Nobody made a TV show about the Belgian thing where the guy who got speared in the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark plays a detective.
I knew the Belgians were awful in Africa, but I hadn't heard of this.
I've never seen the word Métis used in this context! In Canada, it has a very specific (and contested!) meaning that is definitely not at all equivalent to 'mixed race.'
I think the word is being used to make the point that 1 made explicit.
6: Right, I get that. But the Métis people have (justifiable) strong feelings about their cultural identity and about mis-appropriation of the term and the concept. I have no idea how they would feel about this particular use. But in general, they object to using Métis to mean anything close to 'mixed ancestry.'
It looks like this is a normal usage in French Africa, Wikipedia says one definition is "mixed race persons in Gabon and elsewhere in francophone Africa."
The same word often has different meanings in different parts of the world, see Coloured in South Africa for another notable North America/Africa split.
Antoinette Uwonkunda was born to a Greek father and a Rwandan mother in Butare, present-day Huye District in 1961 [...] Her bitter experience would later inspire her decision in 2020 to found Métis du Monde, a non-profit organisation based in BelgiumThe North American Métis will have to take it up with the Central African Métis.
I never read the article, so I didn't get that the article was talking about were mixed race. I just thought it was two groups of people with kids taken into residential schools. But maybe in Canada, the Métis weren't the ones forced into residential schools? It's been a while since I watched Three Pines.
I'm sometimes better about reading stuff, but I'm having a busy week.
I used to be better about not double posting.
Trees were mentioned, so this might as well go here too:
https://theconversation.com/arborglyphs-basque-immigrant-sheepherders-left-their-marks-on-aspen-trees-in-the-american-west-225423
10: the Sixties Scoop was the program that I know targeted the Métis in particular, but I think they were affected by the residential schools as well.
The same word often has different meanings in different parts of the world, see Coloured in South Africa for another notable North America/Africa split.
"Creole" is another famous example, with different meanings even within the New World.
This is all tangential, but why not:
I was in a used bookstore a month or so ago, and ended up pulling this punchy history of Eritrea off the shelf. I had mixed feelings about it, because I don't love stylish narratives from the metropole packaged for intellectual tourists, but the content ultimately won me over and it was a quick read. The author, who comes from a medium-length line of scholars named Wrong, also wrote up a remarkable review of a remarkable book [<-- this is the link to click if you only hit one; it is amazing] and is currently running afoul of the Rwandan government and hating it. I really am a slacker, huh.
[<-- this is the link to click if you only hit one; it is amazing]
The linked article is really good!
I think the "plucky little Eritrea" narrative may not have aged well, though.
Also the link in 1 makes my 15 worse than irrelevant! Sorry. No one wants to be that person who clicks on everything, I suppose.
Form the 2nd link in 18:
Follow any contemporary television drama long enough, and you'll notice the plot twist. Frustrated and heartbroken by a series of mishaps, a character quits the job, gives up the apartment, plans to leave forever. "Where to?" friends ask, aghast and vicariously excited. "Africa," comes the answer, although it could just as well be Brobdingnag, El Dorado, or Mordor. What's required is a nebulous destination offering personal obliteration.
What dramas have this element? It's completely unfamiliar to me. Is it a soap thing?
The most conventional way you see Africa mentioned on TV dramas, to my mind, is some character's charitable trip in the past, cited to show they are virtuous, or that they pretend so.
Wasn't Colonel Blake on his way to Africa when his helicopter crashed?
25: That took me ages to figure out.
Probably because it had nothing at all to do with Africa.
The same word often has different meanings in different parts of the world
Ya think?
Anyway, nomenclature aside, this situation seems a bit closer to the Stolen Generation era in Australia than to any specific policy I can think of in North America, although there are similarities across the board. It's jarring how recent all this stuff has been, with some timelines stretching into my lifetime (link via Wiki).
Reading the OP article made me realize that I have no potted history of Rwanda in my head from reading about the genocide, nor do I have actual historical knowledge, and it's probably worth getting past this "wait, what happened in 1959?" point.
I haven't read very deeply on it, and I had to look up some of the specific dates just now, but here's a quick outline chronology if it's helpful:
1897: Colonized by Germany, which ruled through the indigenous Tutsi-dominated monarchy
1916: Conquered by Belgium during WWI; Belgium continued to govern (still through the Tutsi monarchy) under a League of Nations mandate after the war
1959: Hutu revolt
1962: Independence as Hutu-dominated republic
1973: Military coup; resulting government still Hutu-dominated
1990: Tutsi revolt and Civil War
1994: Genocide of Tutsis by Hutus; Tutsis win the war and establish government under Kagame that is still in place
Also, you probably know this already, but "Tutsi" and "Hutu" aren't really ethnic groups in a European sense but more like castes within a single overall ethnolinguistic group, the Banyarwanda.
My mental picture of Rwanda includes Don Cheadle.
"What dramas have this element? It's completely unfamiliar to me. Is it a soap thing?"
Yes, I cannot think of a single example. Even in old novels where the wastrel son or disappointed lover goes abroad to better himself or to forget, it's more likely to be India or Canada or Australia. Contrary to what Wrong thinks, Africa hasn't actually seen centuries of large scale European colonisation, with the exception of South Africa. Before 1880 or so, outside SA, the European presence was numerically tiny.
Maybe it happens in dramas in Belgium?
32: there is the proverbial escape from a past life -- joining the Foreign Legion, which I think generally leads to Africa. Also I'm reminded of the map of Africa in Uncle Vanya
Russian literature always seems so fucked up. You have these people with no jobs and unwatchable levels of angst.
To anyone interested in reading more about loathsome colonizers, I give you the Happy Valley set
That's the kind of sex life that leads to a Masterpiece Theater show. Sex so white that Alistair Cooke introduces it.
34: good point! Yes, joining the Legion to forget is a cliche and yes, that's generally North Africa. I was thinking sub-saharan only.
But it's a pretty old cliche. I can't believe it still happens in the sort of TV show Wrong is talking about.
36: yes they drank spirituous liquors and consumed illicit narcotics, some of them even engaged in extramarital fornication, words cannot express the extent of my disgust and shock, I am feeling quite faint
Oh what sad times are these when even the official publication of the Phi Beta Kappa Society uses "reveal" as a noun.
One might say such times are literally apocalyptic.
Anyone thinking of having a party at which you announce whether the baby you're having is a boy or s girl should very seriously consider referring to it as a Gender Apocalypse Party.
39: I think there was the occasion murder.
43: but that should be lauded, not censured, since they were loathsome colonialists.
Had they been laudable they would have murdered more than occasionally.
They probably didn't invent being a tool about shooting big game in Africa, but they certainly boosted it.
Two whole books!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arborglyph#Further_reading
43: How could it be an English village without the occasional murder?
I was about to say I would watch that show, but actually I wouldn't.
"Happy Valley" still makes me think of Penn State.
It always makes me think of the horse races in Hong Kong.
The guy who told me what he went to the Jerry Sandusky youth football stuff did have a college career, though not at Penn State.
They probably didn't invent being a tool about shooting big game in Africa, but they certainly boosted it.
As far back as humans have existed in Africa, judging from surviving evidence such as cave paintings, they have been being tools about shooting big game there.
Locally, there is considerable overlap between the fucks funding Trump and the ones with dens full of dead things from Africa.
WE *INVENTED* THE GODDAMN TOOLS
I forgot how much Ajay loves colonizers.
61: There is no bottom. It will get worse once the election is over.
I forgot how much Ajay loves colonizers.
Not all of them, Spike old boy. You're a coloniser, and I'm not too keen on you.
You are now required to wear a chastity belt, unlockable only via Jammies' Bitcoin wallet.
Nervously contemplating the possible relationships of 65 to 62.
(It's the opioid settlement ruling, right?)
Jarkesy, another nail in the coffin of the modern administrative state
He loves the British Empire, not colonizers as such.
67: recent ones are Snyder, aka "Bribes are fine if you get them after doing the corrupt thing not before"; Jarkesy, aka "No government agency gets to impose fines without a jury trial"; Moyle, aka "no, Idaho, you have to let women have abortions when their health is at stake"; Purdue, aka "no, rich Sackler bastards, no hiding from being sued"; and Ohio v EPA, which is something complicated about air pollution. The last three sound to my ignorant ear fairly OK so I guess one of the first two?
aka "no, Idaho, you have to let women have abortions when their health is at stake";
Is that an actual decision now? It was just a non-official leak last I heard.
Obviously, being downwind from Ohio, the idea that only Ohio gets a in Ohio pollution is an obvious problem.
71: I am a skim-reading non-American non-lawyer sitting in the wrong continent so I may very well have completely misread it, but there is an actual decision: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-726_6jgm.pdf
They are releasing stuff today, which is why I asked.
Our own supreme court's most recent decisions include "if the Home Secretary says you murdered 18 people based solely on the fact that a court found you guilty of murdering 18 people, you can sue her for libel"; "if you drill for oil, you have to submit an environmental impact assessment that includes the effect of someone burning all the oil you extract" and "if you slander someone in a way that might cause them financial loss, they can sue you even if they didn't actually suffer any financial loss".
"no, Idaho, you have to let women have abortions when their health is at stake"
For now. They let a lower court temporary order to that effect stand, but the case is still running, & they could change their minds when they address its substance.
76: It's good enough to send you to prison, but if someone says you did it, it's libelous? Now if you brought back the death penalty, and the offender had been hanged, would their heirs have standing?
I think you get a chair at an execution.
18: the argument was that it wasn't a proper court, it was foreign (specifically a Bangladeshi war crimes tribunal) so you couldn't rely on what it said.
I see this is another area where UK defamation law is stronger - in the US, it is categorically impossible to sue any federal official for defamation (Federal Tort Claims Act expressly allows most torts, but not that).
Good lord. Presumably there is some sort of "in the line of duty" condition there? Or do they have complete immunity?
This is all weirdly close to my actual expertise. For those interested, here's another fascinating ex-Nazi female pilot who made a second life in Africa: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23425461.pdf.
The British tended not to put mixed-race kids in boarding schools, but the French did some of that in Southeast Asia. Emmanuelle Saada's book, Empire's Children, is the best history on the subject.
The British tended not to put mixed-race kids in boarding schools
I mean, they did in places like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Martini%C3%A8re_College,_Lucknow, but that's not quite the sort of thing you're meaning.
Sure, the British were a big fan of boarding schools in general, but not specifically as a way to deal with the problem of mixed-race children.
There's also the French colonial boarding schools known as les Écoles des Hôtages. They designed to educate the sons of chiefs but also, as the name suggests, to keep the peace by essentially turning them into hostages.
83: Yes, acting within scope of employment.
There's also the French colonial boarding schools known as les Écoles des Hôtages.
If this was their actual official name, I admire their honesty; less so their marketing strategy.
88 the name makes it to Wikipedia (and i hadn't heard that before): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostage_schools