excuses… excuses…

I am reading a lot of reports from inquiries and royal commissions lately. The subjects are Canada’s native residential schools, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s apology to the survivors of those schools, and the truth and reconciliation commission that is part of the deal struck by Aboriginal organizations, the federal government, and some survivors; not all but some or even most of the survivors.

Unlike the trc, I am not restricting myself to only residential schools in my research. So I pore over documents. As I flip through pages, I find my dander rise whenever certain phrases pop up. One is “in the best interests of..” and the other is “not racist given society’s attitudes at the time.” These two phrases, I’ve become convinced, are flip sides of the same coin.

The first phrase is often used as an excuse. Government officials or authorities use it to intrude, intervene, impose or intercede into the lives of Aboriginal peoples, their communities, their families. It has been used since before Canadian Confederation to “encourage” or force people off the land, from independence to lives similar to the old “fort Indians” who hung about hoping for scraps from the white man’s tables for survival because the buffalo herds had been hunted into near extinction.

This phrase also pops up regularly in various other invasions by government officials or cultural technology, like waves of armoured assault, one after another. The residential schools were only one wave, followed by social workers from the 1950s onward, to the police and the justice system close behind, to television and now the Internet. Each has either grabbed by force generation after generation of children, or enticed with promises of a better life. The result has been the same though - the loss of these children.

Today, whole Aboriginal communities are populated by shell-shocked, institutionalized people; parents who never had the chance to learn how to parent; adults who only learned how to abuse themselves and others. The prisons are full of them, but still churn out more year after year. The child welfare system is especially productive in creating damaged souls. TV and the Internet have replaced the residential schools; both achieve the same result with less fuss as languages wither and cultural norms are confused by foreign images and fleeting promises of instant fame or fortune.

The other phrase (”not racist given society’s attitudes at the time”) is trotted out to explain why the “father of public education” in Canada was not a racist. It is used to explain why the policies of forced assimilation that made the residential schools possible was not racist at all - but a humane act of kindness that went terribly wrong “with the best of intentions” (another one of those lame excuses). It is used to rationalize why a crime was not a crime at all; just the world working as it did in another time.

I don’t buy it.

So many writers, too many to quote here, speak of the architects of these monstrous machines with something akin to pity, excusing racist attitudes, sentiments and public statements with forgiving phrases like “not racist given society’s attitudes at the time.” As though they really weren’t racist at all, and that this really does explain and absolve.

It doesn’t.

It does not excuse hundreds of years of racism, and countless acts of racist cruelty, in the southern United States by saying they weren’t really racist because most people held similar views at the time. It does not excuse the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany or the Holocaust that followed? It cannot let really nasty people off the hook, such as those who planned and executed the genocide in Rwanda.

So why do Canadians, and Canadian writers, routinely defend people like Egerton Ryerson, Duncan Campbell Scott, or a host of others that represented the cream of Canadian society, the best and brightest of their generations? Why do they argue that these folks were not racist? One would think that Ryerson and the others would have the benefit of superior intellect and Christian upbringing, and this would have taught them the difference between right and what was clearly wrong?

It didn’t. They truly believed they were superior to those of other races. They truly believed that the Indigenous peoples of this land were inferior. This is the dictionary definition of a racist.

So why do Canadian writers find it so difficult to face the truth? Why must they pretend otherwise?

human baggage, human bondage

My dinnermates wanted to know more about INPUT, the international public television conference held early May in Johannesburg, and what I did, saw, heard there. I mentioned a workshop organized by Sylvia Vollenhoven about slavery called “The Human Bondage Project.” Sylvia thinks huge, and plans a global examination about the basis of historic forms of slavery and its contemporary effects upon the world.

I mentioned some of the comments from the mostly African audience. One man rose to tell our shocked group that he had been bought and sold nine times as a farm worker in South Africa. He was not an ancient man. His comments sparked others to insist that the Project, therefore, must be “an African project, with African stories and only African perspectives.” I then told my tablemates that I made a contribution to the workshop, a confession really, to show that slavery must be a truly global story.

I told the audience that I came from a “people who practised slavery.” I explained that my Kanienke:haka (Mohawk) nation waged wars for territory, defence, domination, or trade. In the process, my people took male, female and child captives as slaves. In this way we replenished the genetic pool, learned about other groups and societies, extended our diplomatic relations far beyond our national boundaries, and through work and intelligence our slaves helped us establish the Mohawk nation as a dominant military and trading society in eastern North America.

“They (the slaves) could become full citizens of the Mohawk nation,” I explained, “if they learned our language, adopted our customs, followed our laws, accepted our religion and spiritual beliefs. We absorbed or assimilated them into our people. Some became leaders of our people, valued for their knowledge of other languages, laws and customs.” I explained that this was not a one-way street because other nations took Mohawks and others as slaves too.

“What I didn’t tell that audience in South Africa, and Sylvia wished I had, was that we also took a lot of Dutch, French and English as slaves. Very often, they did not want to return to their own people,” I said, “especially many of the female slaves. They had more rights and status in Mohawk society than they would ever enjoy in their own European societies.”

It is a fact that most European captives preferred to remain with their Indigenous American owners. I mentioned the on-going controversies with the Cherokee Nation’s attempt to deny citizenship to the Freedmen. The Freedmen are former slaves who decided to stay with the Cherokee after the U.S. Civil War. The Freedmen chose to endure the death march called the Trail of Tears along with the Cherokee; an ethnic cleansing carried out by the U.S. Army after President Andrew Jackson ordered the removal at gun-point of Native Americans east of the Mississippi River to “Indian country” in the Oklahomas.

With our little group was a CBC editor and my former producer in radio. She sat there muttering almost chant-like throughout: “Slavery is bad. It is never good.”

Now, this wasn’t a discussion about the merits for or against slavery. It was an attempt to explain that historically, slavery was never a simple matter. Even today, discussion about slavery cannot be limited to “slavery bad… never good.” It was and is a much more complex subject that goes to the heart of human endeavor; social, political, religious and economic interaction and how societies evolve and grow.

Slavery has many overt and ugly facets, which we rightly condemn. We know that the export of millions of Africans to the Americas and Europe was one of humanities great holocausts. It bled the African continent and robbed its nations of almost any chance of social, cultural or economic stability even to this day. Slavery also has many not-so-obvious and even benign forms of human bondage that occur in every society.

For example, a few years ago, an advocate against child sexual exploitation named Cherry Kingley blew me away as she described the legalized and licenced operations that make such exploitation possible and even profitable. We permit pimps in their various forms to own male and female, adult and child sex slaves. Hotel, motel and bar managers know what’s really going on in those rented rooms of theirs. So do taxi drivers who transport johns to and from these establishments, often acting as tour guides for the sexual predator. Except for the pimps, all are legally licenced by elected city councils. Those sitting on city and town councils are neither stupid nor ignorant about the part they play in this trade. This is but one example where the supposedly moral and upright citizenry meet and collaborate with the ugly underworld in an ages-old dance in social commerce.

What are sweat shops in Toronto or Montreal if not slave shops? Aren’t migrant farm workers in the cabbage fields of southern Quebec not a part of an agricultural and economic slave trade? What are one-company or one-industry towns, if the inhabitants have little or no other choice for employment. Why is it that nearly every mine, drilling or logging operation in northern Canada has its own comfort girls made available for the use of workers?

It is not a simple matter, as my former producer would have it, of drawing a line in the sand with those on one side instantly and unreservedly evil while on the other is the pristine good. To me, that is absolute hypocrisy; turning a blind eye to the various forms of human bondage that occur in everyday life in Canada and around the world, pretending it doesn’t exist, or condemning the reality of other peoples lives.

A man in Indonesia takes money to feed his large, starving family in exchange for one of his daughters to serve a family in Malaysia. She will likely end up a prostitute in Thailand. A young Cree boy his early teens in north end Winnipeg signs up with an escort agency because he needs the money to survive. It isn’t right. But these types of transactions take place everyday. It is reality.

In my opinion, my former producer refused to accept that the world is a complicated place; that every society and group has practised obvious and not-so-obvious forms of slavery in the past and continue to do so today. To her, the world is reduced into those two simple phrases, “slavery bad… never good.” By refusing to consider degrees of human bondage, other perspectives, other realities, my former producer was imposing her own morals, values, and her situation upon everyone else. She set a standard on morality using her own life as the yardstick by which others will be judged.

it must be the water

Or the heat. You decide.

I can understand if Canada’s Dakota people didn’t celebrate Canada Day this year after the government offered them a deal to buy out their treaty and aboriginal rights. They turned it down without hesitation and rightly so.

According to a government e-mail, the Dakota First Nations in Canada are American Indians who signed treaties in the United States. This is a serious insult to the Dakota who claim that they chose to live in Canada much like the United Empire Loyalists or the Mohawks of Tyendinaga.

I can think of a lot of other people that Canada might want to get rid of first. Um, like that Federal bureaucrat for one…

here we go again

The CBC is hailing the Royal Assent given to Bill C-27, an Act to Amend the Human Rights Act as a good thing. I say, beware what you wish for - especially when it comes from Canada’s other national public broadcaster (APTN is another).

Why? I remember Bill C-31 which allowed some but not all “non-status Indian” people to regain their status after the Canadian government had stripped them of their rights in the first place with clearly, obviously, deliberately discriminatory legislation.

First, Bill C-31 didn’t work for everyone. Second, it continued to allow discrimination against Status Indians. It did so by continuing the very same discrimination - only this time by jumping a generation. So Bill C-31 might allow a child of a non-status Indian to regain rights, but the children of this person would lose it. Clever folks, these federal bureaucrats. Makes you wonder what they do in their spare time.

Secondly, status is one thing but most services are delivered to “band members.” Some bands came up with such narrow definitions of membership that they actually lost numbers. This, too, is another form of discrimination but the feds considered this to be OK so long as it was Indians discriminating against Indians AND in a way that they agreed with (less Indians is and always has been the ultimate objective of federal Indian policy).

Then there were the unkept promises (don’t get me started!) by the Prime Minister on down that bands would be adequately funded and able to handle the increased demand for medical and social services, housing, basic welfare, etc.

Hah! If you believed that one, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn for you.

Here’s what the CBC put down about Bill C-27:

But bands in the region will need more money to comply with the act, said John Paul, executive director of the Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nations Chiefs.

With this legislation, he said, communities may be forced to provide services “with money they don’t have.”

Reserves were exempt from the Canadian Human Rights Act when it was passed in 1977. The exemption was supposed to be temporary to give bands time to prepare.

The House of Commons closed the loophole late last month.

Not quite accurate, even for the CBC. It was not ONLY status Indian bands that needed more time. The federal and provincial governments wanted time as well, so they could get their programs, policies, laws and regulations in line with any changes that might be required to accommodate the COLLECTIVE rights of Aboriginal peoples. Or maybe to find new ways to weed out even more Indians or otherwise restrict their rights.

Whatever. These rights were entrenched in the Charter of Rights and the Constitution Act. The federal and provincial governments were also supposed to make sure that any changes they made did not undermine or violate these rights.

You see, it isn’t just one party that has been discriminating both for and against Aboriginal peoples. Sometimes the Indigenous peoples do it to themselves. But most often, it’s the folks with the power and authority that discriminate against Indigenous folks with near impunity - and get away it time after time.

So, let’s start keeping track of who is complaining about what in the next few months. Let’s just see if the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and the legions of knuckleheads out there who think status Indians spend their lives sipping mai-tais by the backyard pool, begin to file all kinds of grievances “so we can all be equal under the law.”

To me, equal treatment would mean that the federal and provincial government begins to treat them the way they have been treating Indians. Let’s see how they like that!

how to spin (twist) a story

One reporter. One story. Two newspapers. But one is edited much different from the other. The result is a lesson in how individuals in the news media can spin a story, insert their own bias into a story, to send a very different message to the reader.

The reporter is Kerry Benjoe. His email address at the end of the first story puts him at the Regina Leader Post, part of the Canwest (Canada.com) chain. The first story is the longest and is in the Leader post. A shorter version is re-printed in the Vancouver Sun. The two headlines of the same story, however, say very different things.

This is the first headline, and the top of the story (the lede):

Aboriginal children in need of most help: new report
Kerry Benjoe, Leader-Post

REGINA — The most disadvantaged group in Canada is aboriginal children, a new report by the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) concludes.

Jessica Ball, a professor at the University of Victoria who authored the study, examined the opportunities for health and development of First Nation, Métis and Inuit children from infancy to age five. She specializes in early childhood development and felt compelled to study this area.

Here are the second set of headlines, and the lede from the story in the VANCOUVER SUN:

Aboriginal kids found to do better in cities
Persistent disparities for decades, study says
Kerry Benjoe, Canwest News Service

REGINA — Aboriginal children on Canadian reserves are starting out their lives at a disadvantage compared to non-aboriginal kids — and even compared to aboriginal kids living in cities, a new study suggests.

Jessica Ball, a professor at the University of Victoria’s School of Child and Youth Care, says in a new report for the Montreal-based Institute for Research on Public Policy that aboriginal children are the most disadvantaged group in Canada.

Here’s my beef. Maybe the reporter re-jigged the second story for a national audience, hoping it might be picked up by other newspapers in the Canwest chain. Maybe each newspaper in that chain has an editor who makes their own headlines for every story that comes across the system. Whatever the reason, these are two very different stories now.

The first story, the one in the Regina LEADER POST, emphasizes the suffering of onkhwehnohweh (Indigenous) children due to the failure of federal and provincial governments to adequately support programs in remote, northern and reserve communities, or failing to fund them at all (thus the “funding gaps” mentioned).

The spin takes off in the second story, in the VANCOUVER SUN. This version pins the failure to adequately provide for “Aboriginal” children upon the reserves, letting the governments off the hook. More, it seems to suggest that these kids are lacking opportunities because of the failure of the entire reserve system.

There are several things wrong with this second story. First, Indians live on reserves but not Métis or Inuit. So the use of “Aboriginal” is wrong.

Secondly, the study examined “the opportunities for health and development of First Nation, Metis and Inuit children from infancy to age five.” The author of the study found “that aboriginal children, particularly in rural settings, continue to lack adequate housing, food security, clean water and access to services.”

The author wrote that there are gaps and disparities in services and funding for these services, between urban and remote, on and off-reserve programs for all Aboriginal groups. However, of special concern is the situation with Indians (First Nations). These disparities and gaps in services exists due to the jurisidictional fumbling that goes on between the federal and provincial governments. This game of “not me” plays “a major role in creating that gap between the two groups (urban and remote) of aboriginal children.“

Where is the spin? The original story in the LEADER POST is fairly neutral in tone. The second story in the VANCOUVER SUN, blames the folks who have little or no control over how government spends — or deliberately chooses not to spend on basic services, or decides to spend much less that it would on white Canadians. The explanation that it’s actually the governments that are at fault is buried halfway down into the story.

First impressions count in journalism today. Most people scan and would probably miss the point of that second story once they got beyond the headline and the first three paragraphs.

You see, according to that second version, it isn’t a case of discrimination at all. The government isn’t really deliberately under-funding Indigenous programs at all. It’s not governments fault that they choose to live to far away from everything. Y’see? Doncha? Huh?

what is taking so long?

When the National Indian Brotherhood, or NIB, began using the word “aboriginal” in some of its documents more than 30 years ago, my Mom and Dad railed at those those they called “idiots” and worse. The NIB is the fore-runner of today’s Assembly of First Nation, and the national organization representing band council chiefs in Canada. My parents could not fathom why the NIB seemed insistent upon using generic, one-size-fits-all umbrella terms to refer to themselves.

Why, they wondered, didn’t they go back to referring to themselves as they had for centuries and in their own languages. To my parents, use of those other generic terms showed just how successful decades upon decades of brainwashing had been in erasing their own national identities. So instead of calling themselves “chopped liver,” they should call themselves “onkhwehhonhweh,” “Kanienkeha:ka” or “Anishnabek” instead.

My parents were also quite upset when band council chiefs at the AFN decided to call each of their reserves “first nations.” They felt that was just as divisive as a generic term since it gave each reserve, an artifice of the Indian Act, the pretense of existing as a separate and distinct “nation” but (still) under the Indian Act and without any central, sovereign national identity.

In northern Saskatchewan for instance, you can have a whole bunch of Cree territories separating themselves from each other as “first nations,” refusing to group themslves under their own national identity - as part of the Cree Nation.

To my parents, it was all about “divide and conquer;” it was a simple question of cultural, political and national survival. Our own Indigenous nations would either hang together or, to quote Benjamin Franklin, we would surely hang separately.

It seems someone is now thinking along similar lines. The Union of Ontario Indians (UOI) represents mostly Ojibway and Algonquin bands in eastern and northeastern Ontario. they passed a resolution instructing:

“… government agencies, NGOs, educators and media organizations that they should discontinue using inappropriate terminology when they are referring to the Anishinabek. We respect the cultures and traditions of our Metis and Inuit brothers and sisters, but their issues are different from ours.”

The resolution notes that “there are no aboriginal bands, aboriginal reserves, or aboriginal chiefs” and that the reference to “aboriginal rights” referred to in Section 35 of the Constitution Act of Canada “was never meant to assimilate First Nations, Metis and Inuit into a homogeneous group.”

Now if these Anishnabek can only get away from that clumsy “first nation” bit, and convince the others at the AFN as well, they might get somewhere. They might even get there quicker.

So… listen up. I am not a “first nation person.” I am Kanienkeha:ka (aka Mohawk). Get it?

If Canadian reporters can understand the difference between Shona and Kikuyu in Africa, or Croat from Serb in the Balkans, then why can’t they learn the differences and proper names for the distinct Indigenous nationalities within Canada as well? So can politicians.

Just saying.

if it shoots like an ak-47…

Why aren’t the news media, journalists and reporters, calling the Blackwater company exactly what it is?

At first glance, the Blackwater security firm that has been hitting headlines in Iraq for some time apears to be no different than a company called Executive Outcomes, mainly South African ex-soldiers who contributed much to the destabilization of countries like Sierra Leone, fighting and killing Sierra Leonians on behalf of international diamond, gold and other precious resource conglomerates. Some reporters even dared to call them mercenaries.

So what is the difference between Executive Outcomes - your basic army-of-mercentaries-for-hire - and Blackwater, except that Blackwater is an American-owned company?

Blackwater deal allows company to have AK-47s (6/23/0
MOYOCK, N.C. (AP) — Private security contractor Blackwater Worldwide has been able to keep 17 AK-47s at its armory under a deal that sidesteps federal laws prohibiting private parties from buying automatic weapons, a newspaper reported Sunday.

So the question is: Why aren’t news organizations — or at least individual writers and journalists — calling a spade a ding-danged shovel?

uh… who’s looking at your books?

I try to keep an eye on announcements by the federal government of Canada. Yes (sigh), even the announcement that the feds have launched BizPal in Muskoka. But there was nothing on my computer about Son of Chuckie’s latest.

Chuck Strahl, the Minister of Indian Affairs, announced new “value-for-money” audits which will, according to Sue Bailey at Canadian Press, “better track how Indian Affairs spends billions of dollars will catch misappropriation, lax reporting and - in rare cases - fraud.”

The emphasis here, of course, is not on Indian Affairs but on those pesky Indians their danged mai-tai sipping lifestyles.

Let us ignore for a moment that one of the biggest frauds in recent years in Indian country was actually organized and perpetrated by a senior civil servant in Ottawa’s Health Department.

Or that the Auditor-General of Canada slammed the Indian Affairs Department in 2002 for lack of or bizarre funding policies, and of ham-stringing band councils and Aboriginal organizations with multiple layers of audits that had some bands filing as many financial reports as days in a year.

Which raises interesting questions amongst we poor folk in the bushlands. We were just wondering how much the Federal Government wastes with its bizarre arrangements for program funding, in outstanding interest payments, or where the “value-for-money” is in such idiocy.

Y’see, this is how federal funding usually (often?) works in Indian country, and keep in mind that this applies for both new and continuing (year-to-year) programs:

• bands and organizations understand and rush to submit applications for funding on deadlines often set toward the end of the calendar year (around Xmas) for funding that should be approved and kick in by the beginning of the new fiscal year, April 1.
• Federal departments, though, sometimes (even often) change the program criteria and funding requirements even after the bands and organizations have had to submit their applications. The bands do so on assurances from Federal program officers that changes in policy likely, probably, hopefully will not affect their submission. No guarantees, of course.
• the Federal departments then consider the program and grant applications sometimes (perhaps often) without knowing what changes will be made to policies, program criteria or funding requirements. This process may take months, and months, and more months, while they wait for the highest levels of government to decide what to do.
• in the meantime, homes need to be built, schools need to operate, salaries for any number of people need to be paid, and this comes from lines of credit and loans that need to be arranged so ambulances continue to run and clinics keep operating. Who pays the interest on these loans and lines of credit? Sometimes this item is buried in the “miscellaneous” column, but often it must be taken out of regular program funding which may mean one less home or ambulance ride. But it certainly means more money to the banks.
• it is not unusual for programs to receive their “new” funding six, eight, ten months into the fiscal year. One group I’m familiar with received its funding one month before it was required to submit its final report at the end of that fiscal year.

So here are some questions:

1. this example deals only with Indian programs, and only in general terms. Does this or similar shenanigans take place in other federal departments as well?
2. how widespread do you think this problem is?
3. how much does the federal government’s idiocy (constantly changing funding requirements and late approval for funding) cost the Canadian taxpayer — not to mention the Aboriginal organization and programs?

do what I say, not what I do

A well-worn axiom in journalism holds that the truth is not to be found in the high sounding words of politicians, but in their actions.

Lately, we’ve been treated to the concerns expressed by the Conservative Government of PM Stephen Harper on the 26-year old exemption of the Indian Act from Canada’s Human Rights legislation. Is it just me, or does anyone else get just a wee bit anxious at the combination of those words into one single sentence?

The Conservatives recently passed a bill in Parliament to remove that exemption. It’s called Bill C-27, An Act to Amend the Human Rights Act. Why does it bother me? Why should it bother anyone else? Consider the following.

The exemption was originally allowed because there are so many discriminatory facets to the Indian Act and programs that have been designed for Aboriginal peoples, that it would take major revisions to other existing Canadian policies, laws, regulations and institutions to remove them. For example, Human Rights legislation is designed to protect individual rights. However, most Aboriginal rights are based on collective rights such as language, culture, territory, treaties and Indigenous nationality. Many programs and services deliberately discriminate FOR Aboriginal peoples as a means of overcoming centuries of discrimination AGAINST them. It’s called ameliorative programming.

Canada hasn’t been willing to change what it could, and removing the exemption with Bill C-27 will not solve anything. In fact, it will create division, undermine existing programs and services, and spark legal challenges but only to those who can afford it. Remember: the Conservatives killed the constitutional Court Challenges Program.

Those other guardians of Aboriginal rights, the Liberal Party of Canada, did not oppose Bill C-27 because nearly every bill the Harper Conservatives proposed in Parliament was billed as a “confidence” bill. Defeat of a “confidence” bill (similar to a confidence ploy, or a con) would result in an election — and the Liberals would rather dispose of their principles than risk an election.

Why so negative? Why can’t I trust the elected officials of Canada to do the right thing? Read on, McDuff.

I have something in common with the United Nations’ International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. We were both born in 1952. We have also been sort-of recognized by Canada — but not completely. I may explain about me sometime. Right now, let me explain how Canada has been selective in accepting only those parts of the Convention on Genocide that it likes, but not to other parts that it apparently does not like. It goes to why I am and must remain pessimistic of Canada and its politicians to ever do the right thing when it comes to Indigenous peoples.

A couple of years ago, I read an article by Pierre Loiselle at dominionpaper.ca. I don’t have a link anymore although I still keep a copy on my computer. The title was “Genocide, International Law & Canada’s ‘Indian Problem.’” Much of it was circumstantial, and hyperbolic. Still, it raised some interesting points.

The gist of the article was this:

The following parts of Article Two [of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide], which define the crime of genocide, were omitted from Canada’s Criminal Code after the Convention was ratified and became law in 1952:

• “Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group” and,
• “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

The writer and Dr. Roland Chrisjohn (then director of Native Studies at Trent University) concluded that the omissions of these two parts of the UN’s Convention from Canada’s own laws “are not a coincidence,” and “correspond directly to Canada’s official policy of abducting Native children and keeping them in residential school, where many were subject to gruesome and well-documented abuse and torture.”

They assert that the definition of genocide has changed over the years but always meant more than systematic, official, mass murder, such as the Holocaust of Jews in the Second World War. Genocide always meant, according to another writer, “a co-ordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight.”

Earlier drafts of the Convention Against Genocide also included provisions for the creation of an international court and sanctions against “forcible citizenship,” opposed by both Canada and the United States, and eventually removed from the UN’s Convention at their insistence.

Article Two, which defines genocide as: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

I could argue all five, but the fifth one is a slam dunk,” says Chrisjohn. “There is absolutely no way Canada can deny that they legislated the transference of children from their parents to the church authorities.”

He could also argue, and does, that Canadians are complicit in a crime of genocide if they know about violations to the UN’s Convention but do nothing to end or prevent it.

Today, consider that Canada is once again part of an exclusive group of nation states that voted against another of the UN’s conventions — this time voting against the International Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples along with the U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand.

Thus my skepticism given Canada’s record in deciding things affecting the lives of Indigenous peoples in Canada, and of the motivations of politicians wanting to do things over the objections of those affected.

yippee! it’s the year of the spud!

Thank goodness. It’s about time. Read all about it in this story at Indian Country Today:

NEW YORK - An ancient Bolivian legend tells the story of Choque, son of a Sapalla chief, who chose to resist the assault of the Kari invaders. To reward him for his courage, the gods sent Pachacamaj, who changed into a condor that delivered some tubers and a direction: allow the invaders to eat the visible plant and save the part that is below ground for the people. The potato, then, was the substance that fed them and helped them to regain their freedom.

This is one of the creation stories of the potato, which was first cultivated 7,000 years ago around Lake Titicaca in Bolivia by the Tihuanacu (the ancestors of the Aymaras, President Evo Morales’ people). The humble tuber helped sustain 500,000 Tihuanacus, and then the Huari people of what is now Peru, hundreds of years before the Incas took over.

What else to say: Whoo-hoo!!