Kanaks (the indigenous peoples of New Caledonia) are revolting against French colonialism, and the French govt is blocking access to tiktok in an attempt to stop them organising and posting about what's happening.
"Why did France ban TikTok?
As we mentioned, France gave an order to block access to TikTok across the island as part of a state of emergency declaration. Other measures also include the deployment of French troops to secure ports and international airports, alongside a national curfew.
This harsh response came as a reaction to three days of violent clashes that left four dead (including a French gendarme) and hundreds wounded. As Politico reported, protests erupted as French lawmakers passed a bill to change the voting system by allowing all citizens residing on the island for more than 10 years to vote in local elections. New Caledonia's indigenous population, the Kanaks, believes this law will ultimately weaken their representation."
Colonialism has mastered the crime of stealing our children for generations and then punishing and criticizing our parents and grandparents for how they originally raised children.
Then, they went ahead and stole, renamed & rebranded our sacred original parenting instructions as “attachment” parenting, “conscious” parenting, “gentle” parenting, “positive” parenting, and “child led” parenting.
It has been used as a tool of profit.
It has been used as a means of stealing babies from families, then forcing the mothers and fathers of those babies to take colonial based parenting courses in order to get their babies back. And those colonial based parenting courses are heavily twisted and skewed versions of our parenting instructions - but twisted and skewed so severely, so deeply, that they only accommodate and feed colonial agendas and systems.
It is a matter of indigenous parents today abiding to colonially twisted, and colonially backwards parenting “styles” in order to fit the criteria of being a “good parent.”
Here’s the thing though.
Residential schools, the 60’s scoop, the child welfare system, and every other colonial policy embedded in the colonial fabric of society was created to do just this.
Keep the children out of our families to continue the ongoing attempts of assimilation and genocide against our peoples.
Even today.
So rather than pushing for “attachment” parenting, “conscious” parenting, “gentle” parenting, “positive” parenting, and “child led” parenting let us open into, revitalize, maintain and relearn the original instructions of raising and nurturing children.
Let us heal and dissolve what generations of colonialism has embedded into our parenting styles.
May we do our best to continue that.
So we can continue to raise children in the ways that we were originally meant to….
For generations to come.
Because this is the least we can do for the children in our lives today.