Resisting an Orientation Booklet Alternative
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resisting an alternative orientation booklet 2018 / 2019 Social Justice Centre LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT This booklet was created‘ on the overlapping unceded, ancestral, and stolen e e w w e lands of the xkmkkkkkymkmx m 0 - k y m (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. These lands are sovereign and unsurrendered. The creators of this booklet live, learn, and love on these lands known as “Vancouver,‘ e e w w e British Columbia.” Our university occupies the lands of the xkmx m ,mmkmym 0 - k y m. This booklet is authored by social justice-oriented and decolonizing groups at 1. Land acknowledgement 1 UBC and in our local community, and edited by the UBC Social Justice Centre. We recognize our complicity in the settler colonial project as a majority non- 2. UBC Campus Tour 2 Indigenous group of students. 3. Musqueam Nation Introduction 4 In this alternative orientation package, we aim to provide a map for the 4. UBC’s Colonial History 5 engagement of incoming and returning students and community members of UBC, especially since youth and students are commonly written off as apolitical 5. Situating Ourselves 6 and apathetic. Through this alternative orientation, we provide a platform for student movements and innovative groups to reach out to the UBC community. Trans Mountain pipeline struggle 6 Everyone has a place and role in working towards a more just world. Where do you see yourself fit? What needs to change for our space to fit you? Housing Crisis 8 UBC is a vibrant community of organizers and activists, and what follows is Upcoming Elections 10 our attempt to showcase some of this. It is important to note that many projects and groups exist beyond what is presented in this booklet ––there is so much to SASC Closure 13 discover, it would be futile to claim exhaustiveness here. Mining Justice 14 As members of university community who experience a broad diversity of intersecting oppressions, it is important that our movements recognize the Education is a Right 15 importance of building alliances and solidarities. This booklet is an embodiment 6. Radical Clubs on Campus 16 of these movement-to-movement bridges. We need to work together where we can. Resource Groups 16 The university and the university community is complicit in many of the Support 20 systems of oppressions and violences they create, which we are trying to bring to light and fight to dismantle through our collective organizing. In particular, Indigeneity 22 Indigenous peoples are disproportionately and most often on the frontlines of these violences and resistances. We must reflect upon how our presence works Art 25 to preserve a settler colonial status quo, and we must listen to our Indigenous Environmental Justice 28 comrades for ways we can act and organize as allies, for ways we can center Indigenous voices in the movement to decolonize the university, and for way Social Justice 30 we can be allies to Indigenous resurgence. We want to recognize that youth Vancouver Organizations 32 and student movements have not always been inclusive, and often continue to exclude most marginalized communities, especially Indigenous folks, people 7. Upcoming Events 33 of colour, women, queer, trans and non-binary folks, folks with disabilities, others, and particularly where these identities overlap and intersect. We must continuously act to resist and reverse this trend. 1 UBC CAMPUS TOUR MUSQUEAM NATION INTRODUCTION‘ e e w w e x m 0 - k y m (Musqueam)‘ speaking people. We have always moved e e w w e throughout our traditional territory using The x m 0 - k y m (Musqueam) the resources it provides for fishing, people have been here as long as there hunting, trapping and gathering. Today, has been land to live upon. We have lived we are a strong, growing community of in the area of our present location for over 1,300 members. We live on a small thousands of years, and our traditional portion of our traditional territory, known territory occupies what is now Vancouver ‘ ‘ as the Musqueam Indian Reserve, located and surrounding areas. Some of our w e south of Marine Drive near the mouth of s yem (ancient histories) describe Ongoing histories of colonialism, Globally, UBC’s is part of a X the Fraser River. Despite the devastating the landscape as it was over eight neoliberalism, and imperial capitalism hegemonic system that contributes impacts of residential schools, colonial thousand years ago. have influenced the role of institutions to widespread violence against laws banning our ceremonies, and other like universities. Universities are an marginalized communities. For The name Musqueam relates ‘ back to e e e attempts to assimilate our people, we w example of an institution that has example, as we will delve into later, the flowering plant, m 0 - k y , which have remained strong and distinct. Our been shaped by these socio-political the resource extraction industry ‘ grows in the Fraser‘ River estuary. There w e lands and waters continue to support our systems, but have also historically has a palpable presence on the UBC is a sX yem that has been passed cultural and economic practices while contributed to their dominance. campus --especially since the creation on from generation to generation that serving as a source of knowledge and ‘ of CIRDI (Canadian International explains how we became known as In being part of a university e e w e memory, encoded with our teachings and Resource and Development Institute, ‘ w the x m 0 - k y m – People of the community, we invite you to reflect e e e laws. formerly Canadian International w on how this space and the knowledge ‘ ‘ ‘ m 0 - k y plant. ‘ Institute for Extractive Industries and e e e production that occurs within it We are traditional H nq min m manufacture hegemony and uphold Development). This is an industry that systems of oppression – UBC is fundamentally exists to perpetuate complicit in perpetuating imperial dispossession of Indigenous nations Taken with permission from the Musqueam website. Learn more at and destroy their sacred land and https://www.musqueam.bc.ca and colonial violence, both locally and globally. water. Locally, these systems dispossess As members of the UBC community Indigenous nations, specifically the we are also complicit in the violences Musqueam peoples, for example that the University upholds (to varying through UBC’s 1922 ‘Great Trek’ that degrees). We invite you to reflect on demanded Musqueam land for the UBC your positionality and your experiences campus. They also act to determine on this campus, and we call you in to which bodies and which ideas are join the myriad spaces of resistance present, visible, and welcomed in and and decolonization, both on and off this amongst university spaces. campus. 4 5 Despite the continued opposition Finally, the pipeline expansion from Indigenous nations, and the project is fundamentally unsafe, as latest court decision, the federal the Burnaby fire department has government still plans to use tax stated that they cannot put out a fire dollars to complete the pipeline. at the Trans Mountain tank farm if it is Trans Mountain Pipeline Struggle Thus, Trudeau has shown a blatant expanded. This tank farm is in close The Kinder Morgan Trans However, on August 30th, the disregard for Indigenous rights vicinity to Forest Grove Elementary Mountain Pipeline Expansion project Federal Court of Appeal delivered a and sovereignty, and reconciliation School and SFU, both of which would is a proposed project that would twin huge blow to the pipeline project by with Indigenous nations, choosing have no protection should a fire start. the existing 65 year old Kinder Morgan ruling in favour of First Nations and instead to perpetuate Canada’s Despite the court win, the pipeline, which runs from Edmonton quashing the federal government’s neocolonial extractivist paradigm. struggle continues, with resistance (Treaty 6 Lands) to Vancouver (Coast approval of the pipeline expansion. The project also demonstrates against the pipeline is taking place Salish territories). The project would The courts said that the government the Trudeau government’s lack of on multiple fronts, led consistently triple the pipeline’s capacity to deliver failed to adequately consult with commitment to achieving Canada’s by Indigenous nations, elders and bitumen to Vancouver, and result in a Indigenous nations, thus violating (inadequate) climate change targets, leaders: Tiny House Warriors are seven-fold increase in tanker traffic. Canadian law, as well as international since it relies on the expansion of building houses in the way of the The project has been met with law (United Nations Declaration of the tar sands (and the human rights pipeline in Secwepemc territories intense opposition from Indigenous the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, violations that accompany it), and (interior B.C.), and Protect the Inlet nations, as well as municipalities, UNDRIP, and International Labour thus further entrenches our reliance and the Kwekwecnewtxw Watch which resulted in Kinder Morgan Organization, ILO, Convention 169) by on fossil fuels. This summer, Eastern House are leading the way on Tsleil- suspending construction and not getting free, prior, and informed Canada experienced record- Waututh territories (so-called threatening to stop the project. In consent (FPIC) from all Indigenous breaking heat waves, and over 600 Burnaby). On Burnaby Mountain, response, on May 29th, the Prime nations that would be impacted – wildfires burned B.C., threatening there have been around 300 arrests, Minister Trudeau’s federal liberal the majority of which did not give communities and creating with folks who are getting arrested government offered to purchase the their consent to the Trans Mountain dangerous air quality conditions now facing a minimum of 14 days existing 65-year-old infrastructure for pipeline.