Amazing Book List

Go to this link to find an amazing book list focused on "Being an Ally and Understanding Colonialism", compiled by Tessa Blaikie Whitecloud of 1JustCity.

Churches for Freedom Road

Augustine United Church has joined many other churches in using their signs to call for justice for the Shoal Lake 40 First Nation.  This is part of a larger effort to apply pressure on the federal government to build an all-season access road, so that Shoal Lake's 17 year boiled water advisory can be lifted.  Go to their website for more information.

I'm a little disappointed that the initiative is being called "Churches" for Freedom Road, since I'd heard early on that there was interest from mosques, synagogues and temples to participate in this call for justice.  Not sure what happened to that.  As it stands, it would be unlikely for some of these other faith communities to join up, given the name of the initiative.  

- Submitted by Gareth

Truth and Reconciliation is Canada’s last chance to get it right

By John Ralston Saul

Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Jun. 05, 2015 3:21PM EDT

Last updated Saturday, Jun. 06, 2015 11:09PM EDT

There are good and bad things in our society, successes and failures. But there is only one fundamental reality that remains unaddressed. That is the situation of indigenous peoples.

This is the single most important issue before us, whether we are recently arrived in Canada or have been here for centuries. This is the prime issue on which we should be judging governments and potential governments.

And we have been warned repeatedly.

Source: www.shannonthunderbird.com

There have been thousands of speeches, addresses and court cases over the last 150 years in which indigenous leaders have laid out the situation. And there is a remarkable consistency in these aboriginal arguments, as well as clarity and generosity, and what I would call patience. Patience as we have repeatedly acted badly on almost every front, attempting to destroy indigenous cultures. We have done nothing to earn the politeness and patience with which we have been treated.

The 382-page summary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report is perfectly clear. It is written with elegance. There is nothing mysterious or extravagant in its 94 recommendations. Its use of the term cultural genocide is clearly explained. The definition used is reasonable and the facts are undeniable.

Their recommendations are both specific and broad, precisely because the aim of the residential schools was specific and broad. After all, the system was designed to destroy indigenous civilization. So what the commissioners call for is designed to deal with that breadth. And their arguments dovetail with the recommendations of the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which in turn dovetail with those of the 1977 Berger Commission, Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland.

As I said, we have been warned. Repeatedly. We have chosen not to listen and not to act. Is this our last chance? Quite possibly.

Commissioners Murray Sinclair, Marie Wilson and Wilton Littlechild are trying to make it easy for us. Reconciliation, they explain, is about establishing and maintaining a mutually respectful relationship between aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples. This requires an “awareness of the past, acknowledgment of the harm that has been inflicted, atonement for the causes and action to change behaviour.” We must change behaviour, each of us. Then we must make our governments change behaviour.

Think about it. There is nothing to stop us from rectifying educational underfunding, adopting a respectful approach toward the reform of the education system, concentrating on how to remove the barriers to postsecondary education. In a global era of endangered languages, we are among the worst offenders in the world. Within what we call Canada, there are some 55 indigenous languages – not imported such as English and French, but born here. Some 45 are in danger. Yet our government spends only $9.1-million to support all 55. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars in support of French and English through a multitude of programs such as English as a second language and French immersion, which is as it should be. The problem is not what we are doing. It is what we are not doing.

We know that the criminal-justice system doesn’t work for indigenous people. We know the resulting statistics – the prison numbers, the disastrous effects of sentencing policies. Nothing about the current situation in prisons is an accident or inevitable. It is the direct result of government policy. And when policies fail, you change them. That we do not change them is a matter of choice. We know that we need to understand why aboriginal women are being murdered and victimized in such numbers. This is not a matter to be solved by policing. The inquiry being called for would be an attempt to get at what is wrong, yet out of sight. Then we could all set about changing the situation.

We know that the curricula in schools and universities do not reflect the reality of the country. Curricula are always intellectual constructs, often ideological interpretations. Ours, for example, largely exclude the fundamental building block of our society – that is, the indigenous reality, past and present

All of this is a matter of choice and of policy. Where are the policies? Why have these choices not been made? Because our political culture continues to marginalize indigenous issues. Why? Because it remains fixated on outdated concepts of what is at stake. We are still acting like settlers who wish the indigenous reality would evaporate. And our civil service, in particular the ministries of aboriginal affairs and justice, remain immersed in the old culture of power – a culture in which Canada can win only if indigenous people lose. They must lose power, land, treaty rights. All in the name of an elusive European concept of how a nation-state is supposed to work. This model – our governmental official model – does not reflect or suit the Canadian reality. Ask yourself this simple question: Why would we want to erase treaty rights? We all signed these treaties. We are all treaty people. We all lose as that Canadian model is erased.

Over $100-million of your money is spent every year to fund federal lawyers to fight against indigenous people being treated with respect. At the same time, $1-billion allocated by Parliament for spending on aboriginal social programs was simply withheld over the past five years. The combination of these two sums tells you what our policy is.

Our lawyers and civil servants are still fighting to extinguish treaty rights as the price for any settlement. Yet the large 2002 Cree-Quebec Agreement – La paix des braves – was done without extinguishing rights. The Quebec government used its imagination and acted ethically. The Canadian government cannot bring itself to do either.

Our governments attempted to ignore the recommendations of the 1996 Erasmus Royal Commission. We allowed them to do this. What do any of us think is going to happen if once again we, as citizens, allow government to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by doing nothing? There is a wise comment in the commissioners’ report – “At stake is Canada’s place as a prosperous, just and inclusive democracy within [the] global world.”

Does anyone really imagine that we will get through the celebrations of 2017 without being ridiculed at home and abroad if we have not begun urgently to listen and to act on the indigenous front? Already I see growing signs of this as I travel from country to country. No matter where I go, people question me – What’s wrong with Canada? Why are you acting this way? Our reputation around the world and our respect for ourselves is at stake.

The Commission’s report is very clear about how reconciliation works – respectful relationships, restoring trust, reparations, concrete actions leading to societal change. To put it bluntly, reconciliation without restitution would be meaningless. It is not so difficult to work out what restitution means. Part of it is laid out in this report. Above all, it is not about winners or losers. If indigenous peoples have more and do better, we will all do better.

In 1996, Georges Erasmus and his fellow commissioners wrote, “Canada is a test case for a grand notion – the notion that dissimilar peoples can share lands, resources, power and dreams while respecting and sustaining their differences. The story of Canada is the story of many such peoples, trying and failing and trying again, to live together in peace and harmony. But there cannot be peace or harmony unless there is justice.”

Since then, indigenous peoples have more than played their part – leading the way with constructive arguments, developing an ever larger new leadership, re-establishing their cultures, winning repeatedly at the Supreme Court. The rest of us have done very little.

And the Canadian people – you and I – have not taken the stand we need to take. We have not given that fundamental instruction – the instruction of the ethical, purposeful voting citizen. Justice Sinclair and his colleagues have shown us what to do. We are the only barrier to action being taken.

John Ralston Saul is the author of The Comeback and of A Fair Country: Telling Truths about Canada, the president of PEN International and co-chair of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship.

Declarations of Canadians for a New Partnership

Shelagh Rogers was in Winnipeg yesterday evening (Sept 27), joining Wab Kinew in hosting the Burt Award for First Nations, Metis and Inuit Literature.  I had the privilege of being there representing the Canadian Commission for UNESCO.  It was  very obvious during the course of the evening, that Shelagh is powerfully committed to being in partnership with First Peoples.  Here is a letter from Shelagh that Karla has forwarded, inviting us all to sign the online Declaration of Canadians for a New Partnership.  Here is Shelagh's letter.  Please consider signing the declaration.  The link is at the bottom of the post.

----------------------

Dear Friend,

On Thursday, Canadians for a New Partnership was launched. Its purpose is to advance the public's knowledge and understanding of the histories and cultures of First Peoples, their contribution to Canada and the current issues affecting reconciliation and improved relationships between First Peoples and other Canadians by delivering a national lecture series, operating a speaker’s bureau, maintaining a website, and providing educational materials and resources. We will also do all things that are incidental or conducive to the attainment of these objectives.

I am a member of the board, which includes two former Prime Ministers, two former Assembly of First Nations Chiefs, Sheila Fraser, the Metis leader Tony Belcourt, Mary Simon, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Chelsea Vowel and Stephen Kakfwi, former NWT Premier and residential school Survivor, among others.

I'm writing to ask if you will sign our on-line Declaration and help spread the word. Many signatures will make a real impact. 

http://www.cfnp.ca/declaration/

Let's make Canada stronger. Thank you so much. 

love,

Shelagh

Museum of Human Rights Opening and Idle No More

Biked past the Human Rights Museum about noon today. Opening ceremony had just ended when I got there, and I found myself in the middle of a little Idle No More action. And I made "friends" with three guys from Shoal Lake. Asked whether I could give them some "Where Waters Meet" propaganda (see "Faith in the City" information posted in this blog), which they happily accepted, in exchange for some "propaganda" of their own.

 

- submitted by Gareth

A Canadian genocide?

A new museum in Winnipeg has become a flashpoint for how we interpret this country’s treatment of First Nations 

From United Church Observer
By Larry Krotz

Image Source:  Edward S. Curtis/Library and Archives Canada/PA-039476

There is something inherently perverse about the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the as-yet-unfinished landmark rising from the plain between a parking lot and a baseball stadium at Winnipeg’s Forks. When you get right down to it, this $351-million dream of the late media mogul Izzy Asper is being built to document evil.

Of course, it will also document survival against horrible odds and endurance in the face of atrocities that human beings inflict on one another. If you and your people have come through the worst of horrors, then that in itself is cause for celebration. But getting to be included in the museum’s litany of narratives has become a kind of race to the bottom: “The things that happened to my people are just as bad — if not worse — than those that happened to yours.” Or, as various groups already included in the museum have complained to its developers since almost day one, “The story you are proposing to tell about my people is not nearly so bad as it should be.”

The museum, which opens in September and is one of only two national museums located outside Ottawa-Hull, has been taking shape for more than a decade. In that time, disputes have almost constantly overshadowed what its promoters would prefer to highlight: a glass atrium “cloud” symbolizing the wings of a dove; spiral staircases leading up to a light-filled 100-metre-tall Tower of Hope; and a “mountain” made of 450-million-year-old Tyndall limestone from Manitoba. Possibly, museum of something as touchy as human rights should expect controversy. It is a museum of grievances, and it is very hard to make the aggrieved happy.

The Ukrainian community, for example, lamented that exhibits on the Holodomor (the 1932-33 starvation engineered by Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin) were going to be too close to the washrooms; Palestinians objected to being left out entirely; even Jews — whom Asper envisioned as central to the museum — were reportedly upset that the founding of the state of Israel was not going to be commemorated.

But the nascent museum’s most heated controversy is the growing insistence that exhibits depicting the story of First Nations peoples carry the word “genocide” in their titles. So far, the museum has resisted doing that.

The Canadian government currently recognizes five genocides: the Holocaust, the Holodomor, the Armenian genocide in 1915, the Rwandan atrocities in 1994 and the Bosnian ethnic cleansing from 1992 to 1995. First Nations activists aim to add one more to the list. For them, the museum is a testing ground.

You can read the entire article by clicking here.

- Submitted by Kathleen

De-Colonial Theology: Thought and Practice

 Canadian School of Peacebuilding

In June, Terry LeBlanc will be the instructor at the Canadian School of Peacebuilding at CMU.  The course is called "De-Colonial Theology:  Thought and Practice".  Here is the course descriptor:  Colonial imprints lie heavy on Indigenous “Christian” praxis and theology in North America. These imprints are a result of theologies  constructed within specific philosophical and biblical frameworks historic to European, Christian faith.  In this course, using several  Indigenous teaching paradigms, Terry LeBlanc will examine these philosophical and biblical foundations, asking whether a different  Indigenous theology and praxis of faith in the person, work, life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus might emerge if other  foundations were to be set in place.  

You can find more information about the School of Peacebuilding by clicking here.  Bob has suggested that our Just Living group be informed about this very relevant course.  Kathleen has already registered.

 Sojourners Magazine

The most recent Sojourners magazine has an article by Terry LeBlanc called "Reclaiming the Word".  The subtitle is:  In missionary hands, the gospel was too often a bludgeon used to divide and conquer Native communities. Today, Indigenous theologians are finding redemptive power in that very same gospel.

Here is an excerpt from the article:  For generations, Native North Americans and other Indigenous peoples have lived the false belief that a fulfilled relationship with their Creator through Jesus required rejecting their own culture and adopting another, European in origin. In consequence, conventional approaches to mission with Indigenous peoples in North America and around the world have produced relatively dismal outcomes.

You can read LeBlanc's article by clicking here.

NOTE:  Both this course and the article are likely very relevant to our planning for Faith in the City 2.

- Submitted by Bob and Kathleen

Monday, Feb 17: Mi'kmaq Warriors Speaking Tour

- Submitted by Karla

National Congress of American Indians: We do not call ourselves R--skins

In time for the Superbowl, the National Congress of American Indians released a PSA calling for the renaming of the Washington football team.  This article is from Salon.com.  You can see the 2 minute PSA by clicking here.

 

This intro is taken from Salon.com.

As football fans gear up for the Super Bowl, the National Congress of American Indians has issued a PSA to remind them that the Washington Redskins is still a team name, and that, yes, it is still offensive.

In October, President Obama said if he owned the football team, he would “think about changing” the name, which is a slur for Native Americans — an opinion that team owner Dan Snyder does not share.

The PSA lists several things that Native Americans call themselves, like “proud,” “underserved,” and “forgotten.” They do not, however, call themselves R--skins.

Other football teams that have Native Americans as mascots include the Kansas City Chiefs, the Atlanta Braves and the Cleveland Indians.

Question:  Do we give any thought to other names like "Edmonton Eskimos", when Inuit people don't any longer use the European-generated name for themselves (and nor do most other contemporary Canadians)? While it's clearly not as loaded as "R--skins", "Eskimos" is out-of-date, and harkens back to a colonial period we're working to get past.

You can find good information about issues such as these at the facebook site:  Decolonizing Forum-Manitoba

- Submitted by Gareth

 

Rebecca Belmore to Make Major Human Rights Museum Piece

This article appears in Canadian Art, and is written by Leah Sandals.

Anishinabe artist Rebecca Belmore doesn’t shy away from big projects. For her 1991 work Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother, she created a massive wooden megaphone that she then installed in various locations across Canada, inviting members of the public to voice concerns to the land directly. In 2006, for Toronto’s first Nuit Blanche, she and Osvaldo Yero created the sculpture freeze out of a huge block of ice to pay homage to Neil Stonechild and other First Nations people who were injured or killed when left out in the rural cold by police.

Still, a project announced today may be Belmore’s biggest yet. In a commission for the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg, Belmore hopes to create a gigantic “blanket” out of 10,000-plus clay beads that will be shaped in part by members of the public including schoolchildren and elders.

“The piece will probably be 30 feet tall and 20 feet wide,” Belmore tells Canadian Art, noting it will hang off a hooklike structure, and drape in a manner akin to a textile. “I’m a little scared at this point, because it’s a lot of work…. You have an idea, and then you have to follow it through.

Here's where we all have a chance to participate!!

People who want to participate in the project by shaping some beads can visit Neechi Commons, a community co-op, in February and March. That is where Belmore will have a studio set up and be inviting people to shape beads on a drop-in basis.

You can read the whole article by clicking here.

- Submitted by Kathleen

Manitoba Indigenous Writers' Festival

This is very short notice, but it runs from Thursday evening until Saturday, so there may be an opportunity for some of us to participate in some of this.  Thank you, Mary L. for sending this to us.

The Festival runs from Thursday, Jan. 16 at 7  p.m. to Saturday, Jan. 18.
The Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evening portions of the Festival are at Neechi Commons, 865 Main St. from 7 - 10 p.m.

• Writers confirmed and appearing at Thursday night opening night show so far:
  Ko'ona Cochrane (drum song)
  Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair (host)
  Althea Guiboche
  Michael Hutchinson
  Warren Cariou
  Marie Annharte
  Duncan Mercredi
  Katherena Vermette
  Also, Renate Eigenbrod speaking and launching a new Indigenous writers anthology (which will be for sale)!

• for more info, please go to Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/668686833183270/   or  (www.facebook.com/mbiwf)