Although much of the spotlight has been directed on activism in the United States, it is imperative to acknowledge and appreciate the influence that Canadian activism has had on challenging dominant, harmful narratives. In this post, I will delve into two main examples — the Idle No More Movement and the Stop Asian Hate Movement — and assess their effectiveness in dismantling oppressive categories, addressing intersectionality and transnationalism, and deconstructing power hierarchies.
Idle No More
Calling for Local Concerns to Become National & Global
The Idle No More Movement emerged as a grassroots movement in November 2012, when four women from Saskatchewan, Nina Wilson, Sylvia McAdam, Jessica Gordon, and Sheelah McLean, organized a “workshop focused on the impacts of Bill C-45, a 457-page omnibus bill containing changes to 64 different acts and regulations” (Graveline, 2012, p. 293). Idle No More was born from the desire to assert Indigenous self-determination, as Bill C-45 contained provisions that would affect the measures to protect the environment and reserve lands (Crosby & Monaghan, 2016).
The movement overall sought to address the issues of Indigenous rights, sovereignty, and environmental justice, which are interconnected on both local and global scales. Idle No More challenges the decisions made by the Canadian government and corporations, highlighting their negative impacts on Indigenous communities’ lands, resources, and ways of life. In doing so, the movement brought attention to the harm caused by governments and corporations and suffered by indigenous populations in various countries.
By organizing rallies, protests, dances, and economic blockades, Idle No More “caught the attention of the Canadian government and its various policing and security agencies”, thereby blurring the lines between private interests and public concerns (Crosby & Monaghan, 2016, p. 43). Additionally, Idle No More emphasizes the interconnectedness of environmental degradation, colonialism, and violations of Indigenous rights, which challenges the traditional compartmentalization of these issues.
Approaching Intersectionality and Transnationality
With its recognition of the complex intersections of race, gender, class, and colonialism in shaping Indigenous experiences, Idle No More embraces an intersectional lens in analyzing power structures. The movement acknowledges that Indigenous peoples, especially Indigenous women and 2SLGBQT+ individuals, suffer multiple oppressions that interact with broader dynamics of power and privilege.
Furthermore, Idle No More highlights the importance of solidarity and cooperation between Indigenous nations and with non-Indigenous allies, both within Canada and the global sphere. The #IdleNoMore hashtag on social media was popularized to the degree of there being solidary rallies held in the United States, Stockholm, London, Berlin, Auckland, and Cairo, as well as support from Croatia, Ukraine, and Palestine (Crosby & Monaghan, 2016). By forging alliances with other social justice advocates and movements, Idle No More demonstrates the interconnections between struggles against structural injustices.
Potential Challenges
While Idle No More focuses on calling out and dismantling pre-existing hierarchies of race, class, gender, and colonialism, the movement also faces challenges in addressing these hierarchies within itself. With such a wide array of supporters and advocates involved, there are likely issues of leadership, representation, and inclusion within the movement that could potentially reproduce power imbalances based on gender, age, and tribal affiliation. Inter-Indigenous tensions could be a factor in reproducing hierarchies and shaping the movement’s approaches to asserting Indigenous self-determination and rights.
In addition, the movement’s reliance on digital activism and community-based events may exclude individuals with limited access to technology and limited mobility. There may be issues with consensus regarding inclusionary approaches. Thus, Idle No More’s success in challenging or reproducing hierarchies is contingent on its ability to address and overcome these internal dynamics to promote intersectional approaches to organization and advocacy.
Stop AAPI Hate
(Inter)National Anti-Asian Violence
The Stop AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) Hate Movement was ignited as a response to the rise of hate crimes and discrimination against Asian people during the COVID-19 pandemic (Dong et al., 2023). During the pandemic, social media was used to spread hate messages toward Asians, to the degree that transnational criticism took place in the form of the circulated hashtag #StopAsianHate (Dong et al., p. 2023). Shortly after the pandemic hit Canada, “reports of incidents where East Asian Americans are victims of verbal harassment, physical assault, civil rights violations, and online harassment appeared across social media platforms” (Dong et al., 2023, p. 111). News coverage and social media platforms focused on the origins of the virus (which was in China), leading to xenophobic sentiments and harmful messages.
Additionally, the support garnered for Asian Americans and Asian Canadians led to a hate-tracking website (Stop AAPI Hate) that provides a safe space to share first-hand experiences of discrimination, resources for communities to implement certain measures to undermine the xenophobia associated with COVID-19, and a “sounding board” for federal and local government officials to discuss how law enforcement can effectively address anti-Asian violence (Kaplan, 2023, p. 106).
The movement, in shedding light on how xenophobia, scapegoating, and racialized violence affect AAPI communities in North America, challenges the distinction between the global and the local. Hatred towards Asians during the pandemic skyrocketed across the world, with a worrying number of people degrading and dehumanizing Chinese individuals specifically. This was intensified by public health experts “label[ing] the illness [COVID-19] as associated with Asian Americans, particularly those who immigrated from China” (Kaplan, 2023, p. 98). As such, the movement was dedicated to highlighting the interconnectedness of anti-Asian racism and violence on both national and international levels, revealing that racism is not confined to specific regions or contexts.
Intersectionality in Asian-Directed Hate
Stop AAPI Hate acknowledges that AAPI individuals, particularly women, elders, and working-class immigrants, face several forms of discrimination and marginalization. In particular, LGBQT+ Asian youth in Canada struggled with feeling unsafe in public due to increased COVID-19-related racism against Asians, being called slurs and cyberbullied for their Asian heritage, gender, and sexual orientation, and modifying public behaviours to avoid being attacked (Chee & Coleman, 2024). The emergence of Stop AAPI Hate allowed people to “recognize the structural harms that Asian communities have endured”, with one Chinese, bisexual cisgender woman commenting that “the community was able to come together” (Chee & Coleman, 2024, p. 12).
The movement used social media platforms to spotlight the historical legacies of imperialism and colonialism that continue to affect AAPI communities worldwide. By advocating for solidarity and allyship across diverse communities and interacting with other marginalized groups, especially during the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement, Stop AAPI Hate seeks to address the root causes of racial injustice and establish coalitions for social progress. As such, Stop AAPI Hate uses an intersectional lens to discuss anti-Asian violence and employs a transnational analysis of power to encourage solidarity between AAPI communities across the world.
Potential Difficulties in Reproducing Hierarchies
Although the Stop AAPI Hate Movement focuses on challenging pre-existing hierarchies, it also struggles with internal tensions. Participants in Chee and Coleman’s (2024) study viewed the movement as counterproductive since it was performative, which could potentially cause more harm. This is a limitation of most digital activism, which is that a hashtag has less impact without direct action. Though Stop AAPI Hate encouraged LGBQT+ Asians to speak out about their experiences of oppression, the traditionalist, collectivist, and conservative nature of many Asian cultures often sideline their perspectives.
As such, Stop AAPI Hate may have primarily benefitted cisgender, heterosexual Asians. As queerness is often stigmatized in Asian cultures, Stop AAPI Hate may struggle with amplifying the voices of those who are marginalized in AAPI communities themselves (Chee & Coleman, 2024). Furthermore, many AAPI cultures are classist and elitist, which likely factor into the movement’s effectiveness in dismantling pre-existing hierarchies. Thus, while the Stop AAPI Movement encouraged the coming-together of AAPI individuals, it may have excluded or downplayed the severity of the intersectional oppressions faced by certain subsets of the broader AAPI community.
Sources
Chee, K. & Coleman, T. (2024). COVID-19 pandemic experiences of LGBTQIA+ Asian youth in Canada. Journal of LGBT Youth, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2024.2329879
Crosby, A. & Monaghan, J. (2016). Settler colonialism and the policing of Idle No More. Social Justice, 43(2), 37-57. http://www.jstor.com/stable/26380302
Dong, H.B., Vo-Tuan, S., Vu-Hoang, L., & Bui, N.P.T. (2023). The #StopAsianHate movement: Deconstructing Asian hate through digital-visual approach and letter writing. In Mreiwed, H., Carter, M.R., Hashem, S., Blake-Amarante, C.H. (Eds.), Making Connections in and Through Arts-Based Educational Research (Vol. 5, pp. 109-121). Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8028-2_9
Graveline, F.J. (2012). Idle No More: Enough is enough!. Canadian Social Work Review, 29(2), 293-300. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43486286
Kaplan, M. A. (2023). The rise in anti-Asian racism and xenophobia in the time of COVID-19. Journal of Hate Studies, 18, 96-114. https://doi.org/10.33972/jhs.221
Image & Video Sources (In Order of Appearance)
https://www.wcel.org/blog/indigenous-activism-canadas-past-present-and-future
https://idlenomore.ca/idle-no-more-is-founded-by-4-women-idle-no-more/
https://macleans.ca/news/canada/the-spooks-werent-idle-either/