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Apology Towards Keiran And Mob

Phos / 2025 February 23 (1001 Words, 6 Minutes)

Table of Contents

What happened

I screenshoted A’s repost of what Keiran said about getting prepared and survival skills, and vaguely said “this is a weird take”. A reached out about it and we talked a little bit. At the time I responded to/talked with A, I didn’t understand the core of the issue so I responded unreasonably. This happened in mid Feburary 2025.

(keeping “A” anon as I cannot confirm with them if they’re ok to be mentioned, and they’re not a public figure)

(saying the fact that I was responding to A’s repost is just to be clear, but I still understand my behaviour had the most impact to Keiran and Mob and that’s the important part)

My apology & self analysis

The basics

I shouldn’t have casually and vaguely “critiqued”/criticised a Blak person/their views on my stories, and I apologise for that. No matter what my exact intentions were at the time of posting, it was another case of settler’s recurring/ongoing attempt to wear out Mob and discredit their efforts. My lack of consideration and my inability to see the issue at the time showed deeply ingrained racism and lack of respect towards Mob.

Bad faith & double standards

I saw what Keiran said and I jumped to conclusions. Just from this snippet of text, or even combined with the little I know about them, I should’t have judged Keiran or A to be ableist so quickly. I should have approached this with curiosity and humility, instead of assuming I already understand everything including what’s not even said.

I reacted to what he said because of my previous experience of “survivalist talking points”. I was activated and wasn’t seeing clearly, and I ended up perpetuating harm towards Mob as a settler, instead of fighting against it. I should do better on recognising activated states and take a pause when needed.

I do think ableism and sanism is widespread (both in general and in “left” spaces) and we should be more aware and talk about it. But this was not the place, as everything I was thinking and my attitude was based on my assumptions.

I had applied double standards. I felt like since Kieran didn’t make 100% clear what he meant, I could just start going on with my interpretation. But when what I said was treated like that, I was unhappy; I wanted people to believe my intentions were benign but I didn’t treat what Keiran said with the same attitude. I apologise for this and will strive to be more self aware.

I have also been hypocritical towards A’s story post about myself in the same way. I initially thought, I was just casually mentioning it, externalising my thoughts as they come just like I always do, but their post was more like an intentional, serious attack. But I can see now, if the roles reversed, my stories would be felt in the exact same way.

I always talked about treating each other with kindness and curiosity, the need to build real relationships despite trauma and online algorithms, but I still have a long way to go. A lot of us are tense in this time, it feels like too much is at stake, and too little progress is happening. This isn’t to excuse what I did, but instead I want to say, learn from my example. even if we are tense, we still need to treat each other like how we want to be treated. like we depend on each other. Otherwise, we’ll just continue the cycle of harm.

Survival skills

Of course, it’s not Mob’s responsibility to make sure settlers have adequate skills. Actually, Keiran and BPU has worked hard to put together resources to educate us. Keiran isn’t saying “get prepared” out of individualism and elitism and that is clear through what he does for the community, and the context of Indigenous resistance.

Since settlers benefit unfairly from colonialism and caused/are still causing Blak people’s suffering, we have a responsibility to support Indigenous-led resistance, uplift Blak people from systematic oppression and make their survival easier. Not the other way around.

I knew these ideas but as you can see, I didn’t fully understand and embody it. If I saw that story and asked: “hey, these are my skills, how should I share them in a way accessible to both me and others, so the community survive better?” This conversation would probably be more productive.

My lack of relationships with Mob

I have not been proactive about forming relationships and working with local Mob whose land I’m on, and that’s on me. It’s certainly not on Mob to make me comfortable enough to reach out, but I always have a responsibility to do so as long as I live on this stolen land and benefit from genocide as a settler. I admit I’m uncomfortable about it in part because of being a settler and afraid of doing something wrong, and I need to work on this, including building up basic understanding and history knowledge, so that I am more safe to be around. I think I would also be more comfortable if I feel more secure in having a shared understanding.

My social media behaviour

I also want to acknowledge, over time on Instagram, I have been messaging people “unprompted” under their stories to share my thoughts, many times in disagreement or partial disagreement. I apologise for the hurt this has caused. I have started to reflect about this since I saw someone point it out recently, before this incident, but I’m just gonna make it clear that I should seriously start implementing communication techniques that I already know (and didn’t use), like checking if people want to hear any feedback first before expressing it.

The end

Thanks to a few friends who gently held me accountable and talked through the problems with me. Your time, patience and understanding is greatly appreciated.
I thank A for first bringing up the issue with me.

I hope this can be helpful for other settlers to also check your behaviour and beliefs, and how you react to things.

If you have any thoughts you want to share about this, I welcome them. If from reading this you still see issues on something, please let me know.

References

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