Why is Prime Minister Mark Carney recognizing Palestine as a state while at the same time continuing to undermine the Algonquin Nation with a Canadian-made genocide? Of course, the genocide in Palestine is horrible, and I feel deeply for the people. It is incredibly sad to watch it unfold. It is equally sad for me to experience and live through the Algonquin genocide.

As an Algonquin Anishinaabe, it is crucial that I point out that Canada and its political parties have unleashed lie after lie, practice after practice, policy after policy, and legislation after legislation on the Algonquin Anishinaabeg whose territory is located at the centre of what has become the nation-state of Canada. The Ottawa River, the very heart of our pre-contact economy and source of our livelihood, was taken over by the fur trade, lumber, and hydroelectric industries; this economy served the creation of what became Canada. While this happened, the Algonquin were denied our land and resources, and pushed into poverty and destitution that continues to this day. Many of us continue to lack housing, clean water, and proper nutrition and we have higher rates of disability and illness such as diabetes.

Dr. Veldon Coburn has pointed out that our territory is larger than three of the eastern provinces combined. Millions and millions of dollars are stolen out of our territory through logging, hydro electricity, mineral extraction, and recreational hunting and tourism, yet we are denied our share of the revenues and Canada continues to impose the land claims process on us that the federal government and the provinces have unilaterally created. Surely the Algonquin can manage our own lands and resources and live as self-governing people, yet Canada continues to impose a genocide on us while at the same time looking overseas.

People need to understand that genocide through nation-state practices, policies, and legislations are particularly dangerous because it is a slower, less obvious and thus harder to understand genocide versus a genocide that can be easily seen with the eye. Said another way, a genocide that cannot be directly perceived through the nation’s citizens’ eyes is more insidious and more dangerous, and this is precisely why the nation state of Canada has been getting away with it since the time of the 1760 Treaty of Oswegatchie and the 1764 Treaty of Niagara when the British promised they would recognize and protect Algonquin territory and rights.

Lynn Gehl, PhD

Lynn Gehl is an Algonquin Anishinaabe-kwe from the Ottawa River Valley, Ont. She is an academic, artist, writer, blogger, and Indigenous human rights advocate.