Canada.
Imagine a place declaring that to be considered sufficiently racially pure to live there one has to have N great-grandparents of a certain ethnicity. Imagine them forbidding the marriages between the pure ones and outsiders, and evicting the impure ones, including the spouses and the partners of the racially pure, and their adopted children.
The Kahnawake Mohawk territory in Quebec has decided to do exactly that. The people adopted before the enactment of the law (2003) or married to a member before 1981 can apply to be a non-member resident. The people married into the community after 1981 get kicked out. People adopted after the enactment of the law get kicked out upon turning 18. The law of 2003 also suspends the membership of those who are married to non-Aryans, I mean non-Mohawks, but AFAIK they haven't actually enforced it.
From what I gather from the media, the law (or custom) of kicking out the spouses with insufficient "blood quantum" has existed for a long time, but the enforcement is sporadic, as in they kick out the spouses of their residents every few years and now seems to be the time. They are really liberal, too, giving the people a whole ten days to leave their homes.
"We don't consider ourselves Canadians," says the Grand Chief Mike Delisle. "Maybe this is the first step in terms of informing the community how we're going to move forward in that direction." I wonder what would be the second step - refuse any money coming from the Canadian taxpayers, I am sure.
The really funny thing is that Alvin Delisle, one of the previous chiefs, who used to enforce and support this law when he was a chief, has now become a traitor to the race and is living with a non-Mohawk woman. And guess what - he's had a change of heart now, and he is going to challenge the expulsion of his partner as a Canadian human-rights violation.
"Just because I'm a Mohawk doesn't exclude me from the Charter," he says. "I'm still Canadian. And I think this is an injustice. It's a racial slur."
Right. It's a racial slur and injustice when it is done to you. When you were doing it to others it was totally for the protection of Mohawk blood and Mohawk honor. Oh well, as far as seeing the light goes, I guess better late than never.
His girlfriend wishes to stay, saying that since they are both in their 60s they are not gonna have any children and thus pose a threat to Mohawk survival.
One thing I didn't find in the media: can Canada count the money spent on this community as development aid? Isn't that what you call the money that you send to places with human rights problems?
Monday, March 08, 2010
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6 comments:
Don't forget Israel, with its free immigration for ethnic Jews as opposed to non-Jews.
Hiski, not getting his identity through this new system
Hiski: most developed countries have an easy/easier immigration channel for ethnic whatever-they-are. All of them, including Israel, accept their population's spouses and children.
I'd really like to see the central government go tell the Mohawks, that if they don't feel like being part of Canada, they can become independent for all they care and immediately implement normal immigration procedures between Mohawk territory and rest of Canada and terminate all government financial aid to Mohawks.
I'd guess Mohawks would pretty soon realize that racial purity is all nice and good, except that you can't eat it :-)
Including Finland.
Mauno Koivisto decided this "reverse great Finland strategy". The imigration criteria is the speaking of Finnish as home langugage. I think it was not really checked at least
during the first years.
It was usually so that only the grand parents who were past retiring age did speak some Finnish and the younger generation did not.
They were put to ordinary Finnish schools, with no special attention or language teaching as their home language was Finnish in the papers.
Most of the people arrived in the early 90 when the unemployment rate was around 20%.
I think Jussi forgot to mention them, in his article about categorising imigrants.
Joonas
The indian tribal membership has not been entirely about ethicity. Cannot speak about Mohawks tough.
There are 19th century photographs about tribes that show distincly caucasian looking blonde men in indian clothing as part of the tribe.
At least 5 tribes had official negro slavery. I think some tribes used official slavery to make their black members non slavable. I think other tribes had slavery practises dating back their tribal customs.
Many tribes had also received runaway slaves as members.
I think Jimi Hendrix (guitarist) was perhaps the most known black indian.
The second thing is that the indian tribes are more like independent nations and thus do not consider themselves bound by human right declarations and such. The next thing is that most of the tribes have adiministration culture closer to typical african than western standards.
I have also heard that those few tribes that have made great profits from gamling rights have received members with closer ties with organised crime than indian ancsestry and have used their right to kick out people to regulate the number of receivers of the gambling profits.
No, the criterium was not speaking Finnish. It was being of Finnish nationality according the Soviet internal passport (probably parents or grandparents being Finnish was enough) or having been evacuated to Finland during the war.
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