Old Stock Canadian Appropriates Native Voices, Leads Dubious Montreal Pipeline Protest

Amanda Lickers: Most hypocritical pipeline protest ever?

Amanda Lickers: The most unlikely poster girl for appropriation of indigenous voice…

Amanda Lickers is a “anarchaqueer Onkwehon:we cis-woman” from the Turtle Clan of the Onondowaga nation; her interests include “combating ecocide, hating the police, and harvesting medicines.” When she’s not using protests and rallies as opportunities to attack the police, Amanda works towards “dismantling all systems of oppression” by paradoxically “slashing at their social, cultural and material infrastructures.

Amanda works with Rising Tide Toronto, many of the same fine people who brought violence to the streets of Toronto during the 2010 G20. As a spokesperson for their protests, she plays a valuable role deflecting the media from asking questions like “how can a group consisting of 99% ‘settler allies’ have the audacity to claim they speak on behalf of entire indigenous communities,” and “why are there so many convicted G20 organizers here?”

Lickers was in the news again last week after emitting 600 kilometers of carbon traveling to fight “ecocide” in Montreal. She and fellow protesters interrupted a National Energy Board consultation on the Energy East pipeline. Standing on First Nations land unrelated to her home at the Six Nations, Amanda was an interesting choice of spokesperson- why wasn’t there someone local? Could it be that she’s following her established tradition of appropriating the voices of indigenous people outside her own community?

Amanda & pals tear up a 9/11 memorial at Middlebury College in Vermont

Amanda & pals tear up a 9/11 memorial at Middlebury College in Vermont

Amanda got attention on both sides of the border in 2013 in what many see as one of the year’s most distasteful activist attention seeking stunts. Visiting Vermont’s Middlebury College (which is coincidentally where Bill McKibben started 350.org), Amanda decided it was a good idea to protest “militarism” by pulling up and throwing 2000+ American flags into garbage bags. The flags were placed by a coalition of Democrat & Republican student organizations as a memorial to the people who died in the 9/11 collapse of the World Trade Centre.

From the mind of a seriously sick woman...

From the mind of a seriously sick woman…

Amanda explained to the media that her reasoning for this ghastly act was that the flags were on an indigenous burial ground and it was disrespectful to have placed them there. When people complained about her self-righteous behavior she smeared them as “genocide, eugenic, and imperialist supporters!!”. Typical stuff we hear from activists, covering their own weaknesses by making shit up about others.

But there was one major problem. Like last week’s protest, Amanda wasn’t standing on land she had any connection with, it was the traditional territory of the Nulhegan Abenaki Tribe. The chief was horrified by how she dragged his people’s name through the mud with such an abhorrent self-promotion. In a press conference he not only called Amanda and her friend’s behaviour “disgusting“, but called her on her bullshit that the flags were on a burial ground- they weren’t.

So we have to ask the question whether Amanda was pulling a similar stunt last week. Why wasn’t a local person speaking to the media? Why were the three key people interrupting the meeting shipped in from Toronto? Why weren’t there any local indigenous people put before the media. Could it be that she and fellow professional protesters don’t have as much indigenous support as they claim to?

Amanda & friend come from the yellow highlighted area

Amanda & friend come from the yellow highlighted area

Amanda is from the Six Nations reserve near Caledonia, her fellow indigenous activist on stage came from the Aamjiwnaang First Nation near Sarnia. If you look closely at the above map you’ll see a yellow highlighted area that gives a rough idea where their homes are. The green parts of the Energy East pipeline are existing segments, the orange are proposed new segments.

Amanda and her friends declared that there will be “no new pipelines” build on “our territory”. The good news in the case of the Energy East pipeline is that it runs hundreds of kilometers away from their reserves, and the pipeline planned for Ontario is already built. So they’ve already won the (non) battle, Energy East will have absolutely zero impact on their communities and won’t be built anywhere near them.

What About Amanda And Line 9?

Line9Enbridge

While it might upset her to hear this, Licker’s background shares many of the characteristics used to describe “old stock” Canadians- early settlers who helped build this country; abandoning their homelands in search of safety, freedom, and a better future for their families.

Amanda’s ancestors are some of Canada’s earliest refugees who were forced to flee their territory in New York after siding with the British against the Americans. The Crown assisted their resettlement by rewarding them land in Southeast Ontario- the place Amanda calls home, now known as the Six Nations reserve.

There’s a blog by Deyoyonwatheh does an excellent job explaining the technicalities and history of Six Nations treaties explaining and debunking all the misinformation we’ve heard over the years. Deyoyonwatheh made another excellent posting about the Six Nations Men’s Fire vowing to stop (the already completed and approved) reversal of Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline reversal. He explains in great depth how the Six Nations don’t have a claim on the lands the pipeline runs over and how it’s kilometers away from their reserve.

One of the (valid) criticisms against old stock Canadians was their paternalist tendency to speak and act on behalf of indigenous communities. Most Canadians now regret this behavior, but it doesn’t appear that Amanda got the memo; instead continuing to follow the path she established in Vermont in 2013. As unlikely as it sounds, Amanda has become the poster girl for the social justice movement’s neo-colonial appropriation of indigenous causes.

With Halloween on its way, and costume stores already popping up across the country, it won’t be long before social justice warriors start wagging their fingers and feigning outrage about politically incorrect Pocahontas costumes and baseball hats. The lazy/overtasked media will undoubtedly regurgitate the same stories they’ve been printing about the same subject for the past few years.

But meanwhile, when a protester who’s got as much negative attention for appropriating indigenous communities voices as Amanda stands up on a stage, the media laps it up like a kitten handed a fresh bowl of milk. CP24’s Cam Wooley told me back in July this happens because the media is afraid of “offending people”. The media needs to wake up and start realizing their timidity is allowing the Amanda Lickers of the world smear the names of communities filled with good, innocent, people- many who are horrified to be represented this way.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.genuinewitty.com/2015/10/02/old-stock-canadian-appropriates-native-voices-leads-dubious-pipeline-protest/

9 comments

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  1. This country is going to come to a “war” between the Aboriginal/Indigenous & Canadians!! Ad it won’t be pretty if they keep up their warrior like attitude while lying and hating on Canadians who have been here for generations and NOT settlers!!!! Don’t they get it?? Their approach to solving problems and getting their voice heard is very racist and no good will come of it.

    1. Sadly, shoddy media coverage makes it easy to mistakenly believe that people like Amanda are representative of their communities. The truth is that they’re not – like most Canadians, most First Nations people just want to live their lives and provide safe and enriching lives for their family and children.

      For every antisocial idiot paraded and used by the radical edge of the environmental movement there’s also an amazing leader trying their best to make a better world.

      Imagine if the media focused on the latter instead of the former? I can think of no better path to reconciliation…

  2. Great article Greg, Your research on all the articles you send is second to none! Keep up the good work and hopefully it will open some peoples eyes!

    1. Thanks, I appreciate the feedback, reminds me why I go through the pain of spending hours pouring through radical websites and Facebook pages… (I read Rabble.ca so you don’t have to)

  3. I don’t need a history lesson , I’m not one of the 90% of idiots. What I and many others are tired of is the political left and dupes of a new world order using appropriated native issues as a stick to beat the masses with to make them submit to their fucked up politically correct agenda. When ever somebody brings up this first nations own the land bull shit, what they are really doing is using cultural Marxism to force a far left political position on you. FUCK THAT NONSENSE

    1. There are situations where pipelines have crossed directly across reserve land. When/if that happens the affected community has both a right and responsibility to their own people to make sure it’s done safely with minimum risk and impact on the health & welfare of their people. That said, when people in Sarnia and Caledonia start claiming their race gives them the right to veto a pipeline running 100’s of kilometers away from their homes- well, that’s just a form of racism/supremacy isn’t it?

    • Jacob Roe on October 26, 2015 at 12:01
    • Reply

    There’s no denying that colonialism has had a legacy, but there are plenty of aboriginal people who simply integrated into society, not because they were forced, but because they never really believed in tribalism for its own sake. Sure, if a tribe is getting you something, great, but if it isn’t, it’s time to exercise your right to self-determination and make new friends. The situation today is that people like myself, who have aboriginal ancestry (but who doesn’t, everyone was aboriginal before being urbanized, and everyone is indigenous to earth, that is what _many aboriginals_ believed before these colonial University reconstructions of indigineity along corporate/geometricallly bordered lines) are disenfranchised qua aboriginals, oddly enough, because we never complied with the Indian Act—so because we didn’t comply with an instrument of colonial oppression, we just kept on trucking, rather than obeying our Big Chiefs, we should be considered “less aboriginal” than people who collaborated with a Government that they feel is illegitimate?

    As to the social justice media making hay over costumes, I think that the cultural heritage of earth belongs to all people, you can’t “appropriate” what you own. Are aboriginal people “appropriating” European culture if they play Bach on a piano?

      • Anne-Marie Poirier on December 17, 2015 at 23:40
      • Reply

      Thanks for sharing and enlightening me on what other Aboriginals are feeling and thinking!

    • John Doughnt on November 21, 2015 at 15:06
    • Reply

    The usual Toronto Feminist SJW suspects…

    Here she is protesting a talk about male suicide:
    https://youtu.be/iARHCxAMAO0?t=2m16s

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