In India, white people get special seats in parliament, but American Indians…
23 May 2019 [link youtube]
The article being quoted at the start of the video can be found here: https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/living/story/19810815-anglo-indian-community-dwindles-with-the-end-of-british-raj-773154-2013-11-14
This is part of the "Canadian Politics" playlist on à-bas-le-ciel, where you'll find many videos on related issues, and reflecting on my own peculiar history studying First Nations languages and politics: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZEkgohG7k7ph4GjbjjUHDnImp9NpHyDE
Support the creation of new content on the channel for $1 per month on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/a_bas_le_ciel/
Youtube Automatic Transcription
in the heart of a bustling calcutta
suburb forgotten by the people outside stands the Tully gun home for the people inside to the world outside might as well be non-existent inhabited by the aging and dying remnants of the British Raj the home is a throwback to the past an almost unreal world which is all but ignored the passing of the last 34 years pictures of the English royal family adorned the walls of the parlour and dining hall and the residents are at pains to prove their English heritage like a Portrait Gallery from a world gone by wrinkled faces gaze into the muddled past bewildered old people with nowhere to go no nation to look to cling stubbornly to a lifestyle that is vanished into history although they are India's only community with 100% literacy few anglo-indians adjusted to the new way of life after independence the miniscule ethnic group rapidly lost the privileges it had enjoyed under their British rulers and found itself increasingly isolated in free India a spate of emigration followed and today the anglo-indians remain only in secluded pockets in the country quote I am the last of the Mohicans alone in the world Wales miss Carr an aging spinster who typifies the anglo-indian dilemma at the home there are no words to express my sense of revulsion regret an outrage when I read a white woman living in India referring to herself as the last of the Mohicans in as much as she is one of the last representatives of the British Empire the same British Empire that conquered India in pieces once upon a time but yes the same British Empire all so that drove the Mohicans to the edge of extinction the Mohicans in Korea my gun they're not extinct in fact in the year 2010 they finally finally got three hundred and thirty acres of their homeland given back to them they had originally asked for a much much a larger plot of land that they were in fact entitled to they sailed for three hundred and thirty acres they had the great misfortune of having as their native land very valuable territory that includes the Hudson River the river that flows into New York City it's been much harder for them to hold on to any scrap of land and obviously as everyone knows from the famous phrase the last of the Mohicans it's been rather hard for them to survive history the interesting questions about First Nations Native Americans are not in my opinion though was left behind in the past they're the questions about the future when I studied Korean a Jib way as languages at First Nations University I was always insisting on this that I was studying these languages not to study native spirituality need of anthropology nor native history at least not in some distant sense I was interested in the present and future of these people of these languages I would ask questions such as how many years will it be into the future before we translate the constitution of Canada into Korean a Jib way when will we see the first science textbook the first history textbook in Korean at Ghibli when are we going to see a newspaper in these languages and yes I also asked at the university itself why is it that the no-smoking signs are in English given that this is supposed to be a university by and for First Nations people shouldn't there be a little bit of pride taken in having words like no smoking or please wash your hands before you leave the washroom written in Cree a jib way they could also use DNA or other languages they want it to and the example I tend to use most often on this channel because I really felt it as someone who also studied Chinese it really sickened me that I would go up to a bank machine to take money out of an ATM a bank machine and there'd be such a long list of languages to choose from including foreign languages like Chinese so known as Vietnamese but there would not be a single indigenous language for the native people of Canada when would that change sure road signs all of these questions some of them symbolic some of them practical but ultimately these are all questions about the future of these native people and these are questions that nobody is really asking inside the parliament of the Government of Canada inside the parliaments plural of the provinces of Canada and that's for one very simple reason when white people in India became a powerless minority they asked for guaranteed that seats in parliament would be reserved for them so they would have a voice inside the democratic government it's a tremendously bitter irony that in a world where the same word Indian was used for the native people of India and Indian was used to mean the native people of Canada in this Empire it was the white British minority the Anglo Indians who had seats in parliament reserved for them dedicated to them for their protection for their benefit in the Parliament of India whereas in the parliaments of Canada there never have been seats reserved for indigenous people and on the contrary most of our Parliament's have either been overwhelmingly majority white people or actually a hundred percent yes at different times one or two seats have managed to be elected by native people but there is no significant representation of native people or their interests in our parliamentary system quite the contrary what is the future of Canada's native people and native languages supposed to be at the past and the present they've been defined by their position of voiceless inside a system of so-called democracy that existed for the express purpose of silencing them forcibly assimilating them ignoring them and marginalizing their resistance to such an extent that as you know if you live in Canada the United States most of their problems would take more than 100 years to even be heard or addressed in government it's routine you can google it right now conflicts over land ownership that started over a hundred years ago it took 20 years to get to court another 20 years for a ruling so on and so forth nobody would say that the well-being of the native peoples of Canada or the United States for that matter are a priority for either government and there is a very simple reason for that that's because the people who would make it a priority literally do not have a voice in the house of parliament in Canada you don't have a voice in the house of Congress in the United States that gets at the very basic problem of representation and government a problem much more fundamental than any particular period of racism during my lifetime Canadians have become less racist there's no doubt even though racism towards Native people is still a massive problem in Canada I've seen it felt it heard it many times nevertheless we have to say racism is on the way out the problem remains that democracy that meaningful representation for native peoples and native languages is still not on the way in [Music]
suburb forgotten by the people outside stands the Tully gun home for the people inside to the world outside might as well be non-existent inhabited by the aging and dying remnants of the British Raj the home is a throwback to the past an almost unreal world which is all but ignored the passing of the last 34 years pictures of the English royal family adorned the walls of the parlour and dining hall and the residents are at pains to prove their English heritage like a Portrait Gallery from a world gone by wrinkled faces gaze into the muddled past bewildered old people with nowhere to go no nation to look to cling stubbornly to a lifestyle that is vanished into history although they are India's only community with 100% literacy few anglo-indians adjusted to the new way of life after independence the miniscule ethnic group rapidly lost the privileges it had enjoyed under their British rulers and found itself increasingly isolated in free India a spate of emigration followed and today the anglo-indians remain only in secluded pockets in the country quote I am the last of the Mohicans alone in the world Wales miss Carr an aging spinster who typifies the anglo-indian dilemma at the home there are no words to express my sense of revulsion regret an outrage when I read a white woman living in India referring to herself as the last of the Mohicans in as much as she is one of the last representatives of the British Empire the same British Empire that conquered India in pieces once upon a time but yes the same British Empire all so that drove the Mohicans to the edge of extinction the Mohicans in Korea my gun they're not extinct in fact in the year 2010 they finally finally got three hundred and thirty acres of their homeland given back to them they had originally asked for a much much a larger plot of land that they were in fact entitled to they sailed for three hundred and thirty acres they had the great misfortune of having as their native land very valuable territory that includes the Hudson River the river that flows into New York City it's been much harder for them to hold on to any scrap of land and obviously as everyone knows from the famous phrase the last of the Mohicans it's been rather hard for them to survive history the interesting questions about First Nations Native Americans are not in my opinion though was left behind in the past they're the questions about the future when I studied Korean a Jib way as languages at First Nations University I was always insisting on this that I was studying these languages not to study native spirituality need of anthropology nor native history at least not in some distant sense I was interested in the present and future of these people of these languages I would ask questions such as how many years will it be into the future before we translate the constitution of Canada into Korean a Jib way when will we see the first science textbook the first history textbook in Korean at Ghibli when are we going to see a newspaper in these languages and yes I also asked at the university itself why is it that the no-smoking signs are in English given that this is supposed to be a university by and for First Nations people shouldn't there be a little bit of pride taken in having words like no smoking or please wash your hands before you leave the washroom written in Cree a jib way they could also use DNA or other languages they want it to and the example I tend to use most often on this channel because I really felt it as someone who also studied Chinese it really sickened me that I would go up to a bank machine to take money out of an ATM a bank machine and there'd be such a long list of languages to choose from including foreign languages like Chinese so known as Vietnamese but there would not be a single indigenous language for the native people of Canada when would that change sure road signs all of these questions some of them symbolic some of them practical but ultimately these are all questions about the future of these native people and these are questions that nobody is really asking inside the parliament of the Government of Canada inside the parliaments plural of the provinces of Canada and that's for one very simple reason when white people in India became a powerless minority they asked for guaranteed that seats in parliament would be reserved for them so they would have a voice inside the democratic government it's a tremendously bitter irony that in a world where the same word Indian was used for the native people of India and Indian was used to mean the native people of Canada in this Empire it was the white British minority the Anglo Indians who had seats in parliament reserved for them dedicated to them for their protection for their benefit in the Parliament of India whereas in the parliaments of Canada there never have been seats reserved for indigenous people and on the contrary most of our Parliament's have either been overwhelmingly majority white people or actually a hundred percent yes at different times one or two seats have managed to be elected by native people but there is no significant representation of native people or their interests in our parliamentary system quite the contrary what is the future of Canada's native people and native languages supposed to be at the past and the present they've been defined by their position of voiceless inside a system of so-called democracy that existed for the express purpose of silencing them forcibly assimilating them ignoring them and marginalizing their resistance to such an extent that as you know if you live in Canada the United States most of their problems would take more than 100 years to even be heard or addressed in government it's routine you can google it right now conflicts over land ownership that started over a hundred years ago it took 20 years to get to court another 20 years for a ruling so on and so forth nobody would say that the well-being of the native peoples of Canada or the United States for that matter are a priority for either government and there is a very simple reason for that that's because the people who would make it a priority literally do not have a voice in the house of parliament in Canada you don't have a voice in the house of Congress in the United States that gets at the very basic problem of representation and government a problem much more fundamental than any particular period of racism during my lifetime Canadians have become less racist there's no doubt even though racism towards Native people is still a massive problem in Canada I've seen it felt it heard it many times nevertheless we have to say racism is on the way out the problem remains that democracy that meaningful representation for native peoples and native languages is still not on the way in [Music]