The Ethics of Courage - Taiaiake Alfred

[sushigeau]

I liked being able to really get an insider’s view on this matter. Yes this piece was a little hard to follow, and not to mention a tad offensive. But in the end, it was a perspective I would have never gotten to experience otherwise.

Taiaiake Alfred is a first nation Canadian who gets his point across in a blunt, passionate and provocative tone.

He’

Comments

[sterling_k]

I think you did a good job on capturing the main ideas of this essay, I do agree with you when you said it was a little hard to follow which made it difficult for me to really get into the essay. But I also would be interested to know what the Onkwehonwe people thought of this, im sure they would have to agree on some parts of what he is saying.I guess we won't ever really know how they reacted to it.

[stochastic_mud]

Your question on how the Onkwehonwe reacted is a great one. Since we are clearly not the audience the effectiveness of his message is hard to measure. I wonder if Alfred is the leader in his community that he longs to be in his writing. When I tried to Google the text to quickly copy the part I was going to paraphrase, our classes blogs were the top Google searches so I wonder if this is still a relevant piece.

I understand how his tone and language could be read as offensive, but I find I did not take offense. I think he is wrong labeling "whites" as colonists and settlers but maybe that is how the Onkwehonwe see us.