Canadian Indigenous Zionists

"Our children and youth, the students of the TDSB [Toronto and District School Board], are our much welcomed and loved treaty partners. They are not colonizers. The true colonizers are the adults who hijacked the field trip and wickedly co-opted our child and youth treaty partners to facilitate their anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian demonstration -- to facilitate hate."

"A thorough investigation is needed into the events of September 18. The investigation cannot be conducted by the TDSB, which has shown itself to be demonstrably unfit to do so on so many levels."

"What the TDSB did to children on September 18 is despicable and borders on criminal. It dishonours the very concept of reconciliation and the Seven Sacred Teachings."

"Together we must ensure that such politically ideologically-driven events never happen again."

The Honourable Harry S LaForme, Anishinaabe, Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation

Karen Restoule, Anishanaabe-Kwe, Dokis First Nation

Dr. Mark S. Dockstator, Onyota'd:ka, Oneida Nation of the Thames

Photo by Tristan Sosteric on Unsplash

When hundreds of school children from 15 schools of the Toronto District School Board were taken by their teachers to a field trip on September 18, their parents were advised that the trip's purpose was to expose the students to yet another facet of Canada's ill-treatment of its First Nations; in this instance generations of Indigenous Canadians exposed to mercury contamination at Grassy Narrows, calling out for attention and long-ignored remediation.

 

Parents were informed that the trip would represent a measure to instill in students a sense of human rights so sorely lacking historically in Canada's relations with its First Nations populations. This event was meant to raise public awareness in "efforts to address mercury contamination and advocate for their rights regarding mining and logging activities within their territory". Parents were advised the students' presence would be to "observe and learn from the presentations and discussions".  

When parents were informed that their children preparing for the outing should wear blue shirts it is likely that none among them would have suspected that blue shirts would identify the students as 'colonial' usurpers of Indigenous land, and that the colour blue had another linkage, reflecting the colour of the Israeli flag; the ultimate 'colonialists', ostensibly depriving Palestinians of land they claimed as their own despite that Israel sits on its own ancestral heritage geography.

In effect, the Grassy Narrows River Run Rally became a focal point for anti-Israel-pro-Palestinian demonstrators; an ideologically hostile group that holds Israel accountable for a conflict forced upon the Jewish state by Palestinian terrorists who almost a year ago had carried out a wholesale atrocity of sadistically savage rape, torture, and mass murder, finally spiriting away as hostages 240 Israeli infants and children, women and men for the ransom of prisoner exchanges.

The demonstrators, many of whom were teachers with the school board who connived with others to turn attention away from Indigenous suffering to transform the event into one where Palestinian aggrieved 'victimhood' carried the day. Children are wont to obey their teachers and this event saw them being coerced to chant the Palestinian mantras of 'Zionist genocide' and 'From the river to the sea Palestine will be free'; essentially calling for the destruction of Israel.

Indigenous leaders were not amused at the turn this event took. The leaders listed above pointed out in their objections to the atrocious shoving aside of Indigenous historical injustice and the lack of government policies to adequately address them, that the teachers and other adults involved in this hijacking of a critically important Indigenous event viewed the introduction of an anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian crusade as injurious to their own cause. 

"Zionism does not kill -- as the stickers handed out to students at the 'rally' declared; extremism does. Chants of 'Turtle Island to Lebanon, Israel will be gone' by anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian demonstrators promotes terrorism", they pointed out.

Indigenous values, they pointed out with justifiable indignation, "do not align with pro-terror and hateful messages. They are anathema to the Seven Sacred Teachings of Indigenous people. These values are found in Treaties of Peace and Friendship, which are grounded in the Seven Sacred Teachings -- Love, Respect, Courage, Honesty, Wisdom, Humility and Truth", they pointed out.

Their call for an independent investigation into the event co-opting, humiliating and denying justice to the people of Grassy Narrows, is critical. Without such an investigation thoroughly examining the event, its participants, the role of the Toronto and District School Board, the need to hold the board and the teaching staff involved to account, and to take steps to cleanse the largest school board in Canada of their malign, inappropriate and harmful agenda is required, to re-build failed trust with the Canadian public.

Parents and others protest after a Toronto school trip that was supposed to teach students about mercury poisoning at Grassy Narrows was hijacked by anti-Israel protesters and teachers failed to intervene. Photo by Peter J. Thompson / National Post