"IdleNoMore challenges the Canadian government's increasingly aggressive neo-colonial program of resource extraction. IdleNoMore thereby ignites Indigenous peoples around the world to challenge other governments that claim superiority over Native lands and peoples.

IdleNoMore is a grassroots movement: it is based on the social realities of ordinary people in ordinary communities in daily life. IdleNoMore challenges state/corporate institutions built on centuries of colonial practice. Those colonial practices are themselves based on a yet deeper foundation: the doctrine of Christian Discovery that supposedly justifies the colonial extraction regime.

For those who think that history is a story about something over and done with, all this attention to colonial history is irrelevant in the present. For example, one commenter on a news article in the Guardian wrote: "they throw up the sins of past people. I'm sorry their land was stolen but the people that did it are long dead and I'm sick and tired of paying for it." For this person, the history of Aboriginal peoples in relation to Canada is "long dead"; it has no meaning in terms of present concerns."

Get the Story:
Peter d'Errico: When is History? Where is the Present? (Indian Country Today 1/18)

Related Stories:
Peter d'Errico: Adoption an ongoing assault on Indian people (1/2)
Peter d'Errico: Indian people long viewed as uncivilized in law (12/10)
Peter d'Errico: Indigenous people outlast Edward Curtis photos (12/4)
Peter d'Errico: Western Shoshones fight mining on treaty land (11/19)