General Urban Cambridge Updates and Rumours

[Bjays93]

Current example: remember way back before Covid in early 2020 when protesters were blockading railway tracks to express opposition to pipeline development on Wet'suwet'en lands? In that case the democratically elected parliament of the Wet'suwet'en had agreed to the pipelines, but the unelected hereditary royals disagreed. Note that I’m deliberately using British/Canadian terminology, although I’m aware it doesn’t translate exactly and there are many differences. But the point is I found that weird: shouldn’t they have picketed the band council offices rather than an unrelated railway line thousands of kilometres away? That’s a prototypical example of an issue that some see as “settlers” continuing the colonial project but which clearly is somewhere between more complex than that and completely the opposite of that.

Would you even know about it if they did?

The point of protest is to change people's (specifically the people who have power) minds, inherent to that is actually being noticed by those people.

It was just an example this is totally off topic and even off the point of his argument. I suggest the mods move all these posts to a thread dedicated to discussing race relations (that wouldn't be a bad thing to have)

That said, in response, many of the natives protesting weren't even from the affect bands or reserves they were just hijacking the issue to make some noise. As was pointed out, the elected chiefs supported the proposal, and as is clear from interviews, many locals also supported the pipeline as it would create revenue and jobs. Yes there was also opposition there always will be but it would be hard to say that it was a majority opposition for certain. 

And before someone brings up how the elected chiefs are just another canadian attempt of cultural assimilation and forcing our systems on the natives. I get some people hold that view, but one way or another there needs to be some form of governance in the reserves, and hereditary chiefs have just as many issues as the elected ones. What white settlers did to the indigenous people was horrible and abhorrent but it wasnt like everything was totally harmonious before we showed up. As with any form of governance at any level there is always going to be problems and reserves no exception. 

The whole reason that the hereditary chiefs opposed the pipeline anyway is because they weren't going to get a cut of the revenue iirc and the elected chiefs were as apart of the negotiation process.