Watching this genocide has been disgusting. I try to repost things but I don’t know how many personal statements I’ve made. Seeing it go this far, and seeing Western governments try to cling to some premise of innocence, is so disturbing. Four generations ago my Great Grandfather Josie Cuthand was just a little boy when our family was being starved by the Canadian government. Our family raided a store to get food. Because we raided a store, an army regiment was sent to assault us at Cutknife Hill. We weren’t only warriors, there were women and children and babies too I’m sure. My Great Great Grandfather Mistatimwas was the War Chief and helped us repel the settlers, but still he was hit in the belly with a shot from a gatling gun (a precursor to machine guns). He survived. Josie left for Montana and became a Landless Cree until Cree refugees were allowed back into Canada where we were placed on our reserves, which were not really in our territory since we used to be closer to the border (and constantly crossing the border which didn’t exist yet).

Anyway, all that to say that starvation has been used as a tool for genocide for hundreds of years, and Canada proudly stands on that history of blood and hunger. I do not believe Canada is forever, I don’t believe any country is forever. But I think they did manage to escape true justice (so far). I’m four generations on from Josie and I am still a poor person. I still have trouble scraping together rent. And what is going to happen to the survivors of Gaza four generations from now? Will they be afraid of dying from freezing cold and hunger the way that fear still lives in me? Who will survive? Who will protect them when the richest people of the world are literally living for this moment, the chance to show us all their might and how they can wipe us too off the planet?

When this began I and a lot of people could see where this was heading. Israeli leaders were making very clear statements of Genocidal Intent not long after Oct 7, they knew what they were asking for and had no qualms about openly advocating for the annihilation of a people. Despite the fact that the same thing happened to Jewish people in the Holocaust. They even framed it as getting back at the Nazis, never mind the real Nazis were in Germany and Europe and had migrated to countries all over the world and continue to spread fascist ideas. In fact, the Germans joyfully armed them to commit genocide. My country did too, Canada is not innocent at all, we keep providing military hardware to Israel.

And yet at the beginning of this, even knowing what was coming, I was worried about being blacklisted for saying no to genocide. Oh sure they tried to tip toe around the genocide word, but we all saw them say the same kinds of things about Palestinians as Canadians said about Indigenous people and Germans said about Jewish people. And those words all lead to one place: Genocide.

Canadians love to disagree about the terms of genocide they engaged in. They said it was “cultural genocide” completely erasing the mass graveyards at Residential Schools which we had known about for a long time. They said “cultural genocide” when we saw them take children from our communities to brainwash them into Christianity and allow pedophiles to rape and abuse them. It is not cultural genocide, Canada committed Genocide period.

Someday maybe Israelis will admit to cultural genocide, but probably like Canadians will never admit they had policies which led to mass slaughter and death.

I’ve been reading books these days, something I had given up for a while because of my ADHD. But I read Pedagogy of the Oppressed and half of Wretched of The Earth and I’m really thinking about some of the things they said, including that in every oppressed person they have an inner oppressed person and an inner oppressor. And while I disagreed with a few things in the books (I think animals have consciousness and I practice more tribal spirituality) I do agree we have inner oppressors. And I suppose seeing what Israelis have done to Palestinians makes me realize they too have an old brutal oppressor internally.

I don’t think everyone follows their internal oppressor. But I think in the right circumstances it comes out and joyfully oppresses others. I see it in the lateral violence in the Indigenous community. We don’t have a group we have power over except each other. So gang members torture women to death, professors make posts with lies about community members to try and ruin their lives, people sabotage each others projects and steal each other’s ideas. It’s a brutal world when the oppressed crush each other when they can.

But this is an external display of the oppressor. Armed by the worst bully in the world, America, with money extorted from the poorer countries of the world. People thinking they are getting revenge from the Holocaust by causing another Holocaust on people who weren’t even persecuting them in Europe. But they’re brown people. And that’s the other thing.

It’s Jewish Supremacy wreaking havoc on this part of the world but it’s working in service to White Supremacy. It’s being the foot soldiers of the West so they can access gas reserves off the coast of Gaza. It’s another war for resources.

And that’s why the rich encourage it. They don’t have morals, they have no feelings when they see children be murdered. They have no morals because they hoard so much money that they won’t even be able to use in their lifetimes. It’s a moral defect to be obscenely wealthy, and money needs to be redistributed and billionaires need to be outlawed.

And yet we’re here, the poor, the riff raff, trying to make change, trying to shout into the void until SOMEONE listens, until SOMEONE stops it. And no one is stopping it, no one who actually has power anyway. This world is sick and diseased by capitalism and we’re being subjected to this so that the rich can test weapons they will eventually use on us to get further resources.

And maybe I’ve been blacklisted. I don’t know. If there are (and there are) lists of people being passed around who are calling out Israel for it’s genocide against the Palestinians, someday I hope people on those lists get credit for pulling the alarm for one of the most cruel and inhuman genocides in recent memory. I hope the people who have been silent or continued to push Israeli propaganda one day feel ashamed. I hope those IDF soldiers are prosecuted in every country they try to vacation in. I hope the rich who are making billions off war crimes some day face justice and have their wealth stripped from them.

I no longer believe in a heaven, or in a justice in the afterlife. I am not going to live my life thinking people get what is coming to them after we die. I want people to see justice in this lifetime. I want people to be called to account for their crimes against humanity. And I want this genocide to end, and Western governments to beg for forgiveness and never get it.