we agree… sometimes

The Globe and Mail reprinted an editorial it ran on June 12, 2003. It is about David Ahenakew, who disgraced himself with racist and hateful comments about Jews. A Saskatchewan court recently retried, and acquitted him, of “willfully promoting hatred.” I’ve discussed that decision in a previous post, but felt the G&M’s editorial summed up my feelings then, and now.

Let’s be clear about one thing. What former first nations leader David Ahenakew said in a speech last year was deplorable, a disgusting display of anti-Semitism. This was no mealy-mouthed expression of cocktail-party racism, but an expression of unadulterated hate against the Jewish people. It was reprehensible behaviour, particularly coming from a respected elder statesman, a former leader of the Assembly of First Nations and a member of the Order of Canada.

However, charging Mr. Ahenakew with hate crimes is not the appropriate way to deal with his remarks. The proper response is to repudiate his views in the strongest possible way, and for those in the native community to remove Mr. Ahenakew from positions of authority, while making clear that no one supports his hateful views. He should also be stripped of the Order of Canada.

With the exception of that last suggestion, this is exactly what has happened since Mr. Ahenakew shocked his own community and the country with his remarks.

“revolting, disgusting and untrue.”

That’s how a Provincial Court judge in Saskatchewan described things David Ahenakew said about Jews during an interview six years ago. I couldn’t agree more.

There are people who want to see this second trial overturned, to see Ahenakew found guilty of inciting hatred against Jews. I couldn’t agree less. Here’s why.

Ahenakew was charged after he made his now infamous statements about Jews, first as a conference speaker and later in an interview with a reporter from the Saskatoon Star Phoenix. A provincial court found him guilty of “wilfully promoting hatred,” slapped Ahenakew with a $1,000 fine. Ahenakew then had his Order of Canada taken away. The Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, at first behind Ahenakew, condemned his statements and removed Ahenakew from all official positions including FSIN senator. An appeal court overturned his conviction, but by then Ahenakew had been exposed to everyone as a man with disgusting ideas.

But there’s a difference between spouting disgusting ideas and inciting violence against an identifiable group in society. Ahenakew is guilty of the first, not the second. He said disgusting things about Jews, as this second trial judge said. In doing so, he let the world see him in a new light, an ugly light, in that interview six years ago. But Ahenakew wasn’t inciting violence. And that should be the line when it comes to criminal charges. Inciting violence is where the loud-mouthed idiot becomes a danger to others in society, and where the criminal code should become a factor.

Believe me, I can think of some people I would love to put through the same wringer as Ahenakew. I would have to ask myself, though, whether they were simply off their big yaps or advocating physical attacks on someone else.

here’s a headline for ya

Arctic research station to be located in Nunavut

Apparently, the Minister of Indian Affairs Canada [oops, forgot the link] (all ye bow and scrape to the great white fadda) has, after much deliberation and forethought, decided that Canada’s big research station studying changes to the Arctic environment (and identifying resources for southerners to exploit, no doubt) should be located… (hold…. ) in the ARCTIC!

Now why didn’t we think of that?

instant shamans and plastic medicine men

When I first began to cover Indigenous issues as a journalist in Canada, I ran into one humdinger of a moral quandary. I ran across ads in a Toronto community newsletter that caught my eye. The newsletter served a crunchy-granola neighbourhood with its requisite health foods stores and alternative medicine stands. I lean that way naturally (no pun intended) and have attended medicine ceremonies in my own culture. I’ve seen things I cannot explain, nor do I wish to. Somethings, you take on faith.

But these ads were something I had never seen before. Some guy was advertising sweat lodges in the Don Valley, in the heart of downtown Toronto.  He was also offering vision quests.  He would guarantee that customers who paid a certain amount would find their spirit guide and be well on the way on their new path in life. I was flabbergasted.

That got me reading. I found entire magazines usually but not exclusively published by men who had adopted strange names right out of some two-bit  Hollywood “B” western; names like Sun Bear, or Wolf-walker Arrowpoint, or Moon Shade Woman. Now I know a lot of people with genuine names that sound like that.  Names like Peaches Tailfeathers, Arnold Ghoststriker, or Mary Weaselfat. Their names don’t sound a bit fake, and they are well-respected and well-known family names out west.  The fake names resembled those that the Dead Dog Cafe’s “Spin the Wheel and Get a Genuine Indian Name Game” might produce. You would never find real people like them putting their names to ads in community newsletters or publishing their own glossy national magazines claiming to guarantee a spirit guide to anyone willing to pay the low, low price of only $600.  Frankly, they got too much class and way too much honesty.

So here I had a bunch of scam artists fleecing the naive and none-too-bright, and mostly white. Yet, I also knew that in that same city there were genuine people who conducted real ceremonies and never sought attention or payment. They were the real mckoy – not your just-add-crystals instant shamans, mostly wannabe Indians, plastic medicine men.

My quandary came down to this: How to do the story without hurting the genuine folks?  Worse, I kept running across Indians who were doing the same thing. They saw a chance to fleece people and jumped at the chance to rip them off. I had also come to realize the full extent that some of these scammers would go. Some were involved in serious crimes that included rape, major fraud and pedophilia. I was sick with worry, anxious to warn people while at the same time tying myself up in knots about tarring the real elders with the same brush.

There is no “elders” society, association or guild. They don’t carry ID cards or mount certificates or degrees on their office walls or at home, although I have seen plenty of the fakes do just that: “So-and-so has just completed a four week program in the ‘4-Stage Healing Touch” Program and is now a graduate and licenced practioner… blah, blah, blah.”

That happened years ago, but today I’m faced with a similar quandary. This time it’s the government that is behind it all. Instead of attracting genuine elders, real healers who know the ceremonies and rites, they hire people they know are in it for the buck. Or they hire people who have no idea what a healing ceremony is, but the government labels them “elders.” Worse, it compels – orders – people to attend the “workshops” put on by these fakes, and punishes them if they don’t comply. 

Today, I face similar questions. My quandary today is how to tell this story without hurting the elders but let people know that this officially-sanctioned bullshit in going on without identifying the real victims.

some of the best journalism in south africa…

 

traps

… is not being done by journalists. It’s being done by bloggers like this guy, Michael Trapido. He’s a lawyer, a journalist, a writer who bills himself as a witty sports enthusiast. But there’s more. He writes with a sense of humour, of right and wrong beyond sports, and mixes in a healthy dose of righteous indignation. In other words, he’s got edge. He also has one of the better seats in the house when it comes to explaining what the hell is going on in South Africa these days.

 

Of particular concern to me is what has been happening of late to the South African Broadcasting Corporation. I worked at SABC. I know people there. I have friends who are still there after all of these years, although most have left disillusioned of their own accord, or have had their figurative throats slit from behind.

For instance, here’s his take on Snuki Zikalala, one of those people who slit many a throat, is perhaps the person most responsible for putting the SABC’s news operation under the ANC’s control, corrupting its promise to the people of SA as a public broadcaster, for ruining the careers of so many good journalists, and endangering SA’s once brave experiment with democracy and democratic journalism.

You can just feel the anger. But also the warning.

in case you aren’t convinced…

Jodi Rave, a writer for The Missoulian, both print and online versions, has a little story of her own about some of the comments that people have dropped on her. Rave is Lakota and has been a journalist in the mainstream for nearly five years.

photo from the Montana Missoulian

In this column, she wonders whether it’s a case of two steps forward and three steps back sometimes.

 

I know these “Indian” states well. And I knew it would be a tremendous challenge to report and live in one of them, a reality revisited with the recent arrival of an anonymous letter. I’ve seen them before. And in Montana, I’ve noted a pattern.

No return address. No signature. Typewritten. And vitriolic.

Here’s an excerpt from the most recent “anonymous writer.” The words appear exactly as typed in the letter:

“I cannot stand it. ONE MORE DAY!! How many front page articles to do with Indians? Oh my God … Do I live in a city that is Mostly white or am I living on a Reservation and don’t know it? Wait a minute … if I were on a reservation then I would get everything for FREE … ”

forums for hate?

 

 

CBC statement on comments

I waited for a week for some kind of reaction to a story about a group representing some Manitoba Indians. They want provincial Justice officials (for now) to investigate whether the CBC is committing a hate crime by allowing racist comments about Indians on its web sites. The Southern Chiefs Organization monitored several online news sites including CBC Manitoba, versions of broadcast and print news. The group included comments from the CBC site in their complaint, as examples, obviously aiming high on their list of targets to get attention. After a week, though, nary a whisper from either the CBC or anyone else.

 

“The posting of these comments has happened before on the CBC site. Sometimes the very worst of comments have been removed the same day they are posted; others which are marginally less offensive are allowed to remain for months. The truth, however, remains that the CBC website is providing a vehicle for the expression of hatred, intolerance and ignorancethrough the perpetuation of stereotypes.” 

Let’s go back a couple of years. The scene is a lecture room at a university in Ontario. At the front are four people including myself. Besides Sam George, an Anishnabe (Ojibway) and the real conscience behind the Ipperwash Inquiry, I am the other Indigenous person on the panel, a Mohawk, a journalist. Our panel considers whether Canadian society will learn anything from the Ipperwash Inquiry; about the abuse of police by politicians; the consequences of losing control over police blinded by racism, stereotypes, and ignorance; and government authority’s decision to use deadly force instead of negotiation with unarmed Indian protesters. A question from an Oneida man in the audience takes us into an area of growing concern, and is met with a rather flip answer from yours truly.

The man wants to know what can be done about what he reads as racist hate on Internet news sites such as that of the Globe and Mail newspaper. I tell him that I believe in free speech and the right of people – no matter how disgusting – to express themselves. I suggest taking them on at these same sites, to unmask lies or correct falsehoods, to counteract the (and I do agree) racist garbage that seems to dominate whenever there is a story about Indigenous peoples. There are also laws for inciting hatred, I suggest.

I concede that so many of the Globe’s stories that generate such hateful comments are apparently “semi-moderated,” whatever that means. What does it mean? Who knows, I ask? So, I agree with the Oneida man’s point that news sites need to be more vigilant and a lot more accountable for what they allow on their web sites.

That isn’t good enough for him, or it seems for most of the audience. I don’t make friends that day. To be honest, my answers don’t satisfy me either.

More than a decade ago, an Anishnabe journalist began to monitor the Canadian news media to complain about their failings in covering stories about Indigenous peoples and their nations. His letters to editors and producers decried bias, prejudice, lack of depth or comprehension (sometimes to a laughable degree), omission of fact, distortion, or the complete absence of coverage of newsworthy events or issues. The constant theme was: White media is bad, poorly done if done at all, racist, biased and prejudiced against Indigenous peoples.

He had a point, several in fact, but one in particular. Ignorance, bias and prejudice based on racist stereotypes constantly transmitted to mass audiences makes continued racism against Indigenous peoples a virtual certainty. 

But I also remember sitting in a newsroom when that guy began his one-man campaign for media accountability. It was a typical newsroom, mostly white, about half female, middle class, university educated, and culturally insulated from the rest of the world beyond their comfortable little circles. They read his complaints, sniggered at them, uncomfortable at his assertions. They then reassured themselves that they were the good guys, just ordinary Canadians, and he was a bothersome idiot.

yeah, what he said…

Get the rest here….(Opinion: Alaska Natives thrived for thousands of years)

“Homo sapiens have lived and prospered in Alaska for at least 10,000 years. Very resourceful people had advanced cultures and economies here when Europeans were huddling in caves drawing on the walls with burnt sticks.

It is easy for those of us from non-indigenous stock to assume that humans accomplished nothing of significance here before 1747. Most of our attitude is benign ignorance mixed with some cultural hubris. My purpose is to dispel some of the ignorance and engender more respect as we go forward.”

It makes me wanna holler!

Not me, but it fits otherwise.

I have noted, preached against, argued about, condemned, aimed jokes at, and pulled my hair over the continuing laziness, ignorance or stupidity of people (notably journalists and others who work with words and language) over their constant misuse of generic, all-encompassing, one-size-fits-all terms like “Aboriginal.” 

I don’t discriminate with my complaints. I don’t care if they’re aimed at Caucasian, Indian, Métis, Black, Asian, Eurasian, South Asian, Inuit or any number of other peoples. Individuals who work with words are supposed to make things clear – not confuse things even more. They are expected to agonize over limited space or time; to condense and simplify. In the end though, they should explain things so people may understand. 

Instead, I keep complaining about people who think that “Aboriginal” can be used instead of “Indian,” that there are such things as Aboriginal reserves, and that an inukshuk is Aboriginal. 

(brrrppp) WRONG!  Everyone who agreed with that last sentence take one giant step backward. 
I don’t know how many times that I’ve picked up a newspaper, watched a TV program, heard on the radio someone – very often a highly paid someone – talk about an “Aboriginal treaty” or an “Aboriginal non-status person.”  On that first term, there ain’t no such thing. Only Indian NATIONS made treaty with the British, U.S., French, Spanish and later Canada in North America. That is a crucial legal and historic distinction from which many other distinctions flow. 

Before I really get fuming… here’s an example from a draft book that crossed my computer HD. It isn’t written by some ignoramus but by a respected, highly educated and well-paid mixed-race professional person. Part North American Indian she says, and someone who should know better. Read on, McDuff…

When the French and British first took control of the land in what is now Canada, the land was considered to be owned by the King or Queen. Until it was granted or sold to individuals it was called Crown land.

Early Crown land records held by provincial governments include many references to Aboriginal peoples. When members of Aboriginal bands entitled to reserve land allocations married non-Aboriginals (or non-Status Indians), there was often some disagreement over entitlement to the land, and thus documentation of the relationships was produced. This documentation can be found in correspondence with representatives of the Crown and the records of special commissions set up to handle disputes. 

There are also inspection and valuation reports in the Crown land records. In cases where these cover regions settled by Aboriginal peoples, their names may be listed, often identifying them as members of a First Nation Band, Métis or White. These records can be helpful for establishing identity and residence, although they do not tend to describe relationships between individuals.

There are so many things wrong with these three paragraphs that I shudder. “Aboriginal bands”? Do Métis or Inuit have reserves? Who the frig gave the King or Queen the right to… well enough of that! 

In the last paragraph, she states that Aboriginal peoples settled on Crown lands!? WTF? Indians and Inuit are the original owners and inhabitants of the land. They didn’t settle on Crown land but were herded onto postage stamp reserves so the government could give their land to mostly European settlers. 

Oh, then there’s an additional kick in the head with “First Nation band.” 

Oy. Has the Canadian education system ever failed her.  I need an aspirin.

credit where credit’s due

I couldn’t help but be amazed how American’s have been treating the flight and cabin crew of that airliner that ditched in the Hudson River without a single loss in life. Why? Because I remember how quickly the same kind of attention and praise passed for the crew of that French airliner that ditched on takeoff at Pearson International in Toronto a few years ago. Sure, they go some attention – but not nearly as much, as lavish, as sustained as that which the Americans are piling on Captain Sullenberger and crew. Well-deserved, every bit of it too.

But I also remember how the airlines in Canada — and so quickly afterward too – went to Ottawa to get the federal government and the department that regulates air travel safety to reduce the number of crew and attendants on domestic flights. The recent coverage got me wondering whether either of those miracle crash landings would have been so miraculous if there had not been as many trained crew to evacuate the passengers out as quickly as they did. Remember, especially with that crash in Toronto, seconds counted before the plane was enveloped in flames.

As someone who travels by air quite a bit, I really have to wonder the next time I hop on a domestic flight in Canada whether the airlines got their way or not.