Wow.

That’s all I have to say about a youth friend of mine from a community I work with in northwestern British Columbia. Sonya Tamara May Patrick, 16, from Burns Lake, along with 5 other young people, won a contest the Carrier First Nation of Lake Babine hosted for their youth to write about what their language, neduten, means to them and the entire nation.

The prize? Attending the World Indigenous People’s Conference on Education in Australia! And to top off that life-changing opportunity, touring with the Maori for their educational tour the following week in New Zealand.

The conference will be held on the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation, in Melbourne, from December 7th to 11th. It will be a celebration of our diverse cultures, traditions and knowledge.

So why did she decide to write?

“I wrote the essay because our language itself is symbolic to our nation, and that knowing our language and speaking it in another country would show that we still have our pride. We are really so proud of it, residential schools tried to ban our language, but they failed, and knowing that we survived through it keeps it and us alive, and it is still very strong. I would like to learn our language while we have our Elders, because we as youth need to realize we are losing our elders fast and need to take advantage of learning our language when we can. It’s so important.”

The World Indigenous Peoples Conference: Education (WIPC:E) is a triennial conference of international significance that attracts peoples from around the globe to celebrate and share diverse cultures, traditions and knowledge with a focus on world Indigenous education. The purpose of WIPC:E is to provide a forum to come together, share and learn and promote best practice in Indigenous education policies, programs and practice.

Oh, and she found out that she won while she was assisting to run another important conference in her community this past summer, Healing Our Spirits, that promoted health and wellness intersecting the importance of culture.

Wow.

Go Sonya go!

Proud and strong Carrier youth leader, Sonya Tamara May Patrick, standing ground on her traditional territory of Lake Babine.

According to this Boing-Boing post

Researchers from the U. of Florida found that men who believe in what they call ‘traditional roles for women’ (a woman’s place is in the home, employing wives leads to more juvenile delinquency, etc.) earn more money than men who don’t. The same is not true for women.

notabene: I think by ‘employing wives’ the author does not mean ‘I’m a gonna go out there and hire me a wife’, they mean, ‘women who are married also having gainful employment’.

That’s right. Feminist ladies, you should be making more money then your traditional-minded counterparts, and if you’re not you are (still) not working hard enough. Dudes, drop that copy of the Feminine Mystique and start wearing Old Spice as if your life depended on it - or else you will be poor.

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It’s Sacred Sex Week at Good For Her!

Discover the multiple ways you can integrate your spiritual side with your sexy self to maximize your erotic potential.

All workshops are for everyone regardless of gender, sex, sexual orientation or partner status, unless otherwise specified.

I’m kicking it off tonight with Aboriginal Pleasure, Power, and Sex Positivity, beginning at 7pm.

Pre-registration is required for all events except Reclaiming Eros book launch on Thursday, September 25. Visit the website to sign up or call 416-588-0900.

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I was on CTV’s Canada AM this morning talking about the racist comments made by an aide to Conservative Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon, against Norman Matchewan, a member of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake, who is also a teacher and part-time police officer.

In a conversation recorded by the Aboriginal People’s Television Network outside Cannon’s Maniwaki campaign office during its opening Tuesday, Matchewan asked the aide, Darlene Lanningan, whether he will be arrested if he visits Cannon’s campaign office. She responded:

“If you behave and you’re sober and there’s no problem and if you sit down and whatever, I don’t care.”

The Barriere Lake reserve is about 300 kilometres northwest of Ottawa in Cannon’s riding of Pontiac, and a group including Norman Matchewan had visited the office for a rally.

She went on to say that, “One of them showed up the other day and was drinking.” There were several allegations she made that were much worse after that.

In 1991 the Algonquins of Barriere Lake signed a Trilateral Agreement with the governments of Canada and Quebec, establishing a landmark sustainable development, conservation, and resource co-management process. Not surpisingly, the Government of Canada has regularly tried to ignore their obligations under the agreement. On March 10th, 2008, for the third time in 12 years, the government of Canada interfered in their internal governance, ousting the Customary Chief Benjamin Nottaway and his Council and recognizing a Chief and Council whom the Barriere Lake Elder’s Council say were not selected in accordance with the community’s customs and whom the majority of the community does not support.

Lannigan basically said what I know for a fact: a lot of people, especially near reserve communities who are non-Native, already make stereotypical assumptions of us. This is the environment the youth in our communities are growing up in, but we’re doing such an awesome job of kicking ass in so many things that it’s only a reminder of what we need to resist and stand up against.

As a long time fan of the website Scarleteen, I’m part of 20 to 30 000 visitors this site boasts every day who are looking for real, unbiased, raw information on sex, sexuality, and everything in between. That’s quite a feat for not having any major organization behind them, public funding, or having ever done any advertising.

I’m proud to announce that I, along with an amazing roster of fellow activists, teachers, and just general people in the sexual know-how will be taking part in Sexuality in Color: Writing Outside the Lines at Scarleteen.

It will be a series focussing strictly on people of colour writing about sex from their perspective, and giving voice to the myths, realities, and racism that still permeate the sexual health world.

Heather Corinna, editor (and owner!) of Scarleteen who is White, hit the nail on the head by saying:

Even if you have no personal experience yourself being of color, or don’t talk to people of color in your life about these issues, statistics alone make it very clear that race (and, more to the point, how different races are treated and valued) and our perception of race changes things.

HIV and unplanned pregnancy has hit women of color harder than white women, for instance. Contraceptive and sexual health access can often be tougher for those of color. Being gay, lesbian or bisexual can play out differently being of color and in communities of color. I can see all of those things in the work that I do.

I can read about all of those things in journals or newspapers. I can certainly feel empathy, compassion and upset about racial imbalances… but what I can’t do is acutely feel and experience those things the way my brothers and sisters of color do and can. That’s not a minor quibble: it’s major.

We’re just gearing up to get going, so be sure to stop by later this week and onwards to check us out!

Rebecca Traister has an article about Sarah Palin in Salon where she asks: “how did I, a die-hard feminist, end up terrified at the idea of a woman in the White House?”

What Palin so seductively represents…is a form of feminine power that is utterly digestible to those who have no intellectual or political use for actual women. It’s like some dystopian future … feminism without any feminists.

Traister is a great writer and I heartily recommend the article.

But I couldn’t help but feel a whirling sense of deja vu.

Back in March, the Shameless Team and I had the pleasure of attending WAM. There we heard the legendary Helen Thomas assert that feminists should vote for a female candidate, just because she’s a woman.

At that point, I suddenly became aware of the fact that I was in a woman of colour in a room that didn’t have a lot of women of colour.

At the same conference, the very ugly rift between grassroots feminists of colour and grassroots non-anti-racist feminists was brought to the harsh light of day. And it was that weekend when I really started to feel worried, and a little heartbroken, that the movement I’d poured so much of my life into, didn’t - at present - feel like it was for me anymore.

McCain picked a woman to run as his VP on purpose - in the hopes that Republicans might be able to pick up female voters who were still holding to that dream of a woman in the white house. But when Traister says in her article, “Plz, Palin is a woman but that doesn’t mean anyone should equate her with feminism - in fact, please don’t,” I am reminded of how I felt about Hillary.

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Tinkerbell and Cinderella were arrested earlier this week, in the middle of a protest for workers’ rights. Don’t get too excited: Disney hasn’t come out with an unexpectedly awesome new movie. Instead, a group of Disneyland workers, many in costume, shut down a major thoroughfare in California trying to prevent Disney from taking away their benefits.

According to CNN:

The dispute involves about 2,300 maids, bell hops, cooks and dishwashers at three Disney-owned hotels: the Paradise Pier, the Grand Californian and the Disneyland Hotel.

The workers’ contract expired in February and their union says Disney’s latest proposal makes health care unaffordable for hundreds of employees and creates an unfair two-tier wage system. The union also says Disney wants to create a new category of part-time employees who would receive greatly reduced benefits.

Personally, I just like the image of Snow White with a picket sign, chanting slogans and getting hauled away in handcuffs. It’s actually a role model I could get behind, much more than Belle saving an abusive relationship with the Beast or any of the other gender and cultural stereotypes that Disney is well known for (and we’ve posted about them before here and here and here).

I am so very happy and completely thrilled to announce that my home territory of Akwesasne now has a fully loaded, all purpose, sex store!

Located on the New York side of Akwe, Totem Pole Novelties opened in January of this year and since then has become a booming, not to mention pleasurable, business! From the hottest erotica to the most salacious how-to DVD’s, Totem Pole Novelties has all your sweet spot needs whether you are going it solo, upping the ante on a long-term partnership, or just looking to have some safe and sexy fun.

I had a chance to visit this week and can tell you first hand that this is the place you want to be to get an up close and personal view of how some amazingly strong individuals are breaking taboos and taking back ownership for pleasure on the reservation to get to the best end result possible: empowerment.

It is so important that we in the Native community remember the power we used to honour in our sexuality and celebrate all of who we are, including our right to enjoy sex! We have so many teachings that support this that are too often forgotten and are instead, thrown into hypersexualized media.

Show them some love on their Facebook group or hit up their website and congratulate these brave Mohawks for keeping it real!

One of our readers sent us this article about a woman in Owen Sound, Ontario who raised $2,700 for Cops for Cancer by shaving her head, only to be ordered to take unpaid leave from her waitressing job until it grew back.

Her employers had this to say:

“Our staff is expected to come dressed appropriately and we did not feel that this was appropriate…She could have done a multitude of different things to support her cause that wouldn’t have affected her work, but she chose to do it in a way that we told her was inappropriate for our business.”

They suggested she use her summer off to “spend time with her kids”. The suggestion being that she was doing them a terrible disservice by going to work in the first place.

What exactly is inappropriate about a waitress with a shaved head? Could it be that it’s - *gasp* - unfeminine? What’s the bet that if one of the mail waitstaff came to work with a shaved head, the owners wouldn’t bat an eyelid?