defending the despicable

A 7-year-old girl shows up in class with a nazi swastika drawn on her arm. The teacher washes it off. The next day, the mother has redrawn the swastika on her daughter’s arm and sent her back to school. Provincial child welfare authorities show up at their home, find nazi flags and other symbols of neo-nazism, and decide to take the girl and her 2-year-old brother into custody. 

“It was one of the stupidest things I’ve done in my life but it’s no reason to take my kids,” the mother told CBC News at the time.

The mother is fighting Manitoba child welfare authorities who have applied to take permanent custody of the children. She says that while she possesses neo-nazi and “white pride” symbols, she is not a white supremacist. 

“A black person has a right to say black power or black pride and yet they’re turning around on us and saying we’re racists and bigots and neo-Nazis because we say white pride. It’s hypocrisy at its finest.”  

Consider whether the state should have the right to remove children from their families because the state deems the parents’ thoughts or beliefs unsuitable, unacceptable or dangerous. Then consider what you would do as a Mohawk parent if the state decided that possession of red power literature, symbols or a Warrior flag were justification for apprehending your children? 

Is it instilling pride or conditioning racial hatred?

transports me

I was trying to find some filters and plug-ins for Photoshop when I ran across this site and some amazing photos of Khayalitsha township in South Africa. I was lucky enough to meet a couple of the Grandmothers Against Poverty and Aids (GAPA) during my last visit to Cape Town last year. So I was touched, amazed, moved by the picture in one of the galleries on this site. Hope you are too.

only in canada?

A masked man enters a store in Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia. He walks out after the man behind the counter politely asks him to leave. What else to say? Kewl.

smoke shacks and a hole in the ground

A couple of years ago, a friend ranted about the smoke shacks that had popped up along the main road on his home territory. I listened, politely. I’d heard it all before and had said some of the same at one time or another. It goes like this:

• These guys and their smoke shacks are selling our collective, tax-exempt rights to Whites for the price of a pack of smokes;
• They’re padding their own pockets but giving little back to the community;
• They hire kids to sit on their asses in those shacks, watching DVD’s and playing video games instead of staying in school, finding a real job, or learning how to support themselves in the real world;
• They are putting our collective rights in danger with their actions – without our collective consent or support;
• They’re dependent on a false economy that might disappear tomorrow leaving them with nothing;
• They sell a product that kills people, adds to the cost of health care and human suffering – including their own people;
• They are responsible for an increase in drug and alcohol abuse and crime;
• They resist regulation by their own councils, defy outside authorities, exist in a vacuum of law and order;
• Some have grown rich enough, strong enough, to buy band councils (at least a few councillors);
• They have turned some communities in “one-industry” towns, with all that implies about who really runs things.

Rant ended, we spoke of other things. After awhile, my friend slipped into another story. He’s a middle manager at an international corporation who’s travelled to more Indian territories across Canada than me – and that’s saying something. He’s a businessman. He was struck by a TV documentary about a hole in the Amazon jungle. His take was an ode to entrepreneurship, and it went something like this:

• Someone discovered diamonds that could be dug out with a shovel;
• Soon, hundreds of people were digging an ever-growing pit in the middle of the jungle and far from any town or village;
• With the arrival of these people, others saw opportunity to open shops and sell everything from food and clothing, to tools and women;
• Along with this new economy – unofficial and unregulated – a town was born;
• Eventually, people installed a local government, made laws and regulations, and hired the means to enforce them.

Afterward, I point out to my friend that I saw little difference between the people (entrepreneurs) that he admired so in the documentary, and the folks running smoke shops on his home territory.

In both stories, I said, people saw an opportunity to improve their lives where little existed before. In Canada, unless you want to move off the territory and into the city, there aren’t many jobs outside of those few at the band council or school. Anyone hoping to set up their own small businesses face daunting, almost impossible, barriers. It almost seems as though the federal and provincial governments have designed a crossfire of regulations to kill any local initiative with red tape and bureaucratic stupidity. Other businesses, usually owned by Whites in neighbouring towns, do their best to shoot down any potential competition from the territory, and their votes count more with White politicians.

So some people on the territory say to hell with the government, to hell with the band council, and to hell with those who sit in comfortable office jobs or tap on keypads as if that was work. If people want to stop at their smoke shops and spend money, then let them. They are building a successful local economy in the wake of decade after decade of failed federal economic development programs that wasted millions of dollars. They say they are doing what governments haven’t been able to do — precisely because they cut out government altogether.

My friend is aghast with me. I point out that we have always been a mercantile people. We were manufacturers, traders and middlemen long before Columbus. In fact, our role as middlemen and traders was key to our dominance over and relations with the Dutch and English. It was also much of the reason why the French sought to destroy the Mohawk and their brother nations in the Confederacy – the French wanted to cut out the middleman and dominate the fur trade themselves. During much of this continent’s early colonized history, the Five Nations Confederacy (later Six Nations) held military, political and economic dominance over much of eastern North America. I stress the word “economic” to my friend.

I point out that his territory now has an economic zone where nothing existed ten years ago. Restaurants, gas stations, car washes, clothing, furniture and electronic stores and more have sprung up within that time. It happened, I add, without government aid or interference. The smoke shops owners diversified, said to hell with the government because it was holding them back. Now, I continue, the government sees success and wants to get involved so it can claim credit. Bullroar, I tell him, we both know the government did squat.

This story, I tell him, isn’t in the newspapers or on TV. There is no story about how all of these legitimate businesses are off-shoots of so-called “illicit activity.” What we see instead are stories about “illegal smuggling,” “crime” or “drugs.” It’s almost as if the government, Canadian society and the media wants us to remain perennial victims, permanently poverty-stricken, because there is too much invested in “managing” Indians. If they get independent, a lot of Whites lose their jobs.

The real story, I go on, may be about governments trying to stamp out these “illicit activities” with arrests and raids because what the governments really want is their cut. They’re like any other mob or gang. Give them their cut and they will sing your praises. Deny them and you’re “criminals” and “smugglers.”

As for the other complaints, about the moral and ethical questions raised about selling a deadly product to your own people and others… adding to the suffering of others… jeopardizing collective rights for individual gain… these need to be explored by the media to force debate – not by the White community but in our own territories. Those debates won’t take place unless the media starts doing its job better by providing more informed coverage on these issues, and less of the government line. The debate, much-needed and overdue, won’t take place at the insistance of our own politicians because they seem almost as gutless and ill-informed as White politicians. They will always choose the path of least resistance.

fool me once…

That’s the beginning of a rather famous saying that ends: “fool me twice, shame on me.” How many times have the Opposition Parities and the Canadian electorate allowed themselves to be fooled by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s flip-flops, broken promises and lies.

The following is an excerpt from an op-ed the other day, just before Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty finally stopped announcing their new budget in bits and pieces all week leading up to the actual delivery in the House of Commons (why does the news media in Canada insist on calling them “leaks”?):

Have they no sense that their policies have sent the country hurtling down the road to ruin? Are they so divorced from reality that in their delusionary state they honestly believe we need more of their tax cuts for the rich and their other forms of plutocratic irresponsibility, the very things that got us to this deplorable state?

The newspaper in question is the New York Times. The writer is Bob Herbert. His criticism is aimed at those Republicans who just don’t get it, after a serious drubbing at the polls, and the much-deserved bum’s rush that the American voter gave George W. Bush.

These conservative Republicans attack the new Obama administration’s decision for more government intervention into the economy with a stimulus package. Instead, they advocate more tax cuts to the upper crust and business, and more spending on the military. These are the very things that, along with two wars, unbridled greed and a lack of government accountability, led to a $3-trillion dollar deficit and a meltdown of global economies. Herbert has little sympathy for their denial of responsibility – and absence from reality.

As you have probably already noticed, Herbert’s words could have applied just as easily to Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper and his Conservative horde.

Strangely, some of the harshest criticism of Harper in the past few days, though, has come from a former speech-writer for Brian Mulroney, an editor of Policy Options, a right-of-centre political journal, and published as a column in the conservative National Post newspaper. L.Ian MacDonald:

Leaking the deficit number was unprecedented in itself. But leaking it with the stock market open was unheard of. And leaking it from the Prime Minister’s Office, rather than the Finance Department, was a stunning big-footing of one central agency by another. If a deficit number isn’t market-sensitive information, nothing in a budget is. In the traditional Westminster world, there would be calls for the minister’s resignation. In the normal world of Ottawa, Finance officials, not the PMO, would have conducted the briefing.

But in Stephen Harper’s Ottawa, this sort of thing happens all the time. It’s all about command and control from the centre. This would never have happened in Jean Chretien’s or Brian Mulroney’s time – their finance ministers, Paul Martin and Michael Wilson, would never have permitted the Langevin Block to speak for them.

The strategy of leaking the deficit number was obviously to take the hit going into the budget, and take it out of the news cycle coming out of the budget. Indeed, the deficit number is itself a modest one, especially in the context of the global financial crisis and the imperative of securing the support of the Liberals to assure passage of the budget in a minority House.

At one time, leaking budget information before the government delivered it to the House of Commons was a federal offence for which quite a few journalists and civil servants were threatened with arrest. So much for the “honour of the Crown” and the “rule of law.” Clinging to power at all costs is what it’s come to be. How low can this government go?

my Obama moment

Watching it all on TV took me back to my own private memories and to a man who made a huge change to my life. He’s gone now. Too late, I came back home hoping to look him up and to explain what I had done with my life.

My first year in high school. Mostly new people and new classmates. Whole new school. New teachers and new rules. In walks this huge Black man who fills the doorway. He’s my homeroom teacher. Later, I find out he’s also my English teacher. I’m a skinny Mohawk kid in a sea of white with this big black dude at the front of the class.

In bits and pieces, we begin to learn about him. He’s a musician. Piano. Upright bass. Who knows what else? Played at various times with the Count, Ellington, Oscar. This cannot be my high school in southern Quebec.

I learn more from his example, from his quiet strength. He rarely raises his voice, but when he does the windows rattle. Some kids test him, try to push his buttons. He knows what they’re doing. Somehow you know that he’s been through a helluva lot worse than anything these dumbass kids can throw at him. I watch and learn.

As for me, I’m an arsehole too but of a different kind. I am taunted, insulted, bullied. Mostly, I walk away. Every now and then, I turn to confront and fight if necessary. One day, one of the kids who has been on my ass from day one shoots a piece of chalk at me. I duck. It hits the door frame just as the Homeroom walks into class. He spots me but I’m not sure he’s seen the kid who threw the chalk. I get detention.  The other kid doesn’t. I get steaming mad at the unfairness of it all.

In the next class, I react. I act like a jerk. The teacher here has a penchant for using her yardstick. She walks up to me, asks where my homework is, and gets a smart mouth from me. “Put out your hand,” she orders. “No,” I reply. “Put… out… your… hand,” she repeats. “No.”

She is fuming. Why, she asks this skinny little Mohawk kid, won’t you put out your hand? I reply: “Because I’m federal property of the government of Canada. You can’t touch me.” 

I can’t believe it when she walks away, her face beet red. The story, I guess, spreads. This uppity little Mohawk kid says we can’t touch him because that would be defacing government property. Who ever heard of that one?

In English class the next day, with my homeroom teacher, we are given a piece to read. I zip through the assignment then start to doodle on the cover of my notebook. I doodle and doodle, unaware that my teacher is looming up behind me. I continue fooling around with my pen and notebook until – SWAT! He’s slapped me upside the back of my head.

I put down my pen, and look up to see this mountain moving past me. I swear I can see a smile, but I can’t be sure.

I look at the the cover of my notebook to what I was doodling:  ”Black is beautiful, but Red is divine.”

I grow to admire and respect Mr. Patrick. His love of music, the stories he tells us in class, his quiet strength. These are his gifts. On days like the ones when Mandela walked out of prison, when Madiba became president of South Africa, and when Obama wins and later is inaugurated. I can’t help but think of Mr. Patrick.

Then I think to myself: Funny, how so many of my heroes are Black.

media mysteries

I’ve worked as a journalist for most of my working life. Most of that time has been spent with the mainstream media, in broadcast newsrooms or productions. I have spent very little time working with or for Indigenous publications and broadcasters, unfortunately. The few times that I did often ended in disaster.  I blame the mindset in these places – not the individuals. They were often inhabited by really nice people, but also people with a horribly misguided sense of purpose and few to inspire them.

So often, they felt it their duty to tip the scales or act as advocates, representatives, spokespeople and cheerleaders for Indigenous politicians. In other words, they were propagandists.

Other times, they wanted to be opinion shapers or pundits but lacked the depth, clarity of mind, experience or intellect to pull it off.

Often, a lot more often than I care to think, they wanted to be celebrities; to be somebodies on TV or the radio but without paying the dues.

Rarely, once in a while, I came across people who cared about the profession of journalism, wanted to tell good stories well, and to make a difference in peoples’ lives. Perhaps if I had met a few more people like this last group, I might still be trying to work in Indigenous journalism.

The worst part isn’t the disappointment I felt that there weren’t more good people trying to be Indigenous journalists. Or the disappointment that comes from straining to keep the mainstream door of opportunity open for so long and for such meagre results. No, the worst part is that so many good Indigenous people chose to avoid the profession altogether.

They prefered to work in politics, at band councils, for relatively well-paying organizations as hacks, writing news releases, and putting up with know-it-all politicos who have such disdain for anyone with an independent thought that they revile anyone who even used to be a journalist. These are the people that really get my blood boiling. Because they knew better.

Yet they abandoned the field to others who care not a whit for fairness, accuracy and balance. In their places, they have allowed in shameless ideological flacks who seem to dominate the few and shrinking number of Indigenous newsrooms these days. They are filled with such self-loathing that it seems they want to destroy all that is Indigenous in this country.

Meanwhile, the rest of those in the Indigenous media continue to shovel out mindless, meaningless crap. They want to be loved instead of respected, invited to tea instead of feared, prefer to be treated like a servile dog than a feisty champion for the poor and victimized.

Then again, maybe it’s just January and the lack of sun.

congress of aboriginal hypocrisy

Patrick Brazeau

Stories keep seeping out of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP) about its head, Patrick Brazeau, its senior administration, its board of directors. The stories are about sexual harrassment, pyschological harrassment, lack of political accountability, misuse or abuse of position or power, coverups, and so on.

Two women have taken their complaints public; both to Brazeau himself and the CAP board, one to the Canadian Human Rights Commission when that went nowhere. In both cases, there was supposed to be an internal review that cleared Brazeau. Not everyone believes it, knowing all too well how political organizations tend to shovel such things under heavy carpetting.

Two members of the board, one from Manitoba and another from Saskatchewan, have released letters of complaint about the “internal investigations” and their muzzling by Brazeau and other senior CAP officials. They say that when tried to lay their hands on the investigation’s report, they were refused. When they sought to raise questions about the report and the women’s allegations during CAP’s annual general assembly, that Brazeau kept them from attending. Brazeau was re-elected at that meeting.

By suspending the Manitoba delegation from that CAP assembly, and muzzling discussion about these allegations before the election, the western delegates say that Brazeau and others may have rigged the election by avoiding any accountability that might have been expressed by the voting delegates. Lack of accountability, as some may have noticed, is one of Brazeau’s constant criticisms about reserves, band council chiefs, the Assembly of First Nations and its leader, Phil Fontaine.

Brazeau has not cooperated with the Cdn Human Rights Commission, which passed the complaint of sexual harrassment along to an Ontario human rights tribunal. Considering Brazeau’s push to have the Canadian Human Rights Act imposed upon reserves and their band councils, again this seems more than a mite hypocritical.

Sadly, instead of releasing documents like the report of that internal investigation, Brazeau and the CAP executive have decided to shut ranks (predictable), condemn the victims (also predictable), and shut the blinds in hopes it will somehow fade away like the last episode of Dallas

Brazeau said the allegations were investigated and dismissed by an independent mediation firm last year.

“The conclusions of the investigation was that there was no wrongdoing, there was no sexual harassment and therefore, the allegations were false, and that’s now case closed,” Brazeau told CBC News on Wednesday.

“My integrity is not at stake here.”

Uh, huh. Oh, yes it is!

Beyond this almost daily sliming of Brazeau, however, reporters have not asked what I think are much more pertinent questions. Sure this Algonquin Indian from Maniwaki, QC, has some serious character flaws and needs to answer some questions. But so do the good folks who put him into the Senate?

Why aren’t reporters demanding answers from Chuck Strahl, the Min of Indian Affairs, to find out why he still says this about Brazeau:

“I’m sure he’ll do great work,” Strahl said. “He’s a good man. He will do the right things as he goes forward, and he’ll provide good leadership both on Quebec issues and aboriginal issues.”

Pardonez moi? Yeah, right.

What kind of vetting took place before the Prime Minister appointed Brazeau?

The Prime Minister said he wanted to get away from patronage appointments to the Senate and institute American-style hearings and an elected Senate. Bull-roar.
What criteria did he use when selecting fine people like Pamela Wallin, Mike Duffy, and the rest of this bunch of “Cash-For-Lifers.”

So why isn’t the news media asking these questions? Or are they waiting for Parliament to be recalled so they can avoid asking them and get to the real stuff about… uh, whatever.

rise up, stand up

There’s a pathetic old woman named Kathy Shaidle, a Canadian blogger, who recently posted this on her site:

“Shame those smallpox blankets were just a myth, eh?”

The old woman in question was slamming a Plains Cree man who took his two daughters into a freezing blizzard last winter while he was drunk. He lost his children going between houses. They froze to death. The man pleaded guilty to criminal negligence. But the old woman with the blog took the opportunity to express hate against an entire race of people, and to advocate mass murder and even genocide.

Just like the good old days, huh.

Of course, when other bloggers confronted this compelling reason for retroactive abortion, she trotted out the usual excuses: settlers never practiced this method of mass murder; it was just a joke. Such despicable idiots eventually seek the refuge of cowards by wrapping themselves in the cloak free speech, wherein they portray themselves as defenders of democracy, decency, family values, blah… blah…

I wouldn’t comment about this pitiable old woman or her lame excuses except for a study conducted by Canadian and U.S. researchers at York University.

Take two classes of 60 students each. Put two actors, one black and the other white, into one of the classrooms. This is what happened next according to CBC.ca:

The black actor then left the room to retrieve a cellphone, lightly bumping the other actor on the way out. The white actor then responded in one of three ways, saying nothing, saying the phrase “I hate when black people do that” or uttering an offensive racial slur.

When the black actor returned, study participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire rating their emotional mood and then were asked to choose a partner for what they thought was the actual test.

The researchers found that in cases where the white actor made a racist comment, participants did not speak out, did not report any emotional distress and actually chose the white actor as a partner more often than the black actor.

The other group of students were told what had taken place in the other classroom, then were asked to make the same choice. Most students chose to partner with the black actor.

OK. What does all of this mean? Here’s one of the researchers:

“The failure of people to confront or do anything about racist comments is pretty widespread in the real world,” said Smith. “People may feel uncomfortable if someone makes a remark like this, but it’s rare they will actually confront them.”

It also shows why racism continues to be as Canadian as Hockey Night in Canada.

That’s my reason for this post. I’d like to send some applause to a few bloggers StageLeft and Balbulican, Dr. Dawg, who routinely stand up and speak out against racism in the blogosphere.

As for that old woman and others like her… They deserve nothing but contempt.

An article on the study is published in this month’s (January) issue of Science Magazine.

good gawd awmighty

Who writes this stuff? Do they actually get paid for this drivel? Does he actually speak like the phone book? Where the hell is the Obama Factor??

Sorry. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Well it ain’t me that don’t make sense. Here. Take a look for yourself. Then let me know what you think. 

“We all agree that investing in First Nations is the pathway for economic and social prosperity for both First Nations and Canada. Investing in First Nations benefits all Canadians and builds a stronger Canada,” the National Chief said. “The Alternative Federal Budget released today is consistent with the AFN’s own proposal for a First Nations economic stimulus plan.”

Yes, this is just a sample but a mind-numbing example of what passes for oratory at the top of the national Aboriginal organizations (or NAOs as they like to say, but we’ll tackle those nasty acronyms some other time). Whoo-hoo! Sure makes me wanna slip on my demonstrating shoes, knock down a tree, set up a blockade. (yawn) Excuse me while I just take nap first. Those words are better than counting sheep.

I’m not advocating an ear-drum rattling burst of rhetoric. Nor a down-and-dirty slip into street lingo.  But – fer chrine-dine sakes – there not a single bit of passion in there. No sense that the words come from a human being or are meant to be heard (much less understood) by the same.  It’s the kind of boring, sleep-inducing, bureaucratese that permeates everything and everyone who stays in Ottawa too long. They not only begin to look like Ottawa bureaucrats, dress like them, sound like them, but eventually even think like them. 

Which is one reason why folks back on the rez don’t have any connection to these guys in their fancy suits and ties. And why those suits cannot understand why no one listens to them.

Now, your thoughts?