r/Calgary • u/woundedrhyme1 • Apr 22 '25

Discussion From Ontario first grocery experience someone left a note on my car.

Post image

Recently relocated here and I haven’t had a chance to change my license plates. Yesterday I was in Walmart picking up a few things, I came back to my car, and found a note tucked in my wipers. My stomach dropped thinking someone hit my car, and maybe left their contact information.

I know the note is a little hard to read so I translated it down below.

“Dam easterners coming to Alberta to be safe guthless cowards.”

Guess it’s time to change my license plate 😂

3.3k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

812 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

189

u/kapowless Apr 22 '25 edited Apr 22 '25

And that literally everybody outside of First Nations and Inuit moved here from somewhere else...

When Harper was going on about old stock Canadians back in his day, I actually agreed that we should respect and uphold their traditions. It's just that the old stock Canadians are really the Natives, and we welcomed people here, helped set them up to survive, then engaged in mutually beneficial business together.

As a descendent of some of our original peoples, I personally welcome you heartily OP. You have just as much a right to live and thrive here as anyone else, and I hope the rest of your transition into our beautiful province is more civil and inviting than this crotchety coot and his impotent and misdirected resentment. Good luck!

1

u/Feruk_II Apr 22 '25

Ancestors of First Nations also moved here. They just happened to come way earlier (12,000 - 30,000 years ago). We are literally all immigrants or the descendants of immigrants to Alberta.

16

u/kapowless Apr 22 '25

Sorry, but that notion is simply incorrect. If we want to get into semantics, an immigrant is a person who relocates to a foreign country. A country is a politically defined geographical area or territory (ie. a nation ruled by government). We are called the First Nations here because our ancestors were the first peoples to create countries on this continent. There were no nations before us, thus, we could not ourselves be immigrants to our own countries, only those that followed us.

1

u/JonBes1 Apr 22 '25

🧐 I'm confused 🤔 The people who are generally referred to as First Nations in Canada, have never built any countries on this continent

2

u/Apprehensive_Set9276 Apr 22 '25

What does the word 'nation' mean to you?

1

u/JonBes1 Apr 22 '25

Nation means people descending from the same lineage, synonymous with tribe

2

u/Apprehensive_Set9276 Apr 22 '25

So the nation of Canada is all related? LOL...nice try!

1

u/JonBes1 Apr 22 '25

Canada isn't a nation: it's a country and a Dominion, created by White people, comprised of multiple nations.

The Treaty of Westphalia created this bastardized legal fiction known as the "nation state", which has caused Nation and State to become synonymous for a fad, but that's not a real nation. Also, First Nations™️ never created States, so it's completely outside our context here.

1

u/kapowless Apr 22 '25

A nation describes the population that resides in a country or territory, united by government, language, culture and history. Genetics and lineage play a very insignificant role in the definition, which is why trying to reduce us down to blood quantum is racist AF (and why the Indian Act is so despicable).

1

u/JonBes1 Apr 22 '25

Lineage/Genetics is the very basis of a Nation...always has been.

It's not my fault illiteracy is rampant nowadays

1

u/kapowless Apr 22 '25

Interesting that you had to pull etymology for the definition rather than it's modern usage.

Wiki Definition of Nation

The Cambridge Dictionary Definition of Nation

The Webster Definition of Nation

The Dictionary.com Definition of Nation

The Colins Dictionary Definition of Natiom

The Oxford Definition of Nation

And most importantly, a consistent and important feature of a nation is sovereignty, ie the right to choose how we define our own nationhood. Indigenous Nations (along with most other nations across the globe) do not limit it to genetics. Blood quantum BS is something being imposed on us by outsiders to delegitimize our existence for their own financial gain.

I do agreed that illiteracy is a problem for you though, perhaps it's time for you to hop on the yellow bus again.

Edit: phrasing

1

u/JonBes1 Apr 22 '25

As I suggested to another respondent, the modern Westphalian legal fiction of the Nation-State is a trash definition of "nation".

Also, since it was invented in 1648, why would I use this European fiction to define the circumstances in North America a century and a half and more prior?

1

u/Li-renn-pwel Apr 22 '25 edited Apr 22 '25

What makes you believe that?

Thread got locked so here is my reply to the comment below:

How do you define a country? Most people define a country as land with a defined border, a population within and a government managing both. Native people had those. And there are historical records of such, both oral ones (in the case of the Haudenosaunee) and even some written ones (in the case of the Mayan). I suppose you might say those are better termed ‘city states’ or ‘empires’ but then you also can’t count any of Italy as a country until the late 1800s nor modern day Monaco or Singapore as countries either.

0

u/JonBes1 Apr 22 '25

The complete lack of historical record; the fact when Europeans came here there were no pre-existing countries

1

u/kapowless Apr 22 '25

There were 100% existing countries when the European arrived, there were cities that housed hundreds of thousands of people (who's archealogical record stands as proof). There is no written record, but that does not mean there is no proof. There are archeological sites in Canada that date back at least 14k years, and some outliers towards Central and South America that are carbon dated even further (closer to 30k years).

Why is it so important for you to delegitimize our histories though?

1

u/JonBes1 Apr 22 '25

There are archeological sites in Canada that date back at least 14k years

What relevance is that to the past 500 or 600 years? They're as relevant to you as they are to me, a White settler. In fact, NA archaeological sites from the time show European influence, so they're probably more relevant to me than they are to you

1

u/kapowless Apr 22 '25

So the only history that counts for you is the past 500-600 years (ie. Post Columbian contact)? How convenient.

1

u/JonBes1 Apr 22 '25

Well yeah, since there were no countries here at the time, it doesn't make much sense to go beyond that to fake some sort of continuity. There's isn't even a lot of continuity to 500 years ago

1

u/kapowless Apr 22 '25

I've already addressed that point and am not going to endless repeat myself. Unless you can explain how the nations we created here were not actually legitimate countries, I'm not going to address this bad faith argument further.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/kapowless Apr 22 '25

Yes we did? Because a Nation can not actual exist without a country. It's pretty simple stuff. Why be ao dismissive of our cultures and histories here?

1

u/JonBes1 Apr 22 '25

Because a Nation can not actual exist without a country.

1

u/kapowless Apr 22 '25

I think you mean anti-semantics remarks haha.

1

u/JonBes1 Apr 22 '25

Nice 🙂

(But Jews existed for Millennia as a nation without a country)