Lots of us care about deepening relationships with and social/economic/political justice for first peoples. It’s hard to come in, though, sometimes as a person from an oppressor or settler class. But there is a good checklist to make sure we’re actually contributing effectively.
Continue reading Are We Good Allies to First Nations?
It could be racism.
It could be concern that over time too many first nations citizens may get too educated and start demanding more in terms of inter-national justice.
Or…
Continue reading Does Racism Motivate Harper’s Aboriginal Education Funding Stance?
Genocide is a pretty serious word. It invokes the Holocaust, Pol Pot, Rwanda and some other high profile human eradication attempts.
But Canada, being Canada these days, is loathe to admit that it had any part in any kind of genocide. No. Not us. We’re so nice.
But the Canadian Museum for Human Rights will not be using the word when it comes to our historical “treatment” of the first peoples. Since the museum is part of the federal government’s propaganda wing, I can understand why it is avoiding the word. While a museum spokesperson said the Harper-appointed board did not make that call, staff did, this would not be the first instance of federal civil servants engaging in self-censorship during the Harper regime.
A number of commenters at the article make some interesting points.
One thing I keep in mind when people argue that Canada’s treatment of the first peoples is not genocidal is to consider how much people could be using separate arguments to avoid having to deal with the extent of destruction our nation visited upon people. If it’s uncomfortable to our self-concept that we tried to eradicate a people/culture/etc., we can sometimes come up with other arguments, like the semantic ones above.
It’s hard to know what’s in people’s hearts, but it’s easy to check to see if they appreciate the gravity of the issues they sometimes dance around.
“What matters in genocide is not that it’s a lot of killing,” said University of Manitoba sociology Prof. Andrew Woolford. “What matters is that it’s an assault against a group, on their ability to persist as a group.”
Underlying the genocide question are persistent allegations — some made by former museum staff — the CMHR’s federally appointed board routinely interferes in content decisions in an effort to tell more “positive,” politically palatable stories.
[Spokeswoman Maureen] Fitzhenry said the decision to avoid the word “genocide” was made by senior staff, not the board.
She said the museum will not shy away from exploring Canada’s colonial legacy, including the epidemic of missing and slain aboriginal women, the disastrous relocation of Manitoba’s Sayisi Dene people, land and treaty rights and residential schools.
Educate First Nations to be modern citizens
Don Olsen, The Daily News
Published: Wednesday, March 27, 2013
This is the most racist thing I have ever seen published.
The Nanaimo Daily News published a document either as an editorial or a letter to the editor [likely the latter] that is so vile and hateful, I will not reprint it here. I can’t stand the thought of this filth being on our website.
The link is above. I encourage you all to read it to get a sense of what some people think of the First Nations, and what can get published by a community paper.
And I want to know who is this racist Don Olsen.
Watch for updates. I’ve sent an email to the editor. If you’d like to contact the editor and publisher, here is their information:
Hugh Nicholson, publisher
HNicholson@glaciermedia.ca
250-729-4257
Mark MacDonald, managing editor
mmacdonald@nanaimodailynews.com
250-729-4224
UPDATE:
The disgusting post has been removed, but it has not been replaced with an apology or explanation. But you can read most of it with some good analysis here, and a screenshot of it is here.
9:51am A non-apology has shown up on their website. It is a typically cynical “we’re sorry that you were offended” piece of junk. I don’t accept that. It’s garbage and a further insult.
There is also a Facebook group planning action/response against the paper and its ignorant ways.
Vancouver Island University Board of Governors wrote an amazing, constructive, and future-focused letter about why the Don Olsen letter was a mistake and how the newspaper MAY help heal its involvement in community.
The students of the UBC Graduate School of Journalism also wrote an amazing letter to the Nanaimo Daily News.
I’m sure he finds this all quite convenient, but a large hidden issue in this is the privatization of public space.
Can I prohibit protest in a space I own? Possibly.
Can I lament at the amount of space deemed to be public [parking lot, shopping mall] that is really privately owned? Yes.
We need to remember to assert the legitimacy of the public usefulness of space. We need to challenge the amount of space being privatized. This is a difficult task. Any suggestions?
“Political or public protesting or demonstrating, soliciting, use of loud speakers or other similar devices, pamphleteering, loitering [and] skateboarding is strictly prohibited,” states the signs, which were installed by the owners of Glenmore Landing.
via Signs banning protests by Harper’s Calgary office questioned – Calgary – CBC News.
Men, especially white men, sleep too easily at night while women earn 70 per cent of what we do. Secretly, I think we’d prefer to not have to talk about this much. Sure, March 8 and December 6 are days we set aside for reflecting on this, but, most likely, we don’t want to be bothered with it every other day of the year. Plus, the NHL is back.
One conversation I have never had, goes like this. I’m in the lunchroom at work with a group of men discussing workplace realities. The topics drifts around to how women in Canada make less than men, on average. We then happily discuss how unionized workers suffer less gender-based wage discrimination than non-unionized workers. We comment on how women take time out of the workforce to bear and raise children. Then we conclude that pay equity programs can help bridge the gap, recognizing structural discrimination. Finally, we end up talking about how, as men, we need to find ways of being willing to take less money in raises to allow women to make more, until they are on par with men.
While most of that conversation seems realistic, the ending has never happened. I have never had a conversation with men about what kind of sacrifices we need to make, individually and collectively, so that women can reach wage parity with us. Why is that?
Here are a few generalized assertions that I believe will help explain our acceptance of continuing widespread pay discrimination. Brace yourselves, fellow white men.
First, I believe many people still think women actually don’t deserve to make as much money as men. Maybe we rationalize this by saying that men have traditionally been the main wage earners, as women used to not work so much outside the home. This is a compelling explanation, but it’s still sexist. And I think it’s still widespread today, even when so many women are now in the paid workforce.
Second, men still may have a sense of entitlement, which leads us to resent women taking “our” jobs. We can rationalize this by saying that, for thousands of years, women were domestic and men worked outside the home. But I think men still act from this entitlement.
Third, people think it is not fair for a woman to continue to earn full pay and accrue seniority while on parental leave. Strictly speaking, in a meritocracy, people ought to get compensated for what they actually do.
On the surface, there may appear to be some common sense to this sense of “natural justice.” It is, however, absurd and chauvinistic. No one questions the accommodations we make to allow people to stay home with full pay and seniority accrual for a variety of other things: having a sinus cold; recovering from cancer; celebrating Canada Day; and, in more progressive workplaces, caring for sick children or elders. We champion these benefits, but many of us still balk at loudly fighting for full pay and seniority for women on parental leave.
Fourth, capitalists don’t like women and they especially don’t want to work for one. Every January, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reminds us of the grotesque income inequality in Canada between CEOs and average workers. And the CCPA’s 2013 report revealed that only one of Canada’s top 100 CEOs was a woman. Many think the brutally competitive world of capitalism is a testosterone arena where women don’t belong: one that would undermine the femininity men enjoy in our minds when we think of women taking part.
Fifth, whatever gender entitlement men feel, is compounded when we look at racial entitlement: the idea, common among white men like me, that our white European settler ancestors created this “Canada” despite the people who were already here. The predictable defensive backlash against the Idle No More movement reflects this lingering sense of white entitlement.
And this has been a two-directional racial entitlement. White Europeans settled “Canada” and marginalized the people who were here because those people were inconvenient to the settler agenda. Going forward, white “Canada” has been brutally racist towards other new people who have arrived in this land we currently rule.
Canada may no longer charge the Chinese a head tax and we no longer turn back Komagata Marus. Now, instead, we detain and deport migrants on ships that approach the West Coast. And, in B.C., in a disturbing echo of the exploitation of Chinese labourers brought to Canada in the late 1800s to build our transcontinental railroad, we are importing Chinese coal miners under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to operate new mines.
It is uncomfortable to speak of such blatant systemic and cultural racism and sexism. I think most white men still have a blind spot when it comes to these subjects, or are simply too complacent when it comes to economic discrimination based on gender and race.
We need to drop this blind spot, or complacency, now.
Yesterday I gave my testimony to the Joint Review Panel for the Northern Gateway Pipeline Project.
Some might argue it was an exercise in futility because ultimately Bill C-38 gives decision-making power for these projects to Cabinet. Perhaps. Yet yesterday on the fourth floor of the Wall Centre hotel person after person put on record their opposition to the project. Their stories were powerful despite the fact that the public is physically shut out of these hearings, distanced by some 15 blocks (a public viewing area was set up at the Westin Bayshore). The separation of presenters from a supportive public actually seemed oddly appropriate to me given that this review process has been all about separating things from context: the pipeline from the marine effects, from climate change, from discussion of our addiction to oil. Why not separate people as well? Fear not though, Enbridge representatives didn’t have to listen to the webcast or watch with the public: they had a prime viewing table right in the room beside the review panel.
Everyone in my section of 35 yesterday afternoon signed up in 2011 to speak. The group was made up of a diverse collection of fishermen, engineers, students, retired biologists, artists and software programmers. All opposed the project as did the 253 in Victoria the previous week.
It was a moving experience. As one young man put it yesterday: “we will stop this pipeline, whether you’re with us or not…but we’d like you with us”. His mic was cut soon thereafter for pointing out that people would put their bodies on the line to stop it.
Another speaker started with a joke: “Why did the ship’s captain pull the oil tanker over?…..To take a leak.” Continue reading A Not-So-Public Hearing
Green Party leader Elizabeth May published a well-thought out and clear article on Wednesday, breaking down the reasons why the ongoing media banter about Attiwapiskat fund mismanagement and Chief Theresa Spence are merely distractions from an ongoing legacy of government failure to protect indigenous people and the environment. Twitter and Facebook have become virtual battlegrounds for both government supporters and those who are involved with the Idle No More uprising. Racism, sexism and classism are rampant, and tension arising from finger pointing and blame displacement are escalating. The crux of it all is that the Canadian government, and the majority of Canadians as a whole have been content to sweep First Nations issues under the rug, while sticking their fingers in their ears, and chanting “La, la, la! I can’t hear you! This isn’t my problem!”
Perhaps the most desperate and obnoxious contributions to the discussion in cyberspace is the delirious joy that right-wing carnival barkers like Ezra Levant derive from low-blow cat-calls: mocking Spence’s weight, questioning the intelligence of Idle No More supporters, and denial of third-world living conditions endemic to life on First Nations reserves. Their fear that this may gain traction beyond the frustrated residents of reserves is palpable. What are you afraid of, Canada? That you might not like what the elephant in the room means to your current lifestyle?
The Attawapiskat audit: Distracting us from a legacy of failure
– Elizabeth MayThe tensions surrounding First Nations and the federal government are, perhaps, at an all-time high.
I had hoped the Prime Minister’s decision to meet with First Nations leadership this Friday was a hopeful sign of a new beginning in building nation to nation respectful relationships. Perhaps it could finally be the beginning of implementing the 1996 Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.
Unfortunately, there is an ugly tone in the air as Conservative spokespeople, such as Senator Patrick Brazeau, line up in the media to take pot shots at Chief Theresa Spence. Although the Attawapiskat audit covers 2005-2011, Theresa Spence was only elected chief in 2010.
The release of the audit of Attawapiskat band finances is heralded by some as evidence of – what exactly? – that the housing crisis in First Nations communities is the fault of their leadership? The audit is not evidence of fraud, but shows an unacceptable level of expenditures for which proper documentation was not provided. It does not suggest the money was spent improperly. We simply do not know. Finger pointing and attacks will not help build a relationship based on respect for treaty and inherent indigenous rights.
So let’s just step back for a moment and admit what everyone knows. Millions of dollars in federal funding for indigenous peoples goes to non-indigenous consultants and lawyers and the bureaucracy supposedly at the service of First Nations communities. Many First Nations communities could benefit from better book keeping and financial controls, but so too could the federal government as the Auditor General has frequently reported. There is a reason that former Auditor General Sheila Fraser dedicated so much of her final report to the unacceptable multiple failures of the federal government in delivering on goals in meeting minimum obligations to First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples. In 2005 and again in 2011, the Auditor General set out a litany of abuse. In a report prepared by Sheila Fraser and released by her successor, she noted, “I am profoundly disappointed to note … that despite federal action in response to our recommendations over the years, a disproportionate number of First Nations people still lack the most basic services that other Canadians take for granted.” She did not point fingers at the individual communities, but rather at the Department of Aboriginal Affairs for relying on vague policy rather than the kind of clear legislation found at the provincial level to meet non-indigenous needs for health, housing, water and education.
So, just as the Idle No More movement was not an off-shoot of Chief Spence’s hunger strike, neither is the audit of Attawapiskat’s finances a relevant response to the litany of undeniable and shameful neglect of the treaty obligations of the nation of Canada to the people on whose land we live and whose resources make us wealthy.
Numerous Supreme Court decisions make it clear that the federal government, as well as private sector corporations with an eye of First Nations’ lands and resources, have a duty to consult. Yet, numerous legislative changes made by the Harper Conservatives over the last year had no advance consultation, despite significant impact on First Nations. Both Omnibus bills, C-38 and C-45, had significant impacts on First Nations, without consultation. The Canada-China Investment Treaty, signed by the Prime Minister in early September and not yet ratified, could also have huge impacts on First Nations, yet there was no consultation. From neglect, we seem to have moved seamlessly to an assault on First Nations, as though we could erase Constitutionally-enshrined rights should they stand in the way of mines, dams and pipelines. The issue of non-consultation should be addressed immediately.
The abandonment of the 2005 Kelowna Accord was the beginning of numerous blows, including cutting the following programmes aimed at redressing the scandalous disparity in health outcomes between indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians: health awareness programmes curbing tobacco addiction, Aboriginal Diabetes Initiative, the Aboriginal Health Human Resources Initiative, the Aboriginal Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy, the Aboriginal Health Transition Fund, the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Program, the Maternal and Child Health Program, and the Blood Borne Diseases and Sexually Transmitted Infections/HIV/AIDS Program. As well, institutions to assist in understanding the disparities, such as the National Aboriginal Health Organization (NAHO) and First Nations Statistical Institute (FNSI), have been axed. As well, the high cost of food and fuel in the North is a serious problem and remains unaddressed.
Despite all the evidence, we owe it to the embryonic potential of Idle No More to hope that all leaders present will rise to a new level of decency and respect – towards each other and towards the peoples and lands they represent. As the first indigenous leader of Bolivia has done, could we not begin to discuss the constitutional protection of nature itself? Could we not start designing a path to replace the Indian Act, establish a set of meaningful goals to ensure that all children on this piece of Turtle Island, indigenous and non-indigenous, have equal access to proper education, safe drinking water, decent health care and safe housing? Could we not live up to our promises of treaties past and lay the groundwork to a future premised on the respectful sharing of this land? I believe we can. In fact, we must.
Owned by the Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, ArcelorMittal is the world’s largest steel producer—creating some 93 billion USD of revenue as of 2011. Granted, steel is an essential building block of the modern world yet ArcelorMittal’s obscene profit margins do raise the question of “how are you possibly making this much money?”
Turns out, profitability margins are greatly aided by the economic pillaging and environmental destruction of a still-recovering-from-war southeastern European locale: Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The central-Bosnian city of Zenica has for decades been one of the industrial centers of the region. The steel mills in the area, prior to the outbreak of the 1992-1995 war, employed some 25,000 people—a shining beacon of the Yugoslav state’s productive capacities. Today, owned by ArcelorMittal, that number is just over 3000—with the company actually looking to downsize even further, according to local union organizers.
Yet the story here is not (so much) about the bargain-bin prices at which foreign multinationals have purchased massive industrial complexes across the former Yugoslavia—often only to dismantle and sell them off in parts.
No, the bigger story is about the massive ecological disaster zone that the company has transformed Zenica and its steel mills into, which, even at the height of their Yugoslav-era production, did not produce a fraction of the pollution they do today. The footage speaks for itself. Continue reading Why does ArcelorMittal hate Bosnia?
The provincial government has finally relented in its dignity-crushing stance of continuing to allow a developer to pursue building condos on top of a Musqueam burial ground. And while this change of provincial policy does not extend to a solution of land ownership, this is a critical first step to see the provincial government is not blatantly racist. I guess that’s a kind of win for them too. Though, a sad one.
News of this change of heart came out around 4pm today. A Friday. And any Aaron Sorkin devotee knows that’s when the government takes out the trash: releases news they don’t want the media to run with since few people follow the news leading into the weekend, all because it’s bad news, or embarrassing or otherwise something they’d rather hide, but can’t.
There’s no way we’ve missed the idea that instead of Friday afternoon, they could have released this news, say, on Monday morning at 9am to capitalize on all the press it would receive, except they’d look like people who have just learned that they are being racist when they keep saying, “I’m not a racist, but…”.
But even more stunning is the “outrage” that the developer feels about being shafted by the provincial government because they are no longer free to develop their private [sic] property. Now, before you read this hilarious, irony-free quote, please remember that around 95% of BC is unceded traditional First Nations land, covered by no treaty and not gained through conquest:
“In effect they have expropriated the property without compensation and bascially said you can’t do anything with that property and we are not doing anything to compensate you for that and I think every owner of private property in BC should be very concerned about that.”
The phrase in bold is my emphasis. I want you to now re-read that sentence, but replace the words in bold with First Nation in this land. Because that is exactly what has happened in this majestic province of the Queen of Canada for centuries. Ten bonus points to Shane Woodford for noting this fantastic quote which epitomizes the systemic racism or ignorance that so often surrounds “Canada’s” relationship with the first peoples.
So I ask this in all seriousness: do the owners [sic] of this property honestly not understand the colonial history of BC?
Their punishing ignorance should be an embarrassment. But I fear they are beyond shame.
Now we move forward to address why the Musqueam were legally barred from purchasing their burial site decades ago [hint: racism] so that we can seek a solution which restores dignity to those buried there, and to our settler society that has been a party to this shameful abuse of a burial ground.