The Victoria Anarchist Bookfair Collective aims to demonstrate solidarity with Indigenous peoples throughout the world by supporting the varied ways they assert their cultural and political autonomy. To uphold our responsibility within this solidarity relationship, we must name colonialism, capitalism, and state power as forces that obstruct our aims for justice. We recognize these struggles of resistance have a long history: colonialism today is not disconnected from the past but is connected to present reality through the ongoing attempt to remove Indigenous peoples from their lands, whether unceded or shared through treaties, and undermine the sovereignty and authority of traditional Indigenous self-governance systems and lifeways.
Locally, we have witnessed the resurgence of the Songhees and Esquimalt peoples, whose overlapping territories the city of Victoria occupies. These, and other communities with ancestral relationships to their lands, winds, and waters around the globe, show us better systems of decision making, along with better ways of living together and with the land. We support, and aim to walk alongside, Indigenous struggle and Indigenous sovereignty.
Art by Gord Hill, used with permission