it effects everything.

being trans is easier when youre white.

being gay is easier when youre white.

being disabled is easier when youre white.

being a woman is easier when youre white.

being autistic is easier when youre white.

oppression is eased when you are white, as you get extra privileges, and your whiteness is seen as a positive characteristic that in some ways counter-balances your other forms of being a minority. whiteness controls everything.

you are automatically way more innocent in your own oppression as a gay, trans, disabled person because of your whiteness.

three things:

1. it’s true

2. white people get pissed when i bring this up/wear this shirt

The largest dam removal in U.S. history. So successful that the salmon that haven’t run freely in the river for literally over a century came back the next year. Not steady progress over a decade as expected, the very next salmon run they came home. No one alive saw salmon in that river outside the hatcheries kept by native’s tribes and the Department of Fish And Wildlife scientists desperately trying to save them. One of the activists who helped bring the suit spoke of their dying grandmother making them promise to bring the fish home, and they didn’t know how that was possible, but they spent decades doing it.

The legal basis for successfully suing the power company who owned the dams was Indigenous treaty rights to eat the fish. Eating the fish was the one thing in a century that succeeded in being a clear and legally binding right that superseded the desires of white capital and industry. I have been going to the public interest environmental law conference off and on for 20 years where a lot of organizing for Undam The Klamath happened. I’ve heard updates about every legal tact they tried as they happened, and they tried everything.

There are healthy, thriving salmon, trout, and lamprey in a rewilding and recovering Klamath River right now as a direct result of Indigenous people eating them. Of their legally binding right to eat them. They sure as fuck care more about those fish than any white vegan ever could. They are salmon people that the Creator sent Salmon to feed, while charging the People with protecting and stewarding them. It’s not possible to learn about salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest without learning this, and it’s unambiguously racist to dismiss this symbiotic relationship.

The white vegans are trying to get all hunting and fishing banned in Oregon, and that’s quite possibly the single most catastrophic thing that could be done to the animals here because we killed off all the major predators of creatures like deer and without anything hunting them their numbers will explode, eat all the vegetation, destroy the ecosystem, and then die along with everything else in that failing ecosystem. Controlled hunting of deer is vitally necessary for the deer to survive. This is something Native people know, but patronizing racist savior-complex white people refuse to listen to.

I have a whole collection of Oregon’s Public Broadcasting’s documentaries about Klamath River or the larger story of fish and people in the region. If you watch nothing else, watch Klamath Dams Are Coming Out, First Salmon Ceremony, After The Dams, and First Decent (Native made). It could not be clearer that the salmon are being protected and nourished by the people who eat them, and that stewardship is a massive part of their creation myths. But it contradicts political vegan dogma so they don’t listen.

“yeah can i get a deluxe quarter pounder with cheese?”

“absolutely, do you want the meal or just the sandwich?’

“uuuuuh hold on”

*fishes something out of my pocket*

“mikey what do i do?”

“get the fries. youll need the energy in the coming days”

*stuffs it back in my pocket*

this is the audio version of this picture

dexterity: 80

strength: 10

intellect: 100

charisma: 0

That's what a banner near Spruce Grove, AB said this week.

This already feels like old news but I needed time to collect my thoughts and gather some data.

Here’s the truth:

1863–2000: Federal Indian day schools operated across Canada, many run by the same churches as residential schools.

1883–1997: Residential schools were funded by Canada for 114 years. Attendance became compulsory by law in 1920, for kids as young as 7.

1885–1935: The pass system required First Nations people to get written permission from an Indian agent just to leave their own reserve. For 50 years.

Alongside it, the permit system required a permit to sell your own livestock, grain and produce, enforced by the same agents.

1927–1951: It was illegal to hire a lawyer or raise money to pursue a land claim against the government. Two full decades where seeking justice was a crime.

1920's -1980s: Segregated "Indian hospitals" operated across the country, admitting patients by race, not need.

1951-1980s: The Sixties Scoop. Thousands of Indigenous children apprehended from their families and placed in non-Indigenous homes, often losing all connection to their language, culture, and identity.

Ceremonies including the Potlatch and Sun Dance were criminalized under the Indian Act. Children were punished for speaking their own languages — for generations.

Status First Nations people couldn't vote in a federal election without giving up their status until 1960.

This was all in the"last 100 years".

It’s only been LESS THAN 30 YEARS since the last residential school and Indian federal hospital closed their doors.

What we did anyway:

Organized nationally and defeated the 1969 White Paper, which tried to eliminate Indian status and treaty rights outright

Built the Assembly of First Nations, Native Women's Association of Canada, Métis National Council, and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami

Got Aboriginal and treaty rights written into the Constitution in 1982

Negotiated modern treaties and self-government agreements, including the creation of Nunavut in 1999

Pushed through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the National Inquiry into MMIWG

Ran Idle No More and held the line at Wet'suwet'en to protect the land

Got UNDRIP adopted into federal law in 2021

Are still in court right now, defending Treaty rights against Alberta's own separation referendum. The same rights that banner is mad we still have.

We didn't sit still for 100 years. We survived a legal system engineered to erase us, and we are the reason Canada has ever had to answer for any of it.