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Summary
The recent news of the 215 children found in graves at Kamloops Residential School in British Columbia, Canada, has made headlines all over the world. The news raises more questions about Canada’s colonial history and causes outrage about the treatment of indigenous peoples in Canada and globally.
Host Karen Spring speaks with Dr. Tyler Shipley, a professor, activist, and author of the book “Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and Colonial Imagination” about Canada’s colonial past and present. Shipley discusses and connects colonialism to Canada’s foreign policy in Honduras and other parts of the world.
Follow us on Instagram: @hondurasnow
Buy Dr. Tyler Shipley’s book: Fernwood Publishing
Follow ‘Canada in the World’ on Twitter: @canadainthewrld
Transcript
Karen Spring:
Hi everyone. Welcome to today’s episode. Given the horrific news about the discovery of 215 bodies inside a former residential school in Kamloops in Western Canada, I wanted to discuss Canada’s history and also how it relates to Canada’s current foreign policy. To do this, I had the honor of interviewing Tyler Shipley, a Canadian activist and academic. Tyler is a Professor of Society, Culture, and Commerce at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. He has a PhD in political science, and he did his field work in Honduras, looking at Canada’s foreign policy after the 2009 coup. He’s the author of the book Canada In the World: Settler Capitalism and Colonial Imagination.
Welcome to the Honduras Now podcast. This podcast shares human rights stories from Honduras and connects them with global issues and North American policy. I’m your host, Karen Spring, a longtime human rights activist that has lived in Honduras for over a decade. Thanks so much for listening.
Before we jump into the interview with Tyler, I wanted to share some really great news. Literally about an hour ago, I just returned from a celebration. Today, Friday, June 4 2021, political prisoner Rommel Herrera Portillo walked out of the Mario Mendoza Psychiatric Hospital in Tegucigalpa, where he has been held during the large part of two years. Before being transferred to the hospital, Romell was imprisoned in La Tolva jail, the maximum security prison located in southern Honduras. For two whole years, his family, along with the Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners, fought for his release. He was arrested during mass protests in Honduras in May 2019, while defending public education and health care. Today Rommel walked free. Dozens of people and Honduran media gathered outside the hospital to greet him and to celebrate his freedom. [Crowd chanting, “¡Libertad!” (Freedom!).] It’s such a great victory. I wanted to share it with you all, since international solidarity has played such a key role in getting all political prisoners released from prison. [Crowd chanting, “¡Sí se pudo!” (Yes, we did)!]
Now, without further ado, here is my interview with Canadian activist and academic Tyler Shipley, who has a ton of knowledge about Canada’s history and foreign policy, and also about Honduras. Tyler, thanks so much for joining me today. Welcome to the show.
Tyler Shipley:
Thanks for having me, Karen. This is amazing. It’s so good to talk. And yeah, let’s let’s get into this stuff.
Karen Spring:
Cool. So there were reports, and all over the Canadian media, and also here in Honduras, surprisingly, about the tragic and infuriating news about the 215 bodies of children that were found buried inside a formal residential school in British Columbia. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted, “It is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country’s history.” So many people like Trudeau say the treatment of Indigenous people in Canada is history, something of the past that’s not happening now, which is clearly not the case. So can you tell us how this tragic discovery, this news, manifests, and how Canada treats Indigenous people inside Canada, and also through their foreign policy?
Tyler Shipley:
Yeah, you know, I think it’s one of the most frustrating spins of the 21st century is this, the way that the Canadian governments, and you know, it’s Justin, for sure. But frankly, Harper did it too, to a certain extent, to the extent that he would even admit any of this. And it’s this idea that bad things happened in the past, right? And we’re so sorry, we’re so sorry that these bad things happened. So let’s move forward together. Which, you know, if you don’t know anything about what happened and what is happening, it sounds fine on the surface.
And, in fact, it feeds into a Canadian myth that Canadians are taught to have about themselves, which is that we’re so nice, we’re so thoughtful, that we apologize, and that’s sort of wrapped up in this idea of a kind of innocent, well-intentioned Canadian consciousness, you know, as opposed to, say, an American who’s boorish and doesn’t care and whatever. So Justin says something like that, and it feeds that myth.
But it is a myth. It is utterly untrue that Canada’s genocide of Indigenous people and nations was a thing that happened in the past. It is a thing that is ongoing, it is a process that continues. And yeah, some of its most gruesome aspects certainly happened or started in the past, I mean, you know, part of understanding the current moment is understanding the weight, the legacy, and the consequences, the ongoing consequences, of what happened in the past.
So, you know, to be a bit more concrete, particularly in the stages around Canadian Confederation, when Canada is created as an independent country and Canadian troops, actually with the RCMP, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, march west to clear the plains of Indigenous people. That’s explicitly what Confederation was about, it was about getting that land, getting control of it for Canada, as opposed to letting the Americans sweep up and take that territory. No one on the continent, none of the settlers on the continent had any consideration for the Indigenous people that lived there. As a matter of fact, the goal was to get rid of them. And they did that through conquest, through violent conquest, through the intentional spread of disease, through forced starvation. There’s a horrific book by James Daschuk, that describes the intentional starvation of Indigenous people on the plains.
And then, of course, yeah, things like the residential school system, which were explicitly designed to erase Indigenous people to make them not exist. So that if humans continued to exist in this sort of bloodline, from someone who had been Indigenous, if the humans existed, they wouldn’t be Indigenous anymore, in any real sense, they wouldn’t have any connection to their language, their culture, their past, their community, that they would be fully assimilated, and would just behave like some sort of replication of a white person. That was the explicit goal of the residential schools. And when it didn’t work, when they couldn’t assimilate them, they murdered them.
The residential school system wasn’t fully closed until 1996. So when we talk about this is a thing of the past. I mean, most I would say, a fair number of the people listening to us right now, were born in 1996. You know, this is within our lifetimes, certainly within my lifetime, I was in high school. Furthermore, the patterns that are established in the residential school system and in its sort of associated policies, the Indian Act, that is, you know, control of Indigenous movement, the pass system by the white settlers, the banning of Indigenous cultural and economic practices, you know, like the potlatch, the rain dance, the sun dance. These things were made illegal, and people would be arrested for participating in them.
These things have echoes in policies, new updated policies that continue across Canadian history. So, you know, if we’re horrified by the residential school system, we need to also be similarly horrified by the Sixties Scoop, which was a different version of the same thing, kidnapping Indigenous children, and, in this case, putting them in white homes, where they faced a range of abuses, emotional, physical, and so on. There was a Millennial Scoop, there was a wave of Indigenous children taken from their homes and from their communities around the turn of the millennium.
Even now, the Canadian child and welfare, I forget the name, they changed the name of these organizations, but the child and family services, whatever that organization is currently called, something like, and I don’t have the number in front of me, but you can look it up and stick it in there later, if you want. Something like 78 Indigenous children were killed in the current child and family welfare services system in the last, I think, 15 years or something like that. Again, I don’t have the numbers in front of me, it’s a statistic that I saw the other day and memorized.
But my point is that many of the structures that the residential school system represents continue to exist with slightly different language, slightly different specifics, but with ultimately the same goal, which is to have Indigenous culture, life, community, economics, especially autonomy, have those things erased. The goal of the Canadian state, as I see it, with respect to Indigenous people, is that they should only exist as a cultural token that can be pulled out to illustrate Canadian multiculturalism, to illustrate Canadian tolerance, to illustrate that there’s this interesting thing in the Canadian past, which is this, look at this interesting dance, you know, look at this culture that used to exist here. And there’s still a few of them left, and they still practice this. Look, they wear these things. That’s the way that Canada relates to Indigenous nations.
They do not deal with Indigenous nations as equal nations, where they have an equal relationship, and they negotiate on equal terms with them. And for evidence of that, one needs only look at the Canadian government’s relationship to Indigenous nations right now. Wetʼsuwetʼen, last year, when people on their territory, Indigenous people on their own territory, said, we don’t want your pipeline built through our land. And the Canadian government tried to build the pipeline anyways. And so they stood outside in front of that construction project to block it. The RCMP was authorized with snipers in place to use lethal force against Indigenous people defending their own territory. That is not a nation-to-nation relationship. That is a colonial relationship. And the goal is that Wetʼsuwetʼen should not have the authority and power and capacity to defend itself if Canada wants to build a pipeline.
That is part and parcel of genocide, it is an ongoing aspect of the same broader project, which is that Canada is going to do what Canada wants to do. And if Indigenous people have a problem with it, get out of the way. So, that’s a long-winded answer, and I know I took it in a few different directions. But I think it’s my way of trying to articulate that everything that is present, and everything that is underneath, what made that horrible discovery in Kamloops possible, is still present in the current Canadian relationship to Indigenous nations.
Karen Spring:
Tyler, there’s a lot of people that listen to this podcast that are based in the US. I’m not going to say Americans, because Latin Americans don’t like it when you say Americans. But on delegations to Honduras, US citizens, and also Canadians, are often surprised to hear about the behavior of Canadian companies, mostly mining companies, but also sweatshop companies in Honduras. You know, you did your research here, when you were doing your doctorate, and you have done activism in solidarity with Honduras. So what do you think people need to know about Canada’s unearned reputation when it comes to their foreign policy?
Tyler Shipley:
Yeah, that’s a great question. It is such an unearned reputation. I like the way you said that. You know, if you take everything I just said about how Canada related to Indigenous nations, I think you can basically apply most of that to the way Canada relates to other countries, other non-white colonized or formerly colonized countries. So Canada relations with the US are very warm and fuzzy, of course. But Canada’s relations to Honduras tend to follow a pattern that’s very similar to what I just described with Indigenous nations, which is, Canada is there to exploit, Canada will exploit for its own purposes.
My recent book is about this, it’s about the way in which Canada’s colonial project towards Indigenous nations is then mirrored and reflected in its relationships abroad. And if colonialism has two main goals, one of which is, like, capitalism, get the lands, extract resources, profit from it, etc. And the other is a kind of ideological assumption of superiority. White people are better than Indigenous people, they’re smarter, they’re more advanced, and so on, all of that nonsense. Those two things Canada basically applies to, you know, the rest of the formerly colonized world, Latin America, Africa, parts of Asia, and so on.
So when it comes to something like mining companies, sweatshop companies, logging companies, Canadian capital basically treats a place like Honduras as if it’s there for the taking. Its resources are there for the taking, potentially, its labor, you know, cheap labor, because it’s in a position to really exploit poor people, and that it’s there for the taking, and it’s almost an offense to Canada if some government should try to intervene, or some community groups try to intervene. Now, how dare a group of Indigenous people in some part of Honduras get organized to try to fight back against a Canadian mining operation? How dare they! Who do they think they are! This is Canada. This is business. This is commerce. You know, there’s a Canadian ambassador in Guatemala who once said, recently, by the way, this is in the last 15 years, who said, with respect to the Indigenous Maya people in Guatemala, these people have to understand that this is the future. This is capitalism, this is the future, and they have to get on board. That’s not a direct quote, but it’s pretty close. And I mean, that’s the Canadian attitude.
So, you know, we’ve got, as you know, as you’ve probably talked about on the show all the time, Canadian mining companies that use duplicitous means of getting community consent, if they get community consent at all, to then undertake deeply exploitative processes, processes that are environmentally destructive, they poison river systems, which then poison communities, and kill fish and kill other species, make people sick, exploit the labor, exploit Hondurans or whomever is working in those places, whether it’s a mining operation or a sweatshop sock-making factory, and then take their profits and run, leave as little as possible in Honduras, and take all of that money back to Bay Street. I mean, I’m in Toronto, they’re, like 15 minutes away from me, these massive skyscrapers that house the headquarters of many of these big companies, you know, Goldcorp, or what have you. So that’s the pattern.
And it’s eerily similar to Canada’s relationship to Indigenous nations here. I mean, I’ve even written about how, very specifically, the way that Canada treats Inuit in the north, right now, is almost identical to how Canada treats people in Honduras with respect to these extractive projects. Because it’s a sort of a similar dynamic in the north, where there’s a lot of resources that Canadian capital wants to get access to, but there are people that live there. And there are people who want to live on and with the land in particular ways there. And it’s frustrating because it interferes with what Canada wants to do. And so Canada, you know, the Canadian state and Canadian businesses do the same things. They trick people into signing away their land, they trick people, they bribe people into granting concessions, you know, they coerce certain members of the community to speak on behalf of the community and say, yeah, no, we really want this diamond mine, this will be great for us. Which of course, the company knows it won’t be, the company is only trying to extract the diamonds, get those profits, and then bring them back to Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal.
And yeah, this is a pattern that happens here, in Honduras, and in all other parts of the world. So it is an unearned, a deeply unearned reputation that Canada has as some kind of good neighbor, some kind of helpful, you know, peacekeeper in the world. It’s all, frankly, nonsense. It’s just something that essentially settler Canadians tell themselves so they can sleep at night.
Karen Spring:
So something that I frequently think about, and I’ve learned over the years, when working in Honduras, is just how to address human rights issues when I’m engaging with Canadian authorities that are based here in Tegucigalpa, and also US authorities, you know, folks in the embassy in the consulate. So in my communication with Canadian authorities here in Tegucigalpa, but also in Ottawa, they often imply, and they never say it directly, but they imply it, that Canada doesn’t have the same amount of clout or power that US authorities have. So I get this question a lot. And these discussions arise a lot in my conversations with folks in the US is, and I want to ask you, because I feel like you’d explain it very well, is how would you describe the difference between the foreign policy of Canada, which is a smaller country, it doesn’t have the same global status as the US, with US foreign policy? Like, what is that relationship between them?
Tyler Shipley:
Yeah, it’s a tough one, right? Because if you put the two things side by side, what’s the US doing and what’s Canada doing, yeah, Canada is like small potatoes by comparison. You know, they’re essentially doing the same things. These are two countries that are built on precisely the same model, the same foundation, genocide of Indigenous people to grab the land and profit from it, convert it into capitalist property, and then exploit labor on that land. That’s what these two countries are. A slightly different faction of the ruling class was able to hold on to the part that’s a bit further north. So these two countries have virtually the same history, the same foundation, and more or less the same standard operating procedures. But, yeah, Canada’s a lot smaller, and its impact is less on a kind of absolute scale than the US. That’s 100% true. And I certainly think that, if we’re going to talk about Canadian imperialism, and the things that Canada is doing, it would be foolish to only talk about Canada because, yes, the Americans are doing the same thing at a more substantial level.
But I think what we have to guard against is the idea that somehow because Canada’s smaller, it’s not as bad, it’s not as harmful. Or it’s not significant. One of the ways in which Canada is able to do all of the things that it does is precisely because people don’t pay as much attention. Because, yeah, we’re all, but I shouldn’t say we are all, but most people who are moderately critical are tuned in to the fact that the United States is doing all kinds of unsavory shit all over the world, right? But Canada gets away with so much by sliding under the radar, performing this kind of thing about being more progressive, being more liberal, right, having someone like Justin, who, by the way, is the preferred, I think the preferred figurehead for Canada, truthfully. I think the ruling class in Canada generally prefers to have a Justin, because he does the job more effectively, because he’s a performer. He performs Canadian liberalism. He says things that sound nice, he cries on TV, he’s always got his crocodile tears on TV. He always talks about the environment. I mean, he’s good at that. As opposed to someone like Stephen Harper, or, you know, if you think about any of the kind of conservative leaders that they’ve cropped up over the last several years, Erin O’Toole, I mean, I don’t think the Canadian ruling class wants Erin O’Toole as Prime Minister, because that guy will say the quiet part out loud, right? He’ll sound like an American. What Canadian capital wants, I think, is someone like Justin who makes it seem, if you don’t look closely, like Canada is different, like Canada is not the United States. Canada cares. Canada listens. Canada has conversations. Canada reflects, right? It’s bullshit. So because of that, I think that Canada slides kind of off the radar in ways that are dangerous, because it means that Canada gets away with a lot of shit that it shouldn’t. And, you know, things that we’ve been talking about. I think one of the things that’s worth noting about the relationship here, Canada and the US, is that what Canada does, is sometimes framed by progressive even people in Canada, as being unfortunate, but a kind of a consequence of the power of the US. What I mean is, there are people in Canada who will say, look, Canadians don’t want to behave like this, we don’t want to exploit labor, we don’t want to support the Americans. We don’t want to overthrow a government in Haiti or Honduras. That’s not Canada. But we do it because the Americans want to do it. And Canada just can’t stand up to the Americans. Canada needs to stand up and be the real Canada, and don’t just follow the Americans. And I think that’s really misguided, deeply, deeply misguided. I get why people want to believe that, you know, I’d rather believe that there’s some inherent Canadian goodness, and we’re only doing bad things because, you know, we’ve got this bully behind, you know, pushing us to do it, but it’s nonsense. It’s total nonsense. Canada, to the extent that Canada cooperates with the US, it’s because they share the same goals. And it’s because Canada can benefit, Canadian capital, I should be clear, the Canadian ruling class, the Canadian rich, benefits from working with the Americans.
To give you an example, it’s outside of Latin America, Canada participates in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. More so in Afghanistan, but actually, Canada is significantly involved in the war in Iraq. And you might say, well, why would Canada do that? That seems so opposite to what Canada stands for, and didn’t Canadians say they didn’t support the war in Iraq? What is this?
Well, Canada did that because the benefits, the economic benefits of participating in those wars, were massive. When the US war in Iraq destroyed that country’s telecommunications network, bombed it into the Stone Age, a Canadian company, Nortel, got the contract to rebuild all of the fiber optic network in Iraq. Massive, massive contract, and a Canadian company got it because Canada participated in the war. Canada helped do PR for the war. Canada stood beside the Americans through that. This is not Canada being bullied into it. This is Canada saying, that’s our shit right there, we’re going to slide in, and get in there, and be a part of that, and we’re going to benefit from it. So, yeah, to your American listeners, to people in the US who have that sort of illusion about Canada, I’m sorry to burst that bubble. But it’s a bubble that we really desperately need to burst. Because I think it causes us to miss a lot of what’s happening.
Karen Spring:
Absolutely. So a lot of people think that consulates and embassies serve a very specific purpose around the world, of all sorts, of all countries, right, consulates and embassies. And that is that they are basically providing consular services to their citizens that might be in that country. And that’s the main reason why they’re there. So for years, I’ve been pushing on the Canadian Consulate here in Tegucigalpa to publicly speak out about the abuses of the Juan Orlando Hernández government. I’ve also even solicited their assistance with consular services. And the response has been like, well, we can’t really do that, and we can’t do this, and we can’t do that. But anyways. And when I asked them to speak out against the Honduran government or the abuses of the Honduran government, they have yet to do so. What would you say is the role of Canadian embassies abroad vis-à-vis the interests of Canadian economic capital, like you’ve touched on?
Tyler Shipley:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have this very silly idea, right, that, like the embassies are just these helpful places, they are going to help our citizens abroad. But of course that’s not generally the case. And the embassies generally are part of the kind of broader apparatus of how does Canada get what it wants, out of a particular country, out of a particular place?
You know, when I was researching for the book, and as I mentioned, the book sort of starts with colonialism at home, but then says, look, all of the rest of Canadian foreign policy reflects that same colonial starting points, the same goals get reflected, and I went through the entirety of Canadian foreign policy, 150 years of it, all around the world. So I’m regularly looking at cables and messages and statements from embassies all over the world. And there’s some of the most heinous quotes in the book, right, because the embassies are there to facilitate the interests of the Canadian state and Canadian business. And those are usually really contrary to the needs of the people in that country.
You know, when the government of Salvador Allende in Chile is overthrown by Augusto Pinochet, obviously, vicious dictator with the support of the CIA, Canada is deeply involved, and the cables that come out of the Chilean embassy are all, I mean, they’re positively giddy with excitement about this horrific, and, I mean, it was viscerally horrific, there’s people being massacred in the stadium, you know, on September 11, 1973, and the Canadian Ambassador is sending cables back to Ottawa saying, you know, this is great, there’s a positively jubilant atmosphere. That riffraff of the Latin American left are being dealt with, Chile is finally gonna wake up from, you know, and clean up this mess. I mean, it’s really horrifying, blood curdling stuff to read.
And, of course, by the way, a footnote on that, Canada had frozen all of its economic ties with the Allende, elected Allende government. As soon as Pinochet took power in that coup, Canada opened up full relations again with Chile, and extended millions of dollars of loans and foreign aid to Pinochet’s government as he was murdering people in the stadium.
Which, of course, for your listeners who are familiar with Honduras, there will be some familiarity there, because Canada was fostering frosty relations with Manuel Zelaya during the course of his time in office, and then as soon as the coup took place, Canada worked very, very hard, and through its embassy, which wasn’t in Honduras, of course, it was in, I think they were operating out of Costa Rica at that time. But through its embassy was constantly undermining Zelaya, undermining the movement that was protesting for the return of Zelaya, implying that the crisis was Zelaya’s fault, implying that the crisis was just some sort of political chaos in a backwoods country, and that the way forward was an election. And then there was an election, of course, you know, a nonsense bullshit election, stolen, effectively, by the golpistas. And then Canada, through its embassy, again, has great things to say about, okay, Honduras is moving forward, the crisis is resolved. Congratulations, President Lobo. You know, everything’s gonna be okay now.
So the embassies in some ways are this really important piece of the broader economic and political imperialism that Canada projects onto the world. If Canada wants to be able to exploit, you know Honduran women in Gildan factories, then the embassy is there to report on Stephen Harper visiting those factories, saying that they’re wonderful, and they’re clean, and they’re safe, and everything’s great, and Gildan should get a prize. In fact, other Honduran employers should learn from Gildan, because Gildan is one of the most, the leaders of corporate social responsibility. That all happened. As you know, that all happened, that literally is something that happened. These are some of the worst employers in Honduras, some of the most exploitative, literally workers have been killed for trying to organize unions in those factories.
So yeah, I mean, I guess that’s sort of my answer to your question about the embassies, that they they perform this kind of front role, you know, say the right things, say them nicely, but do the quiet work of supporting Canadian capital in whatever particular place they’re located. And they do this all over the world, I could give you examples from Indonesia, I could give you examples from Congo. And they would all ring with the same kind of patterns, slightly different details, but the same patterns.
Karen Spring:
Yeah, I think that’s a really good way of putting it, Tyler. So as you and I are having this conversation, we’re two white Canadians having this discussion. You know, you’ve really done a good job at sort of describing Canada’s history and ongoing racist policies towards Indigenous people in Canada, and then how that relates to foreign policy. I’m here in Honduras, here in Toronto, I think it’s important to be clear, and to tell people about what our role is in changing Canada’s policies, you know, in Canada, but also its foreign policies. And foreign policy doesn’t get very much attention, in general, in Canada and the United States. So, you know, my last question for you is, what is the role of white Canadians and not just activists, but just like people that are interested in these issues, in changing Canada’s imperialist policies towards Indigenous people globally, so in Canada, and then elsewhere?
Tyler Shipley:
Yeah. I mean, it’s a tough question, really, if you take it seriously, right? I mean, there’s a lot of easy answers, that would sound, you know, fine, but that aren’t satisfying to me. You know, there’s a lot of stuff about ally and allyship out there. You know, listen to Indigenous voices, right? So there are some very blasé, simplistic things like that that I could say, but that I wouldn’t feel great about because they’re not substantive enough, they’re not complex enough, they don’t understand the complexities of these things. So I don’t have an easy answer for you.
But I guess a few things I could say, you know, for one thing, I think settlers in Canada, white or otherwise, frankly, all settlers in Canada, have a responsibility to know the history of the conquest of this land, know how we came to be on this land. However, whatever our process was, that we got there, that our ancestors got there, why is this land called Canada? And how did it become that? I think that’s a responsibility, that’s a starting, a very, very first starting point, is to know that history.
I think a second crucially important piece is to reckon with our responsibility for it. And I’m choosing my words carefully, because I don’t think guilt is the right word. Guilt is maybe part of a process that can happen for people, you know, people I’ve known, my students, you know, my mom, you know, my mom, and I talk on the phone all the time about things. And my mom is a very thoughtful, smart woman, but a white person from Manitoba who hasn’t, in her lifetime didn’t spend a lot of time thinking through these things. And in the last five years, I think there has been some shift in the discourse in Canada and the mainstream ways in which these things are being talked about, and my mom is trying at some level, and I appreciate that. And I think a lot of people, a lot of white people are at some level trying. But I think feeling guilty, feeling bad about what happened is a bit of a dead end. It’s a dead end that centers our own experience, you know, I feel so awful about this thing that happened, I’m feeling so sad, you know. Good for you, but what are you going to do about it. What responsibility are you going to take? How are you going to change this ongoing process? How are you, you know, you’re upset about what happened, or what was discovered to have happened outside of Kamloops. Okay, good. Be upset about it. And now tell me precisely what action you want to take. For instance, are you going to pressure the Canadian government to follow the terms of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and investigate every site for other mass graves, so that at the very least, we can acknowledge the scope, the scale of what happened in those schools? And reckon honestly with what happened. And this is a tiny step that should already be a given. But Justin Trudeau’s government, for all his crocodile tears, continues to refuse to do that, continues to fight lawsuits in court about these very kinds of issues. So as a white Canadian, what concrete tasks will people take on that will counteract the concrete effects of Canadian colonialism and imperialism? You know, not putting an “every child matters” thing on your Facebook picture, because frankly, I mean, go ahead and do that, and it raises some awareness, but, honestly, awareness isn’t the thing. We don’t need more awareness here, we need concrete action. The next time there is a blockade of a pipeline that is being built through Indigenous territory, and the RCMP are having a standoff with Indigenous land defenders, go and stand with the Indigenous land defenders. Physically stand there.
You know, these things are happening everywhere. It’s not just Wetʼsuwetʼen, there’s a blockade 50 miles southwest-ish of me, at Six Nations, you know, that is ongoing, these things are happening, you know, everything that happened in Nova Scotia, you know, last fall or whenever that was. So, concrete tasks.
And I think that applies to foreign policy too. And it may seem harder, because it’s further away, but at some level, it’s actually not that different, because you can pressure the Canadian government to, just as easily as you can pressure the Canadian government to search those sites, you can pressure the Canadian government to intervene in Honduras, to get political prisoners released.
We know that, you and I, because your mom and your community here in Ontario organized to do some of that work, and actually had some success, you know, a small community getting organized, had some success in pressuring the Canadian government to demand that the Honduran government release some political prisoners. And, you know, it didn’t change the whole thing. Problems are ongoing. But it was a positive step. And it inspired other things, and it can inspire other things.
So everything I’m saying here is first steps. Ultimately, we need a revolutionary movement that’s going to overthrow the state and radically reshape the way that this place operates. That’s ultimately what we need. But since most people aren’t ready to do that, there are still small concrete steps we can take. So, I hope that helps. It’s a hard question, right? And I probably didn’t give a satisfying, easy answer. But that’s partly by design, because I don’t think there is one.
Karen Spring:
I think you’re right, I just, I had to ask you, because I get that question a lot. And I think people want easy answers. And it’s really not. And it takes a lot of time and a lot of energy, and just persistence and consistency that not a lot of people are committed to doing really. And also….
Tyler Shipley:
And you know what? Oh, no, sorry to interrupt you, Karen. Because, actually, what I wanted to say is that, in some ways, what you have done over the last, like, what is it 15 years now that you’ve been at almost 15 years that you’ve been partially living in and working in Honduras? I mean, that in some ways is the model of what you can do. No, no, no, I mean it, because what you’ve done in Honduras over the last 15 years, is that you have respectfully and consistently become part of, become an element of, and in relationship with social movement in Honduras. You’ve listened to people, you’ve listened to a lot of different people, you know, you don’t just listen to one person and then go gangbusters on whatever that one person said, as if that represents all of Honduras. No, you’ve taken the time to actually get the lay of the land, talk to a lot of people, get to know the country, get to know people, get to know the problems, and then try to rearticulate them to other white Canadians that need to know this stuff. So you know, I don’t mean to, you know, I’m not blowing smoke up your ass. I genuinely think that what you’ve done in Honduras is one way that you can be a solid white person struggling against colonialism.
Karen Spring:
Yeah, and I think it’s important to recognize that you don’t have to travel all the way to Honduras to do that, right? I mean, people don’t, you don’t have to be here. There’s so many different spaces that people can do this work, like you said, go and stand beside Indigenous people as they’re standing down against the RCMP, right, or in the classroom, teaching students to open their eyes.
Okay, Tyler, so where can people find you online? And I want you to specifically mention your Facebook page that you manage that is, I think it’s the same name as your book, Canada In the World. Your full book name is Canada In the World: Settler Capitalism and Colonial Imagination. Where can people find you online?
Tyler Shipley:
Yeah, the book is available at the Fernwood Books website. You can also contact me directly, and I can offer discounts, slight discounts on the price of the book if it’s a little steep. And yeah, I mean, I think people interested in in this work and this stuff, Twitter is probably the best place, better even than Facebook, there’s a Twitter account that is @canadainthewrld. Although it’s W-R-L-D, it’s easy enough to find, and it’s a Twitter account for the book, and I post threads that go into some detail about different pieces of what I write in the book, and there’s pictures and videos and stuff. And I think that that can be a useful place. There is also a Facebook page, that is Canada In the World. And then I have my own Twitter account, too, it’s @le_shipster. Yeah, that’s, that’s sort of where you where you’ll find these things.
And I wanted, before we finish, I want to echo what you last said, because the last thing you said was really important. You mentioned teaching, and I didn’t mean to be too, I think I was too dismissive about awareness raising there, it is important to talk to people, it’s important, if you’re a teacher, it’s important to teach these things in the classroom, to teach them thoughtfully, you know, to find critical resources, you know, not just teach the same old Canadian story, but actually dig into the details, whether it’s my book or other books, and also to have those conversations with the people in our lives.
To bring it back to my mom, if for whatever reason this is in my head. You know, my mom said to me last summer that she, after everything that was going on in the US after the George Floyd murder, my mom said, you know, I have a friend who sometimes will say racist things when we’re on the phone, and it makes me so uncomfortable, but I don’t, I just ignore it, I just move on. And my mom is very unconfrontational, like, you know, she doesn’t want to have a fight with anyone about anything. She’s scared of that kind of thing. But she said to me, you know, I’m not gonna let that go anymore, you know, if this person says something, I’m going to confront that.
And that’s very small, and it’s very personal. But if that kind of thing gets done, if more people do that work with their friends, with their family, with their co-workers, with their bosses, if necessary, and we start doing that ideological work, it does matter. Because part of the way Canada gets away with doing the things that it does, is that the majority of people in Canada basically think it’s okay, basically, at some level think, yeah, well, you know, Indigenous people aren’t using the land properly, anyways, we need a pipeline. Or, you know, people in Honduras are backwards, they don’t, you know, whatever, I don’t know what’s going on down there, it’s chaos, it’s crazy. There’s all these ways that Canadians justify ignoring these problems. And if we do that work that you’re describing, in the classroom, with our friends and families, and start building more of a consciousness about what’s happening, it does matter. Maybe not as much as some people want us to think, you know, actions matter more. But the talking matters, too. So yeah, I just want to bring that point back and kind of echo it.
Karen Spring:
Yeah, I think that’s a good place to leave off. So Tyler, thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s been such a pleasure to have you. You really are just like a wealth of knowledge. Tyler, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Tyler Shipley:
Thanks, Karen. Great talk to you.
Karen Spring:
That’s the show for today. Thank you so much to everyone for listening. As always, you can find the show notes at HondurasNow.org.
And just to share some more good news with you all, the Honduras Now podcast was recently named as one of the top 20 human rights podcasts by prettyprogressive.com.
And it was also recently featured as a podcast that all should listen to by a Honduran fashion magazine called Auge Boga.
Thank you to my monthly supporters. With your support, I am able to keep this podcast going.
Until next time, I’m Karen Spring. Hasta pronto.
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