Art by John McDonald
The "Flag Thing"- The 'Discovery' and 'Claiming' of England- 2000
On July 27, 2000, while John was a student at the University of Cambridge (UK), he staged a protest to bring attention to the inaccuracies being taught as history in regards to the exploration of the Americas. Wearing a beaded buckskin jacket and carrying a flag depicting an Indigenous warrior on a Canadian flag, John symbolically "Discovered" and "Claimed" England for the First Peoples of the Americas. The flag is now on display in the First Peoples Hall of the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa, Ontario.
The Speech:
"My friends, I have traveled many thousands of kilometers and have landed upon these shores, where I was met by it's ancestral inhabitants.
I look around, and I see a people with their own civilization, their own language, their own communities, their own buildings and religion and way of life.
In the time honoured tradition of Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Hernán Cortés and so many others who came to our homeland, I say that none of this existed before my arrival, and that everything I see here now, I am the first 'civilized' person to see, and thus I have discovered it, and, in the name of the Creator, and for all of the inhabitants of Turtle Island, the Americas and the Caribbean, I hereby claim this land for us.
(plants the flag in the ground)
Remember this, my friends: you cannot 'Discover' something when someone is already there.You did not 'discover' us-we were not lost. You did not 'conquer' us-we are not conquered. Hoka hey"
The Speech:
"My friends, I have traveled many thousands of kilometers and have landed upon these shores, where I was met by it's ancestral inhabitants.
I look around, and I see a people with their own civilization, their own language, their own communities, their own buildings and religion and way of life.
In the time honoured tradition of Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Hernán Cortés and so many others who came to our homeland, I say that none of this existed before my arrival, and that everything I see here now, I am the first 'civilized' person to see, and thus I have discovered it, and, in the name of the Creator, and for all of the inhabitants of Turtle Island, the Americas and the Caribbean, I hereby claim this land for us.
(plants the flag in the ground)
Remember this, my friends: you cannot 'Discover' something when someone is already there.You did not 'discover' us-we were not lost. You did not 'conquer' us-we are not conquered. Hoka hey"