Читать книгу The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book - Gord Hill - Страница 3

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PREFACE

Yo weeksus! My name is Gord Hill. I currently live in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (occupied Coast Salish territory). From the Kwakwaka’wakw nation, with Tlingit and Scottish ancestry, my family lineage includes the Hunt and Scow families. I have lived on reserves and in cities, small towns, and isolated mountain camps, and have been involved in Indigenous and other social movements since 1988, participating in many protests, occupations, and blockades. I am an artist, writer, and carver. Above all, I consider myself a warrior—one who defends his people and territory.

In order to understand the world we live in today, it is vital to know our history. Unfortunately, the history we are taught through the educational system and corporate entertainment industry is false, particularly its depiction of European colonization as inevitable (or even justified) and Indigenous peoples as helpless victims (or even willing participants). The story of our ancestors’ resistance is minimized, at best, or erased entirely. This strategy has been used to impose capitalist ideology on people, to pacify them, and to portray their struggle as doomed to failure.

Over 500 years ago, various European powers began the invasion, occupation, and colonization of the Americas, setting in motion a process of genocide and destruction that continues to this day. Indigenous nations suffered drastic reductions in population, as much as ninety percent in most cases, the result of European warfare and disease. When the Americas were being invaded and colonized, Europe was in the grip of great economic and social upheavals, suffering widespread poverty, resource depletion, disease, and war. The invasion of the Americas revived a dying Europe, infusing it with new agricultural goods and resources such as gold and silver, as well as relieving its excess population through settlements in the “New World.”

Today, the global economic and cultural dominance of Europe and its settler colonies, such as Canada and the US, is the result of this history of colonialism. Another indisputable consequence is the fact that throughout