It is becoming obvious that we, the Intaki, are becoming strangers in the Gallente Federation. Many of us have been integrated by our benevolent imperialist conquerors and have reaped the benefits of life in the Federation. We are included in their culture at least as far as inclusion means that we are blended into a greater Federation determined by the cultural, political and social needs of Gallente. As Intaki, we have two choices: submit to the Gallente hegemony and assume an identity that is not our own (and is therefore fundamentally alienating), or refuse integration altogether and therefore live with the alienation of an imposed Gallente sociopolitical superstructure. Those of us that have refused to be integrated, especially historically, are therefore outcasts or exiles.
Our actions of political defiance at the break of the Gallente-Caldari War, something that would seem at the very least tolerable by a self-proclaimed democracy, were punished as thousands of Intaki were forced out of their homes and exiled into the dead of space. The exiles wandered into the inhospitable depths of open space, banned from colonizing planets from a government that claimed to stand for freedom. But we survived, our thousands in space did not die out, rather they grew and transformed the dead space into a sustainable region of commerce, culture and, most importantly, freedom.
I fear for our cause now, since a quiet resolution seems lost on a people who can stand by and accept that they banished thousands from their own homes to die in space. Will the peaceful demonstrations of a restless Intaki population be met with similar actions? Of course, such measures were only ‘the product of heightened tension from the Gallente-Caldari War and a need to maintain the unity of the Federation’. But the Federation is irreparably fractured, Caldari Prime sits in a silent vigil to that fact, what greater moment of tension is there but the present? The Federation has already lost its greatest minority member, what if we, the Intaki, were next? Surely this would be cause enough to act in accordance with some ethics wherein attempted murder becomes acceptable and necessary. So even if we were to act peacefully, the history of the Federation seems to suggest that they are wholly capable of condemning us to a slow and forgotten death.
Those that live in space must be well aware that they have never known pure air, nor have they ever felt grass under their feet, or wind in their hair, or seen a sunset. They have never seen the Akats basking in sunlight on their own homeworld. They have never seen the deep, endless blue staring across the oceans of Intaki. They know only the sterility of station floors, the smell of trade, and the black speckled loneliness of space surrounding them. Even if they do not realize their situation as such, it is a life lived in exile. The Syndicate is the home of exiles; those that have been rejected and banished by a society too repressive and hypocritical to accept them for what they truly are. And we, as Intaki, should be aware of ourselves as exiles, even those of us that live within the confines of the Federation. Wherever we are, we are exiled, banished from our homes and our culture, forever made to obey and trust the Gallente or any other oppressive culture.
As such, the figure of the exile, must be our rallying point. It must be our symbol. For only in our collective exile will we assert ourselves. Only in understanding ourselves as joined in alienation will we overcome the oppression we have experienced for far too long. We are alone, but alone together, and we will find strength in our solitude.
Alone, we are free.
—
Reprinted with author’s permission.