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Oh, Canada! Ignoring Your Sovereignty is the Point
It is what he does
This week the convicted rapist who somehow was elected president has been stirring the pot with tweets about buying Greenland (not for sale), taking back the Panama Canal (which was never technically ours), and annexing Canada (umm, what?).
What these moves all have in common is that they would violate another country’s national sovereignty.
It comes as a surprise to some, but we should not be surprised. Violating sovereignty is exactly on brand for the fraudster-in-chief and the people around him.
I never thought much about the word “sovereignty” until I started teaching adolescents about Indigenous treaty rights. Now I think about it all the time.
In the 1800s tribal nations made nation-to-nation treaties with the government of the USA. Those treaties include sovereign rights and responsibilities. When private companies are granted permits to run oil pipelines through the watersheds of Reservation lands, it is a violation of these sovereign rights. The pipelines keep getting put in anyway.
The concept of sovereignty goes way beyond pipelines and fishing. The way the US government treated/treats Native people is just one example of how sovereignty is respected for some and trashed for others. This is…
