There’s a new movement in Canada to support Indigenous resistance by doing away with capital letters.
Yes, you read that right. Capital letters.
The Media Research Center (MRC) reports Dr. Linda Manyguns, Ph.D. the new associate vice-president of Indigenization and Decolonization at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada, released a statement on the university’s website about using lower-case letters as “resistance.”
“this {sic} is a beginning effort at describing the use of lower case on the website of the office of indigenization and decolonization,” the statement read.
“the goal of equity, diversity and inclusion of all people is synonymous with the interests of Indigenous people. we support and expand the goal of equality and inclusion to all forms of life and all people,” the statement continued. “we join leaders like e. e. cummings, bell hooks, and peter kulchyski, who reject the symbols of hierarchy wherever they are found and do not use capital letters except to acknowledge the Indigenous struggle for recognition.”
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Manyguns tries to make the argument that poet E.E. Cummings used lower case letters in solidarity with Indigenous people’s movement. But as the MRC points out, Cummings played with typography and punctuation as part of his poetry, it had nothing to do with Native peoples.
Bell Hooks’ biography on the Berea College website states, “she has chosen the lower case pen name bell hooks, based on the names of her mother and grandmother, to emphasize the importance of the substance of her writing as opposed to who she is.”
Kulchyski is a professor of Native Studies at the University of Manitoba, and agrees with the no-capitalization ideology, also writing that people should “reject the symbols of hierarchy.”
Even though the idea is to better communicate the struggles of indigenous people, David P. Ball writing for the Canadian Dimension website noted Kulchyski’s insistence on making his books difficult to read by not capitalizing anything.
But according to Manyguns, capitalization is oppression.
“we resist acknowledging the power structures that oppress and join the movement that does not capitalize,” she wrote.
“the office of indigenization and decolonization supports acts that focus on inclusion and support the right of all people to positive inclusion and change,” Manyguns continued.
Writing for the MRC, Alexa Moutevelis notes, “Language is what helps us to communicate and understand each other, why would they want to create further barriers that create confusion and division? Like BLM protesting the National Anthem, this nonsensical demonstration puts up unnecessary barriers and shifts attention away from the cause they are trying to highlight so the focus is instead on their ridiculous and offensive antics.”
“Let’s hope this latest Canadian craze doesn’t catch on south of the border,” she added.
As CBN News has reported, Manyguns’ comments come following the recent discoveries of unmarked graves on the sites of former boarding schools for Indigenous children, many of which were run by churches. The remains of nearly 1,000 bodies have been found so far, most of them Indigenous children.
This led to an ongoing anti-Christian campaign across Canada this summer which resulted in a total of 45 churches being attacked with some of the buildings being burned to the ground.
Terrorists are responsible for the attacks against mainly Roman Catholic churches serving indigenous congregations.
As CBN News previously reported, in a chilling tweet, the leader of the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) even called for more Christian churches to be torched in response to the discovery of the graves.
Harsha Walia, the association’s executive director, responded to news reports of two more Catholic churches being burned down, according to The Western Standard.
“Burn it all down,” she tweeted.
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