Tag: Canadian Politics, Indigenous Politics,

Wab Kinew is officially sworn in as Manitoba’s first First Nations premier on October 18, 2023 at a ceremony at The Leaf in Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park. Photo courtesy Wab Kinew/X. Wab Kinew’s victory over Heather Stefanson in the recent Manitoba provincial election is a moment of progressive hope in what

Kent Monkman, “The Scream.” Etching copper plate, 2017. Courtesy Kent Monkman Studio. On May 23, 2023 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police celebrated its 150th anniversary and kicked off a series of #RCMP150 initiatives. To counter the uncritical mythologizing of the Mounties we are seeing—from the prime minister to the RCMP

A march from Queen’s Park to Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto to demand action on the 215 children found in unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Residential School, June 2021. Photo by Michael Swan/Flickr At the end of the Second World War, the Allies instigated a broad program of denazification

Indigenous communities across the country and around the world are on the front lines of defending and protecting the Earth from further resource pillage. Photo courtesy United Nations Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues. Amid the wreckage of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States and its allies have turned

Members of the Gitxsan Nation resurrect their blockade of the main CN rail line in support of Wet’suwet’en land defenders, New Hazelton, British Columbia, February 2020. Photo by Randall Shoop/Vernon Morning Star. December 11, 2021 marked the 24th anniversary of the Delgamuukw ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada. Celebrations

RCMP Emergency Response Team members stand watch during a raid on Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia, November 19, 2021. Photo courtesy Gidimt’en Checkpoint. Just days after the conclusion of the United Nations COP26 climate summit in Glasgow and calls from international groups to stop the criminalization of Indigenous land defenders,

Fort Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School students. The institution was operated from 1884 to 1969 by the Roman Catholic Church. Photo courtesy of Library and Archives Canada. Tamara Starblanket is a Nehiyaw Iskwew (Cree woman) from Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation in Treaty Six. She holds an LLM from the University of Saskatchewan,

The duty to consult has been at the heart of a number of important legal cases in Canada, but it is skewed toward colonialist justifications for capitalist extraction instead of Indigenous self-determination. Photo by Joel Angel Juarez/Zuma Press/PA Images. More than 15 years after the duty to consult and accommodate

Blockade at 1492 Land Back Lane in Caledonia, Ontario. Photo courtesy of One Dish One Mic. About a year ago, I chanced upon a remarkable piece of Indigenous history right where I live in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough. It’s a burial mound for some 523 people and the skeletal

Two people hold the Mohawk Warrior Society Flag during the All Eyes on Mi’kma’ki Rally in front of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment in Saskatoon, October 23, 2020. Photo by Heywood Yu/The Sheaf. The attacks against Indigenous fishermen in Nova Scotia escalated rapidly this fall. Suspicious fires on fishing

44-year-old Richard Kakish passed away after an incident involving the Winnipeg Police in August 2017. Richard died after being kicked and repeatedly punched by officers during an arrest. Photo supplied by Richard’s family. The Winnipeg Police Service (WPS) has been under near-constant criticism over the last year for numerous incidents

A man carrying the Mi’kmaq national flag at a protest in support of Indigenous fishing rights near Saulnierville, a three-hour drive west of Halifax, September 17, 2020. Photo by Trina Roache/APTN News. On September 17, 1999, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) issued its decision in the R. v. Marshall

Thunder Bay grain elevators on 110th Avenue. Photo by Sean Marshall/Flickr. On the night of January 28, 2017, Barbara Kentner, a 34-year-old Anishinaabe woman, was walking in her Thunder Bay neighbourhood with her sister when she was struck in the gut by a trailer hitch thrown from a speeding car.

Toronto Police arresting a man for illegal possession of alcohol, September 16, 1916. Photo courtesy of Library and Archives Canada. On a Saturday afternoon in mid-January, Winnipeg musician John K. Samson witnessed several plainclothes “loss prevention officers” violently handcuffing three Indigenous girls for alleged theft from a liquor store. “As

The RCMP’s Emergency Response Team (ERT) participates in a training exercise in Ladysmith, Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Photo courtesy the Ladysmith Chronicle. The ongoing debate about whether racism exists in the RCMP is a distraction from the real life impact that racialized violence has on Indigenous peoples everyday. Racism, sexism

Premier Jason Kenney and Cabinet are sworn in at Government House, in Edmonton on Tuesday, April 30, 2019. Photo by Chris Schwartz/Alberta Government. The Alberta government’s Bill 1—the Critical Infrastructure Defense Act—will likely soon be law, implementing new restrictions on what is considered legal protest, along with severe fines and

Thousands join a Black Lives Matter protest in Vancouver, May 30, 2020. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. It has been a horrific and brutal diversion. From the cable news carpet-bombing coverage of the COVID-19 crisis and its related urgencies and stupidities, the murder of George Floyd has quite literally re-directed the

Police at the scene of protests against the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project in Burnaby, BC, November 22, 2014. Photo by Mark Klotz/Flickr. We used to be able to say that Canadians who didn’t believe that their governments and police forces were racist against Indigenous and Black peoples, were simply

This image from a transmission electron microscope shows a sample from a case of COVID-19. The spherical viral particles, colored blue, contain cross-sections through the viral genome, seen as black dots. Image provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What a difference a month makes. In February,

Full-dress mounted parade by members of the North-West Mounted Police near Calgary, September 1901. I, like many Canadians, watched in horror as the RCMP’s invasion of unceded Wet’suwet’en territory in early February was livestreamed over the internet. In real time, we saw heavily-armed RCMP officers, accompanied by snipers and attack