1% Indigenous Means 99% Genocide: Explaining America to Asians.

if you guys watch my youtube channel you
will know my life is one long morality lecture I'm constantly lecturing everyone around me about ethics and politics and history and these things there's me and the people who stick around seem to like it you know what I mean I mean she she could replace me I could replace her but mm-hmm works out fine no but you know my my whole adult life First Nations Native Americans creative Weyden a mohawk the native people in her it's been a big a big deal to me and my momma claims I was like that even as a very small child she claims I was already lecturing the world about you know colonialism and genocide indigenous peoples digis languages when I was a really small kid which is interesting my memory is that is a bit later she seems to remember even earlier than I do like I came out of the womb pissed off about these issues but you know part of my life that I did anticipate was that when I moved to Asia and started being a scholar of Asian languages and Buddhism history and politics and someone over here um was that I really found myself explaining to Asian people the history of Canada and of Australia in these other places from a totally different angle in perspective than I never imagined right so when I lived in Laos that's more than ten years ago now I think right yeah it is it is so I mean Laos may have changed a bit in ten years Laos was emerging from post war poverty and kind of communist control of information and just general podunk ignorance but you know I talked to allow people who sincerely believed that the the map of the world was kind of like the video game pac-man in that if you went off one side of the screen you'd pop up on the other side of the screen right like pac-man so I met and spoke to some lotion people who actually thought that white people were Aboriginal Australians because they said when you look at the map there's like Sweden and Norway up there and then you go off the map and then you come back and you're down here at like Australia and New Zealand and they were not joking they were not joking they thought that like these terms like indigenous Australian Aboriginal Australian they thought that referred to like poor white people in Australia who'd been there since forever because they thought that's how the mapa though the works right like yeah you just go a little bit further north from Norway and Sweden and then you see what I mean is you teleport around right so yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and you know and like you know I was in a position I was not gonna ridicule them or something but it's like okay so let me talk you through you know last 500 years of the British Empire let's let's have a conversation now for them also just mention some in Laos as a communist country they have heard a lot about imperialism and about colonialism but they've always heard it from kind of communist governments propaganda right so naturally like all people in countries where you're constantly inundated with propaganda they soon become indifferent to it or regard at all as lies which in a sense of shame I mean I you know I myself scrutinized a lot of Lao government propaganda but very often it was kind of 9/10 true and you really felt served people because that propaganda was their only source of of history written in their own language but because of the 10% of it that was not true they regarded all of it as false so for a lot of them to they'd be sitting there listen to me and they'd be like whoa all my life I've been lectured by this left-wing government about the evils of imperialism and colonialism but I always thought it was [ __ ] because like for them they grow up and it's like there's the reality of coca-cola there's the reality of American movies American culture American videogames American like rock and roll music or if they listen to rap music you know hip hop music and then there's this discourse from the government about oppression and colonialism and imperialism and cultural imperialism they like to use that term cultural imperialism and to them the reality of one the immediate reality of what American culture is completely discredit these seemingly ridiculous claims about American history how can they believe that America is built on genocide it just seems preposterous it seems loud how can they believe that Australia is built on genocide it seems laughable it seems ridiculous you know because I mean that's I mean that's how they're learning about the outside world and of course they know that their government lies to them but all kinds of things to give an example like the Lao government will lie to you about an airplane crash they'll never you know it will never admit that an airplane crash they lie about a boat sinking like even little things like everyone knows this boat sank like you know everyone has a cousin or something that died in this boat I mean not everyone but you don't mean like enough people are within six degrees of separation to know someone who died in a boat that sank and the government denies this ever happened you know so the key in all kinds of ways the government describes himself so that was one element of it was just dealing with this now I mean I guess another is you know they did have the propaganda from the Christians from the Christian missionaries and it's it's really interesting I mean I guess to summarize there are some Christian missionaries who try to promote Christianity as magical and when you think about it they're the more honest missionaries like like who just say like this is magical you know but then there were the Christian missionaries who try to present Christianity as the religion of science and progress and westernization and democracy you know which of course in a certain sense it is you know if you live in a country like Laos or Cambodia or even Taiwan you know a different place they or Japan even there's a sense in which you know Christianity is the religion of the atom bomb it's the religion of the US Army and the nuclear bomb and you know all those things and the religion of Santa Claus and you know Christmas toys and you know of this new and strange kind of technology to them but those Christian missionaries and Christian education which is definitely it's it's a major alternative source of propaganda in these countries that's that's being totally dishonest about the history of colonialism and of course the reality of what even medieval Europe was you know just the the unbelievably horrible reality of what you know medieval Europe was when the Christians really had political control of that part of the world you know so there also a one conversation really sticks out of my mind with a guy who is very sharp he was nobody's fool he he was a government official you know with in Laos he was a member of an ethnic minority so he did kind of question the government and questioned a lot of things and he spent a lot of his time talking to foreigners partly just to improve his English he was one of these kind of free thinking guys but I remember he just flatly told me when I told no you know like the Catholic Church has killed millions of people all over the world they're guilty of forms of genocide you like literally can't imagine that I can I can start you know describing for you know know they used to literally boil people in a metal pot they used to literally burn people at the stake they used to literally torture people to death on a stretching rack you know the the iron maiden before iron maiden was the name of a rock band you know wasn't a show method of torturing people you know this Spanish Inquisition but from my perspective also the main point because I'm Canadian being how Christianity was spread as a religion in Canada and to First Nations people the United States and again I mean he's living in a very propaganda rich part of Asia and he just he doesn't believe anything I'm saying you know and I remember to sing to him ask your priest he had a he had a European appreciate a white man who was the I guess the head of the main catholic church in in vientiane laos maybe for all of laos but they had imported a white man to preach the word god i said ask him directly you know ask him the reality what happened to the people who were not christian with in france talk just even with in france the religious persecution in the history of france cuz it was a french catholic tradition there as i recall maybe I miss your memory but I see you know whether it's the example is the history of Christianity in Australia or Canada or even within France you know they don't they don't wanna deal with stuff so that's one that's one whole category of of how that stuff gets addressed so I just dealt with this in the last couple of days I'm teaching a course here at a university with the university level students and unlike most white men who teach English in China you know I'm not kind of pained bring down to the students I kind of say the students will look you guys are you know you're mature adults you're 21 years old and they're basically education majors that people are training to become teachers themselves so you know I can I can put the content up here and you guys can come up to me and deal with some university level reading and university level discussions so lately we have dealt with First Nations in the following way we had a whole series of lessons dealing with education how the education system works in different countries how it's different in Japan from is in the United States and these kinds of issues a whole bunch of examples around the world and bunch of student presentations on different aspects some philosophical and some totally practical like some of my lessons have dealt with philosophy Aristotle and Plato but some of them dealt with like how my students can make money being a language teacher in the United States or in Europe like someone's been a really practical advice that'll impact their careers so just saying it's not all a morality lecture it's not all about ethics and so on and then I present to them this fact that oh okay this is actually represented in in in you know the same sequence I said to them look you know countries like the United States and Canada were not poor you know this you know our government is not running out of money you know we have plenty of money for in terms of the education budget and so on and we just did a lesson where we looked at some of the most excellent universities universities and schools we looked at sort of what are the leading best what are the new ideas in education what are they consider the best of the best schools in United States Canada England also Japan and a few other countries okay so we just looked at the best said but you know everyone says this a lot of universities in the United States are terrible a lot of schools in Canada are terrible why is that because money money is not the problem you know with it and I I pushed them with so you know trying to get some answers and get different incident I said okay so you know the government didn't decide because a lot of this comes down to government money the government didn't decide we're gonna make this school terrible in the school good they didn't do this intentionally it's not a conspiracy to just you know intentionally punish some reveals so tell me where are the bad schools and why are the bad coal's there you know why are these bad schools and you don't try to press on and again we're practicing English and they're practicing some some creative thinking because they really have no idea they've never thought about this before and I said to them you know maybe you never thought about this but in the United States there were three kinds of schools there were schools that were creative for white people there are schools that were created for black people and there are schools that are created for Native Americans and this blows their minds and I start going into with the u.s. I'm mostly talking about the university level of Education so what are called Indian colleges universities that are actually run by band councils by Native American bands and how those are funded in contrast to historically black colleges and we did so then the next week we got into the history of segregation and inequality in black versus white education in that states but that we came you know there's only so much you can do with him within one university lecture so we mostly dealt with the differences between university level education for Native Americans versus white people in America and then we got into the parallel questions in in Canada we have our own form of racial segregation and the unequal but just how our actual education system functions differently for white people versus native people and then for Catholics versus non Catholics and for francophone Zoras Anglophones there are a lot of these questions of various forms of segregation in what we do but another one of the things that just amazed them and this is such a simple thing so that the the photocopy I gave them included the statistic it said and you know there's more than one statistic you can get for this in terms of exactly the numbers now so okay so you notice here on the on the handout it says in Canada today only about 6% of our population is indigenous please don't bother me sending emails yes I realize it can be 7% and it can be less depending on exactly which definitions you use in which sense of study is but as I recall with something this guy was something like 6.5 percent of Canadians are native or indigenous and so then I said to them okay so you have that statistic so what percentage of Americans people in United States four percentage Americans are dizziness and in this this isn't this products all this conversation leading up to it and had shown them the map and it's shown them this college and we talked about these these tiny Native American college look some of them are colleges or a theory of their universities they have like four hundred students they're really ten they're out in these remote areas you know it's really bizarre or parallel universe of tertiary education first for Native Americans and how that's funded and so on so this is covered and yeah I remember once did she was she was intelligent you just guffaw do that she's laughed at how impossible she thought the the question was but her final guess was forty percent and then she did sixty percent I really don't know so I don't think I have here but you know I had partly to just reinforce the the contemporary Ness of this question this came up again in class today one of the students said very casually that the native people of Japan their native minorities of course Japanese people are native to Japan those of other groups like the I knew and the NIV key they said the native people they still engage in traditional hunting and fishing and I stopped her Sookie so pardon me this is also part of my job I don't just let the students give a lecture I do you know Q&A I said did you actually see that on the Internet I said is that the reality feather with today in 2017 and I held up the picture given that was part of the photocopied handout because I intentionally gave them some photographs they were just random Native Americans they were Native Americans at a particular University a Native American University exactly well the discussion but point out of them look this is what these people look like they wear the same kind of clothes you and I where they have the same kind of jobs you know they drive but they have they very much live in the modern world they're not they're not carrying a spear they're not they really live in the modern world with electricity and cellphones and you know all the same problems other people have in terms of Education and and everything else right so I wonder if it was for that reason this girl was seriously guessing like is it 40% of her say she was not because also to them when they looked at those photographs of Native Americans they can't tell ethnically like the the facial features are not that different from white people and this is you know legitimately the case in many many many instances not always but you know in many instances there's no easy way to recognize who is and it wasn't First Nations you know but anyway from a Chinese perspective at least you know we we look alike but she was really sincerely guessing and the other guesses I got likewise they were way higher than Canada like as if they imagined like the point of this lecture was like well like in Canada they really committed genocide like they were shocked they were shocked to learn that only 6% of Canadian Canadians are our native people right but they thought like well America's not like that America the land of the free like I don't know like maybe it is the political discourse about like democracy and freedom and human rights that America gives out that they really thought you know like a mirror could be better but I said no so these various guesses am and some some were more conservative but they were guessing like 15% 20% person I said no in Canada six percent of our population is indigenous in America it's they'll until 1 percent okay now again depending on which studies use census data or whatever you can get a 2% figure and but 1% is the is the stat I'm going with which is a census US Census stat using a strict definition of who's we say but who's not and I said to them directly when only 1% of your population is native that means you've got 99 percent genocide this is the reality of the world we've read it in the United States and Canada it's 90 percent genocide you know so it's really it shook them up I mean they're not dumb I mean okay I'm not gonna say every single student in the class was really relating this but yeah I'd say like above 80 percent of the students were really interested in this and not nearly as many students were interested in philosophy of Aristotle just mention it yeah I would say honestly it was above 90 percent of the students were really like woah this is a whole side of both world history and also just education because remember they're all they're all education students this is welcomed into their lives and careers and I said to them also I said look for your own employment this is a way for you to get a job in the United States you can look at the other school boards whether it's african-american colleges or you know Native American or First Nations of the stuff so you know there are actually two opportunities here because it's really hard for them to hire people you know so yeah there was a there's a lot to it so maybe if you you wants anyone jumping yeah I've got one note written down from from today's lesson you know I know if you'll relate to this or not I guess good comment is that I think your lessons are really really well put together see what I put up with Thanks thanks love oh I mean you know anyway I try to structure this stuff so I'm always learning and that's another element of the why I'm not depressed I've learned so much this week it's nuts you know and in the next couple weeks you know I'm not just working on Chinese now we're Lambrecht and lotion and French and in terms of history and politics and everything I learn a lot from week to week I'm 39 years old in some ways you know my life's a disaster and I don't recommend other people live the way I do but in some ways no I mean really I don't recommend people imitate what I don't know it but in some ways I'm like yeah you know I'm still learning a lot age 39 everything's genuinely interesting to me so I also learn when you're tell me like maybe someone will send us a question from patreon is there Melissa is there anything ISIL is into that you don't find her I don't know we listen to a lot of the same rap news do but look staying on topic here so I wrote down one one note on this so one of the students said in her presentation so she did a presentation dealing with First Nations Native Americans and these these problems of Education inequality she said it was a reasonable statement but a challenge Iran it's a reasonable but false a reasonable move misleading she said well you know it's natural that they have a lower quality of education in these backward areas that's a very Chinese perspective like they were shocked also because this came up not with all the classes with one of them I said you know it's not the case in America that like the best university is in New York City and the worst university is in Hawaii like University of Hawaii is a great you know really it's just that's not the way our system works they really think that way they think okay the best University is in Beijing because that's the center and that's the and then the further out you go you know the worse it is but I challenge it says a normal Chinese way to think whoa these are backward areas therefore naturally they have they have bad education for Native people and I challenge you I said to her look you know I used to live in Laos you know I used to live in Cambodia I did humanitarian work I also did teaching I was molded education misc stuff right here I said look in Laos I've been to backward areas and I've been to areas where the school has no electricity you know I pointed the life there was literate there's no electricity and there is no glass in the windows the school is made out of wood and the window is just a hole in the wall you don't mean there's so if you and there's no electricity so if you want to teach after the Sun Goes Down you light a candle hordes of locusts flying into the wind there's you know insects are attracted to the guy speaking experience their people you know what I mean the wood in no mulch and I said and in that school there are no books you know there are no books of course there's no internet access okay that's backward that's backward time but the United States and Canada all these schools have electricity all of them have books all of them have internet access so you can read things on the internet or order books through the internet if you know you don't have enough books in the in the university library but actually even the smoke cause I'm sure they deal with enough books around for what for what they got to do you know on the topics they're not they're not poor in that absolute sense right so I said what does it mean like how is it is it an excuse to say these are it back whatever's what's the actual disadvantage you know what does it mean to say they're in backward areas and you know I pushed her on this you know again because it's not easy from to answer in English and you know she ultimately kind of said something like well I guess in in you know in backward areas you know like people are just less scholarly and they're they're more lazy and drink alcohol and so on which is actually a really honest answer and then you know actually I pushed further without it was okay so that's that's an interesting point so it's not the no novella Tracy's other ton of books you know there's kind of like a lack of intellectual stimulation and a lack of scholarly culture you know academic culture would have you and you know people are doing alcohol and I said okay but let's which one comes first you know because no I'm speaking in somewhat simple English your office I said so is it that people drink too much alcohol and therefore they're stupid or is that people are stupid and you know therefore they drink too much alcohol you know if they're not they're not enjoying it with like what what does this really mean and I talked through with them also is like well you know the huge impact if your parents drink and not not even though they're alcoholics but if your parents drink instead of talking to you about history and politics or just even watching the TV news with you or whatever just how different it is to have parents who drink alcohol every night and they kept saying oh yeah alcoholics it was no no not not even alcoholics just moderate drinkers but where that is your culture and that is your upbringing stuff so we got into a lot of good stuff and a couple of those student presentations were specifically dealing with education and alcohol education alcoholism education and drug use so a student presentation exactly on that stuff yeah okay so right I this is a long enough video over past 20 minutes but yeah it's a really interesting role I've played is introducing people in Asia to the basic concept that white people are not the indigenous population of Canada and what that means and why it matters and yes sometimes the discussion has been more about Australia or the United States or what have you and seeing the political significance of that for them as they as it first dawns on them as they first think about it the first time in their lives and they see all this other propaganda they've heard about colonialism and imperialism in a new light and you know I think the saddest part is that there are a lot of Asians who are living in Canada right now Asians who migrated from India to Canada from China to Canada from Cambodia to Canada and they've never even thought through what I've just worked through with my students they've never even had that much of an introduction to the history of Canada and they may have even become Canadian citizens because let me tell you Asian people in Canada are racist as hell against First Nations that'd be a home video but it's unbelievable and mind-blowing you know new immigrants to Canada are not angels they're not immune to racism and very very quickly they take on the attitude of well my family migrated here from China and now we're rich so therefore if you're not rich and you've been here in Canada for five minutes it's your fault yes and the new immigrants from India and Pakistan tends to be even more explicitly racist so that's a challenge even within Canada we have to deal with is the question of educating Asians about indigenous nests about the past present and future of Canada