Hi there guys! Sorry I haven't updated the blog much recently. Sorry that all my posts begin with "Sorry I haven't updated the blog much recently". Well now that the summer vacation is almost here, I'm making plans of what to do with my life when there is no school to look forward to (ye so I'm lowkey a nerd). My grandparents have also recently come to visit from India. I really want to show them what Canada is all about by taking them to some iconic historical sites and all, and of course a huge part of that will be telling them stuff about Canada's indigenous people.
Alright so it just so happens that Canada's 150th anniversary of confederation is coming up. I'm probably the least patriotic person you will ever meet and I actually hate the governments of all countries (though I love all their cultures but more on that later), but even I couldn't help but feel a little excited. I mean, it's a once in a lifetime event. The federal government is going to spend half a billion dollars on it and there will be discounts everywhere to visit museums, historic sites, etc. For a Seeker of High Culture like me, that sounds pretty terrific. It would just be such a waste to stay at home and rant on my blog about how Canada is guilty of genocide and should be using all that money to pay reparations while it is instead flaunting everything it stole from indigenous people. So I just wanted to say that there's a good and a bad way to approach this dilemma. I bet you no one who follows this blog likes the idea of Canada 150, but my disciples please remember that we must learn to make the most of even the worst situations. So, read on.
DO:
- Get educated on what this celebration is all about if you don't know much about the history of confederation already. Yes I'm talking about grade 7 history when you learned all about John A. MacDonald's vision of uniting British North American colonies a mari usque ad mare. Please don't be one of those people who are like all into the celebration but don't know what the Charlottetown Conference was. Please. We need to be better than some Americans are on July 4th.
- View the day not as a measure of how far we've come as a nation, but how far we still have to go.
- Remember that patriotism is stupid. No exceptions. Not even Mexican patriotism even though Mexico>Life. Oops.
- Remember that Canada is what it is because of the genocide of First Nations people.
- Take advantage of the discounts to popular tourist attractions. See if you qualify for a FREE Discovery Pass http://www.commandesparcs-parksorders.ca/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=22953&urlLangId=-1&productId=524528 .
DON'T:
- Skip reading this brilliant article by Pamela Palmeter, Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson university:
Canada 150 is a celebration of Indigenous genocide
This year, the federal government plans to spend half a billion dollars on events marking Canada's 150th anniversary, prompting a great deal of debate about its historical treatment of Indigenous peoples. The majority of Canadians don't have all the facts about that, while First Nations continue to live the crisis-level effects of that legacy. Perhaps Canada should cancel its celebrations and undertake the hard work necessary to make amends.
- Say anything that would imply you think Canada is in any way "better" than other countries.
- Do anything degenerate. Like actually, I think you know what I mean by now and I can trust you now, right? I can unleash you upon the world now with no regrets.
Alright so now that that's out of the way I want to take a few more moments to just talk about my life and what my plans are for the summer. I want to talk about some novels I will be working on. You may have heard a bit about them if you've been checking out my writing page which u can click here to see. One of them is about two communists who time travel back to the Aztec civilization and try to introduce their ideals to the MexiCa WorLd. It also doubles as a bildungsroman tale of a Mexica teenager who is trying to discover her views on politics, love, and all the rest of that sort of stuff that we try to figure out at this age. The other one I'll be working on is a sequel to the book I wrote that won NaNoWriMo 2016. If you want to read that award winning book, go to the writing page of this blog or click here. It's about a huge cultural revolution that occurs and basically, I don't want to spoil it. But the sequel I will be writing will be on what happens after the revolution. The protagonists are trying to establish a World Government, kinda like the United Nations except that it actually has power. This way leaders will make decisions keeping the good of the citizens of the whole world in mind instead of just of their nation. I'm an anarchist as far as I don't believe in countries, but the world is my country and I would be patriotic to a government that actually benefits the world.
Other random af stuff I'll be doing over the summer:
- Learning to play the harmonica so that I can perform a duet with Vickyish.
- Learning to play the bansuri (Indian bamboo flute)
- Practicing playing the regular flute
- Practicing playing the recorder even though recorders are gross
- Practicing playing the trumpet
- Making lots of art, possibly even venture into making a comic book. Who knows?
- Celebrating my birthday
- Writing novels
- "celebrating" Canada 150 ;D
- some activism related to aboriginal rights (I'll keep you posted on this for sure so that you know I'm being legit.)
- updating this blog regularly
- Working at a summer job which will be tutoring people who are learning English O_o
- Studying math, physics, chemistry and biology in advance so that I don't die in grade 11
- Possibly studying history and philosophy for the fun of it
- Reading a bunch of random af books. Possibly just anything I can get my hands on, including everything from degenerate YA fiction to "The Republic" by Plato. I'm not picky when it comes to books and I'll post some of my Goodreads reviews if any of you are interested. Ideally I would want to finish reading the Mexica Movement's recommended book list, but they are a bit hard to find. It doesn't help that a few of the books on that list are out of print. About time they wrote a compact manifesto, not that I wouldn't want to read everything else as well.
Alright well that's it.
have an awesome summer, everyone!
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