“A message of solidarity and shared grief to the Kamloops Nation by the Alliance of Iranian Canadians”
June 21st, 2021
Chief/Kukpi7 Rosanne Casimir
Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc
200–330 Chief Alex Thomas Way
Kamloops BC, V2H 1H1
Phone: (250) 828–9700
Email: communications@kib.ca
To Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc, the Kamloops Nation,
*The AIC is a registered, not for profit society, made of a group of Canadians of Iranian origin from left, right and center.
A message of solidarity and shared grief
We are a group of immigrants, now citizens of Canada, originally from the country of Iran.
Seldom do immigrant-settler communities such as ours give proper acknowledgement to host and neighbour Nations such as yours.
We want you to know that you have been in our minds, and that recent events finally compelled us to contact you directly with our condolences, and with a statement of shared grief and solidarity, as well as with our own cautionary tale.
We thank you for allowing us to be your neighbours and live on your rightful lands. We know in our hearts that Nations such as yours are the true stewards and keepers of this land and are a sovereign people to whom is owed the deepest gratitude and respect.
We also grieve with you in relation to the atrocious injustices against your people.
We share your grief as we as a culture that has also experienced colonization, violence, and is now largely exiled to your land, where you and other First Nations have given us refuge, for which we are forever indebted and thankful.
Your story resonated with us because we too have experienced a similar plight by a colonizing government. Our country’s children were executed by the current regime occupying Iran. One of our female group members was herself jailed and traumatized when she was a minor by the fundamentalist regime in Iran. The regime in Iran has persecuted all indigenous ethnic and religious groups of Iran through unspeakable methods of torture and execution. The regime in Iran believes that women should be violated if they don’t fully conceal themselves and if they don’t listen to their husbands, leading many women to flee Iran and seek refuge elsewhere including in Canada.
We wish to never experience such atrocities again and instead wish to help our adopted country, Canada, and its rightful inhabitants in their quest for justice and reconciliation. We wish to put our own pasts behind and become part of your past, present, and future.
You can thus imagine the concern of our community when learning that the Liberal government’s position is to establish friendly relations with the Iran regime. We believe you and other Nations should be aware of this. The regime in Iran lost its right to an embassy on September 7, 2012, due to spying in Canada and seeking to enforce its laws and customs in Canada in contravention of international law.
This constitutes an encroachment of First Nations’ lands, an affront to your and our culture, and is inhumane in forcing people to be threatened and re-victimized over and over again. We are certain this is not the way of the First Nations. Yet, the Liberal government has repeatedly tried to re-establish relations with the regime in Iran and allow safe-haven for their criminal operations.
We write to you in hope that we will stand together in solidarity, and that we will do so without the help of the Liberal government. We believe that the Liberal government also refuses to take responsibility for its part in colonizing the First Nations, and this has not gone unnoticed to us.
We acknowledge that you are on your own quest for justice and reconciliation, and we want you to know that you have our support, and that your problems are also our problems, as you are the true sovereigns and keepers of this great land.
Thank you and kukwstép-kuc
The Alliance of Iranian-Canadians
aic.iranian.canadians@gmail.com
604–440–9562
