LOCAL EVENTS WINNIPEG:
COMIX ARTIST OPENS WINNIPEG RADICAL BOOKFAIR:



It's coming up this weekend, the Winnipeg Radical Bookfair, and the opening item will be a book launch for the graphic novel 'Five Hundred Years of Resistance'. Here's the promo.>>>
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Gord Hill launches the 500 Years of Resistance comic book
Time Friday, September 24 · 7:00pm - 9:00pm

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Location Mondragon Bookstore & Coffee House
91 Albert St.
Winnipeg, MB

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More Info
Join us for the kick-off event to the Winnipeg Radical Bookfair:
http://winnipegradicalbookfair.blogspot.com/

Gord Hill is a member of the Kwakwaka'wakw nation on the Northwest Coast. Writer, artist, and militant, he has been involved in Indigenous resistance, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist movements for many years.

He will be launching his recent comic book 500 Years of Resistance.

The book is a powerful and historically accurate graphic portrayal of Indigenous resistance to the European colonization of the Americas, beginning with the Spanish invasion under Christopher Columbus and ending with the Six Nations land reclamation in Ontario in 2006.

http://www.arsenalpulp.com/bookinfo.php?index=317

ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS INTERNATIONAL POLITICS BRAZIL:

STOP BELO MONTE DAM:

Down on the Amazon the government of Brazil is planning what will be the third largest hydroelectric project on Earth. No doubt profit for the government and its friends, but devastation for indigenous people whose lands would be flooded. Internationally people are coming to the support of these people and their struggle. Here's the story from the International Rivers website.

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Stop Belo Monte Dam!
In early February, the Brazilian government approved the environmental license for the controversial Belo Monte Dam in the Amazon.

The dam, slated to be the world’s third largest hydroelectric project, would devastate an extensive area of the Amazon rainforest, and threaten the survival of indigenous and traditional peoples. Construction could begin this year.

The decision has caused a national and international outcry. Right now, more than 5,000 Kayapo Indians are planning a protest camp on the Big Bend of the Xingu River to prevent dam construction. They are threatening war.

Studies have shown that by investing in energy efficiency, Brazil could cut demand for electricity by 40% by 2020 and save $19 billion in the process. The amount of energy saved would be equivalent to 14 Belo Monte dams!

The Brazilian government needs to hear from you today. Let them know that the international community will not sit idly by while they threaten indigenous lives and destroy one Amazon river after another.

Please write today to President Lula and his Ministers and ask them to revoke the preliminary license for Belo Monte Dam!

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THE LETTER:

Please go to this link to send the following letter to the Brazilian authorities.

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Your Excellency,

I am writing to express my concern about the Brazilian government's decision to move forward with the Belo Monte Dam. The project will devastate an extensive area of the Brazilian Amazon and threaten the survival of indigenous and tribal peoples. Indigenous people have not been adequately consulted about the project.

I am concerned about the way the Brazilian government is pushing through this project at all costs, with little attention to due process or the rule of law.

I stand in solidarity with the indigenous people of the Xingu Basin in their opposition to Belo Monte and I ask that you review the recent decision to grant a preliminary license to the project.

Sincerely,

LOCAL EVENTS MANITOBA:

TWO SPIRIT GATHERING COMING SOON:

The 22nd annual 'Two Spirit Gathering' is coming to the Manitoba town of Beausejeur next weekend. Here's the promo.>>>
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22nd Annual International Two Spirit Gathering

The 22nd Annual International Two Spirit Gathering will take place on September 3-6, 2010 at the Dr. Jessie Saulteaux Resource Centre, Beausejour, Manitoba, Canada (64 kilometers or 40 miles) northeast of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Aboriginal/Native American gay, lesbian, bisexual & transgender people, their partners, friends & families are invited to gather in the land of the Cree, Dene, Dakota, Inuit, Metis, Ojibway-Cree and Ojibway.

This is an alcohol and drug-free event sponsored by Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc. (“Those Who Lead”) and the Two-Spirited People of Manitoba.

To register for the gathering, visit the International Two Spirit Gathering website.

For information about registration, accommodation and travel, contact Albert McLeod at 204-783-6424 (in Canada) or by email at twospiritedmanitoba@hotmail.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
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Here's a brief description of what the Two Spirit Gathering is all about from their website.
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Executive Summary
Ka Ni Kanichihk (KNK) and the Two-Spirited People of Manitoba (TSPM) have partnered to host the twenty-second annual gathering of Two Spirit people in North America, A Gathering of Medicine Stones. The following definition of Two Spirit people is found in Manitoba’s Aboriginal Strategy on HIV/AIDS:

Two Spirit People – a term used to describe Aboriginal people who assume cross -, or multiple gender roles, attributes, dress and attitudes for personal, spiritual, cultural, ceremonial or social reasons. These roles are defined by each cultural group and can be fluid over a person’s lifetime. Modern terms like gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, [GLBT] transsexual and intersexed (in combination with, or exclusive to, Two Spirit) may be adopted by some Aboriginal people to define who they are.

This special gathering began in 1988 in Minnesota when a local group of Native American gay and lesbian community members saw the need to launch a cultural revitalization movement that was based on the principle of being alcohol and drug-free. The world-wide HIV pandemic had also reached the Two Spirit community at this time galvanizing many local activists to become involved in the HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention movement.

The Minneapolis gathering was organized with the support of allies such as the Minneapolis American Indian Center, Gay and Lesbian Community Action Council, and the Minneapolis Civil Rights Department, along with community businesses and private donors. For the past 21 years annual gatherings have continued to be supported by various levels of government, Aboriginal organizations, foundations and private donations. There is also a component of regional and local fundraising and in-kind support for this event.

TSPM hosted the gathering in 1990 and 1998 with approximately 125 participants at each event (a full report on the 1998 gathering is available). TSPM will host the 20th anniversary of their first gathering on Labour Day Weekend, September 3-6, 2010 at a retreat centre outside of Winnipeg. The theme, “A Gathering of Medicine Stones” is reflective of the spiritual and ecological nature of this gathering. Approximately 125 participants representing various Aboriginal and Native American nations and tribes from across Canada and the US are expected to attend. The four-day agenda will include cultural activities, health and wellness sessions, leadership building, anti-homophobia and human rights training, and networking opportunities. A Two Spirit youth life-skills component and panel session will be included. Youth will be one of the priorities for travel scholarships.

Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc., the auspicing body for this project will provide administrative support, financial accounting and will function as the central coordination and planning site. A joint committee of Ka Ni Kanichihk and TSPM representatives will lead the planning and coordination, and oversee fundraising efforts and the successful delivery of the project. A project financial audit will be included in Ka Ni Kanichihk’s annual report. As a registered charity Ka Ni Kanichihk will provide tax receipts for individual and corporate donations.

Contact
Albert McLeod, Co-Director
Two-Spirited People of Manitoba Inc.
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
T: 204-783-6424 E: twospiritedmanitoba@hotmail.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS:

GRASSY NARROWS BLOCKADE BEGINS AGAIN:


After their success in stopping clear cut logging on their lands the people of Grassy Narrows in northwest Ontario once again are blockading the road through their reserve, this time to assert their right to improve conditions on the rez. The following story and appeal are from the Radio Free Peaball blog. A tip of the Molly hat to Matt who first brought this item to my attention.
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Blockade renewed at Grassy Narrows First Nation, asserts self-determination
August 28, 2010
by David P Ball

GRASSY NARROWS FIRST NATION (ASUBPEESCHOSEEWAGONG NETUM ANISHINABEK) –

One week after the Ontario government threatened to halt maintenance of a back road used for fishing, hunting, trapping, and rice and berry harvesting, members of Grassy Narrows First Nation in northwest Ontario community are continuing their eight-year blockade to assert their territorial rights.

Led by grassroots women from the Anishinabek community, since August 21 the blockaders have prevented Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) from interfering with their work crew, which was visited by MNR three times last week and ordered to purchase a gravel permit, alongside warnings to stop work citing environmental, public and worker safety concerns. This action continues the longest blockade in Canadian history, which since 2002 has successfully stopped clearcut logging on Grassy Narrows territories and has raised concerns about the government’s lack of action on mercury poisoning in the community.

“We have our own government here,” said Robert Keesick, capital projects manager for Grassy Narrows First Nation, who is responsible for the road maintenance contract. “We have our own way of dealing with the environment, of taking care of our workers. This is our territory, so we have the right to use the land.”

“We support our chief and council – they are the authority here. They received their jurisdiction when they signed the treaty. All we’re doing is fixing a road that was there already, and yet [MNR is] not doing anything about the mercury in the river,” he added.

A sign across the blockaded road reads “Ministry of No Respect: Keep Out,” and community members are maintaining a 24-hour presence at Slant Lake, just outside the reserve, allowing only non-MNR traffic to pass.

So far, the government has not challenged the blockade, and on its first day a conservation officer was turned back. MNR told local media it is concerned about damage to a beaver pond where Grassy Narrows contractors are repairing washouts and beaver damage to back-roads on the First Nations traditional territories, as well as worker and public safety issues. Community members, however, consider the government’s actions harassment and an impingement on their treaty rights.

“When they talk about environmental concerns or workers’ safety, it’s like they think we’re dumb,” said Roberta Keesick, one of the community members active in the blockade. “Of course we think about this stuff too, otherwise we wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t have lasted this long.

“The funny thing is that MNR is saying they’re concerned about a beaver pond, but the government pays people to kill beavers because they call them ‘nuisance beavers,’ because they’re wrecking the roads. Their quibbling over a beaver pond is contradictory. We don’t need a permit; we already got permission from the Creator,” she added.

The blockade has been joined by invited members of Christian Peacemakers Teams (CPT), which has an almost decade-long presence supporting the community’s struggle for self-determination, as well as other supporters.

“All this is towards our sovereignty, it’s about the same thing as other Aboriginal struggles,” Roberta Keesick said. “We hope others will feel less intimidated or feel they have to get permits and permission. Lots of people feel they can’t fight it. When we do our blockade, we hope it opens people’s eyes to who they are as Aboriginal and Anishinabek.”

The back road being maintained is used by Grassy Narrows members to access hunting, trapping, wild rice picking and berry picking areas, and for access to a fishing lodge at Ball Lake, rights enshrined under Treaty 3. The fishing lodge was granted to the First Nation as part of compensation for mercury pollution in 1986, and the government stopped maintaining the road following the Slant Lake blockade started in 2002. The community is calling for support from allies elsewhere to defend the Earth and Indigenous rights.

Take action:

Call the MNR Kenora office to express your support for the people of Grassy Narrows: (807) 468-2501

Some points to make:
1. The government should stop harassing construction crews repairing the road to Ball Lake Lodge.
2. Thousands of people are watching and supporting Grassy Narrows. This issue will not go away until there is justice.
3. Grassy Narrows has the right to determine what happens on their territory, according to Treaty 3. We support them in their decisions.
4. We also support Grassy Narrows’ call to end clearcut logging, for justice on issues of mercury pollution and other contaminants, and for the sovereignty granted them by the Creator since time immemorial.

LOCAL EVENTS - CANADIAN POLITICS:

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION HEARINGS BEGIN:

Appropriately enough the public events for Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission have begun here in Winnipeg, the aboriginal capital of Canada and perhaps of all of North America polar to the Rio Grand. Winnipeg's native population numbers about 68,380 according to Stats Can as of 2007. This is probably an slight underestimate, but it still places the aboriginal population as about 10% of the city. Having lived here for over a quarter of a century I think this is about the right percentage. This is greater in absolute numbers than many other larger cities such as Vancouver and Edmonton which also have substantial numbers of aboriginal people. There are smaller centres such as North Battleford (18%) and Prince Albert (about 33%), both in Saskatchewan where the percentage of aboriginals is greater than that of Winnipeg, but Winnipeg amongst so-called 'major cities' holds pride of place as the city where the "native fact" is the greatest even though the native presence in western Canada is much more obvious generally.

The events of the first hearing of the T&RC at the Forks here in Winnipeg have drawn large crowds despite weather that has been less than clement to say the least. They have garnered extensive press coverage locally and even nationally. For those interested in general news coverage I suggest that they go to the websites of the Winnipeg Free Press and the Winnipeg Sun. For myself I would like to explore, at least briefly, some of the issues behind these events and compare and contrast them to the situation in other countries. I do this with full understanding that I may make grievous mistakes in describing the situation outside of Canada, and I hope that readers from any country mentioned will see fit to correct me if I make too egregious an error.

To begin with the very title of the event seems to be borrowed from the South African context and their own 'Truth and Reconciliation Commission'. The way in which these two settler societies dealt with their indigenous populations were dramatically different, but the 'Canadian way' was similar if not identical to that which took place in the USA and Australia. In South Africa the Boer ruling class essentially "gave up" on the idea of assimilation of what was, after all, the vast majority of the country's population, and even if they constructed their apartheid state by imitation of the Canadian, American and Australian reservation system they never made serious attempts at cultural genocide. In CAA (Canada, America, Australia) various 'do-gooders' took upon themselves the task of "civilizing" the native population ie abolishing them as an identifiable group. To my understanding in Australia this effort was mainly directed towards what they called "half-castes" there ('half breeds' in Canada) while hoping that the aboriginals out in their reserves would gradually become extinct.

The South African commissions are also markedly different from those now being held in Canada in that they are being held in the context of the victory on the part of the majority of the population relatively recently after a successful armed (partially) struggle. They are almost exclusively concerned with events of the last few decades while the Canadian hearings will be concerned with events that extend back to the 1800s and which concern a minority of the population whose armed struggles were defeated in the 19th century. The interesting, and perhaps controversial thing to those outside of Canada (and even to many Canadians), is that the 'death toll' of Canada's residential schools is probably far greater than that of the armed struggle in South Africa, and most of the dead were innocent children on the 'losing side'. YES, the death toll from the Canadian system exceeds by a large number what might actually be termed as "war", and all the victims were innocents.

So how to view the present hearings ? There are similarities between the native experience and that of all of us who endured Catholic schools even if we weren't native. The methods of "discipline" that many people endured (I include myself here) have shown up documented as military torture methods in later years. One might be tempted to view the 'native case' as special pleading, a view that is held by many in Canada. On the other hand those of us who endured the religious school system had certain advantages over the native children. First of all we were not kidnapped and flown to a prison where the jailers spoke a foreign language and insisted that we speak in within days of arrival. Whatever the brutality that we were subjected to which was little different from that that native children endured we at least went home at the end of the day and there was no opportunity for murder. Murder !! That is the only way that many of the things that happened in residential schools could be described.

According to a reference on the Wikipedia site on the Indian Residential Schools it was noted as early as 1909 that the death rate in these schools varied from 35% to 60%. As time went on this rate declined, but it was still horrendous in the 20th century until the schools were finally closed. A lot of this was because the conditions in the schools were very much optimum for the transmission of infectious disease. Group housing in dormitories where the space between beds was two feet for instance. In his 1909 report and in his subsequent book Dr. Peter Bryce claimed that such a situation was actually deliberate. Personally I doubt this given my knowledge of the Roman Catholic Church where brutality is an accepted method but extermination is to be avoided. One dead child equals one less proselytizer in the future. Ignorance and sadism (things that I noted were almost universal amongst Catholic clerics that I had the misfortune of coming in contact with in my childhood ) are totally adequate explanations, and 'conspiracy' does not have to be invoked.

So how to view the present hearings. There are some such as Kevin D. Arnett whose writings are reproduced at the Porkupine Blog who view these hearings entirely negatively. What Kevin sees in these hearings is an "opportunity" to absolve the guilty, and what he says has a certain validity. YES, one of the purposes of such hearings is definitely to "put the issue to rest". On the other hand the hearings will give victims the only opportunity that they will ever have to present what actually happened to the general Canadian public. All that I can say here is that the actual guilty individual parties are mostly dead by now, and that the presentation is much more important than a futile attempt to bring the guilty to justice. YES, this includes the guilty Church organizations. Their liability has been pretty much settled by now.

What I consider important in these hearings is that the full evil of what was done to native children be thoroughly exposed to the general public, and I think that these hearings are a good forum to do that. This exposure can have great positive benefits in the long term as Canada tries to come to terms with its native peoples, and it can promote proper public understanding of the best ways to deal with this legacy. YES, nothing will immediately result from the hearings, but they present an opportunity to change views that will have long term consequences.

As a conclusion to this sad tale everybody should note that the designers and the operators of the residential school system were firmly convinced beyond tha shadow of a doubt that they were "doing good". This sort of result should serve as a cautionary reminder to reformers and revolutionaries of all sorts of the inevitable 'law of unintended consequences' that plagues all human action.

Here are a few references for those who are interested in this issue:

1)Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada http://www.trc.ca/ The official site centred here in Winnipeg.

2)Indian Residential School Survivors http://irss,ca/

3)National Residential School Survivors Society http://www.nrss.ca/

4)Assembly of First nations History of Residential Schools http://www.afn.ca/residentialschools/hiostory.html

5)CBC History of the Residential Schools http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/05/16

6)Wikipedia History of the Residential Schools http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian-Indian-residential-school-system

There's an interesting article in the latest 'Straight Goods'- an on-line magazine of social democratic slant ( http://www.straightgoods.ca )- on the final results of the "Ippenwash Inquiry". This concerns a government inquiry into the shooting of native protester Dudley George during a police attack on a native occupation/protest almost 11 years ago in Northern Ontario. The inquiry "whitewashed" the role of the provincial government of Ontario at the time.
Lest you think that this is a "one-off" event I pull the following from memory. Many years ago an Indian was shot- THREE TIMES IN THE BACK- in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. One man was convicted of "manslaughter" in the murder. He was sentenced to a very short time in prison, and actually served less than a year. The CLINCHER was that the convicted murder was an agent for CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. He said, on his release, that he would take up a career as a speaker against "racism" as his original mission was to infiltrate the neo-Nazis in Saskatchewan. Of course he disappeared into the witness protection program upon his release.
Do inquiries EVER convict the guilty. Yes, rarely. The inquiry into the above case of Dudley George couldn't reveal anything as incriminating as the inquiry into the Air-India bombing here in Canada where there was more than a slight suspicion that CSIS collaborated with the Indian Security Service to "let a terrorist event happen". Of course nothing was proven in that case so why should it be any different here. RARELY is the operative word ie ONLY in the case of situations that do not carry implications that have "political consequences. False convictions, no problem. Collaboration of politicians or security services in murder- a great gross problem.