You are cordially invited to attend the public exhibition of Aboriginal youth art for Taking Action Toronto! on Sunday, October 19th from 3-5pm.

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It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of the Conservative party. Along with many other people I know, I’m saddened and angered that we have another 4 years of right-wing bigotry to face, but I’m up for the fight.

However I was delighted to hear that Leona Aglukkaq, from Gjoa Haven in Nunavut, became the first Inuit woman elected to the Conservative party.

She won with 34.8% of the total vote, however like the rest of Canada, 49.4% of eligible voters in Nunavut actually cast a ballot.

This is not the first time Aglukkaq was the only woman present in various political spheres. A longtime Nunavut civil servant, Aglukkaq was elected as MLA for Nattilik in the 2004 territorial election, making her one of two women elected to the 19-person assembly that year. She was also the only woman at the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Housing (FPT) Ministers Meetings.

I’m delighted because what I’m holding on to now is hope for change. And I sincerely hope with everything inside me that Leona Aglukkaq will do her best to change that party.

I really do hope.

Christopher Columbus is no hero.

Some say he is actually responsible for causing 95 million deaths of Indigenous peoples worldwide.

He was not a great discoverer either. He had no idea where he was going, and never even came to the land we know today as North America. In fact, he was way far off in Haiti and, thinking he had landed in India, called the traditional Arahawk people of that territory “Indians”.

That name has since stuck on us like glue and has caused generations of systemic genocide and mass attempts to annihilate our culture.

But each year, on October 12th, “Columbus Day” is celebrated, paraded, and honoured in the United States, and in many Latin American countries including Costa Rica and Spain, for what this mass murderer did to my people. Actually in Venezuela they have renamed it “Indigenous Resistance Day”. (more inside…)

So this is one of my favourite times of year - when some of the brightest and best talent in the Native film industry strut their awesomeness at one of Canada’s largest Aboriginal film festivals, imagineNATIVE:

“The creative voices of Aboriginal women will be among those heard loudly and clearly at the 9th Annual imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, which runs in Toronto from Wednesday, October 15th until Sunday, October 19th, 2008. imagineNATIVE is pleased to announce and welcome their presenting sponsor CTVglobemedia.

The festival, which annually spotlights Aboriginal filmmakers and media artists from across the Indigenous spectrum, is proud to feature this year’s “Indian Jane” marketing campaign, its latest trenchant and clever parody of mainstream Hollywood imagemaking. And the showcase of more than 100 works by Indigenous people at the forefront of innovation in film, video, radio and new media, will lead with the women’s side of the story of Indigenous survival and evolution of identity.”

Be sure to also check out the amazing Youth Activities and Youth Program on October 16th!

Be there…or be square! But we’ll still love you if you’re square =)

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.

I’m excited to share with you TWO events happening on October 7th where strong women from my community will be speaking on what strong woman-ness and Indigenous feminism (the first!) means to them.

Aboriginal Women Today: Revealing the Impacts of Colonization and Reclaiming Identities

The speaker, Dr. Cyndy Baskin, is of Mi’kmaq and Irish descent, and is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Ryerson University. Dr. Baskin will be talking about how Aboriginal women have been negatively affected by the historical process of colonization and its current impacts based on their race and sex.

Today, despite these ongoing impacts, Aboriginal women are taking the lead in reclaiming their identities, creating social justice movements and holistically healing themselves, their families and their communities.

When: Tuesday, October 7th 2008
Time: 5:30 - 7 p.m.
Where: CAMH Russell Street Site, 33 Russell Street, 2nd Floor Meeting Centre, Room 2029

Towards a Global Feminism

Lee Maracle, of Salish and Cree ancestry, a member of the Stó:lõ Nation, was born in North Vancouver, B.C. in 1950. She is the mother of four and grandmother of four and was one of the first Aboriginal people to be published in the early 1970s.

The author of a number of critically acclaimed literary works including: Sojourner’s and Sundogs, Ravensong, Bobbi Lee, Daughters Are Forever, Will’s Garden, Bent Box, I Am Woman, she is also the co-editor of a number of anthologies including the award winning publication, My Home As I Remember. She is a co-author of Telling It: Women and Language Across Culture. Lee is widely published in anthologies and scholarly journals worldwide.

When: Tuesday, October 7th 2008
Time: 7pm
Where: Room 5-260, OISE/UFT (252 Bloor St. West)

From Daily Kos:

Muslim Children Gassed at Dayton Mosque After “Obsession” DVD Hits Ohio

On Friday, September 26, the end of a week in which thousands of copies of Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West — the fear-mongering, anti-Muslim documentary being distributed by the millions in swing states via DVDs inserted in major newspapers and through the U.S. mail — were distributed by mail in Ohio, a “chemical irritant” was sprayed through a window of the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, where 300 people were gathered for a Ramadan prayer service. The room that the chemical was sprayed into was the room where babies and children were being kept while their mothers were engaged in prayers.

Recently I’ve heard a lot of talk about how the deaths and abuse of women and children of colour are not taken as seriously as the deaths and abuse of white women and children.

Why We Want Our Kids Back Too
From Racialicious:

There were no crush of grief counselors when our 11 year olds got shot by strays or on purpose. There were no pundits filling column space and air time when our girls got raped or became pregnant too soon. And when our children came up missing… when our children came up missing…I saw enough missing and dead black kids coming up that it taught me something about black folks, or at least the way black folks are perceived:

Black children are disposable expectations.

Justice Delayed, Denied, Disgraceful
From TransGriot

It seems that no matter where we live or what decade we’re talking about, when the justice system concerns transwomen of color, justice is delayed, denied, and disgraceful.

The argument - that the media and the public in general respond more when a white woman suffers - used to give me some pause. While I know, for example, that the numbers of missing and murdered Aboriginal women is collosal, the numbers of women in general who experience violence in Canada are just as shocking:

Half of Canadian women (51%) have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16; Every minute of every day, a Canadian woman or child is being sexually assaulted; One to two women are murdered by a current or former partner each week in Canada. (Source: Canadian Women’s Foundation).

But if racism is not a factor when it comes to reporting acts of violence against women and children, why are there virtually no stories in major North American media about last Friday’s attack on Muslim babies and children?

If you have a blog, if you are a journalist, if you just have a lot of friends on your email contact list - write about this. It is completely abhorrent to me that almost no one, so far, is talking about this. Let’s prove to ourselves that our society is not as horrifyingly racist as it appears to be today.

Hat tip to Muslimah Media Watch

I will not add anything to Pike’s awesome post on Take Back the Night this year, except to say again that women united will never be divided!

If you were ever a previous attendee, or maybe thinking of becoming a new one, we need you there with us each and every year, and there just isn’t too many times you can go. Because, let’s face it, violence against women affects us all, and we need to remember those who cannot physically be with us, but who are trying to take back their night, in their own way, on their own terms, every day.

Some photos from this year’s event to inspire YOU to keep Taking It Back!

Markings of what we stand for were written everywhere we marched

Taking it to the streets

Standing in solidarity with my sisters as as a proud Indigenous feminist

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Wow, there were so many women and transwomen at Take Back the Night last night here in Toronto. Women sang a capella of freedom, told their herstories in multiple languages, gave testimony of their rape or experience of genocide, shared success stories of ending violence in their lives, read out their frustrations with feminist movements, talked of creative collaborations on the amazing giant puppet that accompanied us, and kids held lanterns high. My bum was cold. But my spirit was warm.

I haven’t been to Take Back the Night since I moved to Toronto four years ago, and all my experiences of this important event came from a small university town where the local women’s shelter headed up the event mostly by memorializing the women killed by domestic violence. While of course I think it is important to remember our dead, I don’t think that Take Back the Night is that time. It always felt like a seriously muted understatement to quietly do our little memorial in a dark park. None of that in Toronto! Just being a part of a group of women come together in the spirit of resistance and survival - hell, not survival, but to flourish - was mind bending, especially since I’ve been hiding away for many months writing my Masters’ thesis. It was a great way to come back out into my community of allies, and I got to come with a friend who had never been to Take Back the Night before. It was hard to yell that oh-so-quiet word RAPE out loud walking down Queen Street West, but when we started chanting “Hey mister mister keep your hands off my sister!” it felt so good to have words this time when so many other times I didn’t.

If you missed it and you’re craving some serious kick-ass women community, on October 2, there is a march and rally happening to support women without status who flee violence.
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