It was not a rebellion and Metis were not insurgents

Kwe

Wonder are they (mainstream media) deliberately trying to be offensive? I refer to the recent news articles (e.g. The last battle of Red River CP) about the pending Supreme Court of Canada decision about their own never honouring the agreements they made with reference to the Red River Métis children, where the mainstream media repeatedly use the word "rebellion" instead of resistance, and try to falsely label Métis as "insurgents".

It wasn't a "rebellion". The Métis were not "insurgents". They never were subjects of the British Crown, no one "rebels" against something they have never been a part of to begin with. They were free human beings living on their own land as the Creator / creation intended. Their ancestors (up to seven generations before them) had once been engagés (laborers with short term contracts) of the french, but the french (who only had monopoly trading rights in Indigenous territories) had long since returned to europe. I emphasize they were (are) free human beings. They never were slaves of the french and the people could never have been transferred to another "owner" when they never had been owned to begin with. Not that owning slaves was ever moral or acceptable, human beings are not property.

What they did was "resist", they resisted being locked up on reserves or settlements aka concentration camps, they resisted theft of not only their homeland, but their personal property and trade items that were stolen from them such as pemmican they had worked hard and long to prepare, and furs they had also worked long and hard to prepare as trade items. I am pretty sure a lot of the labour of the women went into preparation of those furs, hides, and pemmican too.

The thieves would wait until all the work had been done, and it's not like pemmican was prepared in a snap in those (or any) days, nor were furs and hides prepared for market overnight, it represented long hard hours of physical work of many people ... after things had been made ready as trade items, the thieves would break in and steal them, not only stealing the trade items, but the hard labour put into those items.

In between times there was wave after wave of smallpox that killed many people.

Doesn't take much digging into history to discover who the thieves were, and it wasn't "white (sic) settlers from Ontario". Nor was it the peoples displaced from their highland and island homelands who quickly had gone "wild" and whose descendants had become Métis as well.

As for the resistance being relabelled a "rebellion", that's offensive and obnoxious to me. It's not just a falsification of history, it's total bull$hit, as it tries to make it appear -- retroactively -- that the Indigenous peoples had been "rebellious subjects" of a foreign (european based) ruler when the fact was many of them had been engagés of the Northwest Company that employed them and traded with them, that is, they were free people who worked for and traded with a trading company. That company never had title to any of their homelands but simply monopoly trading rights in relation to others foreign to the North American continent just as they were.

Of course the Métis resisted those thieves! I suspect if Indigenous North Americans ever turned up on a european (or any foreign) shore with murder, bio-terrorism (smallpox blankets), rape, pillage, looting, kidnapping, child sex slavery, and adult work slavery, and theft the only thing on their mind, europeans (or anyone else) would resist as well! The fact is Indigenous North Americans were happy where they were, and had no desire to invade and disturb other people around the globe for "riches" and illusory "power over".

An insurgent is not someone who resists terrorists, and tries to defend themselves, their own livelihoods and that of their children, their own property and means of subsistence, and their own homeland!

Yes I think the constant use of the word "rebellion" and labelling the people as "insurgents" is extremely offensive. I'm not sure if the mainstream media intends to be offensive, but to me they are offensive, and disgustingly so.

Look at the opposite, for them not to be defined as "insurgents" (part of the "Indian problem") according to the mainstream media, they had to what? submit to slavery and imprisonment? give up everything to those who never earned it by their own work, blood, sweat, and tears? or just simply die off and disappear? Oh really?

Surely no one sane and of a sound mind would ever believe that.

Kisikewiskw
12 Dec 2011

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tags: aboriginal, assiniboia, assiniboine, british, canada, crown, engage, ethnocide, free people, fur trade, genocide, hbc, hudsons bay company, human beings, human rights, insurgents, manitoba, mainstream media, metis, northwest company, offensive, ottawa, pemmican, rebellion, red river, red river metis, resistance, smallpox blankets, winnipeg

Also see To rabble dot ca : It was not a rebellion