
again, to priest -smack us in the backs of our heads, in the world eye, that we
may finally bow our little brown heads down in compliance to sovereign
influence. it proves that our land and its resources are entrenched in global
enterprises.
Their decision HAS to prove what we've known along, that the colonial powers
are continuing their stance of domination over our land and its resources.
We HAVE changed as self-governing nations, we have the Indian Act which acts as
the government's ICBC, the government has it's own leglistation which rules our
lives, we ARE suffering the aftermath of loss land, roles, traditional
leadership; residential school genocide, the reservation system; ensuing racism
in all aspects of our lives and more...government sanctioned media and employer
acquiescence.
...as little children, our ancestors,
meaning our great-great-great and great-great and great, and our grandparents
were dragged by the RCMP, priests, independent contractors and the Department
of Indian Affairs agents into the torture chamber called the Residential School
to suffer for the peoples sin of not comforming, not assimilating, not giving
up the declaration that this land is our land, this land's not your land... and
these are the people that we must take a stand for... these broken people and
their next generations.. who ..are today, living in poverty, living in
addictions, living in the streets and on reservations NOT ONLY as a testament
to colonialist dictatorship and their utter disregard for us as human beings
but to the strength of our people to survive as a 'minority' people. We know
our rights.
As little children and as youth in
school, and for the past fifty years, we have dealt with racism and as children
and youth today, our children suffer from racism in school and in the post
secondary level as well.. because of the government(s) stance on our piece of
the pie crumbs flouted as 'native privilege.'
TAXATION, EDUCATION, 'FREE' LANDS. Technically, we are the havenots, but we are
rich in the knowledge of what is rightfully ours.
'Canada's' decision has to prove for
something. It proves to society that we as indigenous people are indeed, living
under 'Canadian' oppression, as what was laid out in the master plan by the
European powers that desired our beautiful soil and rich resources. This
attitude is what we, as activists, and community leaders have been rallying
against all along.. and now it is there for all to see.
We as many nations, will never forget. Countries around the world now know the
totalitarianism we live under.. And we say 'shame!'
And as my banner reads: CANADA IS
OCCUPIED TERRITORY
Kat Norris Coast Salish
Indigenous Action (604) 682-3269 extension: 7718
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