My friend Carmelle Wolfson and Zach Pedersen, Nikki McDonald, Dagna Pielaszkiewicz and Gemma Holdway produced this short documentary profiling Dakota/Cree activist Audrey Redman on her path to healing as a survivor of Canada’s residential schools.

Indian Road documents one of the best kept secrets of the government and churches that horrendously removed culture and left a legacy of pain and destruction for us as Native peoples in Canada.

Playing:
Friday May 2nd
7-8pm
George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre
245 Church St.
Room 103

It’s not to be missed! Contact Carmelle at cwolfson@ryerson.ca for more info.

It’s 12:15pm on Tuesday and the text message from my friend DJ in Marty, South Dakota reads “The state has sent 47 troopers and 2 snipers here.”

For what?!

“The Yankton Sioux tribe is protesting a hog farm development that would harm the land and river.”

Are you kidding me? Last time I visited that reservation, the population read something like 3800. Marty alone has only over 400 people, and about 100 protestors were at the construction site where Long View farms is trying to build.

But it’s true. Two friends of mine, Gary Drapeau and Kip Spotted Eagle, were arrested among others for protecting the traditional territory and standing up for the wellness of the peoples on it.

Peacefully.

They were let go immediately but it was quite symbolic of the utter disrespect of the state for tribal sovereignty and jurisdiction. Never mind the health and well being of everyone else who would be greatly impacted by the waste from this hog farm and their polluted claim on Native land.

Does this story sound all too familiar? Only smaller communities like this aren’t making major news headlines, but it is people like Gary and Kip who are taking a major stand against Corporate America to ensure a better livelihood for the land and people that we really NEED to pay attention to.

Fed up of the continous disregard for the Native community? Let Governor Mike Rounds and the state of South Dakota know you support the Yankton Sioux tribe and to tell Long View Farms to cease all construction on their land.

I support my Inhanktowan brothers and stand in solidarity with them.
STOP DESTROYING MOTHER EARTH!

This is just too disgusting for words.

From the Arctic Sounder:

The state House of Representatives voted Sunday to condemn an “abhorrent” reference to Alaska Native women made by a host on a morning radio show in Anchorage, according to Rep. Mary Nelson, D-Bethel.

The slur was made on Wednesday, April 9, shortly before 7 a.m. on the Woody and Wilcox show on KBFX 100.5 The Fox, said Michelle Davis.

Driving to her job in Anchorage that morning, Davis said she laughed as the two men discussed the car accidents around the city, and joked about how you weren’t a real Alaskan unless you’d crashed at a busy intersection.

Later, one of the DJs on the classic rock station tried to make a play off an old Alaska saying, and asked, “Have you made love to the Yukon and peed in a Native woman?” Davis said.

“I was horrified,” said Davis. “I was completely shocked, it took a long time to sink in, then I got to work and I sat down at my desk and cried. It’s such a degrading thing to say. It’s incredibly insulting.”

(more inside…)

From Guest Blogger Jessica Yee:

I am damn happy to be of Native ancestry. I take a real look around and see that we as Aboriginal peoples have so much to be proud of! The media continuously paints ignorant and negative pictures of our peoples and our ways. But our heritage, our culture, and our traditions give us the tenacity to endure many feats and the strength to climb many mountains. It’s time to recognize those on the forefront making a difference for future generations, our YOUTH! The National Aboriginal Health Organization (NAHO) calls Aboriginal youth ages 18-30 to nominate other Aboriginal youth for the National Role Model Program who are making waves in their community.

The program which began in 2004 aims to:-promote healthy self-esteem among Aboriginal Peoples
-strengthen Aboriginal identity
-enhance a positive public image of Aboriginal Peoples
-facilitate availability of Aboriginal role models to Aboriginal youth and communities
-influence behaviours and attitudes of Aboriginal youth toward healthy lifestyles
-foster Aboriginal-inspired leadership

The deadline to submit was March 28 so stay tuned for the winners!

Not Aboriginal? We all have a responsiblity to ensure the First Peoples of this land are being recognized and viewed in the light we deserve to be seen in. Contact the program to have a Role Model visit and learn about the amazing things Indigneous youth are doing to effect positive change across the country.

Start looking out for Aboriginal role models in your community to nominate for next year!

Well, yes I do like to live in the dark here in Canada, and not just during Earth Hour. Or it seems that I do since I was the only one who didn’t know who Helen Thomas was at the Women, Action and the Media! conference in Boston this past weekend. All kerfuffled from a delayed flight and Boston rain, I arrived just early enough to read her bio in the conference program before entering the large lit-up auditorium. Helen Thomas was a big deal to all the excited, chattering women there. She is known as the First lady of the Press and is part of the White House Press Corps. Before she even spoke, the crowd gave her an almost unanimous standing ovation. (Yes, almost. More on that later.)

What a woman. She’s been in journalism since the 1940s, and has been harangued 9 presidents so far with tough questions, like pressing Bush on “Why did you REALLY go to war?” He ignored her, where she sat in the front row of the press, for 3 years. She said that “too much is at stake to throw the president a soft ball.”

I loved some of Helen’s deadpan one-liners quoting others, earmarking her fame, like:

If God had created the world in six days, he couldn’t have rested on the seventh, because he would have had to explain it to Helen Thomas.
- Gerald Ford

Fidel Castro on the difference between Cuban democracy and American democracy: “I don’t have to answer questions from Helen Thomas.”

I think the audience was enraptured with her fame. And she was probably enraptured with their eager, feminist journalist faces - when Helen Thomas started in journalism, she and other women had to fight just to be allowed in the door to the press conferences. She thinks we’ve come a long way.

But maybe not that far.

(more inside…)

This post is best introduced by this video testimony by a woman worker who was detained as part of the New Bedford sweatshop raid in Massachusetts:

In this particular raid, 361 people were detained and the majority were women. Many of these women are mothers and pregnant women; at least two pregnant women were deported without delay.

The mainstream and also the feminist media isn’t really talking about these raids and other important human rights stories about immigration in the U.S.

Why? Why are these stories ignored when these raids are happening all over the US? When this continent is a dangerous place for immigrant women? When immigrant women are being “disappeared”, detained indefinitely, denied access to health care, torn from their families, deported without seeing a lawyer or a judge? Why?
(more inside…)

We’re a little late on this, but we were thrilled to learn from Jessica Yee blogging over at Feministing that the Spring Equinox (which falls on the 20th or 21st of March every year) in Canada is now officially Indigenous Women’s Empowerment Day.

Gatherings to commemorate Indigenous Women’s Empowerment Day started in 2006 in BC, and have been organised every year by the Kookum Educating Traditional Acceptance Society.

As Jessica says:

I often reflect on the power of our traditions and the great culture of Native peoples that have been rejected through colonization, Christianization, and extreme genocide. We have so much in our ancestral teachings that supports respect for women, caring for the community, and love for Mother Earth. Yet today Indigenous women face the highest rates of domestic violence and poverty in the world. It is essential to recognize these injustices, but be proud of who and where we come from in the present world.

Whoa!

Here’s an older, November ‘07 news piece that we somehow missed (from the BBC):

The several hundred vigilante women of India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state’s Banda area proudly call themselves the “gulabi gang” (pink gang)…[they] shun political parties and NGOs because, in the words of their feisty leader, Sampat Pal Devi, “they are always looking for kickbacks when they offer to fund us”.

Two years after they gave themselves a name and an attire, the women in pink have thrashed men who have abandoned or beaten their wives and unearthed corruption in the distribution of grain to the poor.

I have to admit that there’s something whoop!-inspiring about a gang of 100s of women who dress in pink, and go after men who’ve committed violence against women. Devi says, “Nobody comes to our help in these parts,” and I can’t help but be in awe of a gang of women who just ain’t gonna take it anymore.

But at the same time there’s something troubling about a large group of people descending on one person and beating them. Or is there? For Western feminists there’s always the temptation to idealise or simplify the stories of “3rd World” women who, confronted with a crumbling or ineffective infrastructure, take things into their own hands.

See after the jump for a beautiful comic by Elisha Lim (yes, yes, we’re related…) of One Hundred Butches fame, and her thoughts on the issue.

(more inside…)

Some of you may have heard that Toronto city councilor Rob Ford recently got himself into some trouble by saying the following (moronic and offensive) thing in a speech proposing that stores be allowed to open when they wish:

“Go to Hong Kong, okay? I’ve been there. You want to see workaholics? Those Oriental people work like dogs. They work their hearts out … that’s why they’re successful in life. … I’m telling you, Oriental people, they’re slowly taking over, because there’s no excuses for them. They’re hard, hard workers.”

My sincere apologies if you just spat your drink all over your keyboard. Toronto’s Mayor David Miller rightly demanded that Ford apologize and Ford refused. Victoria Shen (Co-President of the Toronto Chapter of the Chinese Canadian National Council) wrote a brilliant open letter in response to Ford’s comments, stating, “It is not enough to deride and be outraged by racist comments. Words are empty. Sanctions are merely palliative. We challenge those who are genuinely offended by Councillor Ford’s comments to run for office at the next Municipal election. It is the only way.”

(I’m still trying to figure out the image choice that accompanies BlogTO’s reposting of Shen’s letter, but I’ll leave that alone.)

Now, Rob Ford is not exactly known for his ability to come up with the best ideas or say the most tactful things. Torontoist lets us know he had this to say about why Toronto shouldn’t fund an AIDS prevention program:

“If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you won’t get AIDS probably. That’s bottom line.” Of course, when it was pointed out that heterosexual women are the fastest-growing group of AIDS patients, Ford postulated “How are women getting it? Maybe they are sleeping with bisexual men.”

For reals? How is this man allowed to serve the city of Toronto? I’ll tell you how. There are so many people who just don’t see what the big deal is when leaders say these kinds of things. There’s been a lot of arguing on the blogs about how objection to his most recent statement is “nitpicky” and people who think he should apologize are overreacting. There are even people in the “media” who say crap like this:

“This preoccupation with what people say and how they say it and finding offense in everything said is happening, I suspect, for the same reason that dogs lick their genitals. It’s because they can.”(more inside…)