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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Kat Norris
(604) 682-3269, Extension: 7718
CELEBRATING THE LEGACY OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS IS CELEBRATING THE
ON-GOING CAMPAIGN OF GENOCIDE AGAINST INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
Date: June 4, 2008
Indigenous Action Network explains:
Honoring Columbus is like honoring Hitler in terms of his utter
disregard for the human rights and dignity of a people because of
their race, namely the Indigenous people of Haiti, Hispaniola in the
Caribbean, people of South Africa. His exploits lead to the
forced colonization and genocide of the original inhabitants of the
Americas. The Columbus influenced "indian removal
policy" was used to force our people away from their lands,
using war tactics such as starvation, biological warfare, burning
down of villages and savagery such as murder, rape, mutilation,
despite the fact that European leaders acknowledged that our natural
rights were to have been respected.
It is
said that Columbus saved Indigenous people from having to survive the
wilderness and lives of war, yet the lives of our people were no
different than the early ancestors of land all across the
hemisphere. We survived off the earth and our land and its
resources remained intact and unharmed. Technology and modern
advances have only destroyed this earth and OUR country.
Our
reality as Indigenous people in respect to our survival and struggle
for justice for the past 500 years is cause for
commemoration. We have survived premeditated genocide, colonization,
murder, rape and pillaging. We have suffered deliberate loss of
our resources, language, roles, of the right to represent our
people. The advent of the imposed reservation system caused our
men the loss of the right to feed and provide for our own
people.
In
occupied Canada, in British Columbia, the celebration of the past 150
years of imperialism, calls for a transformation of thought as the
First Nations people demand the true history to be acknowledged at
all levels, in government, education, within society. Occupied
British Columbia is committed to a New Relationship and states that
the Treaty Process is founded upon respect, reconciliation and
recognition of Aboriginal title while providing promises
through these treaties which threatens to do exactly the opposite as
we will lose our lands, titles and rights.
New school texts need not
perpetuate the ideologies of racist colonialist thought that
glorifies a man whose exploits included the onset of the atrocities
of the slave trade, slave labor, sexually related disease, and the
decimation of indigenous people.
Loewen, in his book,
"Lies My Teacher Told Me," http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/
calls Columbus a racist, murderer, " who forced Native people
into slavery as laborers, scouts, sex slaves and dog food for
his men.
The Indigenous Action Movement and supporters will will hand out
educational fact sheets. As Indigenous people we reject the
historical misconceptions that exalt a slave trader, a murderer who
is not worthy of exaltation. It's time society wakes up to our
reality and not buy into the doctored spin that allowed such a legacy
that gave birth to the death of millions of Indigenous people."
Kat Norris, Indigenous Action Movement
Promo
For Tourists Re: Replica Nina
http://vancouver.kijiji.ca/c-events-Step-Onboard-the-Nina-W0QQAdIdZ50506707
What Children
Learn About Columbus:
http://events.askacop.org/columbusday.html
2004 http://www.survival-international.org/news/144
TO GET THERE: http://tripplanning.translink.bc.ca/hiwire
Translink: (604) 953-3333
Those catching Transit: We'll meet at
4:00 Burrard Street and Robson stop. ($3.75 fare)
Posters for distribution picked up dropped off here
VCV COMPUTER SERVICES
888 Commercial Drive, Vancouver
Phone: 604-251-4737
Store Hours:
Monday to Saturday - 11:00am - 8:00pm
Sunday 12:00 - 6:00pm
You might find me here usin the 'net
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