FISH LAKE, Teztan Biny in the Tsilhqot’in language, is a pristine lake with an abundant rainbow trout population. Located on the Chilcotin Plateau, 125 kilometres southwest of Williams Lake, British Columbia, Teztan Biny is a place where the Tsilhqot’in people have deep ancestral connections. The area is an active hunting,
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Canadian Dimension | Articles: Genocide on Trial
People began lining up even before the sun rose over the mountain ridge, quietly waiting their turn at a makeshift desk outside a home of wood and earth. One by one, relatives of the dead come forward. Brother. Uncle. Father. Nephew. Grandfather. Cousin. Son. Do you know where their bodies
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Persons Day: The Indigenous Famous Five Contingent
Persons Day, October 18th, is a day when many women’s groups celebrate the efforts of The Famous Five for their role in gaining women’s rights in Canada. In 1927, Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney, and Henrietta Muir Edwards challenged section 24 of the British North American (BNA)
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: What was Former Prime Minister Paul Martin Thinking?
As an Indigenous woman I have been exposed to the atrocities of genocide through sex-discrimination and through the denial of land and resources. I continue to live with these genocidal policies and laws today and I work on the issues daily in the work I do with my section 15
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: The Dissociative State of Nunavut
Dissociation can be an involuntary coping mechanism to help with an overwhelming experience such as trauma or loss. Dissociative behaviour is usually a diagnosis given to an individual, but an analysis of the state of Nunavut today suggests that it is a concept that may assist in understanding the character
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: The Dissociative State of Nunavut
Dissociation can be an involuntary coping mechanism to help with an overwhelming experience such as trauma or loss. Dissociative behaviour is usually a diagnosis given to an individual, but an analysis of the state of Nunavut today suggests that it is a concept that may assist in understanding the character
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: The Rise of the Native Rights-Based Strategic Framework
Years ago I was working for a well-known Indigenous environmental and economic justice organization known as the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN). During my time with this organization I had the privilege of working with hundreds of Indigenous communities across the planet who had seen a sharp increase in the targeting
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Brazeau, Harper and Idle No More
The Brazeau affair — sad, repugnant and bizarre all at the same time — shines a light on two aspects of Canadian politics that desperately need some exposure. One is what it reveals about the state of “official” Aboriginal politics and its relationship to the Canadian state. The other, the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: The High Stakes of Native Resistance
The blossoming of the Idle No More movement signals the return of native resistance to the political and social landscape of Canada and Quebec. With its origins in Saskatchewan in October 2012, this mass movement has taken on the federal government and more specifically the adoption of Bill C-45.[1] Its
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Harper & Co.‘s failing math
Of course, we’re all familiar with the sometimes fawning, sometimes begrudging accolades for Harper & Co.’s tactical strategies: its PR manouevres, its playing of images, its essential ‘gaming’ of our political system. By attempting to jump on certain issues, policies and files with their own spin and aggressive marketing stance,
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Idle No More Visits The Sun
You have to give Ezra Levant full marks for chutzpah. A week or so ago he met a hundred Idle No More protestors at the door of the Toronto Sun. It was an interesting scene. The Sun had taken down its big logo from the front of its offices and
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: The Power of Idle No More’s Resurgent Radicalism
The remarkable Idle No More movement is the biggest and most important national outpouring of grassroots aboriginal anger ever seen in Canada. Not since the late 1960s when Indians (as they then referred to themselves) and Métis confronted governments with demands for justice has such a dramatic and passionate expression
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: More Idle No More
Canadians are hardly living up to their reputation for complacency. Coming hard on the heels of the ‘maple spring’ in Québec and the earlier Occupy movements across the country, and building on a longstanding grass roots opposition to the Enbridge Pipeline proposal, Idle No More has captured our attention and
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Mr Harper’s End Game
It is telling that the Idle No More movement started with four First Nations women—Nina Wilson, Sylvia McAdam, Jessica Gordon and Sheelah McLean who gave the first “Idle No More” teach-in. Sylvia McAdam is a lawyer, as is Tanya Kappo, who first tweeted #idlenomore. Perhaps they are of the “New
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Idle No More: Journalists on the Wrong Side of History
One of the great hazards of journalism is that a writer may come down commandingly on the wrong side of history. The Idle No More movement provides just such an opportunity, for the risk is most pronounced when a marginalized group undertakes to struggle against some social or political orthodoxy.
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: What if Natives Stop Subsidizing Canada?
There is a prevailing myth that Canada’s more than 600 First Nations and native communities live off of money — subsidies — from the Canadian government. This myth, though it is loudly proclaimed and widely believed, is remarkable for its boldness; widely accessible, verifiable facts show that the opposite is
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: #IdleNoMore: A Longer View
“Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.” —Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth Apparently decolonization happens when you are busy taking other stands. As activists in Canada this fall struggled to defeat a tuition hike in Quebec, to defy anti-union legislation
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Infernal Wind, Eternal Nodin
An early winter nodin swishes the spruce, pine, bare aspen. Eternal, as a season turning, a planet spinning, natural as breathing. Nearby, an infernal wind charges across treeless ground, rutted with feller buncher tracks, the oxygen supply there growing more and more scarce. The blockade at Grassy Narrows began 10
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Nueva Esperanza
In a hut with dirt floors on the verge of becoming mud, Rosli Oded and her husband Aroldo Morales López swung their baby in a hammock. The rain that pounded the sheet metal roofs and tarps overnight had finally died down, ushering in a cool, grey morning. The new family
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Reproducing Order
In its interim Report, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TR C) noted that “Canadians have been denied a full and proper education as to the nature of Aboriginal societies. They have not been well informed about the nature of the relationship that was established initially between Aboriginal and non- Aboriginal
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