Difference Between Anti-Genocide & Anti-Racism Work

The Basics:

Foundations: Land is our starting position; the land & its peoples.

Limitations: Antiracism work starts and stops with people, & it fails to acknowledge land materially. Origins: History did not start when the colonizers showed up. Disconnections: We make ourselves squatters on stolen land when we do not honour how we cannot separate land from its peoples. Anti-genocide work picks up where antiracism work falls down.

Origins: History did not start when the colonizers showed up. Disconnections: We make ourselves squatters on stolen land when we do not honour how we cannot separate land from its peoples. Anti-genocide work picks up where antiracism work falls down.

Disconnections: We make ourselves squatters on stolen land when we do not honour how we cannot separate land from its peoples. Anti-genocide work picks up where antiracism work falls down.

Liberation: Anti-genocide & liberation work include the liberation of land. You cannot liberate people without also returning their land & sovereignty. Genuflections: There is no need for DEI/antiracism/Inclusion work if all we do is genuflect to the colonizer.

Genuflections: There is no need for DEI/antiracism/Inclusion work if all we do is genuflect to the colonizer.

Mindful Action:

Anti-genocide work is hard and gritty, and there are a few things we need to be mindful of so that we do not end up compounding harm:

Extraction & Exploitation: The things we acquire and/or attain cannot come at the expense of someone else and/or somewhere else; if what we acquire, attain and achieve come at the expense of someone else and/or somewhere else, this is privilege. For example: You worked very hard to put yourself through university to acquire your degree, and for most of your life you have not had to walk two kilometers twice a day to collect potable water. There are 28 First Nations without clean water.

Colonization: Colonization is a process of disconnection. It disconnects us from:

• Our responsibility to ourselves and our values,
• Our responsibility to the communities we belong to,
• And our responsibility to take care of and show up for the communities that we do not belong to. If we disconnect and if we choose to center our safety and protection at the expense of the communities we do not belong to, then we are doing the work of the colonizer.

Land: If the land we are on was acquired (stolen) as part of the colonial project, then our first responsibility is to decenter ourselves, use what little privilege we have and show up for the Indigenous Peoples of the stolen land we are on. Liberation is not possible without the return of land to the Indigenous Peoples of that land. And by this same line of reasoning, when the Indigenous Peoples of other lands are being exploited for their labour, when they are being dispossessed, and when their land is being expropriated and we choose to prioritize our privilege and comfort, we are practicing North American liberal individualism and selfishness. If you are a non-Indigenous oppressed group now sheltering on someone else's stolen land, how and why we got here is inconsequential when it comes to our responsibility to the Indigenous Peoples of that land, and the land itself.

Binary Thinking and Forced Choices: Any time we are placed in a situation in which the colonizer only presents us with two options, we know we are about to get fooled. Resistance work is finding ways to push back even when we have been backed into a corner. Resistance work is harm reduction work when we keep the three points above in mind. Picking the lesser of two evils is not harm reduction work; it is playing up to the colonizer.