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.

Canada's Shameful Exports

Fifty years of bloody conflict, economic greed, and environmental devastation

Sojourners Magazine, May 2015
By Emilie Teresa Smith

This article examines horrendous Canadian mining practises in Guatemala, the Philippines, Chile, Argentina, Paua New Guinea, Tanzania, D.R. Congo, El Salvador. 

CANADIAN MINING companies have left a trail of destruction around the world—mostly in places where people are poor and vulnerable.
The earliest conflicts caused by Canadian mining exploded in Guatemala in the early 1960s when the nickel company Inco dug into the northern mountainside of Guatemala’s largest freshwater lake, Lago Izabal. Almost 155 square miles of traditional Kekchi-Maya land was expropriated to create Inco’s Exmibal mine. As the region descended into bitter war, Guatemalan oligarchs and their military, with the support of Canadian-mining and U.S. geopolitical interests, exterminated all popular dissent. Dozens of Kekchi leaders were killed or disappeared; four prominent leaders who had published a report condemning the Inco-Exmibal deals were brutally assaulted and two of them assassinated. The Exmibal mine operated for three years before Inco abandoned it, never paying a nickel in royalties to Guatemala.

Image Source:  UC Observer

Meanwhile, in the Philippines, Vancouver-based Placer Dome arrived on Marinduque Island and sunk in a filthy copper mine. Over the next three decades, Placer Dome operated the Marcopper mine, devastating the local environment and its communities. From 1975 to 1991, Placer Dome dumped 200 metric tons of toxic waste into Calancan Bay, and in March 1996 a massive rupture from the tailings pond flooded 60 villages with toxic waste, permanently destroying community lands, rice fields, and shrimp marshes. The Boac River was declared dead, and the U.N. pronounced it a major environmental disaster. The entire Marcopper mine project was abandoned; no major attempt at clean-up ever took place. In 2006, Placer Dome was taken over by the giant, Toronto-based Barrick Gold, one of the world’s largest mining companies. In 2008, the provincial government of Marinduque began a lawsuit, but Barrick has fussed and delayed, dragging the court case on endlessly.

Barrick is also responsible for the massive $8.5 billion boondoggle of the Pascua Lama gold mine. Saddled in the Andes between Chile and Argentina,the mine threatens to blow up hundreds of glaciers and drastically impact the Atacama Desert—one of the driest regions of the world. In response to the long-ignored concerns of Diaguita Indigenous communities and others, the Chilean government eventually suspended Barrick’s license, but glaciologists report that the pre-mining activity has already wreaked irreversible destruction in the area.

Papua New Guinea hosts the massive Barrick Porgera mine, built right on top of local Ipili communities; multiple claims of grave human rights violations have been reported. Bought-off police and mining company security guards have been accused of murder, beatings, home burnings, and gang rape. The former chair of Barrick, Peter Munk, was quoted in a Canadian newspaper in 2011 that “gang rape is a cultural habit [of the traditional people of Papua New Guinea]. Of course, you can’t say that because it’s politically incorrect.”

Horrendous violence has also been reported at Barrick’s mine in Tanzania. And shadows of the same story emerge inD.R. Congo: Security guards for Montreal’s Anvil mines have been accused of providing cover for government soldiers engaging in the massacre of civilians. In El Salvador, Vancouver’s Pacific Rim (now OceanaGold) sued the Salvadoran government, claiming that the country violated international trade law by refusing to allow the company to dig a massive gold mine that would have drastically polluted the country’s thin water supplies. Four community activists of the Cabañas region, where the project was to go in, have been murdered, including Dora Alicia Recinos, who was eight months pregnant when she was shot dead.

The common denominators in these countries and elsewhere are corrupt local officials with ready access to people-controlling violence—a perfect environment for Canadian mining. The low-paying jobs, taxes, royalties, and other economic gains in the short term in no way compensate for permanent environmental devastation and community conflict inevitably caused by mining.

- Submitted by Gareth

Oh, Canada!

Canadians are supposed to be the good guys in the story. Well, not anymore.

Sojourners - May 2015
by Emilie Teresa Smith

DOÑA DIODORA STANDS on the side of the mountain, shivering. She’s tending to her skinny cows. A simple adobe hut stands here on the edge of her land in the Guatemalan highlands—“so I can stay and look after the animals,” she says. “But I don’t know what I am going to do about water. They’ve taken away the water.”

Tears drip down out of her good eye. She dries them on a thin sleeve. The other eye socket, shattered where the bullet went through, seeps with yellow pus. “Me siento un poco triste—a little sad,” she explains in her halting, quiet Spanish. It is cold on the mountain, achingly so. And, mysteriously, the water has gone: Old streams and wells are dusty. The cows look ill.

Photo Source:  Sojourners Magazine

Just down the crumbling mountain, the tailings pond from the Marlin mine glows a weird shade of neon green.

I first heard about the Marlin mine—operated by Vancouver’s Goldcorp—in 2005, before it opened. That year I was going to Guatemala with a youth group from my diocese, and we were warned: Don’t wear anything that identifies you as Canadians. What? Canadians? We’re supposed to be the good guys in the story. Well, not anymore.

The great global economic shift in the mid-1990s, a free-for-all (if you were already rich) of unbridled neo-liberal capitalism, unleashed an invigorated predatory wave of miners—from Canada—all around the planet to sniff out new places to dig. Canada is the place to raise venture mining capital—the heaps of cash needed to fund these monstrously expensive projects.

Canada has few laws or functioning regulations to control investments or protect human rights and the environment far from our shores. Thus it’s not surprising that 75 percent of international mining companies are registered in Canada and 60 percent are listed on Canadian stock exchanges. In Latin America alone there are around 1,500 mining projects, involving 230 Canadian companies.

Mining Watch, Canada’s top mining observer, has documented that 90 of these companies are involved in 200 conflicts. The main points of contention are water contamination and drastic depletion, land expropriation and devastation, and the lack of community consultation.

Local populations have massively rejected these exploitative practices. They have seen it all before: Promises of jobs, money, and progress, followed by the realities of shattered lives and never-cleaned-up toxic waste. Doña Diodora was shot by midnight strangers at her door, after she openly resisted the Marlin mine for more than five years, refusing to sell her land and refusing to shut up.

I have seen these often-deadly clashes in the flesh—in Guatemala, where I have lived off and on for many years, and then up and down the spine of Latin America. In 2012, I was elected co-president of a historic network of liberation theologians and practitioners that formed in the aftermath of the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero. In that capacity I have visited El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Argentina, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. In each country, as I stepped off the plane, community leaders came to me wanting to talk about the conflicts around Canadian mining in their country. Walls sprayed with graffiti presented me time and again with the unhappy message: “Mineras canadienses—OUT!”

Providing shelter for industry
Meanwhile, back in Canada, there have been numerous attempts to create control mechanisms for mining behavior. They have all met with obfuscation and obstruction. In 2009, a private members bill (Bill C 300, for Corporate Accountability for the Activities of Mining in Developing Countries) was brought to the Canadian parliament. Mining companies rushed to fund and organize some of the most intense lobbying ever seen in Ottawa. The bill was defeated.

The government of Canada, especially under the nine-year reign of ultraconservative Stephen Harper, has dedicated itself to the promotion of mining companies around the world. While community, environmental, and religious groups have rallied on every front, both in Canada and in the ravaged countries where the mines are going in, the Canadian government has showered resources—diplomatic, legal, and economic—to shelter industry.

The only government response to growing demands for mandatory controls on mining companies has been the creation of a toothless Office of the Extractive Sector Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Counsellor. The office, set up “to assist stakeholders in the resolution of CSR issues pertaining to the activities of Canadian extractive sector companies abroad,” has seen four cases in the five years since its creation—and not a single conflict has been resolved, not even remotely. The complaint and review process is completely voluntary on the part of industry; in all of the cases brought forward, the company has simply refused to participate. The Counsellor office has operated as a screen to greenwash the hopelessly destructive practice of modern mining.

Canadian nongovernmental organizations pushing to hold mining companies accountable (such as the Catholic group Development and Peace and the ecumenical Kairos Canada) have had their government funding slashed. Other NGOs (such as World Vision-Canada and Plan Canada) have accepted more than $6.5 million—of Canadian taxpayers’ money—to in effect run the companies’ CSR programs and, in the process, help to pacify local resistance movements around the world.

Most Canadian citizens are blithely unaware of what is happening in our name. We have bought into the idea that what is wrong in the world is “underdevelopment,” not rampant greed on the part of an ever-decreasing minority. In the “mercantile cosmology,” where the whole world is for sale and nothing is worth anything if it isn’t marketable, international mining blasts a “win-win” rhetoric that carries the day.

A stroll around Toronto or Vancouver reveals the depth to which mining enterprises—while sabotaging mandatory regulations—have purchased the consent of the Canadian public. In British Columbia, for example, Goldcorp nestles its money and its name into the Vancouver Opera Society, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Aquarium, the Tap Society, Science World, Bard-on-the-Beach, Arts Umbrella, Big Brothers, YMCA, the Nature Trust of British Columbia, the Special Olympics, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Goldcorp Mental Health Centre, every major Vancouver hospital, Simon Fraser University, and the University of British Columbia. Community, health, education, and arts institutions—in desperate straits due to drastic funding cutbacks—are anxious to take the money. Goldcorp acts as a “good corporate citizen,” and Canadians nod in agreement.

Another way citizens are enmeshed—often without knowing—in controversial international mining projects is through deep ties between industry and pension plans. The national government Canada Pension Plan, to which every working Canadian makes monthly contributions, is one of the largest group investors in Goldcorp. Trade union, teacher, and other public servant union pension plans are not far behind, holding heavy investments in numerous mining corporations. Even churches have their fingers in this sticky, money-making pie.

Resisting the onslaught
Around the world (see “Canada’s Shameful Exports,” previous page), open—and costly—resistance to massive mining projects has arisen since the beginning of the Canadian invasions. While industry appears to have every advantage on its side, determined individuals and groups have created strategic campaigns in defense of their territories.

In Guatemala, Mayan communities have launched dozens of public consultations, availing themselves of both traditional decision-making models and international agreements. They have vigorously applied Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization’s code on the rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples. In more than 85 communities, upwards of 1 million Guatemalan citizens have studied, debated, and finally voted on whether or not to accept extractive industries in their territory. Their resounding answer: No.

There has been a rising tide of organized defense of territory by communities across Canada as well. About 200 miles from where I live, there is a sacred lake, known to the Tsilhqot’in people as Teztan Biny and to English speakers as Fish Lake. It is home to 85,000 rainbow trout. Vancouver-based Taseko Mines crafted a plan to use Teztan Biny as a tailings pond, to hold the dirty water from their proposed “Prosperity Mine.” The Tsilhqot’in people and their supporters were having none of it. They organized a years-long campaign of study and defense and, finally, in February 2014 the project was rejected by the federal minister of the environment.

The resistance of the Tsilhqot’in people was a prophetic act: Six months after the federal decision, the holding wall of the Mount Polley Mine tailings pond—only 82 miles from Teztan Biny—ruptured. In the biggest mine spill in Canadian history, waste water and toxic sludge burst out, destroying Hazeltine Creek and pouring into the deep, pristine Lake Quesnel.

It isn’t surprising that the struggle to protect the earth has been taken up by Indigenous communities and others who live close to the soil—and the cycle of creation, growth, and decay upon which it depends. Motivated by a deep love for the land, these communities have supplied a critical challenge to the dominant story that progress and right-living necessarily depend on the destruction of creation.

Theirs is a loud proclamation of a different truth: The Earth is not a thing to be bought, sold, used, and destroyed. Our eternal connection to the dust is that we are dust. We are not the Creator, but frail creatures, utterly dependent on the care of the Earth, her mountains, her water, streams, and deepness underground. As the psalmist reminds us, the Earth is not ours, but God’s; we live with tender mercy and grace upon her abundant belly. 

Emilie Teresa Smith, an Argentine-Canadian Anglican priest, is co-president of the Oscar Romero International Network in Solidarity with the Peoples of Latin America. She is working on a book about Canadian mining companies in Guatemala.

- Submitted by Gareth

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

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

 

Pipeline rupture report raises questions about TransCanada inspections

2011 report criticized TransCanada’s ‘inadequate’ inspections

 

A CBC News investigation has unearthed a critical report that the federal regulator effectively buried for several years about a rupture on a trouble-prone TransCanada natural gas pipeline.

On July 20, 2009, the Peace River Mainline in northern Alberta exploded, sending 50-metre-tall flames into the air and razing a two-hectare wooded area.

On July 20, 2009, the Peace River Mainline in northern Alberta exploded, sending 50-metre-tall flames into the air and razing a two-hectare wooded area. (Courtesy of Dene Tha' First Nation)

Few people ever learned of the rupture — one of the largest in the past decade — other than the Dene Tha’ First Nation, whose traditional territory it happened on.

In an early 2011 draft report about the incident, the National Energy Board criticized TransCanada, the operator of the line owned by its subsidiary NOVA Gas Transmission, for “inadequate” field inspections and “ineffective” management.
Final reports are typically published by the investigative bodies, either the NEB or the Transportation Safety Board, but this report wasn’t released until this January when the CBC obtained it through an access-to-information request.

The NEB said the delay was caused by an “administrative error” when an employee left without transferring the file over.

In a written statement, TransCanada said there's a combination of construction, coating and soil factors that have required an "active pipe integrity program" on this pipeline. The company said it instituted new technologies and new approaches after the rupture that have since prevented a reoccurrence.

You can read the entire article by clicking here.

- Submitted by Gareth 

Open Letter to Winnipeg Re: NEECHI COMMONS

December 13, 2013

Dear friends,

Open Letter to Winnipeg Re: NEECHI COMMONS

This letter is being circulated by the Canadian Worker Co-operative Federation on behalf of the signatories listed below.  These individuals are active in a cross section of co-operative and community economic development organizations as well as in universities.

The letter is intended to let you know about a remarkable sister Co-operative that is blazing a trail in empowerment for its members and social justice in the community. A Co-op doing such principled work that it elevates the name of co-operative enterprise and by reflection enhances all of our reputations. We are talking about Neechi Foods Co-operative in Winnipeg (865 Main Street, at Euclid).  This Co-op needs your patronage and support.

Louise Champagne, the president of the Co-op and long-time leader of the enterprise, shepherding it through more than 23 years of operations and meeting all challenges, recently accepted the 2013 Excellence in Aboriginal Business Leadership Award from the Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, on behalf of the Co-op. In her acceptance speech Louise made the following comments:

“Neechi Foods Co-op Ltd. is a worker cooperative. This is a form of economic democracy that encourages staff to develop a sense of business ownership. Neechi means “friend”, “sister” or “brother” in Cree and Ojibwa.

On March 19 this year (2013) we held the Grand Opening of Neechi Commons, our beautiful, 30,000 square foot, community business complex at 865 Main Street, for which we received a Green Globes award for high environmental standards. Previously we operated a nearby, small corner grocery and Aboriginal specialty store for 23 years.

In Neechi’s early days we drew up a list of community economic development principles:

•       creation of goods & services that are used locally

•       purchases of locally produced goods

•       local reinvestment of surpluses (profits)

•       employment and training of local people

•       community-oriented business ownership

•       community health and

•       human dignity

We were the first grocery operation in Manitoba to not sell cigarettes – ahead of the pharmacies! At our old store we have always had a children’s fruit basket, subsidized by the staff, where the previous owner sold cigarettes, war toys and Barbie dolls. We also have run various diabetes prevention programs and played a key role in neighbourhood efforts to push back street prostitution and other gang activities that became rampant in the mid 1990s.

All along we have understood that economic healing is needed to sustain personal and social healing. This is the context in which Neechi Commons was born. We have taken what we did at our old store to a much higher level, including a strong focus on regionally harvested and processed foods, a lovely art store and gallery, a restaurant and catering service backed up by an impressive commercial kitchen, a well equipped bakery, and a neighbourhood supermarket with a fruit and vegetable courtyard, freshwater fish and full meat service.”

Neechi Commons needs your help to achieve its goals. It hopes to become the cornerstone for the revitalization of commerce in a Winnipeg neighbourhood that has faced long-term economic hardship. The Co-op has created over 50 new employment opportunities for aboriginal youth and other neighbourhood residents.

Neechi Co-op has not chosen an easy path focused only on commercial viability. It has chosen to blaze a trail to be a transformative venture in the same spirit as other Co-operative pioneers. Its success will not only be a beacon of light in its local neighbourhood but also a shining example of the inherent power of the Co-operative form of enterprise to change lives for the better.

The most obvious and simple way that you can support Neechi is by purchasing products at the Commons.  Another way that you can help is by signing up for Neechi’s weekly e-mail promotion and updates, at neechifoods@shaw.ca.

Your support can help to ensure the success of this Co-operative enterprise. In the words of Louise Champagne:  “We will remain heavily focused on achieving the commercial profitability needed for long-term business and community success. Neechi Commons symbolizes how Aboriginal People can regain control of land and economic decision-making within a modern community context.”

Sincerely yours,

• Cindy Coker, Executive Director, SEED Winnipeg

• Hazel Corcoran, CWCF Executive Director, Calgary

• David Kerr, Co-op Consultant, Winnipeg

• Richard LeMoing, Director, Manitoba Co-operative Association, Minnedosa, MB

• Marty Donkervoort, Social Enterprise Consultant and Instructor, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg

• Shaun Loney, Executive Director, BUILD (Building Urban Industries for Local Development)

• Greg O’Neill, Co-operative Developer, Calgary

• Dr. Claudia Sanchez-Bajo, Chair of Co-operative Enterprises, University of Winnipeg

• Lucas Stewart, General Manager, Manitoba Green Retrofit Inc., Winnipeg

• Dr. Wanda Wuttunee, Professor, Native Studies & Director, Aboriginal Business Education Partners, University of Manitoba 

PS To learn more about Neechi Commons, see: www.neechi.ca.   The link to this letter on the CWCF web site is : http://canadianworker.coop/news/neechi .

- Submitted by Bev

Joint Review Panel recommendation to support Northern Gateway pipeline ignores strong opposition of First Nations and citizens

Photo credit: Marco Guada via flickr.

 

Please send a message of support to the 130 First Nations that stand against the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline.  The Joint Review Panel has recommended approval of the Northern Gateway pipeline.  But this is far from over.  You can take action now to support First Nations, protect our coast, and move toward a carbon free future.

Let them know you stand with them in solidarity as part of an unbroken wall of opposition.

This message will also be sent to the Prime Minister and his Cabinet who now have the choice to side with Canadians or with Enbridge. The decision is in their hands. To move forward, they need First Nations cooperation and support from British Columbians, and they have neither.

The David Suzuki Foundation signed the Solidarity Accord for the Save the Fraser Declaration, agreeing with the Yinka Dene Alliance that we need to uphold indigenous laws and protect the health of British Columbia’s Fraser River watershed, including its headwaters.

And the vast majority agree. At community hearings across BC, the Joint Review Panel heard from 1,159 people who spoke against the pipeline. Only two spoke for it.
Remember, this isn’t the end of the discussion. Make your voice heard now.

You can link to the David Suzuki Foundation website to send a letter.

-submitted by Karla

Protect Costa Rica's rainforests from Infinito Gold

This is from the website:  sumofus.org
 Infinito Gold, a Canadian mining company, just slapped Costa Rica with a $1 billion lawsuit because the nation decided to protect its rainforests rather than host an open-pit gold mine.
Costa Rica’s rainforest is lauded as one of the most beautiful in the world, and is home to many endangered species, including the green macaw. Officials considered approving the gold mine, but the use of toxic chemicals such as cyanide -- which often leaks into and pollutes nearby lakes and rivers -- was far too great a risk to allow the project to move forward.

Image Source:  sumofus.org

A subsidiary of Infinito Gold has announced that a massive lawsuit against Costa Rica is “imminent”, so we need to act now. If thousands of us stand together against this toxic mine, we can show Infinito that Costa Rica and other countries that are defending their natural resources will not be silently bullied by corporate power.

Tell Infinito Gold to drop its $1 billion lawsuit against Costa Rica.

Open-pit gold mining in Costa Rica would destroy 190 hectares of pristine forest. The rainforest houses 5% of the world’s species and has seen tremendous growth in the ecotourism industry. Over 75% of Costa Ricans oppose mining and have decided that they cannot take the risk to move forward with gold-mining in the country.

And Costa Rica is not the first to be sued by Infinito Gold. In 2001, Infinito Gold locked Venezuela into a ten-year legal battle over a rejected mine. Fortunately, Infinito lost. We can make sure Infinito Gold loses again by standing up to its greedy tactics and shameful behavior. Corporate profits cannot take precedence over the health of the people and the environment.

Stand up for Costa Rica’s rainforests -- tell Infinito Gold to drop the $1 billion lawsuit now.


You can sign a petition to pressure Calgary-based Infinito Gold to drop its lawsuit by going to the sumofus website.

**********
More information:
All That Glitters. Corporate Knights, 3 Oct 2013.
Calgary-based mining company suing Costa Rica for more that $1 Billion. Global News, 4 Oct 2013.

- Submitted by Nancy P.

Religion and Culture Colloquium Series

- Submitted by Kathleen

Circle of Courage

An Afternoon with Dr. Martin Brokenleg

As part of our ongoing commitment to providing educational and informational opportunities linked to supporting employment equity/ diversity, the departments of Indigenous Affairs and Human Resources are pleased to bring Dr. Martin Brokenleg to The University of Winnipeg. 

Tuesday, November 12
12:30-3:30 p.m.
Convocation Hall (Wesley Hall)
University of Winnipeg

ALL WELCOME!

Photo: Reclaiming Youth International

Dr. Martin Brokenleg, co-founder of the Circle of Courage, consults worldwide for Reclaiming Youth International.  He holds a doctorate in psychology and is a graduate of the Episcopal Divinity School. He is an Emeritus Professor and was most recently Director of Native Ministries and Professor of Native American Theology and Ministries at the Vancouver School of Theology in Vancouver, British Columbia. For thirty years, Dr. Brokenleg was Professor of Native American studies at Augustana College of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He has also been a director of The Neighborhood Youth Corps, chaplain in a correctional setting, and has extensive experience as an alcohol counselor. Dr. Brokenleg has consulted and led training programs throughout North America, New Zealand, and South Africa. He is the father of three children and an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe practicing the culture of his Lakota people.

Grassroutes, UW

This event Tuesday evening has been recommended by a number of Just Living folks, including Karla, Kathleen and Mike.  

 

Extractive Industries, Indigenous Development, and the Environment: A Panel Discussion

 
Tuesday, November 12, 7-9 pm -- The University of Winnipeg, (Riddell Hall)

Speakers: Wab Kinew, Richard Atleo, Darren Courchene, and more, moderated by Julie Pelletier. More speakers TBA.

In April 2013, an article in the Guardian claimed that “Indigenous rights are the best defence against Canada’s resource rush” and that “First Nations people – and the decision of Canadians to stand alongside them – will determine the fate of the planet.”  This “natural marriage” between environmental activism and movements for Indigenous rights is not new. But is it useful? Or does it simply recycle old myths of the Noble Savage? What is the relationship between Indigenous development and extractive industries in Canada? Where does environmental activism fit into the picture?
For more information, for speaker profiles, and for more information about the Grass Routes festival visit www.grassroutes.ca

Feast For Friends, Sept 21

Mike has submitted this photo from the Feast For Friends event, held at the Sandy-Saulteaux Spiritual Centre on Sept. 21.  If you look carefully, you'll find a number of familiar faces in the circle.

Sept 20, 21 - Fall Ceremonies at Sandy Saulteaux Centre

To members of the Just Living group,

One of the ideas which we have talked about in the Just Living group is establishing better relations with Aboriginal people. There is an upcoming opportunity to meet in a positive way with Aboriginal people and, in particular, help out and get to know some of our neighbours at the Oak Table.

I am trying to organize a group of people who would like to attend Fall Ceremonies at Sandy Saulteaux Centre by camping out at the Centre (near Beausejour) on Friday September 20 and staying for the celebration on Saturday Sept. 21. There are several people from the Oak Table who would like to do this, but they have no way of getting out on the Friday night. So, if you’re interested, we would meet at Augustine at 6 pm, form partnerships with Oak Table friends, and drive out to camp at the Centre.

That evening, elders Jules and Margaret Lavalee will light the sacred fire and share teachings. Saturday morning, there will be a sunrise ceremony. Then, around 10 pm, about 100 other people – Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal – will arrive. The day is filled with workshops, activities for adults and kids like “Indian baseball”, wandering the grounds, a sweat lodge for those who wish, all ending with a big feast on Saturday night, breaking camp and returning home.

The stated purpose of this weekend is “Feast For Friends – a day to meet each other in friendship, to learn together, to share stories together, to play together, to feast together … to become a people who walk together.” The Sandy Saulteaux Centre is a United Church training facility committed to the idea of walking the two roads: Christianity and traditional Aboriginal teachings. Everything is free, although donations are welcome. For those who can’t camp, the Centre has rooms available for $55.

This will be a real opportunity to form better relations with Aboriginal people. If you’re interested in attending Friday night and Saturday, please phone me at (204) 338-0090.

- submitted by Mike

Wake up to the aboriginal comeback

John Ralston Saul - Source:  Globe and Mail

These excerpts are from the Globe and Mail, August 9, 2013, written by John Ralston Saul.  You can read the whole article here.

When Canadians learn that malnourished aboriginal children were used for nutritional experiments, they cannot really be surprised. Shock is a more plausible reaction. We should never be beyond shock. But not surprised. That would be to feign innocence, when we all know that for more than a century, Canadian authorities of all sorts continually acted badly 
when it came to indigenous peoples. Many Canadians knew this when it was happening. The standard public discourse made these actions possible. These were our governments, our authorities. Our responsibility cannot be denied.

What’s more, this will not be the last shocking revelation. There must be much more to come.
And so an official national apology was a good thing. But it will not be nearly enough. For a start, everything must come out and be made clear. Full responsibility, whatever that involves, must be taken. The political, legal and bureaucratic cringing, prevarication, negotiating over which documents to release, when, in what conditions, only make the whole tragedy more humiliating for all Canadians, aboriginal and otherwise. How can any of us agree to live together in any sort of healthy relationship if there is not clarity, as well as full and concrete responsibility taken for the past?
..........
 I have never heard a First Nations, Métis or Inuit person say they wanted to be seen primarily as a victim. That would be marginalizing and demeaning. What they want is that their situation be understood. They want responsibility taken. They want to be heard. They want their dignity back.
That is why there is such insistence on respect for the treaties. We are all signatories. We are all treaty people. Those treaty agreements shaped Canada. The landed immigrant becomes a treaty person the instant she or he swears allegiance as a citizen of Canada.
What indigenous peoples are after is their full and proper place on this territory. They are the original founding pillar of everything done here. Their influence on the shape and habits of this country has been and remains enormous.
..........
The simple truth is that we are all witnesses to the remarkable comeback of the aboriginal peoples. This will mean fundamental shifts in power, in financing and in how we all live together. We can pretend this is not happening; we can manoeuvre in order to delay it. But it is going to happen. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose by embracing this comeback as living proof of the strength of these cultures and peoples. We are witnessing how central they are to the future of this country.
Now is the time to listen to what they are saying and understand what they are calling for.

- Submitted by Gareth

First Nations processes translate to Afghanistan

(Op-ed piece in Winnipeg Free Press, May 30, 2013 by James Wilson)

Photo Source:  Thompson Citizen

Sometimes we have to travel far away to realize the answers are right here at home. At least that's one of the lessons Renee Filiatrault learned when she was a diplomacy officer in Kandahar, Afghanistan, negotiating between Canada, the military and the Afghans.
At first glance, there seems to be little relevance between aboriginal issues and the work she did in that country. But as Filiatrault delved into her past, there were definite similarities that were both informative and somewhat shocking.
As a former press secretary to minister of Indian affairs, Robert Nault, she visited and worked with many First Nations amidst a dynamic and challenging political atmosphere.
I was curious to know what lessons time and separation from First Nations issues had given her and how she compared experiences in both Canada and Afghanistan.

You can read the entire article here.

Note:  James Wilson is commissioner of the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba, and will be the keynote speaker at Project Peacemaker's Eco-Friendly dinner on June 6.  More information about the Eco-Friendly dinner to be found in previous posts. 

- submitted by Gareth