EnMasse

[al-Qa'bong]

We really ought to have a thread about this, even if there's nobody here to talk about it.

Steven "Indian Giver" Harper wants to renegotiate the treaties that were agreed upon, and which should be providing a lot better living standards for First Nations people than is the case. Harper also wants to privatise reserve lands.

We all should be fighting back, as we're all treaty people.
_________________
"The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the powerful" Hammurabi

"We can't all be Sam the Sham; some of us have to be Pharoahs" Larry, brother of Darrel, and his other brother Daryl

[anne cameron]

What Harpo is doing is ramping up the not-so-secret policy of extermination of "the Indian problem". Most Canadians are so poorly informed of actual conditions on reserves, and the reasons for those conditions that they knee-jerk react with put-downs which blame the victims.

Privatization of reserve land is just so obviously a way to get that land into the hands of developers. Impoverished people will sell their "share" just to get their hands on some money. When enough people sell their "share", here come the development corporations and there goes the land.

Out here a great number of reserves are on what would be deemed waterfront property. At the time they were given reserve classification they were the LEAST desirable pieces, often miles from any kind of town, school, medical facility, etc., but now they are very desirable and beach frontage sells for huge money. In Campbell River a band has struck a deal with a major big box outlet, leasing them reserve land, a deal which seems to satisfy all concerned. But it's only leased, it isn't as if it has been sold...big difference.

This Harper government just gets sleazier and sleazier, nastier and nastier and it's going to prove to be a black eye in the history of this nation. And to think they taught me in school that the Nazi's had lost the goddam war!!!

[Slumberjack]

[anne cameron]

People, many people, still think if the roof of a house on a reserve starts to leak, the government pays to have it repaired. They think natives can hunt and fish day or night year in and year out. They think natives don't pay tax on anything. That there's free medical, dental, eye and ear care.... and , sadly, we've all been told often enough that the biggest per centage of kids in foster care are FN kids.

It's been a well run propoganda machine and the castratti in the news media have played their part amazingly well.

The hunger strike? Some withering wit in the local coffee shop was heard to remark "she's so damned fat it'll be months before we notice any change in her...", and someone else added "she must'a been planning this for a long time, eh? She can live off her own fat until at least Easter."

I can only hope they don't represent the majority of Canadians.

[Vundo Draxon]

[sparqui]

Thank you, Vundo. That's an excellent article. I suggest you look up Pam Palmater and the incredible work she is doing to educate Canadians about Aboriginal rights. I think you would find her work to be a great companion piece to Vowel's work.
_________________
“If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a tractor.”

-- Gilles Duceppe

[Hondo]

[al-Qa'bong]

Lemme guess; you think line dancing is fine but round dancing is violent?

Hey, whatever scoots your boots, pilgrim.
_________________
"The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the powerful" Hammurabi

"We can't all be Sam the Sham; some of us have to be Pharoahs" Larry, brother of Darrel, and his other brother Daryl

[Slumberjack]

[anne cameron]

I don't feel very protective of corporate property and when it comes to violence it seems to me the federals , the army, and the RCMP take the cake on that...the death of Fred Quilt, the shooting of Dudley George... the way the Surete handled the blockade of the Mercier bridge...it takes a certain mind-set to rough up a three year old kid...

I was never offended when Direct Action sabotaged logging equipment, especially when the logging company was in "overcut", mowing down old growth at amounts above their permitted cut quota...and it gripes me no end that the government charged so many blockaders but so far not one CEO of a major logging corporation has been charged in spite of their cavalier disregard for regulations...

they always yammer on about "level playing field" but I don't see it's very level, it has always slanted in favour of corporations and industry... so blockading the railway, or closing down a bridge or a border crossing doesn't seem particularly heinous to me... with any luck they'll close down the Parliament buildings... not that the people inside that edifice are doing anything of benefit to the nation.

[DSquared]

[al-Qa'bong]

You might have to speak up. It's probably difficult to hear or see anything from inside those circled wagons.
_________________
"The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the powerful" Hammurabi

"We can't all be Sam the Sham; some of us have to be Pharoahs" Larry, brother of Darrel, and his other brother Daryl

[sparqui]

Hondo wants fee simple property rights so that the super rich, money bags developer can go door to door buying out all the plots he/she needs to get on with business. If it were an episode of Bonanza, the developer might have his own private policing cowboys around to harass the holdouts.
_________________
“If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a tractor.”

-- Gilles Duceppe

[Slumberjack]

[al-Qa'bong]

This just came in the mail....

[Hondo]

[anne cameron]

Oh yeah, sure "billions" just handed over willynilly with no strings attached and the band councillors are driving Hummers while....THIS is what I meant when I said most Canadians were ignorant of the actual conditions on reserve... every cent of "indian money" is supposed to be supervised by the federal government...so IF there has been mishandling of that money what were the supposed watchdogs doing other than cashing their paycheques? You want accountability? Start at the top, start with the feds...why does Bombardier need a big chunk of money and more tax breaks, they're doing just fine... why do the five major banks get a free ride?... how come so much has been spent looking into the bloody jets we're supposed to need so badly and why have we been consistently lied to...

It is just too frikken easy to blame First Nations people...blame the victim and kiss the ass of the victimizer...blaming the FN people satisfies the hidden and often not-so-hidden racism of the blamers...

the entire system stinks. How many miles of what used to be reserve land have somehow wound up in the hands of off-shore developers? And how did that happen?

I wish I had the time and energy to fill you in on the stinking deals between the United Church, the logging corporation, and the federal government that saw so much of what was Ahousat land taken away from them. And what good did it do them to go to court?

And what good does it do to try to get the bigots to remove their blinders and find out the truth.

[al-Qa'bong]

[anne cameron]

The Village of Tahsis has a policy of letting the Moachat-Muchalat know ahead of time if anything the Village does will, in any way at all, impact on traditional territory. If it will, the Village meets with the Moachat-Muchalat chief and council, and , together, they discuss what might be a problem. So far there has been NO dispute, the discussions have been friendly and have demonstrated mutual respect, and guess what...it wasn't difficult!

You have to know I'm pre-prejudiced. I have five granddaughters who are status band members. Big house tradition teaches that until they are old enough to speak for themselves it is my duty as grandmother to speak for them.

Traditionally, pre-contact, the year-round spring at what is now called Esperanza, was considered a healing site, and particularly good for any problems with the liver. Consequently, the NuuChaNulth were used to going there when they felt ill. Come Contact, the "shanty men" missionaries took advantage of this and set up their first medical clinic at Esperanza. Today there's a large enterprise there, although all things medical get handled by the Clinic in Tahsis.

Esperanza does family councilling and has an effective and much needed drug and alcohol rehab programme. In the summertime they have kids camps which are very popular.

I have no quarrel with the people who work at Esperanza. But recently the federal government, with NO consultation with First Nations, granted Esperanza a ninety-nine year lease on what has been FN traditional territory since 'forever'.

And that is wrong. There should have been consultation and the lease should not have been for ninety-nine years.

Some time ago, reading the Gold River newspaper, I noticed a classified which said the Regional District was going to have third and final reading on an application to start a wind farm at Tatchu Point. Tatchu is the traditional "property" of my granddaughters family. Their grandpa was hereditary chief of Tatchu. So, of course, I phoned my daughter and asked her about the wind farm and what it would mean to their traditional use of and claim to Tatchu. She knew nothing about it. She contacted her band office. They knew nothing about it. Some scurrying, and at the Regional Board meeting there was official notification that the FN were NOT in favour of the Regional Board giving permission for a wind farm at Tatchu Point.

It was voted down.

I have nothing against wind farms. The wind farm was never the problem. The problem is that not only the federals ignore traditional claims, even local and regional government can blunder in without checking anything.

If Idle No More makes people more aware of traditional use and claim then it will have made giant steps in helping protect my granddaughters claims to land which have been protected by the family for more than ten thousand years.

And the rest of us have to do better than we've done in the past!

[Slumberjack]

[anne cameron]

Dear Hondo:
You refute any suggestion of racism because , among other points, you have dated FN women, even lived with one for three years.

My ex-husband of 17 years was an avionics instructor. Do you really want ME to fix your airplane?

[The Evil Twin]

[al-Qa'bong]

At first I thought, "That makes no sense. Why would anyone want to be with someone if he is prejudiced against that person's ethnicity?"

Then I remembered a couple of white women I know who dated First Nations guys just to annoy their fathers. That's a rather racist motivation.
_________________
"The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the powerful" Hammurabi

"We can't all be Sam the Sham; some of us have to be Pharoahs" Larry, brother of Darrel, and his other brother Daryl

[cco]

It could be even simpler than that -- people have an amazing capacity for special pleading. When I first brought my wife to meet my aunt, uncle, and cousins in West Texas/New Mexico, I expressed some concern about the attitudes they were likely to display -- these are the kind of people who watch only FOX News, listen to only Christian radio, send their children to entirely Christian schools, make constant remarks about the "Mexican takeover", and think there's a war on Christmas in Lubbock.

The response I got from them was revealing and dismaying at the same time: "We're not like that with real people." Indeed, they loved her, at the same time as they were cheering on the bombing of her people. (It probably didn't hurt that she's not Muslim.) I've seen them socialize at work and church with people of the same ethnicities they constantly complain are threatening their way of life, and I don't think it's just so they can tell themselves they're not racist. They just don't make the connection between the anonymous faceless mob of brown people out to destroy them and the actual, living brown people they interact with personally on a daily basis.

[Maestro]

[al-Qa'bong]

While listening to CFCR's "Radio Active" last night I heard an essay on how our First Nations are subsidizing Canadians billions of dollars every year via the royalties and taxes that mining companies, etc. pay to the government rather than to the people on whose lands the wealth is extracted.

I tried finding a website for the show, so I could track down the essay, but found this instead.

http://cfcr.ca/blog/watch-idle-no-more-activists-interviewed/

[anne cameron]

So I have grandchildren who are status FN. And , yes, I am pre-prejudiced. No quarrel there.

My grandchildren are so totally physically beautiful I cannot believe they share DNA with me. My face will never be my fortune. Or, considering the sad state of finances, perhaps it is!! Any or all of these treasures could improve the covers of any magazine.

And I cannot count the number of times otherwise "nice" people have said, in their hearing, some version of "oh, they're so cute when they're small, aren't they?"

The unspoken part being that once they're adult they'll be ugly as sin.

Too often we don't even recognize racism. Right now I have members of my family whom I have loved all my life who are sending me all manner of absolute shite purporting to "prove" that IdleNoMore is a rip-off and a danger to the economy of Canada. Chief Spence is all manner of awful. Her boyfriend is a redneck crook. And virtually all chiefs and band councils are corrupt.

Any of these people would yelp with indignation if they were called racists.

Interestingly, many of them would quite gladly chip in to buy boat tickets to send all Muslims "back where they came from".

They aren't racists either, to hear them tell it. No, they're patriotic Canadians who believe we should all speak English, stay off welfare, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and sing God Save The Queen.

And still, I love most of them. Some I don't. I don't understand them, and I often don't understand me, either!

[Slumberjack]

[DSquared]

A Christian perspective on Idle No More:

[bshmr]

This arrived this morning. Much of it, I have been aware of, the new
warrants a search and peak as additional resources.

ABORIGINAL JUSTICE/PALESTINE REFLECTION: Recognizing Palestine in my Jewish identity
by Emily Green, CPT intern, Aboriginal Justice TeamI, CPTnet, 08 February 2013
[ In partnership with Jewish and Muslim women, Emily Green has organized an interfaith fundraising dinner for Christian Peacemaker Teams in Toronto, 14 February 2013. ]

[DSquared]

The true scandal of First Nations Funding:

[anne cameron]

Inherently more civilized?

I don't know as much as I'd like to know about "eastern" FN tribal life, but here on Vancouver Island the pre-contact people considered newborn infants to have full citizenship.

Yes, there was slavery, and yes, there were on-going inter-tribal wars, and yes there was social inequity...we still have all of that today and there's no real difference between a "slave" and a "wage slave"...

but children, even the children of slaves , were much better treated.

[Sibjyn]

[anne cameron]

Not joking at all. Why would you think I was joking?

Or don't you know any immigrant women working as nannies...or at piece work garment industry jobs...or...

[Sibjyn]

[anne cameron]

I don't think we need to argue. We can just agree we disagree and leave it at that.

I've never been a slave, and I suspect you haven't, either. But out here we get repeated reports of mostly women brought over to be domestic help and then treated in terrible ways...passport confiscated...underpaid... no real time off... sexual assault... it's really very disgusting and we aren't, as a nation, doing enough to protect these "guest workers". We have one case dragging on interminably where a group of tree planters were taken halfway to the back of beyond, "housed" in inadequate tents, fed slop instead of food, worked long hours in miserable conditions and not paid... now they are in limbo, waiting for legal action to happen, hoping for a ticket back home, unable to work at any other job...

[bshmr]

NTYC, I am siding with Anne. Her meanings were lucid to me when not over-generalized; whereas, differentiating historical slavery from modern captivity or abuse seems to confuse words with their underlying reality <g> as Anne's examples are far too common (NO,La; ... , Israel, ..., China).