IninewCrow
Indigenous Canadian from northern Ontario. Believe in equality, Indigenous rights, minority rights, LGBTQ+, women’s rights and do not support war of any kind.
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All of the biggest ones … no corporation should be allowed to amass so much wealth that they could literally control entire countries or regions of the world. The fact that this level of power and control exists means we value money and capital over human life or even more terribly the value of millions of human lives.
I’m Indigenous Canadian and my dad was born in the wilderness in a very traditional lifestyle in northern Ontario. His first and only language was Ojibway/Cree, he understood English but seldom spoke it as he preferred his our language only.
As a teen in the 90s I loved watched TNG and I watched it as often as I could whenever I could. I never stuck to a schedule and we only had the most basic satellite TV package we could afford at the time. I was so engrossed and loved the show so much that my dad at one point asked me … ‘It’s amazing that people are up there now that are doing all those things’
I had to explain to him that it was all just as show that was fake and that none of it was real.
To me … this is my favourite TNG moment … that the show was so convincing and well performed that it made my dad believe that it was real.
To be fair, my dad was probably the most intelligent person I’ve ever known and an excellent teacher. In his prime, he often just walked into the wilderness with nothing but a knife in the fall and came back midwinter with a stack of furs to trade and make money and then head back out again with very little to survive on. He just wasn’t that aware of what the outside world was all about.
The fact that you are there and aware of what is happening to your country is hope for change. I always sound doom and gloom in my posts but I’m also hopeful for the change. I’m Indigenous Canadian and my entire life has always felt like failure in everything me and my family has been exposed to for generations. The greatest thing I learned from all of it is to never give up … even in the face of overwhelming odds.
Our whole global pop culture has been fragmented now. Up until about 20 years ago, everyone the world over almost universally followed the same or similar pop culture because we all watched the same TV, the same movies, the same radio, the same music and knew the same biggest pop stars, movie stars and famous people. It was all mostly the same content from cable TV, satellite TV, broadcast radio, magazines and newspapers. We all read, watched and listened to the same stuff most of the time.
Now it’s completely fragmented. Everyone everywhere live in their own world, watch their own on demand TV … some like new stuff, some like old, some like regional, some like international, some like it all, some like only one niche corner. Not everyone follows the same patterns, shows, personalities or music.
I’m middle aged myself and I have no clue what anyone is doing or referencing most of the time and I no longer care. I like what I like and if I don’t understand or don’t get something, I move on until I find someone that can understand things that I understand.
The cost is not so much in losing the product but in deciding when and how much to invest in increased security. The more shoplifting happens, then the owner has to start investing in more security cameras, security guards and legal costs of dealing with law enforcement and courts. Then no matter what products or items you try to discriminate against, the owners and corporations just raise the prices of everything to cover their costs.
Don’t waste your energy on people who won’t listen.
Look for people, places and groups that support your own beliefs.
If you can’t find those people at work, then just be nice to them but not too close. Them in your free time, use your energy to support those people and groups you believe in.
Don’t waste your time on those who won’t listen.
True there are different types of poor and different types of people that see life as completely normal in any circumstances. We are all very adaptable creatures in whatever situation you place us in.
I grew up poor and I didn’t know it for about the first 10/15 years of my life. We had enough food but it was just that … enough … we never had extras, no snacks, no guilty pleasures. I have good teeth because I didn’t have the opportunity to eat a lot of junk food when I was younger which then led me to not really want it when I got older.
A lot of people around me were the same or similar … it was just the way things were and we were more or less just happy and content with it all. It was normal so there was nothing too upsetting about it. Unfortunately, not all families were as capable as ours. In a community full of people in the same boat, about half couldn’t do it and they fell into extreme poverty, addictions, bad health and just generally miserable lives. Then in my life, I started venturing out into the world and saw how wealthy everyone else was and I wanted to do the same but as a brown skinned Native person, the entire game was rigged against me … I couldn’t get schooling, I couldn’t find work, I wasn’t wanted, I wasn’t needed and I was just different. I had to work really hard to get anything. People also claim that my school could have been paid for but it only works when you work the system and are connected to everyone and everything in that system … I wasn’t and I had to fight my own leadership, my own community and the non-Native government about everything in order to get anything done. I barely scraped by and found work on my own, made a bit of money and barely made it to become an adult. Of all the family and friends I grew up that were like me … I think only about a quarter of us made it to something, a handful got post secondary and became lawyers and doctors or something important and the majority of the rest just ended up at home in varying levels of poverty from just getting by to literally living on the streets with small children. All in a situation where it is believed that we Native people get free money and have the world handed to us.
Money may not buy happiness but it sure helps and no matter how you frame it, poverty makes everything harder to do.
You get to lead the most powerful nation in the world