This is just the latest from the crazed online materialistic, superficial, and stereotypical world.

The BeautifulPeople Network is an online dating service that has just come to Canada for “beautiful people” only.

Huh?

If you want to join the service, you must submit a picture and profile, and other members of the opposite sex rate you over a 72-hour period, deciding whether you’re worthy of joining their club.

Now I’m not about to lie and say that looks don’t matter at all, but geez, who really gets to have the final say on that?

Thanks to Julia for the link!

I wanted to share this with the Shameless world since I’m a little baffled by the occurence.

Recently I wrote a piece for a place that shall remain nameless. In it I recounted my recent trip to the United States and all the great Native youth engagement work, which happened to include the cultural and spiritual journey my partner and I have decided to embark on.

The comment I received back went something like this “You need to refocus your writing since you seem to dwell too much on your boyfriend and that’s nobody’s business”.

Not once did I even say anything REMOTELY romantic. Not once did I refer to my own feelings about him. I didn’t even say his name. I like to keep it real so if he happened to be there while community work was going on and positively contribute to it, I’m going to say it. Just like I referenced what everybody else did.

(more inside…)

Kudos to this strong female in Chile for taking a stand against patriarchy and conservatism.

Monserrat Morilles who is a 26 year old professional pole dancer took her protest to the subways of Santiago where for one week, she would get on at one station, find a subway car with no children on it, and strip in time to exit at the next station. She refused to take tips to make a point, and was arrested during one of her performances.

Chile has a long history of widespread sexual repression, not to mention the fact that abortion is still illegal and supposed public awareness campaigns remain overtly moralisitc.

But it’s not like Chile stands alone on these issues.

This is pretty inspiring. Last weekend was tribal elections in Oneida, Wisconsin, which is basically the governing body for the sovereign nation (although we still have to legally answer to the federal governments - sovereignty sure is an interesting reality).

My partner’s amazing, incredible, strong sister Melinda Danforth was re-elected as councilwoman, along with six other women, making more than 60% of elected officials for the Oneida tribe of Wisconsin female! She’s 33 and this would be her second term as councilwoman, meaning she got started in the biz of running things at the age of 30. Melinda is a true believer in the power of the youth voice and is representing this Haudenosaunee nation with pride. You go girl!

It’s actually a normal occurence for this place; previous years have seen women holding the chair’s seat and other righteous Indigenous women taking on significant leadership roles.

Now if only the governments running these North American countries could get it right…

My car all tagged up to support Melinda running for council!

I’m still in the United States and with limited access to phone and internet on the reservation. I’ve been out of the loop with several important events that have transpired in “Kanata” (the Wendat Huron word for Canada, which actually means settlement. Yes, we are on Native land) so I’ll play the catch-up game soon.

For now I want to leave you with one of the things I’ve been up to here. My partner and I decided that on my visit here in his territory of Oneida, Wisconsin we would only eat traditional food and do as many traditional things as possible.

What is traditional food you say? Well we are both Haudenosaunee, which in English means Iroquois, or 6 Nations. The 6 Nations are Mohawk (me), Oneida (him), Onondaga, Tuscarora, Seneca, and Cayuga. We have an ancient lineage of unity and one of the oldest forms of law called the Confederacy. As such, we have similar traditions, customs, and teachings. Corn and strawberries are some of our most sacred foods and we revere them more than just foods, they are life sustinence and you can do so much more than just eat them.

For us it means eating food grown on our territories, by our own peoples. Culture is such an important part of both our lives, and we want to honour our Mother Earth as much as we can. It has been a showing of solidarity across these borders we did not create, and also proof that youth can be part of the fight to get what we lost back.

We created a blog to record our journey here and we invite you to share with us as we go back2traditions!

Talk to you soon!

My partner DJ making some yummy traditional corn mush!

I’m back in the US but not without a story to tell yet again from what it was like to cross the U.S. border as a Native-black-haired-darker skinned-young-woman-travelling-alone.

To give you some background, I have been stopped and questioned repeatedly in higher security levels when I bothered to tell the whole truth about why I was crossing. And let me tell you, they sure don’t like fighting for reproductive freedom or working for Native American rights.

In fact, last year when I actually said that I was going to do some work with the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center, I was told to move to the next security level where I was fingerprinted, photographed, and had to explain my ancestry and why I would want to do “work like that”.

So I’ve learned to say the lesser activist reasons as to why I’m going to be in the US.

This time around I’m driving, and what do I see when get down to the long lineups for border crossing but 3 border patrol officials who are standing around amongst the plethora of cars, looking all stern and serious. This is new to me, I thought if you were going to be “randomly searched” it would happen when you at least get to the official in the booth.

Not anymore.

(more inside…)

Canadians for Choice Toronto crew at the International Women’s Day rally

Yep, it’ll be a full six months that we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of abortion legalization in Canada tomorrow, June 28th!

20 years and 6 months ago, Dr. Henry Morgentaler won the Supreme Court of Canada case striking down the abortion law that criminalized women who exercised their inherent reproductive rights.

And since it’s Pride weekend in Toronto, what better way to go out and PARTAY for our bodies to be with whomever we want, than to honour and remember the hard-fought battle that now legally guarantees women the right to choose what we want to DO with our bodies in Canada! (Actually accessing abortion services and quality of care though is a whole other story, you need look no further than at the 2006 REALITY CHECK report we did at Canadians for Choice to see that.)

We are one of the few nations in the world with no legal restrictions on abortion, and we should be damn proud that choice is an important matter generations young and old are continuing to fight for. It’s estimated that approximately 80,000 women die every year around the world due to complications from botched illegal abortions.

It’s been one helluva year defending choice in this country that I’ll actually detail when my latest Rabble article comes out soon, but for now I’m going to march with Pride this weekend that I live in Canada, and that I’m pro-choice.

(We’d love to have you join us at Canadians for Choice marching at the Dyke march, click here for the Facebook listing!)

Some Shameless self-promotion, I’ll be doing an interview on CIUT Radio 89.5 FM in Toronto this Thursday, June 26th in regards to the 20th anniversary of abortion legalization this year and what this means for young activists involved in the pro-choice movement now.

I’m on at 9:40 a.m. You can listen live here.

Wish me luck!

Me at the December 10th 2006 Rally for the Status of Women

While reading this Montreal Gazette article entitled “Harper’s failure to woo women could hurt him in the polls” I’m inclined to ask YOU Shameless readers, how has our Conservative government been doing so far with women in Canada?

Sure, we’ve passed the whole cuts to any women’s groups that “lobby or advocate”, the Court Challenges Program, and removing the word “equality” from the mandate of Status of Women, but I still don’t feel any safer and I’m actually still angry we have this government in power.

So before I painstakingly list off all the things that have happened since then, what say you?