Immigrants in Support of Idle No More – Idle No More
As racialized migrants, immigrants, and refugees, we express our support for the Idle No More movement, a movement of Indigenous surgence/resurgence across these lands. We are allies of Indigenous peoples’ asserting their rights and sovereignty and protecting the lands and waters. The history and current reality of Canada is a racist and genocidal one, marked by the forced dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ lands and extraction of their resources, the suppression of Indigenous customs, governance, and laws, and the attempted assimilation of diverse Indigenous cultures and identities.
As racialized migrants and refugees, we came across many oceans or continents, a hundred years ago or yesterday and are being targeted by racist and and exclusionary immigration policies. Enduring decades, if not centuries, of colonialism, empire, racism, impoverishment, violence and displacement; paying a Head-Tax, growing up in internment camps, living in constant fear of deportation and denied access to basic services, unable to be reunited with our family members, working long hours for less than minimum wage in dangerous industries/sweatshops; deemed “illegal,” “undesirable,” or “terrorist” by the Canadian government (and often Canadians), many of us have struggled to find stability and to make homes here on Turtle Island. But we recognize that our homes are built on the ruins of others. We are on the lands of Indigenous peoples: lands unjustly seized, unceded lands, treaty territories.
With humility and gratitude, we affirm our solidarity and support for the sovereignty not of the illegal Canadian government or its immoral laws but of those communities whose lands we reside on.
Read statement in full here: