The greatest non-story of #Elxn44 was tragically its biggest story: our colonial country pretended the grief and emotional outpouring this summer over the residential schools didnʼt even happen. Every false leader should have made our Indigenous peoples their top priorities and conducted their whole campaign through the lens of respecting the First Nations foremost by being in their holy territories throughout the entire campaign and basing their platforms on consensus-based soulful spiritualities from the Indigenous perspectives. If we had an equal and just political system, Puglaas would be our Prime Minister by now and Doctor Jane Philpot would be the properly qualified Health Minister we needed during the kaiju pandemic now in its strongest and baddest monster phase yet. 

What happens when a bigger and faster threat shows up in the future and we ignore our Indigenous perspectives yet again, even though their civilizations lasted for sustainable millennia while ours is about to blow up after a few hundreds years of collective misery? Would you rather trust Charlie Brown or King Trudy the Putrescent? I donʼt know about you, but the Golden Heron would much rather see our Land of the Lakes Tribe peoples in charge of this area over the undemocratic and fascistic debacle currently being perpetrated by the corrosive CoN and the buffoonish Nü-Dippers; not to ignore the condescendingly rich Laurentian Libertines, and the unProgressive Conservers of the Reich. 

We canʼt ignore the 5-10% of our population who survived continuous European invasive species devastations to this point, when they are the ancestors of a massive populace that wouldʼve been our dominant voter demographic if they had been allowed to flourish instead of whatever you want to call this antagonistic human-caused natural disaster. Just because our ancestors participated in a social-studies experiment which conspiratorially made their blood relatives the eventual outnumbering group on native lands, does that mean the 90+% of us who are not Indigenous now get to outvote, defy & disrespect the First Nationsʼ extremely clear guidance for how we can mutually get ourselves out of this lifetime-defining era of existential crises? The settler nations back then were dumb enough to devalue the folks who kept them alive through deadly winters and famines caused by their patriarchal insistence on following the old Eurocentric ways, despite a blueprint of organic biological success on-the-record in the fertile landscapes and beneficially ordered chaos all around them, with environmental stewardship at the forefront of all ecological values and generational decisions. Centuries later, instead of learning our obvious lessons, we choose to be even dumber and follow a failing system of white oppression to the grave when the same resilient first peoples are guiding us to come to our senses and try something else for the sake of the earth and ourselves. 

Youʼd think the global pandemic and its subsequent economic and communal collapses would be enough to make us realize that we donʼt have to follow the Mayans down this path of the rich only realizing they need the poor to keep them alive when they themselves are also dying. Yet most people in this city, province & nation are pretending everything is fine like theyʼre the most dishonest showman in the world (say hi, King Trudy!), while the same beings whom we pretended to care about so much in the fair-weather months are now the same souls beseeching us to accept that nothing is just fine in their traumatized communities which have never gotten the respect and freedoms they deserve in order to restore them to their rightful places atop our local family trees — where they would still reign supreme if we hadnʼt knocked them off their glorious perches with racial discrimination, imperialistic fascism, collective sexualized misogyny & paternalistic preaching, etc.. 

No wonder they have cultural words for the Great White Father complex that Captain Canuck worships at his god-loving bedside every night. How many of us have a grandpa who voted for the old white man he imagined looked the most prime ministerial like him? Who doesnʼt know a servile grandma who may have voted for grandpaʼs patriarchal choice even though she secretly yearned to cast her ballot for the nice guy in the turban who decided it was a good idea to campaign with his pregnant wife during this fourth Delta-sponsored wave, even though he swore up and down itʼs a terrible time to have an election due to said lethal variant. How much clean water could Indigenous tribes drink from their taps with 610-million election squandered dollars, Mr. Blackface? 

If youʼre participating in Maple Leaf Society Incorporated at present as if itʼs business as usual for the elitist pale-faced fogeys who claim theyʼll trickle-down all their misbegotten Covid bonuses but somehow never do, then youʼre part of the problem, and the least you could do is publish an online column that rants about how much weʼve sold out our Indigenous peoples and our racialized minorities yet again to the Manmon-sucking cultists who destroyed and ravished this sacred grove in the first place with their insatiably gluttonous greed for more material dividends and silicon currencies than they could ever drag kicking and screaming through the crucible eye of a needle. You have got to change your ways if youʼre someone who claims to be ʻheartbrokenʼ by the already known residential school shamefulness while youʼre still living the status quo dream. Your precious house equity is based on a systemic lie fueled by a narco-state at home which stole the very land youʼre now profiting from in a manner that further decimates the original victims of this sad-sack alliance with the devilish dollar over life eternal itself. 

So be happy when thereʼs a newly jubilant Jester King crowned on the imperial stage well after tonightʼs funeral if you like, but donʼt fool yourself over who suffers from their profits and yours, just because we still canʼt revere the people who should be in charge. 

#forstmedia #goldenheron #opinion