Inheritance and Homelessness in Dialogue with Vancouver’s Parks

Аннотация

Sto:lo Elder Lee Maracle’s chapter “Conversation 10: Appropriation” from her book, My Conversations with Canadians, exposes White settlers’ appropriation of Indigenous stories, songs, and knowledge as direct, intentional theft of birthright inheritance. Because oral traditions exist in European cultures only as folklore, there was no recognition of the cultural, scientific, and epistemic authority that Indigenous oral traditions hold. Maracle highlights how knowingly, and unknowingly White settlers robbed Indigenous children of their birthright by writing down stories and knowledge. This inevitably led to the settlers capitalizing off of their plunder. However, in more recent years, in line with efforts of Truth and Reconciliation, Indigenous birthright and familial ownership have been coopted and are in the process of being filtered into Canadian intellectual property law. Maracle interrogates the Euro-Canadian urge to treat Indigenous intergenerational knowledge as equivalent to European colonial private property. The two are not equals.