(P.S.: I'm a white guy.)
(P.S.: I'm a white guy.)
Full quote to assist you.
"In 2022, Gordon Price, a prominent Vancouver urban planner and a former city councillor, told Gitxsan reporter Angela Sterritt, “When you’re building 30, 40-storey high rises out of concrete, there’s a big gap between that and an Indigenous way of building."
"White man" can be used in that form when the white man appears to be telling a different culture what they can or cannot do or be.
Edit: previously my message included some poor choice of words, which I will keep here for history and an example of accidental bias: “White men are absolutely allowed to use it as a slur towards other white men.”
What kind of nonsense is that, the mental gymnastics to not call it what it simply is - racism - is just unbelivable.
Like, it really doesn't ring any bells of "something is not right here" when you read it?
The rest of the world either settles their matters or employs lawyers to do so for them. Most time settlement is a disappointing serving a crow, hence the glint of involving the courts. How much will that serving of crow cost?
Why do I bring this up? This “replace X with Y” is the ultimate form of an algebraic rhetoric that demands a fully balanced system of mathematical perfection as if this were a reasonable way to go about things.
Laws do impose parity so in fact it's not just some online rhetorical device.
For Mr Gordon Price to imply that a group should not do something because it has not been done before is him trying to deny their agency.
They don't "have to". But they can break with it in a nice way or in a bad way.
Same way a culture can change their tradition in a respectful way or to replace it with McDonalds and Starbucks for example.
This is not confined to "indigenous people". The same critique can and does apply to any group.
White person should not define "Indigenous way".
How else can we misinterpret this argument?
Any person, white, black, asian, whatever, can however assess whether this development is in line with the indigenous tradition or something that might distort or endanger it.
Or do you think the same discussion doensn't happen within the indigenous community as well?
Are certain groups not allowed to change? Why use the word distort or endanger?
We aren't talking about the discussions inside the community. We are talking about people outside the community applying judgements to their decisions and actions.
Did I say that?
>Why use the word distort or endanger?
Because obviously some change can be distorting and/or endagering some things?
The fact that an individual or group is allowed to change doesn't mean each particular change is always for the better.
>We are talking about people outside the community applying judgements to their decisions and actions.
Yes, so? Do you think groups should only get judgements to their decisions and actions from within themselves?
I disagree that we're all equal when it comes to defining what is and isn't "indigenous way."
The real issue is that Vancouver is full of NIMBYs who want sightlines, low density, and “character” preserved. It’s basically encoded into the zoning laws for the municipality. Those groups will use whatever tactics at hand to prevent density at a scale they don’t approve of from being built.
So I genuinely love seeing racial minorities stand up for themselves. I particularly admire what the Maoris have accomplished in New Zealand. And I especially love it when it ends up annoying the rich old white guys that the racial minority is starting to do the exact same thing that the rich old white guys have been doing for centuries. Seeing the irony and lack of self awareness lets me tell myself that no, I am not one them, despite the fact that I look like them.
BTW, the flip side of that is, "I am one of them despite the fact that I don't look like them." Which, it seems to me, is what we ought to be striving for.
You’ve returned to the world of racial essentialism, the most debunked form of racism, where you argue nonsense about what kinds of buildings people should make based on their ancestry. No matter how you dress it up in the language of civil rights, the racialized views promoted by the institutional left (eg, academia, media, and government) are built upon that racism — which we see articulated in your quote.
But if you touch grass, you’d know people consistently build with the best technology available to them — and have throughout history.
If anything, the person you're replying to rejected this kind of crap, they argue (like the article) that it should be the right of the Indigenous Nations to determine on their own what they want to build on their own land.
Who the fuck are you, white man, to say "It's high time the indigenous people reclaimed their sovereignty"? You're foisting your notions of sovereignty and time unto them, which is racist.
P.S.: I'm indigenous ;)
I suppose whether I am being rescued by my white saviors espousing this new age philosophy or tormented and infantilized is a subjective matter.
It is important for us to remember not to judge a man until you've walked three full moons in his moccasins. ;)
What if you said (in a different setting, where it would technically make sense): "Who the fuck are you, eskimo?"
I bet you wouldn't, because you've been programmed by woke media.
A person univolved with the colonization of Canada, not even from there or living there, that still believes that?
>You aren't living the same lifestyle and building the same buildings that your ancestors were hundreds of years ago
And that's bad in a lot of ways too. Not all modernization is for the better. It can turn a vibrant community into a gentrified Starbucks shitscape, for example.
Skyscrapers are not an indigenous lifestyle. I suppose that's not okay to bring up in this context?
If someone put skyscrapers on the last Hawaiian island I'd be pretty upset about it. The entire population of the Earth should be. Can't we leave one thing undeveloped?
But okay, maybe there is plenty of land to go around in Canada that looks the same as this land, so I could see that...
How does any of that relate to indigenous people using granted land to build them?
Does Canada have some law about that?
I guess I don't see why this quote has any bearing for or against the development. It feels entirely out of place in the article. Just seems like an unrelated fact.
What is unique is that nimbys have a new arsenal of tactics to use as to why this isn’t a good idea eg “concrete skyscrapers aren’t the indigenous way so you shouldn’t build your project.”
The people you're talking about would strangle this entire country to death (and have) before allowing a single 3-story building to be built outside of the small areas that were already been zoned for it 80 years ago.
The Canadian Indigenous identity issues tied up in this project are the only force that have ever been powerful enough to bludgeon them into submission, just this one time.
>Skyscrapers are not an indigenous lifestyle. I suppose that's not okay to bring up in this context?
If people are going to oppose this project, don't do it on the basis of some vaguely bigoted notion that "these skyscrapers don't match the indigenous lifestyle". As if that's the reason the project's opponents are opposing it. It's clearly a smokescreen being deployed because they actually dislike the project for NIMBY reasons (e.g., "it'll block my view", "it'll reduce the value of my nearby properties").
(Whether the commenter I'm responding to actually believes this is immaterial. The article quoted a local government official who basically said the same thing.)
I think we all agree on that. Here's what's really bothering me.
How did you arrive at the conclusion that the quote is implication of opposition to this development? Aside from the author of the article not so subtly injecting that implication, with no context, there's literally nothing to indicate that.
Destroying land to build them, I don't care who's land, is typically in opposition to environmental efforts. So before you say it's not my business, stop and consider that this is everyone's business. And using minorities as a scapegoat through what might be an underhanded deal might be pretty disgusting.
Since I don't know which it is, I'm asking.
Sure. Undevelop your own land and that will solve the problem.
If they did and then "undeveloped" it, that wouldn't much help. Right? The last island will have been destroyed for future generations to study and enjoy.
Not being Canadian, I have no clue what the context is. This might be the last of a unique piece of nature, or it could be the first acre of an endless desert. That context changes the meaning quite a bit, doesn't it?
I'm not Italian, but I'd be upset if Italians bulldozed Pompeii.
It's a world heritage site! Some things belong to everyone and are worth preserving.
I'll gladly "undevelop" and take compensation to move if a temple was discovered under my house.
So your comment has no meaning. I sure will "undevelop" my land, and since the law would force me, we can see that society as a whole had voted that I should, in certain cases.
This story doesn't make a case for not telling people what to do. It makes a case for not trusting natives to protect the wilderness.
Or maybe not. I don't have context. I am asking a question.
If you care so much, undevelop your own land and restore the nature and the balance. Plant forests over your parking lots and golf courses, erase suburbia and embrace minimalist living. That is so simple.
Developing land like this is a way for the tribe to generate revenue and take care of their members, but it's also a way for them to have meaningful input into the development process. They don't have some responsibility to leave the land as a pristine untouched wilderness, they can choose to develop it in a way that aligns with their values.
I visited a museum in the North once where they were talking about preserving the practice of carving giant canoes, to travel south and trade with Europeans. It struck me how this practice was historical and important culturally, but it also arose out of colonial interactions in the past 500 years. Both can be true.
My question was pretty simple.
How are you guys (commenters) drawing a connection between what the author quoted, and the assumption that the person being quoted opposes the building project?
What context are you using to correlate those?
Here's a logic diagram to help. Assume P1 is true, since that's what he's saying:
P1: indigenous lifestyle is not skyscrapers.
P2: skyscrapers can be built by indigenous people.
C: indigenous people can't build skyscrapers
The above is nonsensical. Your conclusion is in direct opposition to the premise.
Introducing this person's quote to the article was totally irrelevant unless you're aware of some context that is missing from the story.
I remember on TV once this older indigenous guy promoting natural resource development he thought would create indigenous jobs going on about “Back in the old times, my people hunted the buffalo. Now my people hunt a new buffalo, called the loonie”
I asked a question. Did you get that far? I'm wondering about context. How do you know the quoted guy is opposed to the development.