A Canadian academic associated with Mount Royal University is throwing out the English language capitalization rules in protest of the Indigenous peoples' struggle for recognition in Canada.
"dr. linda manyguns," the associate vice president of Indigenization and decolonization at MRU, wrote in a perspectives piece for MRU that "we resist acknowledging the power structures that oppress and join the movement that does not capitalize."
An editor's note on a Calgary Herald piece about "manyguns" explained why she was refusing to capitalize anything but words pertaining to the Indigenous struggle.
"mount royal university's office of Indigenization and decolonization uses lower case text as Indigenous 'eventing' to support resistance. they join leaders such as e.e. cummings, bell hooks and peter kulchyski who reject symbols of hierarchy wherever they are found and do not use capital letters except to acknowledge the Indigenous struggle for recognition," the editor's note read.
Her comments come as over 1,000 unmarked graves have been discovered on the former sites of residential schools in Canada over the last few months, sparking new conversations about the Indigenous experience in Canada.
"it was genocide, and the adults were dying at just as high of a rate as the children at residential schools. our reserves should be filled with graveyards and there are none," she told the Calgary Herald.
She told the Herald that with her new position at MRU, she is bringing in a Traditional Thinkers Circle, planning a garden with traditional Indigenous plants and bringing traditional languages to some studies.
"this isn't about beads and feathers and putting up pictures on the wall. they are expecting me to make some pretty fundamental changes to the system … not just curriculum," she said.
"if you are going to take away the notions of colonization, then you have created a vacuum and you have to fill it with something. that's what I intend to do," she added.
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